In recent years, LGBTQ+ rights have become a global battleground, shaping political alliances and conflicts. From the United States’ fight against terrorism, backed by the discourse of “homonationalism”, to Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws and framing of its invasion of Ukraine as part of a struggle for “traditional values”, the world is often described as divided into two opposite geopolitical camps: those who support LGBTQ+ rights and those who oppose them.

Beyond Queer Cold Wars challenges this idea by bringing together case studies of how sexuality and gender are entangled in geopolitical relations in multiple and sometimes unexpected ways. The chapters move between social movement mobilization, media, arts and popular culture, religion, economic forces and high-level international politics, and show the richness, complexity and nuanced histories of contemporary politics of gender and sexuality. By examining the blurred lines between support and opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, Beyond Queer Cold Wars offers a fresh perspective on the global fight for equality, emphasizing that no country or movement is as simple as it might appear.

Maryna Shevtsova is a Senior post-doctoral FWO Fellow at KU Leuven. She is the author of LGBTI Politics and Value Change in Ukraine and Turkey Exporting Europe? (2021) editor of Feminist Perspectives of Russia's War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices (2024). 

Tatiana Klepikova is Research Group Leader at the University of Regensburg. She is the author of Homophobia: Soviet and Post-Soviet (forthcoming) and co-editor of Outside the “Comfort Zone”: Private and Public Spheres in Late Socialist Europe (2020) 

Emil Edenborg is an associate professor and senior lecturer at Stockholm University, He is the author of Politics of Visibility and Belonging: From Russia’s “Homosexual Propaganda” Laws to the Ukraine War (2017).