Weaponising stigma? Stigma, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, and its impact upon LGBTQI+ communities during the era of COVID-19

COVID-19 has had a disproportionate effect on LGBTQI+ people globally (Human Rights Watch, 2021), but it has also seen the negative framing of many LGBTQI+ people and their communities, by nation states and their satellite institutions. News reports and NGOs have highlighted examples how media institutions blamed LGBTQI+ people for the spread of COVID-19 in South Korea (Pink News, 2020) and in Uganda, how the state used COVID-19 restrictions to arrest, detain and torture LGBTQI+ people (The Guardian, 2020). In Panama, police officials were seen to discriminate against transgender people while enforcing a gender-based quarantine (Human Rights Watch, 2021) and Turkey’s growing religious conservatism, validated by the state, blamed LGBTQI+ people for the very origins of the pandemic (France 24). This chapter will outline global case studies of the material and symbolic ways in which the state and institutions have framed and impacted upon LGBTQI+ people and their communities during the pandemic. Using Tyler’s (2021) concepts of ‘stigma power’ it will also evaluate how ‘stigma politics’ (Tyler, 2021) have been weaponised by nation states, and institutions, to produce, legitimate and reproduce homo/bi/transphobia in an era of COVID-19