LGBT

Of all Arab countries, Tunisia stands as a model of privileged research to analyze empirically these issues. After the Jasmine Revolution that eventually led to the fall of autocratic Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Mediterranean country has become the greatest democratic referent in the Arab world in just five years. However, despite the country stand out positively in many aspects that serve to assess the democratic quality of a State, the fact is that with regard to the LGTB community, the promises of equality and Human Rights’ protection that brought the Arab Spring have not been fulfilled for them.

Focusing specifically in urban cosmopolitan Cairo during the aftermath of the alleged January 25th Revolution, this ethnographic project is an invitation to a deeper exploration of sex and sexuality in the Middle East. During the 18 days of the January 25th Revolution, media outlets worldwide discussed the historic event as not only a site of political opportunity, but also as the beginning of a sexual(ity) revolution that had the potential to transform understandings of gender and sexuality in Egypt, the “gay isues” by pointing towards the colliding assemblage of revolutions, same-sex practices, Arabness, identity construction, human rights activism, Islamic theology and cyberspaces. “Are You Gay?” conceptualizes the sexualities of Egyptian men from within the interweaving of institutions, religions, culture and histories that produce them. This thesis also deploys queer theory to queer ethnographic practice by analyzing sexual experience and deconstructing the normalized ethnographic time and space by entering fluid cyberspaces—a virtual manifestation of the forces of globalization. This project also seeks to mobilize queer theory towards the East, specifically Cairo and the Middle East, to conceptualize how sexual subjectivities are created at the nexus of encounters between Western understandings of sexuality and traditional expressions and understandings of male same sex practices in the Middle East. Lastly, by using queer theory, “Are You Gay?” seeks to open up sites of resistance through the conceptual power of queerness for what I term queer subjects in Egypt.

2019

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2009

This Bachelor thesis deals with the sexual identity of Egyptian women who love and have relationships with other women. I theoretically study the state of existing literature on homosexuality in the Middle East, and I do this from a gender perspective. By looking closer at four recent books on this topic I derive two main, and contradictory, theories. The first is put forth by Joseph A Massad in his book Desiring Arabs, where he rejects the existence of homosexuality in the Middle East, declaring that same sex acts in this region don't constitute identities, as in the West. The second theory, best represented in Samar Habib's work Female homosexuality in the Middle East, sees past and present histories of same sex love as representations of homosexuality. The empirical basis for my analysis is five in-depth interviews with Egyptian women having sexual relationships with women. Examining my material I find a negation of Massad's theory and a confirmation of Habib's, the women indeed describe sexual identities. I look into these descriptions and see how the women have reached this point of realizing-or coming to terms. I also study their narratives of passing, as heterosexual women, in order to avoid repression. The women's knowledge of society's prejudice gives the explanation for their choices of passing, but at the same time the women's stories show a will to challenge the view on lesbian women and resist the compulsory heterosexuality.

Index on Censorship, 2005

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 2018

LGBTQ individuals are facing an unprecedented level of persecution in Egypt. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), an independent human rights organization, recently reported that since the military coup in 2013, the average number of persons arrested and taken to court because of their private sexual practices and/or sexual orientation has increased five-fold annually compared to the years 2000- 2013.

This chapter scrutinizes the changing roles of women and gender roles, particularly in the Arab world. It sketches not only how gender relations have been inflected by religion, politics, and colonialism since the early twentieth century, but also the multitude of ways that women in different societies have articulated their autonomy in spheres of work, education, and home life. More assertive expressions of women’s rights have increased over the past two decades through mechanisms such as civil society activism, legislative representation, changing legal codes, and uprisings like the Arab Spring, but indigenous women’s rights movements have existed since colonial times. The chapter also examines state feminism, which has been mobilized for both authoritarian and democratic ends, as well as Islamic feminism, which seeks to advance women’s rights by drawing on understandings of egalitarian practices in early Islam. The discussion finally touches on sexual orientation, in particular how new voices are questioning the historical treatment of queerness while also interrogating the changing nature of sexuality for cultural discourse.

After a brief review of the proliferation of newly coined Arabic words to speak about LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and ally) identities, this article interrogates the facile imitation of Western labels and questions their usefulness in the context of Arab societies and cultures. It demonstrates that the assumptions that underlie the creation of new wordlists overlook and ultimately erase the very rich tradition on alternative sexual practices that has been prominent in the Islamicate world at least since the ninth century. Salvaging this tradition and its accompanying terminology on homosexuality challenges the claim that homosexuality is a Western importation, and renders the recourse to English categories superfluous. Moreover, uncovering the forgotten Arabic cultural material on alternative sexualities offers contemporary Arab gays and lesbians a rich and empowering indigenous heritage, as well as home-grown modes of resistance that are poised to challenge homophobic attitudes and policies in the Arab world, and the hegemony of Western sexual and cultural imperialism.

2022

A virtual interdisciplinary conference hosted by the University of Texas at Austin / Organizer: Ipek Sahinler / 4, 5 & 12 March, 2022 / Sponsors: Program in Comparative Literature & Department of Middle Eastern Studies, UT Austin * Registration Day1: https://rb.gy/mftne1 Day 2: https://rb.gy/z4dnk7 Day 3: https://rb.gy/ezs5wa * https://minio.la.utexas.edu/colaweb-prod/event_images/4/48165/conference_program_b3606fec-4f6e-43eb-86ef-41a413c4aa7d.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2aGmaI3ePPbuKqkD0QQpddOc_Z11NWqWZBdZrgimGhufhGP2FUlJmpuKY