Whiteness, Heteropaternalism, and the Gendered Politics of Settler Colonial Populist Backlash Culture in Australia1

Abstract This article analyzes backlashes to queer and Indigenous diversity-affirmative practices in Australia that entail perceived loss of dominance by the majority culture. The case studies outlined here demonstrate how whiteness, nationhood, and (gendered) heterosexuality are playing out in parallel ways through populist backlashes that have the purpose of containing queerness and indigeneity in “respectable” modes that do not challenge the default neutrality of a constructed “Australian” subject. The rhetorical and political strategies of erasing the queer and Indigenous others so as to reify the norm will be analyzed.