in response to "Monster, Terrorist, Fag"

Tiffany Do

ASA 2 Section 2

Week 6 Blog

In response to Puar and Rai’s article “Monster, Terrorist, Fag”:

This article talks about how heteronormativity plays a large part in the way the West understands and misrepresents the “terrorist monster.” The terrorist is depicted in ways that equate queer with sexual deviancy (126). The propaganda and field of terrorist studies is all new to me because I did not read or watch the news much (still don’t, unfortunately). Even so, I don’t find this very surprising. The U.S. needs to place people into boxes that they can understand them in. I think in the minds of people who come up with these cartoons or talk about the deviant behaviors of terrorists, they find it hard to conceptualize how a terrorist could ever have any of the same values as the “normal” people. By defining everything the terrorist is, they are defining everything that the West isn’t—much like Orientalism. These degrading and insulting images have a simplifying effect, and they undermine the terrorist and the idea that he could have any legitimacy. It seems like a very childish thing that a bully might do.

Question

What sort of impact does this have on the LGBTQIA community?

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