Queer in Cyprus: National Identity and the Construction of Gender and Sexuality

Abstract

The Republic of Cyprus (RoC) is an economically advanced, nominally secular and multicultural European democratic state, which claims to respect human rights pertaining to diversity. Nevertheless, Cypriot society is deeply divided along national, ethnic, racial, sex, gender and sexuality lines. Thus, it is particularly instructive for demonstrating how nationalism relates to gender and sexuality in nationalistic, ethnically divided, postcolonial and traditional milieus. At the same time the Cypriot microcosm functions as a window on injustices that take place elsewhere in the name of national prerogatives, in a globalized and amalgamating world. Additionally, it exhibits how relatively recent phenomena such as Europeanization – ‘a process of structural change, variously affecting actors and institutions, ideas and interests’ (Featherstone 2003: 3) – and external policies, laws and trends promote or inhibit certain subjectivities’ inclusion in – or exclusion from – the body of the nation and from the dominant socio-political culture. Accordingly, this chapter will address the questions: a) How are gender and sexuality subjectivities constructed in Cyprus and what is their relationship to national identity and to other predominant discourses? b) How are ‘human rights’ and ‘Europe’ conceptualized and how do lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans* and queer (LGBTQ) rights operate in the Cypriot context? c) What strategies are needed in order for alternative identities to flourish and for European and global LGBTQ legal developments to be substantially applied on the local level? d) What role might queer theory play – or not play – in milieus where a strategically identity-based LGBTQ movement seems to offer the best hope for affecting societal and political change