Of Homo Nostalgia and (Post)Coloniality: Or, Where Did All the Critical White Gay Men Go?

The impetus for this chapter was the realization that in the national elections of June 2010, white gay men voted overwhelmingly for the Party for Freedom (pvv), the party of Islamophobe and xenophobe Geert Wilders. Starting with a comparative analysis of the two major social movements of the latter half of the twentieth century, the women’s and the gay movement, the chapter concludes that the latter movement was never concerned with race, but managed to occupy positions of power. Moving on to governmental gay policy, the chapter establishes that it recognizes, privileges, embraces, and defends only one kind, that is, the dominant Western form of homosexuality. The chapter then focuses on Pim Fortuyn, flamboyant and successful gay politician, and his contradictory sexual desires, vilifying yet desiring Muslims. Reading his desires in light of the cultural archive, the chapter highlights continuities with white male colonial sexuality in the simultaneous disgust with and attraction to sexual partners. It proposes the contours of a sexual map.