ABSTRACT
Law is a form of knowledge-power through which LGBTI recognition is widely asserted. It functions as a master frame for homophobia-related violence to be rendered actionable. In this chapter I take a critical look at how legal and rights discourses are put to work against homophobia-related violence and the conceivable actions these enable or restrain. I explore how a logic of law – and its association with the (dis)ordering of the social – operates through the construct of the ‘hate crime’ and the legal and educational strategies it supports as principal responses to homophobia. The chapter interrogates how queer vulnerabilities, protections and refusals are activated through discourse dynamics that work both with and against intersecting systems of violent dispossession.
