Activists discuss intersectionality, LGBT rights in Middle East and North Africa

Among the many questions raised concerning intersectionality and human rights in Egypt and Lebanon, none revolved around where to draw the line with sexual and gender oppression. That line has already been crossed, and with great detriment to the victims, multiple panelists noted at a lecture series this past weekend.

The lecture series included one panel on Friday centered on the framework of intersectionality in Lebanon, followed by a panel and dinner conversation on Saturday focusing on LGBT rights activism in Egypt. Ahmad El Hady, a Princeton Neuroscience Institute researcher and queer rights activist at the University, acted as the moderator.

The first panel featured Beirut-based academic and feminist Ghiwa Sayegh as well as Rasha Moumneh, a Ph.D. student in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University.

Sayegh gave a simple definition of intersectionality as “groups of people coming together at certain points in time, ” before expanding upon this concept as the key to connecting all social justice movements with one another.

Sayegh illustrated the grim realities of the “hierarchy of importance” that often prevent the feminist movement from springing into mainstream public discourse. While Sayegh recognized the many problems that currently face Lebanon, she emphasized that “the struggles of women are constantly relegated to the sidelines.”

Yet in spite of these challenges, Sayegh affirmed her belief in the feminist movement as a means of paving the way for other social transformations to take hold in Lebanon, saying “articulating our positionality is not only a moral duty, but allows us to express solidarity by giving space to other movements that are not ours to claim.”

Moumneh presented a modern perspective on the plight of the transgender and homosexual community in Lebanon. Moumneh demonstrated the strong correlation between the discrimination against these LGBT groups and the alleged resentment towards Syrian refugees perpetuated by the Lebanese government. According to Moumneh, the fact that one out of every four people in Lebanon is a refugee has offered a “convenient scapegoat” for the other troubles faced by the nation.

Moumneh elaborated with one specific incident in which the police arrested a refugee of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and determined that he was gay simply by going through his phone, charging him with engaging in sex contrary to nature.

In another raid, Moumneh continued, a local mayor justified the arrests of five Syrians – four homosexual men and one transgender woman – “as a way of preserving the moral character” of the region.

Moumneh acknowledged that she is not in a position to decide if intersectionality is the right framework for unifying the LGBT rights cause with other movements in the Middle East. She commented that while civil liberties and gay male rights groups were able to find a solid voice amid the government raids, women’s groups in Lebanon struggled to come together to speak out against the sexualization that accompanied ethnic purges.

Nevertheless, both concluded that there is room for optimism in Lebanon. Sayegh, also the editor-in-chief of Kohl, the first queer and feminist theory research journal in the Middle East and North Africa, commended the rise in student activism at Lebanese universities. Joking that she already feels “older than the feminist generation,” Sayegh expressed her pride in these young groups for their increased promotion of human rights.

Scott Long, the founder and former executive director of the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, was the headline speaker for the second panel of the weekend. Professor John Borneman, a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and current Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Anthropology, moderated Long’s talk.

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Long described the situation faced by LGBT and human rights organizations in Egypt under the current government led by former military commander-in-chief President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi. The American-born activist condemned the Egyptian military for inflicting violence upon the members of the LGBT community, with transgender women and more “effeminate” men being the primary targets.

According to Long, who has worked in Egypt for more than a decade and lived there since 2012, the Sisi administration’s obsession with exploiting public fears of dissonance is a particularly egregious and underreported part of the crisis.

Long made sure to chastise the foreign policy of the United States government of refraining from publicly speaking out against the myriad arrests of queer people in Egypt, saying that the U.S. “has happily stood back and let the Egyptian government destroy every trace of a leftist movement, except for the independent workers’ movement, which now survives almost entirely underground.”

Long simultaneously criticized major human rights and LGBT groups for both their lack of pressure on the Obama administration and their increased involvement with politics and power as opposed to working with social movements on the ground. Long stressed that human rights are what many people in Egypt have given their lives for, and that they are not well-treated by organizations that aim to be supportive of these movements.

Despite the great number of human rights violations that have occurred, Long has seen an increased awareness of the gender and sexuality movement among the general public. “When we produced our first report on crackdowns against LGBT people in Egypt back in 2004 … it had about 80,000 hits on our website in the Arabic version in the first two years, which made it something of a best seller in the country,” he noted.

When asked about his own personal obligations in Egypt, Long stated that he has worked to rediscover his voice through writing and to give spaces to those whom he has interviewed who may lack a strong enough voice on their own. After more than 20 years spent working for human rights organizations, he concluded that every civil rights worker has a vital responsibility to assist victims of human rights violations in any way possible.

The lecture series, titled “Walking a Fine Line: Queer Identities in the Middle East and North Africa,” was co-sponsored by Home Away from Home, Intersecting Queer Identities, the LGBT Center, the Mamdouha Bobst Center, the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Queer Graduate Caucus.