Is Egypt ready for “Queer”?

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After a month of being back in Cairo, the city was starting to get to me. My girlfriend and I decided to go for a weekend getaway in Alexandria, breathe some fresh air, eat good food and relax a little. Once we got off the train, we tried to get our bearings and ended up walking through a nearby street market. We were greeted by comments like “look at that faggot” ( ‘خول’ in Arabic) and “girl or boy?” As we walked through the city to the ruins of the Greek catacombs, we were accosted by a mob of young boys who shouted lewd comments, insulted and followed us until they were chased away by the arrival of our (male) Egyptian friend. Needless to say, it wasn’t quite the experience we had imagined. The harassment was by no means just young boys. On the train back to Cairo, I was asked by an older Egyptian lady if I was Egyptian, before she went on to scold me for acting “inappropriately” in public. My girlfriend and I had barely touched throughout the three-hour journey.

Being a woman in Egypt is difficult, but being a gay woman in Egypt is phenomenally difficult. The issue of gender in Egypt (because it is an issue rather than a reality) is one which is constantly side-lined, relegated to a ‘sub-topic’ in the broader scheme of social change. Matters of sexuality, then, are not even on the agenda. In the aftermath of the revolution, Egyptian women witnessed a backlash against their demand for the right to continue to participate in the country’s changing political landscape, and even to be allowed the space to develop their own specific demands. The demonstration on International Women’s Day, which was attacked and dispersed by a group of angry men, confirmed the hostility to social change regarding gender.

When attending the Women’s Day protest, I noticed a significant number of gay people present (both men and women). The men present were accused of being “faggots”, and bore equal – if not greater – hostility than the women beside them. In the same way that acknowledging women’s role in society threatens male dominance, the notion of diverging sexualities is not just socially taboo, but also a challenge to the prevalent misogyny which informs attitudes to male-female relationships. As such, the response to any affront to heterosexual normativity is violent and aggressive. Choosing to dress in a way which makes your gender ambiguous, for example, provokes forcefully intrusive verbal, and sometimes physical, harassment.

It is understandable, then, that gay people in Egypt are often inconspicuous. In the first four months I lived in Egypt, I was completely unaware that a scene existed. As in most Arab countries, the paradox exists whereby you have to be in the scene to know about it. But it does exist. You can find it in bars and cafés, in the corner of mainstream clubs, in a room in a house party. But there is no public, safe space to create a community. Squashed into the confines of a severely heteronormative and repressively patriarchal society, we struggle to talk to each other openly, to create healthy relationships, to discuss our dreams and our daily battles. There is no ”gay” culture, only a persona imported wholesale from the West to tell us how we should behave.

Even within the small network of gay activists in Egypt (by which I mean activists who happen to be gay, not who work specifically on sexuality) there is no notion of working towards a community. The general consensus is that Egypt is not ready for “queer”; the implication being that it is unlikely it will be in the near future. What we should be aiming for, however, is much more basic than this. We need to create links between each other, talk about our experience, offer each other support, love and advice. The idea that being “openly” gay is the first step is misinformed and doesn’t relate to our specific experience of our sexuality in the context of the Middle East. We can’t fight for change as individuals; community builds strength. The idea of sexual tolerance in Egypt may seem far-fetched, but, equally, Egypt is in the aftermath of a revolution which has changed the course of history in the Arab world. Now, more than ever, we should have a little faith in the impossible.

– Contributed by Yasmine

Tags: activism, community, discrimination, egypt, Gay Activism, gender, International Women's Day, queer, Revolution, sexuality, support, women's rights