Constructions of Masculinity in the Middle East and North Africa

Literature, Film, and National Discourse

Mohja Kahf, Nadine Sinno, Mohja Kahf, Nadine Sinno

• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9789774169755
• eBook ISBN: 9781649030153
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: LGBT Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

A multi-disciplinary exploration of how masculinity in the MENA region is constructed in film, literature, and nationalist discourse

Constructions of masculinity are constantly evolving and being resisted in the Middle East and North Africa. There is no "before" that was a stable gendered environment. This edited collection examines constructions of both hegemonic and marginalized masculinities in the MENA region, through literary criticism, film studies, discourse analysis, anthropological accounts, and studies of military culture. Bringing together contributors from the disciplines of linguistics, comparative literature, sociology, cultural studies, queer and gender studies, film studies, and history, Constructions of Masculinity in the Middle East and North Africa spans the colonial to the postcolonial eras with emphasis on the late twentieth century to the present day. This collective study is a diverse and exciting addition to the literature on gender and societal organization at a time when masculinities in the Middle East and North Africa are often essentialized and misunderstood.

Contributors:

• Jedidiah Anderson, Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, USA
• Amal Amireh, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
• Kaveh Bassiri, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA
• Oyman Basran, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, USA
• Alessandro Columbu, University of Manchester, England
• Nicole Fares, independent scholar
• Robert James Farley, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Andrea Fischer-Tahir, independent scholar
• Nouri Gana, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Kifah Hanna, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
• Sarah Hudson, Connors State College, Warner, Oklahoma, USA
• Mohja Kahf, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA
• John Tofik Karam, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Kathryn Kalemkerian, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
• Ebtihal Mahadeen, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• Matthew Parnell, American University in Cairo, Egypt
• Nadine Sinno, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

1

EXOTIC AND BENIGHTED, OR MODERN YET VICTIMIZED? THE MODERN PREDICAMENT OF THE ARAB QUEER

Jedidiah Anderson

Introduction

“The gay man or lesbian in the Arab World is oppressed. She or he is not only oppressed by the government that he or she lives under, she or he is also oppressed by Islam. It is the moral duty of us white and enlightened ones to liberate him or her—if only she or he could move to the West (or to Israel) and get away from those backward people! At least we have freedom.”

“The gay man or lesbian in the Arab world is perverse. Don’t they fuck little boys and camels there, and no one cares? It’s because they are segregated by gender; it’s because they make their women cover up from head to toe—of course the guys only want to fuck other guys, and the girls only want to fuck other girls. It is the moral duty of us white and enlightened ones to bomb him or her—if only they could be like the West and not be these backward perverts! At least we have decency.”

“The gay man in the Arab World is FUCKING HOT!! Aren’t the guys over there all tops, all muscular, tough, ready to pounce on the first bottom that they find? It’s because they aren’t like us, they have to be tough, it’s their culture, and even the straight ones will fuck a guy because they are so horny. It is the moral duty of us white and enlightened ones to let them occupy the territory of our asses—if only we had cocks as big as theirs! At least we can buy a plane ticket there.”

“Wait—there are Arab lesbians?”

The above statements are examples of the ways in which the Arab queer¹ is Othered and Orientalized. Colonialism, neoliberal paternalism, economic exploitation, military aggression, and white guilt have all contributed to (and stemmed from) an Orientalist discourse that constitutes the Middle East as an a priori ‘Other’ that is to be excavated, penetrated, and controlled as it is a subject that cannot rule itself. By extension, the Arab queer has become the subject of this discourse. Due to a number of discursive forces, the Arab queer has become a flashpoint for this Orientalizing discourse, a point at which multiple fields of Orientalizing discourse intersect. I further claim and will show in this chapter that this Orientalizing discourse regarding the Arab queer centers around three poles that contradict each other and at the same time are all simultaneously in play in Orientalist discourses surrounding the Arab queer. Those poles are the Arab queer as uniquely and exceedingly oppressed subject (exemplified by Israeli pinkwashing efforts); the Arab queer as polymorphously perverse monsterterroristfag² (exemplified by the Abu Ghraib prison abuse pictures, in which they were forced, ironically, to enact this trope); and the Arab queer as hypersexual, inchoate savage (as exemplified in the writings of André Gide, Jean Genet, and William S. Burroughs, and also in the queer tourist literature about the Arab world [particularly Lebanon] that exists in the present day). While all three poles of discourse surrounding the Arab queer have been discussed in depth, it is my intent to call attention to the inherently contradictory nature of three poles in relation to each other and at the same time draw the reader’s attention to the fact that they all exist in Orientalist discourse, and all serve to facilitate the ‘Othering’ of the Arab queer—and, by extension, Arabs in general.

Theoretical Framework(s)

These three constructions of the ‘Arab queer’ are frequently discussed separately in academic works, with only one being examined in any particular work as if the other two tropes did not exist.³ Joseph Massad, in his book Desiring Arabs, does perhaps the best job of acknowledging at least two of these Orientalist tropes (the Arab queer as “oppressed victim,” which dominates the book, and the Arab as “monsterterroristfag,” which he merely points toward in his introduction). This chapter will analyze the trope of the Arab queer as hypersexual, inchoately desiring savage through the theoretical framework of Frantz Fanon’s writings, the trope of the Arab queer as “monsterterroristfag” through the theoretical framework put forth by Jasbir Puar (particularly in her book Terrorist Assemblages), and the trope of the Arab queer as (my words) “uniquely and exceedingly oppressed,” through the lens of the concepts put forth in Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.”

All three of these theoretical frameworks are already grouped under the greater theoretical umbrella of postcolonialism—Fanon is often mentioned in the same breath as Mohanty, who is often paired with Puar. The claim that one theoretical framework excludes use of the other(s) is incorrect. Additionally, I acknowledge the importance of Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s concept of the assemblage and the rhizome in shaping how I have approached this topic. In Deleuze and Guattari’s words, “the rhizome is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifiying system without a General and without an organizing memory or central automaton . . . [w]hat is at question in the rhizome is a relation to sexuality” (Deleuze and Guattari, 21). It is within the framework of the rhizome and the assemblages that it creates that I hope to locate and analyze these discourses.

The topic of sexuality, particularly queer sexuality, is something that cannot be looked at as possessing only one genealogy, only one discursive path of development. In this chapter, I attempt to acknowledge the fragmented nature of (queer, Arab) sexuality by also openly acknowledging the fragmented, multifaceted, hybridized nature of my analysis, in which I hope to illustrate that Arab sexuality (and the manifold ways in which it is constructed) is not only ‘X’ but is also always already at the same time ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ and ‘A’ and every other letter and more as well.

But first, I will begin with what is perhaps the most polite (but still covertly deeply oppressive) of the Orientalist tropes—that of the Arab queer as uniquely and exceedingly oppressed subject.

The Arab Queer: Uniquely and Exceedingly Oppressed

I have chosen to indicate this particular Orientalist trope of the oppressed Arab queer with the term “The Uniquely and Exceedingly Oppressed Arab Queer” to indicate that while it is not problematic to describe Arab queers as an oppressed category, when the Arab queer is constructed as a subject that is oppressed by homophobia in a manner that is found nowhere else in the world—and also oppressed by that homophobia to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world in a manner that is worse than any other form of oppression that for any other reason the Arab subject can bear—one is creating discourse indulging this particular Orientalist trope.

That Arab queers endure much greater oppression in their home countries than their queer Western counterparts is a truism that, on the most basic level, I will not even attempt to deny or downplay. That being said, one must ask: is this oppression the most odious of the oppressions that the Arab queer faces? Is Arab queer subjectivity characterized by a perception of oppression that is not shared by non-queer Arabs—and if so, is this oppression unique in its odiousness?

The answer to these questions must be no. Perhaps the clearest, most concrete example that shows that this is not the case took place on November 9, 2009, when Helem (the LGBTQI-rights advocacy group in Lebanon) protested in front of the Ugandan Consulate in Beirut (an action in which I participated) and presented the officials that worked there with an open statement condemning what has since become known in the mainstream media as the “Kill the Gays” bill. Activists at Helem claimed that they felt that their protest was morally necessary because of the greater privilege that they enjoyed as Lebanese as opposed to Ugandans, even though they did not have a strong relationship with the Ugandan group SMUG (Sexual Minorities in Uganda) that called on them to protest. Helem’s activists’ understanding of their relative privilege when compared to the situation in Uganda, paired with their awareness of the necessity of acting in solidarity with the Ugandans when asked to do so and in the manner that they asked for the international gay community to help them, illustrates how genuine, non-exploitative global activism toward their common goal of freedom for LGBTQI individuals throughout the world can work. At the same time, it also stands in stark opposition to public-relations efforts by the Israeli government to call attention to LGBTQI oppression elsewhere in the world by highlighting (what it likes to portray as) its LBGTIQ rights agenda visà-vis other countries for the purpose of obscuring its human-rights abuses in the context of the occupation.

This exploitation of gay people and the discourses surrounding them has been given the shorthand term ‘pinkwashing.’ Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when speaking before the United States Congress, has engaged in it, claiming that “Israel has always embraced this path [of Western human rights] in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out” (Netanyahu, 2011).

The discourse of pinkwashing does not restrict itself to making comparisons between Israel and its neighbors with regard to gay rights, but also attempts to highlight the (allegedly) more liberal gay-rights policy of Israel in relation to other Western nations, including the United States. In it, two Israeli male soldiers are shown holding hands, with a caption that announces, “It’s Pride Month. Did you know that the IDF treats all of its soldiers equally?”⁴ This is coupled with the creation of websites like gaymiddleeast.com, although this website has been greatly downscaled since its inception. While gaymiddleeast.com (according to human-rights activist Scott Long) was ostensibly created to serve as a clearing house for information about LGBTQI individuals in the Middle East, it was run by Israeli citizens in order to create a platform from which the LGBTQI-rights situation in Israel was glorified, and contrasted with homophobia and oppression of LGBTQI individuals elsewhere in the Middle East for the purposes of both rendering Israel legible as a modern state that protected human rights and framing the Palestinians and Israel’s Muslim and Arab neighbors generally as backward and in need of enlightenment through external intervention (be it military or otherwise) (Long 2012).

Pinkwashing is perhaps one of the most malicious examples of the covert imperialism in human-rights discourse that Chandra Talpade Mohanty speaks of in her essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Mohanty talks about Western feminists whose writings create the monolithic idea of ‘the Third World woman,’ a unified group of women who are ‘powerless’ a priori because of their gender. Such Western feminist approaches, Mohanty suggests, are incapable of creating a genuine analysis of the actual situation. The Western feminists end up failing to see how women in the developing world are oppressed for reasons other than their gender, reasons that they may share with men, but instead constructing knowledge that is flawed by starting with the assumption of the category of ‘woman’ as oppressed group. Instead of seeing the real reasons why specific groups of women are oppressed or disempowered, these feminists see women as oppressed or disempowered because they are women, and because they are ‘Third World’ (Mohanty, 261–62).

If one substitutes ‘LGBTQI individuals’ for ‘women’ and ‘LGBTQI rights activists’ for ‘feminists’ in the argument proposed by Mohanty, a more benign version of pinkwashing emerges. However, it is the seemingly willful creation, by pinkwashing, of ‘the oppressed Arab queer’ that is indeed disturbing, as it is done without genuine concern for what it constitutes as oppressed subject; rather, it is done in the name of helping the oppressed while actually intended to benefit only the oppressor.

In more concrete terms, the concept of the “uniquely and exceedingly oppressed Arab queer” actively obfuscates other forms of oppression faced by Arab queers that have nothing to do with being queer. It would be absurd and racist to say that American queers of color should join mainstream LGBTQI activisms (particularly when those mainstream activisms ignore or are willfully antagonistic toward the realities of queers of color, working-class queers, rural queers, and so on) to the exclusion of anti-racist struggles simply due to the homophobia of some straight people of color—and yet this is what Arab queers are always insistently asked to do, and neoliberal hegemony is bewildered by their unwillingness to comply.

The trope of the ‘exceedingly and uniquely oppressed Arab queer’ also ignores the very real issues surrounding the ways in which Arab queer identity is constructed. In his book Before Homosexuality in the Arab Islamic World, 1500–1800, Khaled El-Rouayheb argues that people in the pre-modern Arab world viewed homosexual acts as something that anyone could potentially do, and not as something that one needed to have a particular nature in order to do (6).

Accepting El-Rouayheb’s basic premise and expanding on it, Joseph Massad, in Desiring Arabs,⁵ discusses how Western colonialism and cultural imperialism brought the sexual category of ‘the homosexual’ through epistemic violence to the Arab world, and how this epistemic violence, by creating ‘gay people,’ has thus also created ‘straight people’ that could then in turn oppress the ‘gay people’ (Massad, 18889). Massad also claims that ‘the homosexual’ as a category of identification has been further reified through what Michel Foucault called “incitement to discourse” in his book The History of Sexuality.⁶ This “incitement to discourse,” according to Massad, has been spearheaded by what he calls “The Gay International,” a collection of Western human-rights groups and activists who have sought to bring Western gay rights to the Arab world. Massad problematizes these efforts of “The Gay International” as imposing Western concepts of gayness on the Arab world, and erasing other knowledges of sexuality, thus creating a scenario in which those that object to this understanding are constructed as opposing ‘gay rights’ (Massad, 174).

Not only does the trope of the “uniquely and exceedin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Colonial to Postcolonial Masculinities in the Middle East and North Africa
• 1. Exotic and Benighted, or Modern yet Victimized? The Modern Predicament of the Arab Queer
• 2. Of Heroes and Men: The Crisis of Masculinity in the Post-Oslo Palestinian Narrative
• 3. “I get to deflower at least one. It’s my right!”: The Precariousness of Hegemonic Masculinity in Rashid Al-Daif’s Who’s Afraid of Meryl Streep?
• 4. Crises of Masculinity in Huda Barakat’s War Literature
• 5. Mahfouz, al-Mutanabbi, and the Canon: Poetics of Deviance from the Masculine Nationalist Discourse of al-Sukkariya
• 6. Diasporic Queer Arabs in Europe and North America: Sexual Citizenship and Narratives of Inclusion and Exclusion
• 7. Of Knives, Mustaches, and Headgears: The Fall of the Qabaday in Zakariya Tamir’s Latest Works
• 8. Romancing Middle Eastern Men in North and South America: Two Mid-century Texts
• 9. Tough Guys, Martyrs, Dandies, and Marginalized Men: Changing Masculine Roles in Iranian Cinema
• 10. Men and Modernity in Postcolonial Tunisian Cinema
• 11. Constructions of Masculinity in Palestinian Film
• 12. Gendered Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century Egyptian Nationalist Discourse
• 13. Men at Work: The Politics of Professional Pride in Ottoman Beirut
• 14. “You Are Like A Virus”: Dangerous Bodies and Military Medical Authority in Turkey
• 15. Gendered Memories and Masculinities: Kurdish Peshmerga on the Anfal Campaign in Iraq
• 16. Militarist Masculinity, Militarist Femininity: A Gendered Analysis of Jordan’s War on the Islamic State