Death, since the beginning, has always been part of human life. Humans would live regrouped in big family habitations where all generations would share the same living space. Animals would also be part of daily life, as hunt victims or breeding beings. Death was an everyday experience; animals would be killed to feed humans.

Old people were part of the daily life, integrated in the society in their role of wisdom holders and they would die surrounded by their own community. With no modern medicine available and with harder living conditions, it would be common for children to die before the age of two, for pregnant women to die delivering babies and for young men to die during their heavy works or in battles. Death was common and at the same time, it had a special role; it was part of ‘passage rituals’ together with birth, puberty, and marriage. It was a moment to reunify the community in a public – but intimate – space of collective meditation.

Today, society denies the existence of death. Those who grow up in the city barely see animals and normally buy meat in a supermarket or in a shop, with no connection to their life or death. Old people rarely share the family house; they are taken care of by somebody external to the familial system, and when death approaches, hospitals take charge.

Medicine and scientific progress are considerably reducing death risks in everyday life. This positive progress brings within itself a new vision of death as an unacceptable accident, a mistake, something one cannot understand. But death is whole with life; it is not possible to ignore one of the two without distorting the other; by losing the meaning of death we lose the meaning of our own life.

In our productive system, old people are reduced to become unproductive beings. The world is changing fast and old people do not know it anymore; their experience was build in a different world, where television was a great discovery and internet just did not exist. In a society imprinted on technological development, there is no space for their old fashioned expertise. Old people therefore lose their sacred role of wise guidance of the community; disoriented in the fast spinning of the new era, their experiences become useless, good to entertain kids with old time stories. They end up nothing more than people to take care of.

Aging becomes a shame, because by aging, you get closer to the moment when you will be considered useless. In the spinning and fast world of technology, you have to be young, flexible, functional and possibly pleasant.

Society has a very hard time dealing with undefined identities, so as soon as possible, each one of us must find the way to achieve clear ones: a professional identity, a sexual identity, a social status and a familiar status. The more we are defined, the easiest it is for society to understand if we are in or out and in which sectors we can be useful. Twenties, therefore, for many people, become a struggle; the young adult or the ‘old teenager’ must face the process of defining its own identity. Whether we care about others’ judgments or not, we are still constantly in a position where we’re being judged.

With the progressive loss of life, we lose the importance of our own path towards wisdom and awareness. This detachment leaves us directionless, it steels our power to use technology as a tool to facilitate the path and it enslaves us to the ‘musts of society’. We give up on our own value as humans and we measure ourselves only in function of how much we produce and what we achieve in the material world. Life becomes a series of fixed steps to shortlist as soon as possible.

If we break this vicious circle, our thirties come as a gift: a time where we can finally relax.

Around thirty, you start getting an idea of who you are, of what you like, of what you want, of what you can do and how to do it. All those annoying doubts, “will I be able to….?,” “will I find ….?,” “will I achieve….?” dissolve in the consciousness of your value and your capacities, in the knowhow to use your strengths and your weaknesses. Your experience starts to be considerable; it magically transforms into concrete tools to face known situations and unknown ones as well. The drama level in your life decreases incredibly and you understand that not only you will survive, but that you will probably also be able to overcome it in a pleasant way.

If the twenties are about running after something – a huge burst of energies, most of which are wasted for lack of clear priorities and direction – in your thirties, you automatically achieve the capacity to focus your energy and do many more things with much less effort. No need to prove anything anymore, finally you will be free to just be and to fully enjoy whatever comes.

- Contributed by Camilla

I got my first scar at the age of 5. It was a blow in the face both literalli and metaphoricalli as I learned that I wasn’t invincible and that walking blindli with my hands covering my eyes wasn’t a lasting fantastic superpower. I tripped and fell on the edge of a table and cut my forehead right in the middle. Luckili I don’t remember the pain but I remember my mother hopping from one hospital to another trying to get a doctor to do 10 sutures on a kid while the sirens were blowing and the countri was sinking in a civil war. I brag about this scar today. It is perfectli positioned to act as my third eye and I remind those who see it that they are in the presence of wisdom and enlightenment.

A couple more are the results of some misfortunate surgeries.

I carri one on my neck and I’ve become accustomed to enjoying its prickling pain in cold weather. Regardless of a possible masochistic penchant, I drift into fantasi when I feel the pain. I imagine myself to be Harry Potter, famous for the lightning-shaped (or crescent-shaped in my case) scar that alarms him of evil being nearby; such as an unwelcome ex, or a flamboyant queen who will comment out loud about the extra-gained weight, and the heightened number of white hairs which is additionalli increased by the same queen’s tales of the who and how mani numbers of people she courted the previous night while she missed her boyfriend who is out of town.

One more lies slit across from my heart. And this one by far is the most entertaining when it comes to answering people’s curious questions about its nature. I try to challenge myself when it’s time for explanations:

- “If you think this scar is bad, you should see the other guy.”
- “Lseneh tawil w biya3melleh mashekel”   (bmedd lseneh 3al ekhir)*
- “I was born with a failure in my heart, and by the way, my heart is on the right side.”
- “I am a warrior princess, my breastplate was one size too small.”

I have a few more marks on my bodi that I wish to keep for myself. Although I might be willing to share their locations with those holding a debauched sense of discoveri and aspiration.

As creative as I could get with the stories around these scars I will always be faced with the realiti of matters. They did happen, and they happened for a reason. They are visible for everione to see and I am free to hallucinate my own realities about them. The mysteri lies in the scars that are hidden inside the heart; and those appear to have the deepest cuts.

* “I have a big mouth and it gets me into trouble” (I open my mouth wide)

As the old-time tramway left Ataturk Airport to meander in unfamiliar streets, and as I watched the city slowly unravel its sounds and colors to my reluctant eye, I wasn’t able to foresee the most intense twelve days I was about to live; I wasn’t able to tell I was on the very edge of taking a further step towards self-assertion.

All I could see was “SGRI 2010” in my e-mail inbox and the selection letter that came with it as an attachment, the goodbye of my friends teaching me how to slice a condom, and the terror of flight.

June 12

The Sexuality, Gender, and Rights Institute (SGRI) 2010, as a CREA project, took me to Istanbul for an intensive 8-day training.

From the bored academic that occasionally speaks up to insipidly comment on an unmet thesis statement or an infuriating abstraction in a poetic line, here I was, in a room full of activists and advocates, wondering what I was doing there. I thought I had nothing to offer but a limited life experience of “how-to-break-free” and artistic questioning, and perhaps it wasn’t exactly the space for the kind of knowledge I muscularly held on to.

June 13 to 19

Nevertheless, as I came to the realization that being queer, sexually active, non-reproductive, fond of dubious sexual practices, and very (very) kinky would instantaneously place me at the bottom of any institutionalized sexual hierarchy, I comprehended how embedded sexuality is in our every day’s life: from the bus driver’s lewd eyes in the rear-view mirror to the honks and the handfuls of rice of a Sunday wedding; from the old 3ammo that frowns and mumbles at a couple holding hands to the monochord lullaby of a schoolteacher’s voice talking about reproductive organs; from the signs on bathroom doors to the pharmacist’s face when you buy condoms or worse, lubricants; from Charles Perrault and Brothers Grimm as an educational tool for kids (every night before they go to sleep) to the same movie plot of Good-Girl versus Bad-Girl pulling each other’s hair over Handsome-Guy (who by the way is filing his nails while enjoying the show).

I stared at my own sexuality written on the white board, defined as postcolonial, instrumental, gendered, or communal. Slowly, in a conference room in the Old City of Istanbul, these words shrouded shapes and faces, so I became the muffled protest of the guy that lost his job for coming out as a transsexual. I embodied the subtle gesture of the sex worker of color standing in the streets. I internalized the same rage of the patriarchal man who looks down at her but will pick her up later in the evening. I tried to escape consumerism as a unidirectional mean for love. As all of these thoughts confounded in my mouth in strained syllables, I found my own voice that segregated into perspectives at an alarming rate. I had roots soaked in promises of a white horse, but I also had branches that managed to develop despite the antidote to non-essentialist threats.

I could see.

June 20

Perhaps my boggling self decided to complicate things even more by combining theory to practice, and it’s in her bedroom overlooking the city and the Bosphorus that I understood what the difference between sexual behavior and sexual meaning entailed.

June 23

Back to Beirut and swallowed up by the city already.

While we were critical of feminism itself and developing a denaturalized approach to human rights and sexuality in the SGRI context, I realized how far we are here from even questioning the efficiency of an activist or advocate’s work. We are struggling still for the most basic of all, being the recognition of feminist theory and sexual rights, or the possibility of a shift from a normative consumerist life. Our constitution still groups the mega-scale of sexual behaviors under “unnatural sex acts”. We come from far in terms of visibility and alternative lifestyles, but a lot is yet to be done.

This brought me to another realization, or perhaps a question, that of how to challenge essentialist approaches and bear a non-judgmental view to the multitude of behaviors surrounding us when they are the fundamental manifest of a discriminatory patriarchal structure, the main focus of our struggle.

July, Every Day

As for her… she is lost somewhere running the city, waiting for trams and drinking beer drafts that linger on her lips, but she comes back to me every time I smile, or in a dream angle hugging me fervently somewhere between Taksim and Kabataş.

- Contributed by Gya

As soon as the idea of marriage becomes salient, gender roles get primed and “femininity” is highlighted. So what is femininity? If it’s an element of personal identity then why is it defined by society and projected on the female? Personally, I have come to terms with my sex, but I still haven’t come to terms with gender. Society has it already figured out for me, but I feel it’s too rigid. MY gender is much more fluid; much more volatile; it can even be momentary! MY gender is flexible, moody, ephemeral and eclectic! I am a woman, and I am genderqueer!

Beirut may indeed be relatively more tolerant than other places in Lebanon, but the families there are not as accommodating as the city in which they were raised and currently reside.  The apparent open-mindedness is only a façade, part of the mask city dwellers are inclined to wear to create that cosmopolitan allure of diversity and tolerance Beirut tends to carry. But at a more nuclear level, traditional values are still upheld in conservative families such as mine, and the expectations to conform are still as rigid. The double standard has become part of the integrated system of values: it’s okay for “others” to be different, but this cannot happen to “us”… “ne7na mish heik⁴”

———————

1- It won’t hurt you to be more of a girl!

2- Don’t argue a lot… you need to be diplomatic, you’re a girl!

3- Don’t sit like that, it’s shameful!

4- We are not “like that”

- Contributed by Emcee

مع تسارع الأحداث بفلسطين وتسارع أصحاب الرأي للإشادة والإستنكار وتبادل التهم بالمواضيع المرتبطة، من قريب ومن بعيد بالقضية. أكتر من مرّة طلع على بخصوص نداءات ومقالات داعمة للحقوق الإنسانية بفلسطين. وعلى كل مفرق حقوقي و/أو فكري، بيوقف عالقليلة البعض تيسألوا إذا مفروض نركّز هالقد على موضوع غير مرتبط بمجموعات الدعوة للتحرر من القوالب الإجتماعية الجنسية والجندرية. هيدا السؤال بيكتسب أهمية أكبر ضمن الإطار اللبناني والإنقسام الطائفي/العنصري من أي موضوع مرتبط بالقضية الفلسطينية.

وبالحقيقة، هالتساؤلات أساسية وإذا فشلنا نفكّر فيها ونتواصل أكيد منوصل بالآخر إنّو نتصنّف بفئة سياسية معيّنة هيي رافضتنا بالأساس. فإليكم وجهات النظر، وسمّعونا صوتكن إنتو.

أوّل شي خلّينا نوضّح إنّو الدعم للحق الفلسطيني مش لأنّو نحنا عرب ولأنّو الفلسطينيي عرب. وإنّما هوي دعم لحق إنساني. وهون بسمح لحالي روح شوي أبعد وقول، إنّو الإيديولوجيات القومية والنخبوية هيي عدوّة المناصرة للحقوق الجنسية والجندرية. لأنّو إذا بدّي دافع عن حق إنسان عربي لأنّو عربي، بكون عم سلّم بفكرة إنّو في ناس، اللّي هنّي عرب (متلي)، عندن حقوق وغيرن بلا حقوق بطبيعة إنتماؤن لهوية غير عربية (مش متلي). وبالتالي بكون عم سلّم بأحقية التمييز ضدنا كذوي هويات جنسية وجندرية مختلفة، لأنّو أغلبية المجتمع عندن كامل الحقوق لأنُّن متل بعض وأنا حقوقي ناقصة بطبيعة إنتمائي لهوية غير.

وبالتالي مناصرتنا لفلسطين وحقوق الفلسطينيي الإنسانية هوّي إمتداد طبيعي لمناصرتنا لحقوقنا الإنسانية. وما منقبل نوقف عند الحق الفلسطيني، وإنّما مندعم الحق الأرمني، والحقوق الجندرية، وحقوق الأقليات الإثنية، وبحب إدعي مناصري القضية الفلسطينية من جماعاتنا إنّن يفهموا إنّو دعمن لأي قضية على أساس عنصري بيخلّين بكل بساطة عنصريي، ومش مدافعين حقوقيين.

وهون أنا واعية إنّو في ناس من مجموعاتنا (أي مجموعات ذوي الهويات الجنسية والجندرية المميزة) عندن رفض للقضية الفلسطينية وحتّى كره طائفي/عنصري ضد الفلسطينيي بشكل عام، متل ما في ناس من مجموعاتنا بيعانوا من سائر أنواع الرهاب الطائفي، ان كان موجّه ضد المغايرين أو الأفارقة أو السريلنكيين أو الفقرا أو النساء أو حتّى المثليين والمتحوّلين.

بس أوقات منواجه مواقف ومقالات بتخلّينا نغضب ويمكن ننقم على زملائنا بالقضية، متل مقال “حضارة اللّواط والموقف من الإعتداء على سفينة الحرية” للـ”دكتور” عوض سليمان، ويلّي تم نشرها أساساً بموقع وطن ثم أعيد نشرها بمنتدى شيوعي لبناني. المزعج بالموضوع مش إنّو تم نعتنا بالغربيي الأصل، وإنّما إنّو ينلام “اللواط” بالتسبيب نوعاً ما بضياع فلسطين. بالنهاية قوافل رهاب المثلية ما بحياتا اعترفت بوجودنا، بدكن هلّق يعترفوا بوجودنا الأزلي بالتاريخ والحاضر والمستقبل العربي؟

يمكن بيحز بقلبنا هيدا المقال أكتر من غيره لأنّو عم بيلومنا على قضية منعتبرها قضيتنا، متل كأنّو مناصري فلسطين ما ممكن يكونوا مثليين أو ترانس. بالنهاية، اللّي ضيّع فلسطين كان التواطؤ الحكومي بالمنطقة بشكل خاص والشعور بالدونية هيدا هوّي اللّي بيخلّي العرب يلوموا، متل العادة الغرب، والحضارات غير المحافظة، ،اللواط، والنساء المتحررات، بدل ما يحملوا مسؤوليتن. متل ما ضعف حجج مرضى الرهاب هوّي اللّي بيخلّيُن ينكروا إنتماءنا للحضارة العربية، متلنا متلن، متل كأنّو لو نحنا ما كنّا عرب بيصير مش مشكل إذا انحرمنا من الحق بالوجود أو الحق الحياة.

ويمكن اللّي بيجمعنا بالقضية الفلسطينية أكتر من القمع والتمييز هوّي خيانة الإخوة بالجنسية. بالنهاية لمّا علقت حرب تمّوز مركز حلم فتح بوابه لمن احتاج سقف فوق راسه، بس بواب هيدا الوطن بتضل مسكّرة بوجّنا لأن البعض مش شايفنا مواطنين. متل ما الحضارة العربية بتقبل مديح أبو نواس بس ما بتقبل الشعر الخمري أو المثلي.

وبالتالي نحنا لما منحكي بفلسطين مش هدفنا تشفّي دعم فلسطين للقضية المثلية، متل ما دعمنا مسيرة العلمانية ببيروت مش لأنّو منتوقّع دعم علماني للحقوق المثلية، ومتل ما دعمت المثليات القضية النسوية بأميركا من دون ما تتوقّع (أو تحصل على) الدعم النسوي للحقوق المثلية. مندعم القضايا الإنسانية إيماناً منّا بالحقوق الإنسانية، ومش لأنّو نحنا مثليين بس لأنّو نحنا داعمين للحقوق الإنسانية، المثلية كانت حافز للتفكير النقدي بالمسلّمات الطائفية العنصرية.

Friday night I was going to SMS you to tell you.

On Saturday, I knew I was going to see you and I was about to tell you.

But I didn’t.

Do you know the song “Leave Right Now” by Will Young? In it, he says, “I think I better leave right now, before I fall any deeper.” For the past two years, I have always had those lyrics in mind whenever I felt I was falling for people. I always left before falling deeper for all those who entered my life, and then left it; I never saw myself with any of them in the future. But YOU… You are an exception…

Do you know Lisa Hannigan’s “I Don’t Know?” She sings about how she doesn’t know anything about her love interest, but still she is still interested and is “in for the game.”

So here I am, admitting that I don’t know what countries you have been to, I don’t know if you write letters, if you panic on the phone, I don’t know if you are a morning person or if you’re at your best when the sun goes down, I don’t know if you can dance or if you ever did, I don’t know if you can cook, I don’t know if your heart was ever broken, I don’t know your favorite singer, I don’t know your childhood crushes…

But at the same time, I know that you drive, I know that you swim, I know that you can’t draw, I know that you are too shy to dance and I have never witnessed you doing so, I know that you are a book person, and would rather curl up with a novel any day rather than go partying, and I know that I can talk to you and I can be silent with you and I truly enjoy doing both.

I want to cook for you, I want to listen to you tell me of your childhood dreams, I want to take you to my favorite places because I am certain you will enjoy them, I want to make you smile like you are always able to make me smile, and I want to dance with you.

But before we get into all of that, I need to tell you I’m one of the biggest messes you will ever meet, but I know what I want.

And what I want is you.

To sum it all up, there are so many things we already know and so many things we have yet to discover, and to quote Lisa, I’m game.

-  Contributed by Abdallah and Zee (because we both like you).

What I wanted to address here, however, is not the debate itself, but the implications of those questions; the homophobia underlying them. Why are laypeople interested in such findings? To me, it seems that their approach to this investigation is ultimately apologetic. It serves as a “justification” for any “deviation” from the heteronormative mainstream. It serves as evidence to back up statements such as “homosexuality is not a choice.” But what I call for is transcending this statement itself! So even if we assume for the sake of argument that homosexuality is indeed a choice; what is wrong with that? Why would it be more condemnable if it were a choice? Behaving in accordance with one’s sexual orientation is a choice, and whether the person chose that orientation or not doesn’t seem relevant. If the act itself is morally “condemnable” anyway, then why question the motives? Why does a non-conforming choice need to be justified? I would welcome people seeking understanding but not justification. That is why I am concerned with the fundamental question with which the determinants of sexual orientation are approached: the scientist asks HOW; the bigot asks WHY.

Again, I am not opposed to research on factors affecting sexual orientation, but I would encourage broaching the topic as a module within a much more comprehensive view of how the mind works; including how we make conscious choices versus how much of our apparent willfulness arises out of involuntary biological mechanisms. In this sense, regardless of how much of a choice sexual orientation turns out to be, it would not bear any more moral stigma than any other “choice” or “preference” of food or fragrance.

- Contributed by Emcee

I was raised in an Islamic home, and taught of my Islamic background and history, taught to follow and obey it.

I spent 13 years walking down those school halls feeling alienated… I had no one to turn to, no one to talk to, and no one to confide in; I was surrounded by my religion… I guess you can say that being home was slightly the same; I had family love and comfort but still, it was the same religious drill daily: pray 5 times a day, and obey your God…

I grew up thinking I was wrong, that I was a “living sin.” But a part of me always wondered, “How could that be? I’ve done nothing wrong! I’m human just like everyone else!” My constantly scanning classrooms, analysing peering eyes, looking for any sign of familiarity, for a sense of comfort… was fruitless, all I found was a feeling of misplacement…

I used to sit in class admiring her shining eyes, trying to steal whiffs of her sweet scent, and though I knew I shouldn’t look, I just couldn’t help myself. I was mesmerised. Her long glittering chocolate hair sweeping across her shoulders, every step she took was effortlessly elegant; she would just glide across the marble floor… The words she uttered were music to my ears, but she was off limits – seriously off limits: I mean come on, my ‘Islamic studies’ teacher, could I have possibly made my young confused life any harder?

She caught me staring. We locked eyes. I couldn’t look away. I felt her look right through me. She walked up to me, and bent her knees until we were face to face. She moved closer, then she whispered “You know it’s not polite to stare.”

As she moved away, I caught a glimpse of her smile.

Finally, a sign that I was not evil! She smiled; that’s all it took, human kindness!

I’m not wrong. I’m not an alien. I walk on the same ground you walk on. Homosexuality is a human trait. I’m human!!!