Digiqueer criminology and the new LGBTQ+ visibility

This article examines the technosocial drivers of partisanship over LGBTQ+ sexual politics. In liberal democracies, disclosure of non-heterosexual identity has grown, and same-sex marriage has been enacted in a growing number of jurisdictions. At the same time, LGBTQ+ people in many jurisdictions are experiencing renewed censure and criminalisation. This new LGBTQ+ visibility is defined by a contradictory connectivity between technology, queer identity, and justice. Contradictory connectivity provides safe online spaces to explore sexual identity, but which are encompassed by ambivalent human and algorithmic decision-making that can repackage LGBTQ+ stereotypes to old and new audiences. The global reach of the convergence of stereotypical media framing with algorithmic discrimination has produced complex, anti-LGBTQ+ threats from a loose coalition of previously disparate, revanchist ideologies who take a very narrow, ‘traditional’ view of family, sex, procreation, and gender. Creators of this misinformation can amplify its reach through light-touch digital platform moderation under the auspices of unqualified freedom of speech. It is at this intersection that LGBTQ+ identity has become ensnared in the attack on democracy through incoherent and destabilising messaging. Big tech’s experiment with generative artificial intelligence is set to further amplify anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation. Digiqueer criminology seeks to deepen understanding of this relationship between digital knowledge, justice for LGBTQ+ people, and geopolitics.