Lewis, ‘The Cultural Politics of Lesbian Asylum’, 2010

Rachel Lewis, ‘The Cultural Politics of Lesbian Asylum, Angelina Maccarone’s Unveiled (2005) and the Case of the Lesbian Asylum-Seeker’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 12 (3-4), pp 424- 443, 2010

Abstract

Although asylum for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals has been on the international human rights agenda since the early to mid 1990s, lesbian asylum cases do not tend to figure centrally in analyses of the relationship between refugee law and international human rights law. While a number of regional and comparative studies of lesbian asylum exist by legal activists and scholars, a discussion of the politics of lesbian asylum claims has so far remained absent from both feminist and queer studies. In this contribution, I explore how the subject of lesbian asylum is treated within the context of film and visual media. Focusing particular attention on Angelina Maccarone’s film Unveiled about an Iranian lesbian asylum-seeker, I consider the ways in which film and media might transform how we conceive of and imagine lesbian rights. As I will suggest, Unveiled offers important insights into the kinds of representational challenges that are specific to lesbian asylum claims. In this way, I argue, the film constitutes a much-needed intervention into current advocacy on behalf of the issue of lesbian asylum.