"This book offers a theorisation of the international politics of sexual shame and stigma. Using the empirical case of Russian state homophobia and international responses to it, the book illustrates the dynamics through which sex comes to matter geopolitically: namely, through moralising policies that carve out international hierarchies. Russian foreign policy has consistently and increasingly included stigmatizing discourses about non-normative sexuality and gender. Part of this has involved constructing Europe and the West as Gayropa, arguing that this Gayropean space and its values threaten Russian national security and cultural sovereignty. This book studies these practices and responses to it. Introducing the concept of heteronormative internationalism, it shows that sex is part of international power games. To illustrate this, the book examines how international actors try to resist Russias heteronormative geopolitical project. A key part of that response has been the use of visual and bodily strategies of contestation.

Methodologically, the book introduces a tripartite words-images-bodies approach which treats words, images, and bodies as having equal epistemic and ontological status. In addition to this, it introduces an antinormative conceptualisation of queer that shifts the epistemology through which we understand non-normative sexualities and activist practices. Emphasising antinormativity is also presented as a fruitful avenue for queer international relations scholarship to explore particularly with regards to developing some political core, rather than being a synonym for ontological plurality and instability. Overall, bringing queer theorising together with visual international relations scholarship, the book offers an analysis of the way images and bodies are matters of international politics and must be taken seriously as avenues through which geopolitical projects are resisted by non-state actors"-- Provided by publisher.