Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism

11 Stealth Bombers of Desire: The Globalization of “Alterity” in Emerging Democracies

11 Stealth Bombers of Desire The Globalization of “Alterity” in Emerging Democracies Cindy Patton In the early 1990s, a small number of young men in Taiwan awaited their interviews with psychiatrists who would certify them as homosexual and therefore unfit for obligatory (for males) military service. Unfortunately, the highly public 1993 American debates about gays in the military had not passed unnoticed by officials in Taiwan. Although technically permitted to apply for the homosexual exclusion , those awaiting a hearing during this time were discouraged from declaring their sexuality, which was no longer considered cause of unfitness for military service. The exact reasons for this change in policy are unclear. Taiwan was probably following the lead of emerging democracies that adopt apparently liberal stances on social issues as a means of demonstrating their modernness , or at least their distance from barbaric practices of their neighbors or their past.1 Indeed, Taiwan may have initiated this strategy in an earlier round of publicizing liberal sexual regulations. Chao Yengning (1996) demonstrates that during martial law (1949–1989) the Kuo Ming Tang, or KMT, asserted its liberalness by claiming that, compared to mainland China, believed to imprison and execute homosexuals, Taiwan lacked draconian regulation of homosexuality.2 It is clear, at any rate, that the present government was not responding to the demands of a minority constituency. Indeed, in 1993 there was barely a visible gay movement in 195 Taiwan; even today, there is nothing comparable to the visible, organized gay civil rights movement that, in the United States, demanded reconsideration of military policy.3 Actually, it is difficult to imagine a Taiwanese gay movement demanding to serve in the military: the absolute association of the military with martial-law KMT suggests that getting out of the military is more consonant with expressing new democratic feelings. Paradoxically, then, while seeming to promote human rights locally and adduct toward its space the global blanket of free self-expression, the 1993 policy change actually preempted identity-based liberation politics. Not speaking one’s sexuality—even in the semiprivacy of the psychiatrist’s interview—aligned with nationalist, progovernment (that is, pro-KMT) feeling. Far from making the state more democratic, the new policy put queerness at a further remove from emergent liberationist politics.4 Feelings of love of men are no threat to the military (though they may cause discomfort in other quarters . . . ironically, in the new social order under way by 1995 in the briefly DDP-controlled Taipei City government!).5 Gay men have been absorbed by the military; at least, Taiwan’s homosexuals no longer benefit from an official policy that once relieved them of service. Thus, instead of the expected battery of questions about their perverse desires and deviant practices , the gay petitioners of 1993 were treated to a rant about their nationalist feelings : “You are unpatriotic! You care nothing about your country! All you are doing is trying to get out of your obligation! What is wrong with you? Don’t you know the American gays want to serve their country?”6 Underneath the bleak humor of this scene lies a deeply troubling question, for sexual dissidents in emerging democracies—who are mostly not visible as a social movement—as well as for their globally visible American friends. Through what channels do discourses of sexual liberation travel—and what do they accomplish when they arrive? The fact that states can convey minoritarian “civil rights” in the absence of local actors militating for them may seem like a triumph in the globalization of human rights.7 But isn’t it a bit frightening to imagine a nation that first recognizes its gay citizens as cannon fodder? This is the fatal irony of the late modern homosexual citizen’s rights: he (in some cases she) is allowed to serve in a military that does not otherwise protect his (her) sexual interests. The use and composition of the military—sometimes all-volunteer, sometimes conscripted—have been debated in American politics since our Revolution. Many Americans believe that the post–World War II racial integration of the military paved the way for integration in other industries. See? Blacks and whites can work together! War films, television dramas, and novels of the post–World War II CINDY PATTON 196 decades—indeed, though less patriotic, through the Vietnam critique and reconciliation films of the 1970s and 1980s—suggested that a new sense of cross-racial understanding emerged...