Identity Strategies and State Engagement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 June 2025
Chapter 4 considers dilemmas that arise for “successful” LGBT movements with increasing access to and interactions with state bureaucracies. The chapter applies an intersectional lens to neoliberal inclusion to reveal how inclusion along one dimension (sexuality) may constrict organizations along other dimensions (access to resources), influencing the ability of organizations to deploy their identity strategies. The chapter first examines how, in Argentina, activists who took up salaried positions in the bureaucracy were able to deploy their strategy of lesbian visibility from within the state to advance pro-LGBT public policy. However, activists’ engagement with the state weakened the organization and compromised its ability to deploy its identity strategy in the public sphere. The chapter then contrasts this example of state engagement with Free Gender’s decisions in South Africa. Free Gender declined to participate in a major national initiative and chose instead to engage with local police and deploy its identity strategy in these interactions. The chapter concludes by drawing lessons about the consequences of neoliberal inclusion on LGBT organizations, specifically how it may limit their potential to effect change regardless of the choice organizations make to engage the state or not.
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