Homoterrorism: Definition, Application, Subversion
Abstract
On Friday, September 21, 2018, Zak Kostopoulos was lynched in his attempt to escape a jewellery shop where he had found shelter from an unknown to this day threat. Zak was lynched literally and figuratively by the jewellery shop owner and his associate, by the bystanders, and by all mainstream news media. In this paper, homoterrorism is proposed as a construct that can describe hegemonic attempts to portray certain domestic non-heterosexual identities, practices, and cultures as abject in an attempt to (re)define a society's national sociodicy. The argument is that homoterrorism provides an understanding of extreme acts of violence against the non-heterosexual Other, such as in the case of Zak Kostopoulos's murder, especially when such acts are framed as essential to the precipitation of national cohesion. Further to this, the paper draws on theories about the social media and their potential as a means of political and social change, and it argues that Twitter activism can become a way to challenge homoterrorism.References
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