Samuel Ritholtz explores LGBT vulnerability during COVID-19 in new paper

Samuel Ritholtz (DPhil International Development, 2018) has published a new article in the Journal of Politics and Gender entitled ‘A Queer Approach to Understanding LGBT Vulnerability during the COVID-19 Pandemic‘.

“This journal article, which I published with Graeme Reid of Human Rights Watch, highlights the risks associated with a monolithic understanding of LGBT vulnerability during crisis. In the article, Graeme and I contend that this monolithic approach, which focuses solely on a person’s sexual and gender identity, risks obviating the way different structural forces compound precarity during crisis.

“We argue for rooting intersectional approaches in queer analyses of crisis. To make this point, we first consider how LGBT people, in general, have been left out of humanitarian responses to crises in the past and the mixed efforts of inclusion in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. From there, we explore how solely focusing on sexual and gender identity fails to capture the wide array of exclusions and vulnerabilities that LGBT people face in crisis. We develop case studies from Human Rights Watch’s reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate how dynamics of class, race, migrant status, and gender all produce differential impacts on the lived experiences of LGBT people during crisis. We purport, thus, that successful interventions must take these considerations into account.

“This article builds off of my research on the experiences of LGBT people during conflict and displacement, which I undertake as a DPhil Student at the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford’s Department of International Development. My thesis specifically looks at the dynamics of violence against LGBT people during the Colombian internal armed conflict. My research is motivated by the assertion that centering LGBT experiences during crisis reveals new insights into the logics of prejudicial violence, othering, and marginality by political actors. I also believe this research focus can have an impact in preventing the passive perpetuation of discrimination that comes from the effacement of LGBT lives in academic literature.

“When the COVID-19 pandemic began, I was actually in Colombia conducting my fieldwork. I ultimately returned home to New York, and with this unexpected break in my fieldwork, pivoted my focus to more contemporary topics of how the global COVID-19 response was leaving out LGBT people. Graeme was also publicly writing on LGBT vulnerability during the pandemic and so when the Journal of Politics and Gender put out the call for a special virtual issue on Gender, Politics, and the Pandemic, we thought it was a great opportunity to connect this public policy discussion with a more nuanced, academic discussion. Our goal is to provide an approach for humanitarian organizations that can be applied to this crisis and the next.”

Find out more about Samuel’s research exploring the dynamics of violence against sexual and gender minorities during the internal armed conflict in Colombia.