Review: "The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers"
Mark Gevisser's new book is a much-needed look at the complications of globalized queer activism.
In some ways, we seem to be living in a golden age of LGBTQ+ rights, at least those of us that live in the global north. In the United States, for example, the last decade has seen a sea change when it comes to both legal victories and public opinion. Supreme Court cases such as Obergefell v. Hodges and Bostock v. Clayton County granted same-sex couples the right to marry and protected them from being fired, respectively. Meanwhile, the American public has become ever more accepting of queer people in general, and more and more young people are identifying as something other than straight.
However, as Mark Gevisser documents in his new book, The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers, globally the picture is far more complicated and not nearly as universally positive. Increasingly, queer rights discourse has come into conflict and contact with a host of other phenomena, including the rising tide of nationalism, a retrenchment of traditional social values in various nations in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and dictators who see queer people of all varieties as a convenient scapegoat as they try to solidify their hold on power. It’s this “pink line,” as Gevisser terms it, that is at the heart of the book and provides the axis around which his analysis revolves.
What’s especially striking about Gevisser’s work is the extent to which he manages to weave together the macro and the micro levels of his story. Though the most moving--and sometimes haunting--parts of the book are the personal narratives of the people whom he has interviewed over the six years he spent working on the project, he periodically zooms out to show us the bigger picture, i.e. how these vignettes fit into a broader geopolitical story. Indeed, he repeatedly shows us that it’s impossible to fully understand these personal narratives without a concomitant understanding of how they fit into a broader whole.
To be sure, some of the stories that Gevisser recounts are difficult to read, especially since many of them live in countries where to be queer--whether gay, trans, or any number of the other identities that that word encompasses--often comes with physical danger and social opprobrium. We see, for example, the way that Russia’s “anti-propaganda” law negatively impacts the lives of a trans-woman trying to regain custody of her son from her ex-wife. Likewise, we see how the Arab Spring in Egypt seemed to open up a new world of possibilities for a lesbian couple in Cairo, before the subsequent crackdowns showed the limits of liberation.
What’s more, the pink line often runs right through other geopolitical fault lines, as we see in the chapter focusing on Fadi and Nadav who, as a Palestinian and an Israeli find their relationship firmly entangled with the broader conflict between Israel and Palestine. As Gevisser puts it, the Green Line and the pink line become firmly enmeshed within one another, affecting the lives of everyone they touch.
The Pink Line also demonstrates the extent to which gender, just as much as sexuality, has become a major front line in the ongoing wars over identity. Gevisser doesn’t shy away from the difficult conversations in this regard, and the chapter on “The Riot Youth” stories is especially illuminating. Here, we see how the growing number of young people that don’t identify as straight and cisgender run smack dab into opponents on both the right and the left, with the former dominated by religious conservatives and the latter by a certain brand of anti-trans (or at least trans skeptical) feminism. Fortunately, Gevisser allows the various youths--nonbinary, trans, nonconforming and everything in between--to tell their own stories in their own words and, just as importantly, he’s also willing to withdraw when they ask him to do so.
The Pink Line asks some very piercing questions, particularly for western readers, accustomed as they are to thinking that a human rights model is both good and necessary in the global queer struggle. Many of us, particularly those who occupy some privileged position--as White, as wealthy, as cisgender--tend to think that of course everyone in the world should aim for a western rights model. How else can we ensure that queer people are protected from harm? However, things are far more complicated than that, especially when this discourse runs up against cultural traditions that already had space for queer people, even if it wasn’t always ideal (or particularly pleasant). Things can quickly turn toxic when aspiring dictators decide that this push for global queer rights constitutes a threat to their power and so seek to reframe it as an western assault on tradtional values.
We see this play out in various regions throughout the world, but it comes into particular focus in the final portion, when Gevisser discusses the kothis of India. Frustrated with the social and economic privation faced by those who identify as hijra, the kothis have established their own little enclaves. However, as the book demonstrates, things again get complicated when this comes into conflict with the judicial system. When it comes to the pink line, there are no easy answers.
Thus, though some reviewers have taken Gevisser’s book to task for not answering the difficult questions that it raises, to me that rather misses the point of The Pink Line. The book aims to show how the pink line structures the lives and livelihoods of a wide range of individuals scattered across the globe, not to set out a political strategy. As our world continues to become ever more connected, these issues are going to become ever more pertinent and ever more urgent, especially as queer people in all parts of the world recognize that they have the agency to remake their own lives. I applaud Gevisser for being so willing to sit down and actually talk to people, to let their own voices ring through, and I also appreciate his willingness to render himself vulnerable, to allow us to see how his own understandings of the world have changed as a result of his travels.
The Pink Line is an essential read, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.