LENA KASSICIEH
Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in
Cultural and Social Anthropology.
Original cover artwork and self-portrait by friend and interlocutor Khaled Haider,
created specifically for use in my masters thesis Navigating Rainbow Street:
Subaltern Experiences of Living Gayness in Amman.
Second readers: Dr Annelies Moors, Dr Rachel Spronk
Amsterdam, December 11, 2015
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ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the lived experience of men who openly identify as gay as well
as those that fall under the men who sleep with men (MSM1) category. Organised by
tangible spaces in which these men move, this thesis chronicles the daily-lived
experiences, hopes, dreams and opinions of these interlocutors in Amman, Jordan.
These lived experiences are then placed in the conversation on the global image of a
‘gay man’, illustrating that there is not just one image, not just one perspective. My
research was collected during a three-month fieldwork period in Amman, Jordan. My
data collecting methods were participant observation, unstructured interviews and
‘deep-hang outs’. The men I interacted with, throughout my fieldwork, come from
varied backgrounds, and this thesis seeks to illustrate the diversity and subjectivity of
subaltern experience for men in this community.
KEYWORDS
Homosexuality, Jordan, Amman, men, identity, sexuality, living gayness, subjectivity,
MSM, subaltern
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis would not have been possible without the tireless support, guidance and
feedback of my supervisor Dr Anne de Jong. I am also thankful for my local
gatekeeper in Amman, Mousa al Shadeedi. These two insightful, inspiring individuals
aided me in pushing my own boundaries, thinking outside the anthropological box,
and exploring new concepts and themes within my research. I am also grateful to each
person who allowed me to speak with them or interview them, as their trust and
openness allowed this research to thrive, and my friends and family who listened to
me throughout the past few months as I unpacked the various unforeseen struggles of
writing this thesis.
1
For men who do not self-identify as gay and did not have a label for themselves, I will refer to them
as MSM: men who sleep with men (Boellstorff 2006: 287).
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CONTENT GUIDE
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 6
Research Questions & Sub-Questions...................................................................... 10
Terminology ............................................................................................................. 11
Objective .................................................................................................................. 13
Methodology ............................................................................................................ 15
Ethics .................................................................................................................... 20
Doing Anthropology at Home............................................................................... 21
Amman as a Field site .......................................................................................... 23
Chapter outline ......................................................................................................... 24
1. WORLD VS. JORDAN VS. AMMAN ....................................................... 27
1.1 From First to Fifth Circle: Creating Comfortable, Safe Public Spaces .............. 27
1.2 ‘Gay International’ and Local Identity ............................................................... 35
1.3 Activism in Amman: Pushes for changes in terminology and awareness.......... 39
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 42
2. CYBERSPACE .................................................................................................. 44
2.1 Weaving the Web: The Internet as an engine for knowledge, hope and
anxiety ..................................................................................................................... 45
2.2 Safety, Security and Sex in a Virtual World: How and where is connection
made? ....................................................................................................................... 51
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 54
3. THE MOSQUE .................................................................................................. 56
3.1 Discovering Self in Religion: Sexuality and Islam intertwined ......................... 57
3.2 Re-defining Islamic Values: “The Qur-an doesn’t condemn the orientation, just
the sex” ..................................................................................................................... 62
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 64
4. HOME ................................................................................................................... 66
4.1 What is Home: Understanding kinship and belonging at home ......................... 66
4.2 ‘Coming out’ at home: “To be, or not to be” ..................................................... 68
4.3 “Well, one day I do want to get married…” ...................................................... 76
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 80
FINAL CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 82
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................... 87
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LIST OF IMAGES
Image 1: Portrait of interlocutor in Jabal el Weibdeh on one of our strolls around the
neighbourhood…………………………………………………………….………….19
Image 2: Interlocutor checking his phone in front of Graffiti Cafe in Jabal el
Weibdeh……………………………………………………………………………...21
Image 3: View taken from bottom of Rainbow Street in Jabal Amman
neighbourhood………………………………………………………………………..25
Image 4: Mousa and friend lounging at Graffiti Café…………………………….….37
Image 5: During the summer (2015) Jordanian media outlet Kharabeesh uploaded this
comic about a gay boy hugging his mom saying: “It’s a disaster, mom! I found my
husband cheating on me with the door man!”. An interlocutor shares it, commenting
that it is rude and silly to “make fun of gays”………………………………………..45
Image 6: Inside of Kulliyet al Sharia mosque in Jabal el Weibdeh………………….57
A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
As stated by philosopher Todd Jones (1990), ‘a perfect translation is a utopian
dream’. That being said, I am not a translator, and throughout the course of my
fieldwork, I transcribed colloquial Jordanian Arabic conversations and interviews, a
language I speak and understand fluently, into English. I then interpreted all
transcriptions phonetically into English, making it easily accessible to readers who are
not familiar with Arabic. I chose contextually to keep certain phrases in Arabic,
translating them in parenthesis into English directly after. For my transliteration, I
have chosen to follow that of Anouk de Koning (2009):
- [s] for both ﺱسand ﺹص
- [h] for ﺡح
- [t] for ﺕتand ﻁط
-[d] for ﺩدand ﺽض
-[z] for ﺯزand ﻅظ
-[sh] for ﺵش
- [kh] for [ • ﺥخgh] for ﻍغ
- [‘] for ]´[ • ﻉعfor ﻕق, in case the ﻕقis replaced by a glottal stop, as in ´ahwa. Long
vowels are represented by double vowels; doubled consonants are similarly
represented by double consonants in English. Proper names and place names have
been written according to their usual spelling in English. (2009: XII)
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INTRODUCTION
It was in August 2010 that I moved into a villa draped in fuchsia bougainvillea in
Amman’s Sweifieh neighbourhood. Known for its abundance of bakeries, dress and
jewellery markets and shopping malls, it was a pedestrian-friendly, safe area for
families and expats alike. Two friends and I moved into the bottom floor of a villa,
which was owned by a family that had been there for years. I recall that first day of
unpacking when a tall man dressed in a pink t-shirt, pin stripe vest and calf-length
shorts came to our door with a teakettle. The moment he opened his mouth and with a
flick of the wrist said, “Ahlan ya banat!” (Hey girls) is forever cemented into my
memory. My flatmates and I were immediately surprised, recognising similar
mannerisms that we had seen before in our gay friends in the United States. Until
then, I had never met a gay Arab man, despite being raised with and amongst Arabs
both in Jordan and in the United States. It was just not something you encountered on
a daily basis. Quickly we became friends with Naseem2, and he introduced us to the
lifestyle of Ammani gay men. Our weekends were filled with parties in posh
apartments in Amman’s more affluent neighbourhoods like Abdoun and Deir Ghbar
(where King Abdullah’s palace is located), dancing along to Madonna and going to
clubs in matching studded outfits. We were quickly engulfed in this world – one that I
certainly had never imagined existing in Amman – and I became ensconced with the
lifestyles these men lived.
As friendships with some of these men developed, I began to observe some of the
issues, fears and facets of their lives that most worry them. I felt personally impacted
and deeply involved with members from this community, and sought to understand
more of how these individuals locate themselves within both their own local contexts
and within a larger framework. How do they relate to their families, to one another, to
the religious notions that imbue Jordanian society? Through first-hand experiences
with my self-identified gay friends – from seeing friends blackmailed (the fear of
being “outed” to family or society looming) to losing friends who chose to leave
2
All interlocutors’ names have been changed with the exception of local gatekeeper. See ethics section
pp. 22.
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Jordan – I began to witness the fragility that wove its way through their daily lives in
Amman. Given the economic, political, religious and social landscape of Amman and
its people, this thesis topic became profoundly relevant to me, my friends and loved
ones who navigate life in Amman on a daily basis. It is necessary to note that I chose
to focus my research on exclusively men, mostly in the age range of 18 – 35, is due to
these early 2010 interactions that facilitated easier access.
In coming to this research, I certainly came with a set of perspectives and preconceived ideas. Despite being open-minded and ‘gay-friendly’, I was searching for
answers or for a definitive lifestyle. More and more I began to realise there was no
such thing, and the reality was of a much more complex nature. Throughout the
process, I found myself taken aback and surprised rather often. I found that even
things as seemingly trivial as an interlocutor’s chosen vocabulary words or facial
reactions were surprising to me. Throughout the duration of my fieldwork, I took
many evenings to sit back and reflect on perspectives I found that challenged my own.
In the first couple of weeks back in Amman, as I met up with some of the men who
were familiar and some who were not, I recall being surprised by the vivaciousness of
their personalities. Not because I had imagined that these vocal, outlandish
personalities did not exist, but because they did not align not with a globalised
stereotype of gay men that I had in mind. Some of the things they said to each other
reminded me of some of the more animated gay men I had met in the United States,
but these men were speaking in Arabic, interacting in a local Jordanian context, and
talking about locally-bound topics and people. It was then that I first realised an
intertwinement of cultures had been created, and that there was no one definition of
‘what it meant to be gay’, and that the reality of these identities was much more
complex. It was also then that I began to be more critical of my support of Joseph
Massad’s criticism of the ‘Gay International’ and his conviction that all Western
cultural influences are detrimental, somehow asserting agency over a less powerful
agent. I began to see that this perceived ‘evil’ from the West was just a natural result
of increased contact over time that could, like all things, be employed in positive or
negative methods.
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Questions like “what does it mean to be gay?”, “how is the topic of marriage
navigated?” and “what function does religion play in these individuals lives?” worked
in shaping this research, with each man’s story displaying his own subjective lived
experience. My research primarily focuses on openly gay men who, in some way or
another, engage in Amman’s gay scene. It will also provide a look into the
experiences of men who do not identify as gay per se but still engage in sexual acts
with other men. My thesis will illustrate the diversity in which ‘gay’ identities are
grasped, criticised and analysed through the day-to-day activities of life in Amman,
and the development of spaces in which the men move. My research does not intend
on taking sexual identity categories to be universal, enduring realities but rather seeks
to engage with the ways in which groups of men in Amman transform and experience
such categories to a local context.
This thesis analyses subaltern experiences of living gayness in Amman, Jordan.
Though theoretician Antonio Gramsci wrote extensively on subalternity in political
discourse of hegemonic power structures, he also contended that subaltern
experiences existed on a much grander scale, including individuals who exist at the
margins of society (Green, 2000). He states that hegemony also materialises from the
bottom, originating in the ideas and acts of everyday people who may or may not see
themselves as part of a broader organised society. Here I would draw the link between
subaltern experience and subjectivity, also attributable to Gramsci’s work. Interested
in groups that were considered problematic for mainstream (or dominant) society,
Gramsci emphasised the importance of collective alternative subjectivities, which
formed the foundations of his work on subalternity. Historian Ranajit Guha (2009)
explained the study of the subaltern as ‘listening to the small voice of history’, and
through this research, I hope to give those ‘small voices’ a platform. This thesis does
not intend on proving any one truth, but rather displaying the broad, complex and
diverse reality of the interlocutors of my research.
The notion of “living gayness” is placed at the crux of my research – that is,
understanding how this sexuality is navigated on a daily basis. I’ve found that it is
often problematised with a negative lens through mainstream media when in reality it
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is lived, experienced and navigated with an incredible array of diversity. Though
issues of marriage and everyday societal expectations shape the creation of these
lifestyles to some extent, they are not necessarily oppressed or “living a lie” as
Western media might assume. Joseph Massad (2002) theorises that the Orientalist
approach taken by many Western LGBT activist organisations and groups, stating that
their larger mission is to “liberate Arab and Muslim ‘gays and lesbians’ from the
oppression under which they allegedly live by transforming them from practitioners
of same-sex contact into interlocutors who identify as homosexual and gay.” (2002:
362) Massad states that the interposing discourse of the Gay International transforms
those participating in same-sex acts into neat little boxes labeled “gay” and “lesbian”,
like their Western counterparts.
My thesis will align with some of the theories found in Massad’s book (2002), which
aims to derail the Western assumption that all individuals who identify as gay desire
to live a particular lifestyle. This conception also presumes the universality of the
term ‘sexual freedom’, and seeks to neatly package sexualities. It is my hope that my
research will unpack the multiplicity in which interlocutors experience life. Because
this thesis focuses on thick descriptions
3
of lived experiences, it displays
interlocutors’ own intimate realities that do not seek to define or delineate the
experiences of all interlocutors in the same context or region. Local place and culture
surely shape experience but ultimately the complexity of lived experience can only be
approached in the everyday. It is my hope that my research can add to that notion that
sexualities are experienced differently in different historical, geographic, religious and
personal contexts.
3
‘Thick description captures the thoughts and feelings of participants as well as the often complex web
of relationships among them. Thick description leads to thick interpretation, which in turns leads to
thick meaning of the research findings for the researchers and participants themselves, and for the
report’s intended readership.’ (Pontoretto, 2006: 543)
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RESEARCH QUESTION & SUB-QUESTIONS
Following the theoretical grounding, and in line with the ontological emphasis on
lived experience, this research is guided by the following central research question:
How do both openly gay men and those who do not necessarily openly present
themselves as gay navigate daily life in Amman, Jordan?
In order to further develop an answer to this overarching question, the following subquestions take a central role:
o Do active members of the gay community feel that gayness is a “Westernised”
construct? Why so?
o What affect have Western imports (media, entertainment) and the Internet had
on their lifestyles and what tangible effects (brought by these) have impacted
their day-to-day living experiences?
o What role does social media play in daily life and connecting both openly gay
men and those who are not openly gay together? (A look into dating app
Grindr, Facebook, etc.)
o How do openly gay men feel about the notion that to live freely is to be open
about your sexuality? To what extent do they agree/disagree?
o How are societal expectations of marriage and having children viewed and
managed?
o How do interlocutors experience and view religion?
o How do everyday practices with music, entertainment, and wardrobe link to
notions of gay expression?
o What are the primary fears and challenges that face my interlocutors?
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TERMINOLOGY
Terminology in this field of study is constantly being debated as to its political
correctness and accuracy. Social anthropologist Dan Kulick accurately states: “What
to collectively call people whose sexual and gendered practices and/or identities fall
beyond the bounds of normative heterosexuality is an unavoidable and ultimately
unresolvable problem” (Kulick 2000: 243). In an age where syntax and meaning are
highly contested, it is important to remain as close to accurate as possible. Sociologist
Sasha Roseneil (2000) discusses the theorisation of post modernity when discussing
social changes that have affected sexual understandings. She argues that sexual
identities around the homo/heterosexual binary are not fixed and are inherently
unstable. Former editor of the Middle East Guardian, author Brian Whitaker
highlights some of the further complexities when using the term like ‘gay’ in the
context of Arab and Islamic societies in his book Unspeakable Love: Gay and
Lesbian Love in the Middle East:
The word carries connotations of a certain lifestyle (as found among gay
people in the West) and it implies a sexual identity that people may not
personally adopt. ‘Homosexual’ – describing a person – may not have the
same westernised connotations but can be equally inappropriate, especially
where homosexual acts are an occasional alternative to those with the opposite
sex. Arabic itself has no generally accepted equivalent of the word ‘gay’. The
term for ‘homosexuality’ (al-mithliyya al-jinsiyya – literally: ‘sexual sameness’) is of recent coinage but is increasingly adopted by serious newspapers
and in academic articles. The related word mithli is beginning to be used for
‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’. Meanwhile, the popular media continue to use the
heavily loaded shaadh (‘queer’, ‘pervert’, ‘deviant’). The traditional word for
‘lesbian’ is suhaaqiyya, though some argue that this has negative connotations
and prefer mithliyya (the feminine of mithli). Arabs also have a variety of
more-or-less insulting words for sexual types (e.g. effeminate men) and those
who favor certain kinds of sexual act. (Whitaker 2006: 13)
These intricacies complicate terminology further, and so for the sake of this thesis, I
will follow some of the definitions found in Whitaker’s book:
Homosexual: Behaviour, feelings, practices, etc., directed towards people of
the same gender. It is used adjectivally in the text but not as a noun (e.g. ‘a
homosexual’).
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Gay: Applied to men who have adopted this as their sexual identity. In some
contexts (e.g. ‘gay community’) the term should be regarded as shorthand,
which includes various other non-heterosexual identities: lesbian, bisexual,
transgender, etc.(2006: 13).
For men who do not self-identify as gay and did not have a label for themselves, I will
refer to them as MSM: men who sleep with men (Boellstorff 2006: 287).
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OBJECTIVE
The purpose of my thesis is to provide insight into the lives of men who identify as
gay-and those who do not but partake in homosexual activity in the setting of Amman,
Jordan. I will examine how, despite various elements of ambiguity and instability,
men manoeuvre daily life and make decisions for the future. I intend that my research
shall highlight concerted efforts to create comfortable places for interlocutors to
interact, and bring to light different aspects that make daily life more manageable.
Through experiences with my interlocutors, I found that the notion of “Gay
International” and concepts of one unified gay identity do not apply in the context of
many of my interlocutors terms. Many of my interlocutors are individuals outside of
this notion that their gayness would define them, what they do, what they like or what
they want in life. Boellstorff, who contemplates Westernisation and its impression on
subjects, asserted, “domination does not necessarily lead to determination” (2005, 58).
Of the interlocutors who attended universities outside of Jordan, speak English
fluently, listen to Western music/film, I found that generally much of their identities
were heavily tied to local contexts and local expectations and gayness had only
impacted one portion of their personalities. One interlocutor, an openly gay Christian
man in his late 20s, stated, “Yeah, I’m gay. But I still care about not disrupting the
family unit; not disrupting my community and not letting this part of my life affect
everything else. Mesh daroory ehki la kol el nas” (It’s not necessary for me to tell
everyone). My thesis will take part in the theoretical debate on the complexities of
defining sexualities and identities and will use the regional context as a lens at which
these develop.
Furthermore, I believe there is a concrete lack of ethnographic research on
contemporary gay subcultures in the Middle East. Despite the growing academic
literature based on same-sex relations in the Arab World, it is mostly limited to
historical research of homosexual practices. More recently, Bruce Dunne wrote about
power and sexuality in the Middle East (1998), giving brief accounts of forms of
discursive elements of power within both hetero and homosexuality, but not more
modern ethnographic samplings of a particular state or community. Brian Whitiker’s
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more recent book Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East
provides individual same-sex narratives of men and women throughout the Arab
World, but does not contribute a zoomed-in localised context (2006).
It is my hope that this research can be illustrative of the broad spectrum of experience,
subjectivity and perspective among men in Amman who identify as gay in some way,
and those who do not, and can illustrate the diversity in which sexual identities are
experienced.
REFLECTIONS
Having a local gatekeeper significantly aided my research process. With research that
focuses on the everyday, having an interlocutor who actively reflected with me in
reference to subjectivity and contemplation was invaluable. Mousa often had me in a
state of reflexivity, working with me to question any assumptions or conclusions I
was trying to make. Throughout my fieldwork, I was very cautious to avoid any sort
of “othering”4, and Mousa played an active role in helping me address those issues of
representation. When we perceive life through a certain framework, all aspects of it
become riddled with complexity, anxiety and strife. A clichéd perception that
minority or subaltern groups always stick together in solidarity also shaped my
looking-lens, one that was proven oversimplified rather early on in the research. At
the onset of the research, I wanted to remain ultra-cautious as to making any preemptive assumptions or conclusions. After my first month in the field, that initial
sensitivity faded away and I learned to view each story, each experience as subjective.
Ultimately, doing this research has allowed me to become a much more
understanding, patient person. I learned one must not jump to immediate assumptions
or conclusions because those are based on past experiences and subtle nuances that
may not be wholly accurate or representative.
4
"Othering" is a way of defining and securing one`s own positive identity through the stigmatisation of
an "other". Whatever the markers of social differentiation that shape the meaning of "us" and "them",
whether they are racial, geographic, ethnic, economic or ideological, there is always the danger that
they will become the basis for a self-affirmation that depends upon the denigration of the other group
(www.cwrl.utexas.edu~ulrich/rww03/othering.htm).
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METHODOLOGY
The data found within this thesis was collected during a three-month fieldwork period
(June – September 2015) in Amman, Jordan. When I drew up my research proposal
plan, I thought the most effective way to collect information and to gain a deeper
understanding of interlocutors’ lives and lifestyles would be through interviews. A
common research method for anthropologists, it seemed to suit my research topic and
interlocutors as well. However, this method presents various restrictions, particularly
with research that delves into lived, subjective experience. Anthropologist Charles L.
Briggs delineates some of the issues that arise in the process of interviewing for social
data: “What is said is seen as what is ‘out there’ rather than as an interpretation which
is jointly produced by interviewer and respondent. Since the context-sensitive features
of such discourse are more clearly tied to the context of the interview than to that of
the situation which it describes, the researcher is likely to misinterpret the meaning of
the responses” (Briggs 1988: 3). Early on in the fieldwork I learned that the standard
form of interview would not be suitable given the sensitivity and intimacy of my
research. Because I was asking interlocutors to tell me about personal experiences,
giving them a space to tell their stories as they saw it, I realised standard interview
discourse could not be applied. I adjusted my methodology to be more contextappropriate, and began each sit down with an informal, unstructured brief about
myself, my research and why I was interested in the subject. The ‘interviews’ became
more like life histories, and usually led to specific topics of interest and concern
(marriage, religion, family, the future). I also allowed space for the conversation to
take an organic flow, rather than follow the typical question-answer format, taking
away a sense of formality. If an interlocutor had a hard time knowing where to begin
with his oral life story or experiences, I would ask a question like “When did you first
feel like you were attracted to men?” and almost without fail, this question would lead
to a story that would lead to other stories. I would, on occasion, cautiously probe
interlocutors for information, but usually I asked them to tell their story from
whenever they felt it might be relevant. From this, I could gauge which moments in
life were most memorable or most important, and which they either forgot or did not
feel were relevant. I felt it was especially relevant to understand the past of each
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interlocutor in order to better understand who he is now and what events have shaped
his outlooks. Past experiences, for the most part, form a significant portion of the
particular lens through which each individual looked through, and that could be seen
vividly through their histories. It was important to me, however, in this process, to
capture note of intonation, mannerisms and the general feeling of the interlocutor as
they shared their experiences. Thus, a large portion of my ethnographic material
relied heavily on these conversations, which were either arranged by myself or
through Mousa. In the arrangement process, I would ask interlocutors where they
would like to meet. The response was most commonly in a coffee shop or café in
Jabal Amman or Jabal el Weibdeh, places where interlocutors felt a sense of
familiarity and comfort. During these sessions, I took meticulous notes. Because the
presence of a recorder seemed inappropriate and at times constrained the subjects
from speaking without inhibitions, I felt that detailed note taking would be a better
approach.
On several occasions, I also utilised the ‘go-along’ method, defined by sociologist
Margarethe Kusenbach as a “form of in-depth qualitative interview method that, as
the name implies, is conducted by researchers accompanying individual interlocutors
on outings in their familiar environments, such as a neighbourhood or larger local
area. The go-along can be conducted as a ‘walk-along’ (i.e. conducted while walking
with the participant), a ‘ride-along’ (i.e. conducted while driving) or a ‘mixed’ form
combining the former two types” (Kusenbach, 2003). During and after the meetings, I
would write down everything that was said and everything that I noticed, including
what the interlocutors were wearing and how their mood was.
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Image 1: Photograph5 taken of an interlocutor on one of our casual strolls through Jabal el Weibdeh
As time progressed and I built rapport with particular interlocutors, informal
gatherings or “deep hang outs”6 began to happen. With Mousa’s group of friends,
which I will go into more detail about in Chapter 2, we would often spend afternoons
and evenings together driving around the city, going out to eat or for walks (Image 1),
having coffee, going on day-trips out of Amman, smoking hookah7, or sitting on my
rooftop talking/dancing. These outings proved particularly informative for me, as they
took away the performativity and pressure that can sometimes occur in an
interviewer-interviewee situation, and allowed interlocutors to feel more comfortable.
Before I entered the field and throughout the research period, I was regularly
engaging with interlocutors through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Through these
mediums, I gauged what interlocutors’ felt comfortable sharing, the language they
5
All photographs were taken by Lena Kassicieh unless otherwise stated.
‘Deep hanging out’ is a term coined by cultural anthropologist Renato Rosaldo and later popularised
by Clifford Geertz, referring to casually spending time with people in order to understand how they
live.
7
Oxford dictionary defines ‘hookah’ as an oriental tobacco pipe with a long, flexible tube that draws
the smoke through water contained in a bowl.
6
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utilised, and who knew and spent time with whom. These platforms allowed me to
understand more of the interconnectivity of the community as I could see who was
mutual friends, comments shared between others, and I learned a lot about how
interwoven the prominent individuals in the ‘gay community’ are. Though many of
my interlocutors denied the existence of a cohesive ‘gay community’, anytime I met
or learned about a new person, I could tell whether or not he was involved in the
scene in any way by noting just a few mutual friends. I would begin to get friend
requests from men I did not know, but through seeing our mutual friends, I
understood that someone must have told them about me or connected us in one way or
another. I was connected to several people who I had the chance to arrange meetings
with through Facebook, including an Australian filmmaker who was making a
documentary about the LGBT community in Amman.
As I spent the majority of my time in Jabal el Weibdeh, I would be having coffee in
Rumi or Graffiti café (Image 2), and would randomly run into men that I became
more familiar with through mutual connections. Graffiti Café in particular turned into
a space in which I would meet new interlocutors or friends of Mousa, but would also
have side conversations with acquaintances that later became friends and allowed me
to interview them for the sake of this research. This location lent a sense of inclusivity,
as almost everyone that came into Graffiti was a regular and knew everyone else in
one way or another, even if they were not friends. It also allowed me to see what
topics were discussed and what things were important, as well as how and why
interlocutors discussed certain things. These moments provided a great level of
intimacy, allowing these interactions to flow naturally, like friendships. In certain
instances, I would ask for permission to take recordings to aid me in later writing
notes and drawing conclusions.
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Image 2: Interlocutor checking his phone in front of Graffiti Cafe in Jabal el Weibdeh
Having Mousa as my local gatekeeper hugely aided the fieldwork process, as it
almost immediately bridged the gap between researcher-researchee. Interlocutors
trusted me because I came with a close friend of theirs, and suddenly I became
someone that was always included in group plans. Without Mousa, this level of
rapport and closeness would have been much more difficult to attain, especially in
such a short period of time. I was also introduced to other interlocutors through
interlocutors that I knew on my own without the aid of Mousa. Some interlocutors
felt a sense of ‘get our stories heard’ and thus, wanted to connect me to their friends
that they thought might be willing to share.
Sociologists Peter and Patti Adler (1987) defined three roles of qualitative researchers
engaged in observational methodology, being: 1) peripheral member researchers:
those who do not actively participate in the activities with group members 2) active
member researchers: those who become actively involved in core activities without
completely committing to the values and goals of the group and 3) complete member
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researchers: those that are already active members of the group or who through time
become fully connected during the course of the research. During the entire course of
the research, with certain groups (Mousa and his friends, and with former
acquaintances that became friends) I fell into the active member researcher role, as I
was heavily involved in their daily activities on a regular basis. I found that with
certain interlocutors and groups, language differed. With Mousa and his friends,
Arabic was predominantly used with the exception of the occasional English word
(like saying ‘gay’ or ‘out’, for example). With other interlocutors, a mix of the two
languages was utilised, or primarily English. This depended on a few factors of which
I will go into greater detail later on in the thesis.
ETHICS
Given the sensitive nature of this research, it was necessary to carefully consider an
ethical approach. Throughout the period of my fieldwork, protecting the identities of
my interlocutors was of utter necessity to me. I made special efforts to be extremely
sensitive in the manoeuvring of both the research and my personal/private life without
inadvertently putting interlocutors in any harm or danger for any reason. As such, in
the process of taking field notes, I used various pseudonyms and for added precaution,
changed them several times. Throughout my thesis, I maintain the pseudonyms with
the exception of my local gatekeeper Mousa al Shadeedi, who has expressed
explicitly that he would like his real name to be used throughout the research, and has
further granted permission to use his photo in the thesis. Throughout the course of my
research, Mousa aided in introducing me to key interlocutors, discussing interview
questions and themes, and met me on a regular basis to discuss the development of
the research. With research that focuses on everyday experiences, it is inevitable that
the questioning of representation comes in. Actively reflecting on my data with
Mousa proved to be an invaluable asset. Together, we had many open brainstorming
sessions where we discussed various concerns, and were able to address the ethical
issue of writing about “them”.
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DOING ANTHROPOLOGY IN A CITY THAT IS ‘HOME’
Although my family is originally from Palestinian Jerusalem, after 1948 they were
relocated to Amman, Jordan. Effectively, Amman is as close as we really got to have
a city of our own, and my family were all granted Jordanian citizenship as refugees in
the late 1950s. For me, my connection with Amman runs deep, as it is a place that I
have really come to love, both through the lens of my family’s history and later as an
adult who returned there after completing my studies in the United States. For the last
four years, I lived separately from my family (in an apartment on my own) and
worked in Amman, getting to know different aspects and sides of the city that I had
not been exposed previously.
It was during this time that I met some of the interlocutors I interacted with for my
research, and became an active part of Amman’s publishing and media community. I
worked as an editor for two of the most well-known Jordanian magazines, one being a
design, architecture and travel magazine and the other being local culture, heritage
and lifestyle. On a monthly basis, I interacted with artists, filmmakers, journalists,
freelancers, designers, radio hosts and other media personalities and became one of
the faces of the magazine, so to speak. This “in” granted me the opportunity to meet
an assortment of Jordanians that most people do not come into contact with, and
allowed me a certain amount of space to move and negotiate my own role. It is also
thanks to this role that I was able to work with several of the interlocutors I will refer
to throughout my research, as we worked on a professional level together that
transitioned into friendship.
When I first applied for the editor position, the editor-in-chief – a powerful Jordanian
woman with a certain cutthroat reputation – was sceptical about hiring someone she
did not know through someone else. In Jordanian society, word of mouth and familial
relations are typically how one connects to others in the social scene, and it took
Rania months before she came to accept me based on my own personality and not the
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stamp of approval or “wasta”8 of someone she already knew. It is the accumulation of
these roles and experiences that created an easier transition into the researcher role,
and granted me the role of someone the interlocutors could understand and
contextualise. My ability to speak Arabic in the Jordanian dialect, and understand
many of the jokes and nuances used within the colloquial dialect also aided me in the
interview process and easing the interlocutors’ worries about an “outsider” looking in.
The language was also useful in understanding and noticing code switches and when
gauging Arabic terminologies for ‘gay’,‘homosexual’ et al.
Since I did research in a place that I consider home, it is necessary to address the
insider-outsider dichotomy. Anthropologist Leila Voloder writes: “In contrast to the
classic model of anthropological research, which defines the ethnographic endeavour
in terms of clear movements in and out of the field…research at home is characterised
by the increased proximity and intersection between ‘home’, the sites of the familiar,
the personal and of non-research activities and ‘field’, the sites of the unfamiliar, the
professional and research activities” (Voloder 2008: 30). Being that I was very
familiar with many of the locations I entered to conduct research, meet interlocutors
and to conduct interviews, I was able to notice more details about interlocutors
themselves and how they related to social contexts. As I was returning to a familiar
place, I was employing the role of ‘halfie’. A term coined by anthropologist Lila AbuLughod, halfie is defined as “people whose national or cultural identity is mixed by
virtue of migration, overseas education or parentage’ and whom ‘unsettle the
boundary between the self and the other” (1991: 137). In some circumstances, I felt
that this aspect affected the way I navigated certain intricacies, allowing ambiguities
of understanding to be bridged. Some interlocutors considered me to have more
experience and be less traditional than a Jordanian girl who grew up and remained her
entire life in Jordan, but still found it important that I had an understanding of local
customs, norms and expectations. I believe that being a female also lent an added
8
Wasta or wasata (Arabic: )ﻭوﺍاﺳْﻄﺔis an Arabic word that means the use of social connections to obtain
benefits that otherwise would not be provided. (The Stigma of Wasta: The Effect of Wasta on Perceived
Competence and Morality by German University faculty Ahmed Mohamed and Hadia Hamdy)
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sense of comfort to many of my interlocutors, as many of my interlocutors would feel
not feel as comfortable talking to a heterosexual Jordanian male. It is also relevant to
note that I have a half-brother who identifies as gay, and when I shared this with my
interlocutors, it granted them further insight into why this topic intrigues me and
affects me on a personal level.
AMMAN AS A FIELD SITE
Image 3: View taken from bottom of Rainbow Street in Jabal Amman neighbourhood
According to the United States Central Intelligence Agency9, Amman has one of the
highest immigration rates of anywhere in the world. The capital and most populated
city in Jordan, it also stands as the economic, social and political centre of the country.
Its current estimated population, which includes surrounding municipalities, is 4
9
More statistics on 2014 net migration rate in Jordan can be found on https://www.cia.gov.
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million10. The city is structured over seven hills, each with a traffic circle referred to
as First Circle, Second Circle etc., and is divided into different sections which
function almost as neighbourhoods, known for different purposes or attractions.
According to the 2014 article ‘Urbanism and Neoliberal Order: The Development and
Redevelopment of Amman’ by Najib Hourani, certain areas within Amman, like
Abdoun and Sweifieh, have been transformed by economic development, seeing
various foreign land developers primarily from the Gulf region (Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates). 20 years ago, the Rainbow Street I refer to
throughout this thesis, which acts as a hub for socialising and activity, did not exist.
This influx of economic growth, increase in development of cosmopolitan areas and
import of new cultures unequivocally affects all inhabitants of Amman and certainly
my own research population, forming an interesting background for my research.
Most of my fieldwork was conducted in two Ammani neighbourhoods: Jabal Amman
and Jabal el Weibdeh. Due to urban and economic developments in the past fifteen
years, both areas house a number of cultural and art venues, including Darat Al Funun
(House of Art), Dar al Anda, The Royal Film Commission, Makan Art Space,
Rainbow Theatre, et al and cafes, restaurants and bars. On weekends, it is not
uncommon to be stuck in traffic around the First or Second Circles en route to either
area, as they are the two of the primary hubs in Amman for social activity.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Being that my research primarily focuses on the navigation of daily life, I consciously
took the decision to organise my chapters into tangible spaces. Each chapter is
representative of a particular location that is moved through by my interlocutors and
composes the layers in which they experience their lives. In order to be able to
contextualise my thesis research within the region and on an international level,
Chapter 1: World vs. Jordan vs. Amman begins with a brief explanation about
Western sexual categories and classifications, expounding some of the theories of
Joseph Massad’s ‘Gay International’ and going further into the work of anthropologist
Tom Boellstorff and his understandings of local vs. global. Throughout the chapter I
10
According to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. See at
http://www.unisdr.org/campaign/resilientcities/cities/view/11
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seek to argue that identities of interlocutors are not necessarily defined by one
mentality, but rather that they are a complex intertwinement of local experience,
imported mentalities, entertainment and other external factors, creating a constant
interplay and dynamic of tension. My research provides a look into the lived
experiences of my interlocutors, and displays the subjectivity of their own intimate
experiences, without trying to prove or rectify certain truths. The chapter illustrates
the creation and manoeuvring of space in Amman, contextualising the interlocutors
in their daily environments. I then discuss activism, explaining the interconnectivity
and tension that persists within the LGBT activist community in Amman. It also
expounds inner efforts to change Arabic terminology in media, to create awareness
and dialogue within Jordanian society.
Chapter 2: Cyber web discusses the role the Internet has played in the lives of
interlocutors in the last 10 years. Many interlocutors, when facing confusion about
their sexualities, turned to the Internet for information. They would also see the web
as another place to interact, connect and meet. This chapter discusses the various
benefits of such an outlet, and the role it played in the lives of these interlocutors
during various periods of their lives. It also discusses the volatility that can also breed
in this virtual world, as others interact and meet and get tangled up in precarious
situations with one another. Here, I discuss usage of gay dating mobile applications,
how Facebook works as a way to meet and date, and the clichéd nature of hooking up
through such meetings.
Chapter 3: The Mosque discusses views on religion and sexuality. For many
interlocutors, sexuality and religion became intertwined, and manoeuvring viewpoints
based on what Islam or Christianity might state about such sexualities was a topic of
conversation. For other interlocutors, it was not a question of abandoning religion in
order to maintain a ‘gay’ identity, and one identity did not have to mean that the other
could not exist. The careful navigation of these spiritualties, opinions and family
member roles will be seen through detailed analysis and ethnography in this chapter. I
will also discuss, through a collection of experiences on how the impact of being
raised in Amman, various perspectives on religion, and how in the future, perhaps a
modified interpretation of religion can be more inclusive of varying sexualities. As a
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precursor to chapter 4, I will also discuss the common family reaction to ‘coming out’
by sending interlocutors to Islamic psychiatrists, as often the thought that ‘turning
back to religion’ may help ‘solve the problem’.
Finally, Chapter 4: Home shifts the spotlight to men’s relationship with their
families and the myriad obstacles that emerged out of endeavours to negotiate their
subject positions within kinship structures. This chapter highlights the fragility and
critical tension of the navigation between familial responsibilities and roles within the
kinship structure (duties and obligations as cousins, brothers, sons et al) and their
sexual subjectivities. Within this chapter, I also discuss the delicate process of
‘coming out’ and how, though generally considered in the West as liberating and
freeing, in this context it almost feels more limiting in some ways. I argue that the
process is not so much as clear as closed-to-open but rather that interlocutors are
constantly negotiating the process in some form or another within the home space and
differently with different individuals. The evolution of this disclosure process is of a
particularly delicate nature, and is abound with inconclusiveness and ambiguity,
leaving us with no clear path for a certain future.
In the Conclusion of this thesis, I highlight the underlying notion of subjectivity and
the process of selving for my interlocutors throughout the course of my research. My
data does not conclusively state any argument or prove any theory, but rather provides
a thick description as data in and of itself. My interlocutors’ experiences, all varied
and diversified, emphasise the various levels of intricacy found in daily life, and
illustrate the notion that living gayness in Amman cannot be generalised or defined.
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1. WORLD VS. JORDAN VS. AMMAN
Applied to art, academia, political discourse and cultural studies, the Western
Orientalist lens is one that is often looked through when discussing the region.
Offering a confining take on life, this perspective limits growth and diversity through
a platitudinal perception of reality. Social scientists like Joseph Massad (2002, 2007),
Lila Abu-Lughod (2001) and Tom Boellstorff (2005, 2011) have discussed orientalist
applications to sexualities in the Arab World, critical of implications of assertions of
agency or stating that sexualities can be globally analogous. This chapter discusses
various tenets of this perspective and its effects on interlocutors in Amman, as well as
how interlocutors chose to create and explore spaces of safety in their own context, on
their own terms. Firstly this chapter contextualises the neighbourhoods in which the
vast majority of my fieldwork was conducted, and seeks to illustrate the atmosphere
in which my interlocutors dwell. This chapter then goes on to discuss activism in
Amman, and how some interlocutors work tirelessly to re-brand and re-package
perspectives within the community on how to best go about changing the discourse on
sexuality.
1.1 FROM FIRST TO FIFTH CIRCLE: CREATING COMFORTABLE,
SAFE PUBLIC SPACES
My first few days of fieldwork in Amman felt strange. It had been a year since I had
last been in Jordan, and the overwhelming but familiar feelings of “nothing has
changed here yet I have” were pounding in my tired, jet-lagged head. I decided to go
for a walk through Jabal el Weibdeh, the neighbourhood that I’ve lived in and with
which I became most acquainted. I walked up the steep hill, past the green mosque on
the corner of one of the neighbourhood’s oldest streets, just a block from my father’s
childhood home. The air felt stiff and heavy, as it usually is midsummer, but this
particular summer Amman experienced a heat wave it had not seen in decades. After
ten minutes, I arrived to Rumi, a cafe that opened in 2014 and had since become a
cornerstone of Weibdeh coffee culture. Inside Rumi, I saw a few familiar faces, some
27
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of whom knew I was returning for the summer, some that did not, and so the earnest
work of making connections began.
One can describe Jabal el Weibdeh as a tiny village inside of a village. Amman being
a relatively new city built around a series of hills, Jabal el Weibdeh is one of three
remaining old areas that maintain a tacit sense of community. Sitting in this café, I
experienced a heaviness; heaviness that brings nostalgia, loneliness and longing. I
spent several hours there, swallowing glasses of bitter iced hibiscus tea, enjoying the
free air conditioning and refuge from the harsh summer heat. This café felt like a
place that has somehow always existed; had always been a meeting place. It was the
very infrastructure of a community. Hours passed as I watched friends come and meet
friends, business partners sipping coffee, co-workers on their lunch breaks. It was also
there that throughout the summer I would come to meet with interlocutors, see others
in passing, and truly feel a part of Weibdeh life.
The beginning of my fieldwork brought with it unforeseen changes. Before arrival in
the field, I had arranged a former friend and colleague, Khaled, to be my gatekeeper
and key interlocutor throughout the summer. Upon arrival, I noticed that he was rather
busy and was not making my research nor our first meeting a priority. We finally
managed to arrange a coffee date (in Jabal el Weibdeh), 3 weeks into the fieldwork.
First we caught up on life, and then Khaled shared that on June 26th, he would be
traveling to Sweden and France for the duration of the summer. I swallowed my
surprise and proceeded to listen to him talk about how it was an important opportunity
for him to improve My.Kali, the LGBT e-magazine he started years ago, and how the
exposure would change the very way he interacted with the community. It was at this
time, with my cell phone on the table facing the surface, that Khaled quickly got up,
picked it up and placed it across the room, saying “Sorry, but I just don’t know if
there are things being recorded and I am a bit paranoid now.” Very surprised by this
abrupt move, I wanted to understand what he was paranoid about. He explained,
briefly, that after the IDAHOT event (greater detail will be given about the event in
sub-chapter 1.3), certain things happened and he was afraid he was being watched, his
every word recorded somehow. I was unsure as to how my cell phone would be
working against him, and assured him I was not recording the conversation without
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his permission. I had been taking notes throughout the discussion, but only with his
knowledge and permission.
After the realisation that my intended gatekeeper would not be in the country for the
summer, panic rang immediately in my ears, and I wondered what I might do. After
we finished our third glasses of iced karkadeh (hibiscus flower tea), Khaled got a
phone call from Nadir. Known as one of the “divas” of Amman’s gay scene, I met
Nadir in 2010 at a luxurious party at a gay Hungarian man’s apartment. Khaled told
Nadir I was with him and he told him to bring me along to Graffiti Café, where they
were all having coffee, chain smoking and talking. With great trepidation I agreed, as
I had not connected with Nadir prior to my arrival in Amman. I was nervous what
opinion he might have of my research. Khaled and I walked the 3 blocks to Graffiti
café, finding Nadir sitting on a couch surrounded by other men, some of whom I
knew. Excitedly greeting each other, Nadir jumped up and welcomed me back to
Amman, complementing my shoes and blouse. I returned the complements, asking if
he had lost weight (in Arabic, ‘nahfan?’), much to his delight. This was the first
group interaction I had experienced since my return to the field, and I felt that Graffiti
Café created a warm, inclusive ambience for the group. One of the men, Zaid, whom I
had seen in photos on Facebook through mutual friends but never knew, was the
manager of the café thus creating a feel of ease and intimacy. I watched on as Nadir,
with his vivacious personality, steered the group conversations. The topics ranged
from Nadir’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia and how good the shopping was to an
Egyptian fashion designer’s newest collection to the gay dating app called ‘Hornet’.
At around 2 am, Zaid started to wipe down counters as a signal that it was time for
everyone to go home. I walked outside with Nadir, Khaled and Zahir where we made
plans to meet again.
A couple days after the discovery that Khaled would not be in Jordan for the
remainder of the summer, I was discussing my research at the kitchen table with my
flat mate. Charlotte was a German woman who has lived in Amman for the past 5
years. She asked me if I had met a man named Mousa, An Iraqi LGBT activist and
author, Charlotte thought Mousa might be an ideal person for me to meet and
potentially interview for my research. She sent a Facebook message connecting us,
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and eager to meet, we set a time for the following day at Graffiti Café. As I walked
the 5 blocks from my apartment to the café, I was anxious, wondering if Mousa might
be willing to fill the role of a gatekeeper that I felt I really needed. When I walked
into the café, I found him already there sitting at a table, pack of cigarettes and water
bottle beside his thin arms. Mousa had a subtle calm to him, and as he looked at me
through his thin-rimmed glasses, I felt I could be open with him. I shared with him a
bit about my research, about the masters program itself, and why I had chosen to do it
here in Amman. He then shared with me his story, and how he had moved to Amman
3 years ago because he did not feel safe or comfortable with the violence that had
been incited against gay men in Baghdad. He moved to Amman first alone, and then
his parents followed shortly after. Mousa spoke with calm reassurance, then, about
how he chose to disclose his orientation to his parents:
Their initial reaction was “Are you sure? Is it just because you’re trying to
support the cause? My parents had always been supportive of my activism in
Baghdad, and they thought when I came out that it was out of support for the
cause. When I assured them that no, this is who I am and how I feel, they
understood. Now they have almost become LGBT activists themselves, trying
to educate others and raise awareness,” he smiled. (Mousa, Amman, June
2015)
After Mousa had shared with me how he felt about activism in the Middle East, we
began to discuss the notion of ‘community’. Mousa shared that he does not feel that
there is a cohesive gay community in Amman, but rather pockets or smaller tribes that
mirror greater Jordanian tribal culture. Several other interlocutors echoed this notion,
and agreed when I posed the question myself. It was then, in that first sit down with
Mousa, that I asked if he would agree to be my gatekeeper. Without hesitation he
agreed, and it was almost as if on a first date you are deciding to get married. I
laughed a nervous laugh of relief and he and I made plans to move forward with the
research. Mousa began to list men he thought would be willing to meet and talk with
me, giving brief summaries about them and their lives, and telling me about his group
of friends and how he got to know them.
First we arranged meetings with Mousa’s close friends. Though he is not Jordanian,
Mousa had become very familiar with the scene through connections, contacts,
Facebook groups and spending time in Books@ Café and Jabal el Weibdeh. His close
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friends, however, were men I had not heard of or seen before. Our first meeting was
with his friend Sa’eed, at Books@ Café. Sa’eed connected with Mousa through the
LGBT Awareness in Jordan page that he created earlier this year. The page, which
incited a lot of attention from both within the community and outside of it, formed the
basis of their friendship. After a three hour sit down with Sa’eed, in which he shared
with me his story and some of his experiences which will be discussed later on in the
thesis, we ordered the bill and he offered to drive Mousa and I home. Sa’eed chose an
ABBA song to play as we drove through the winding street back to the First circle,
gleefully singing along to “Dancing Queen”. After meeting Sa’eed, I met some of
Mousa’s other close friends: Dalal, Khaldoon, Bilal, Muhannad and Noor. Every time
we arranged to meet a friend of Mousa’s, I would ask them to choose the place.
Without fail, they almost always chose to meet in Jabal el Weibdeh or in Jabal
Amman on Rainbow Street, and we almost always ended up in Books@ Café, Turtle
Green, Graffiti Café, or some other popular café in these two areas.
Several of Mousa’s closest friends highly preferred meeting at Books@ Café to other
cafes in the areas. Books@, which I mentioned in the introduction chapter of the
thesis, was the first restaurant/bar to open that appealed to ‘alternative audiences’.
Though the owner, Madian, states that his intention was never to open a place
exclusively for LGBT crowds, the general ‘come as you are’ feel to Books@ had it’s
a niche appeal. Gradually the bookshop-bar-restaurant became widely known in West
Amman as ‘for the gays’ – perhaps because the lack of other public spaces. Tom
Boellstorff noted this similar phenomenon in Indonesia: “The places of gay and lesbi
worlds are sites of belonging and recognition to find people who are the ‘same’(sama)
as oneself because they too ‘desire the same’’(Boellstorff 2005: 126). Mousa briefly
worked there so was on a first name basis with everyone who worked there, and knew
them all well. Bilal in particular always chose to meet at Books@, as it was one of the
few places where he could “get a hookah, drink, and check out hot guys”. I believe
part of its success was the dire need for a place like it – a place that allowed for a
certain degree of openness, a social world that was known and open. Anthropologist
Richard Howard noted this arrangement of social worlds, and I agree that many of my
interlocutors saw daily life “as being divided into distinct social worlds, and they
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recognised that fact that in some sense they had to become different people in
different locations in social space” (Howard 1996: 263).
Because Books@ appeals to a wide variety of people, being seen there was not
necessarily implicating, but at the same time men had the opportunity to see who else
was there and scan them out. Many of the men also saw this space as opportunity to
open their Grindr app, as the app functions out of proximity. One night, as I sat with
Mousa and his friends at table in the outdoor area of Books@, Dalal talked about
spaces in Amman known for cruising. In this context, ‘cruising’ refers to drives
around particular areas with the intention of finding men to hook up with or hit on.
Bilal chimed in, saying that he doesn’t need to go to any certain areas and that he just
shouts out from his window to men that appeal to him and it usually works. Curious
about the nature of cruising as a method of picking up potential lovers, I asked if I
could come along. They laughed and both Dalal and Bilal asked when I wanted to go.
Later that night, we all piled into Bilal’s car to be dropped off at our respective homes.
As we winded through the First Circle, Bilal rolled down his window and shouted
evocative words like shagfeh (literally means ‘piece’, but translates to something akin
to ‘hot piece of meat’ or ‘babe’) and sarookh (rocket), typically reserved for catcalling women, at attractive men he saw walking on the street. Enthralled by this
brazen behaviour, I asked Bilal if he does this often. With a smirk, he replied,
“Whenever the mood strikes I do it. You’d be surprised how often it actually works”.
A few weeks later, on a night when Mousa, Dalal and I found nothing to do, we
decided to go for a drive in Shmeisani.
As we drove through the thick of the night, Amman in one of the warmest heat waves
in 15 years, Dalal raised the volume on the radio. Haifa Wehbe, one of the Middle
East’s most notoriously provocative female singers, pelted from the stereo, “The fire
of desire from faraway separation…draw me close to your heart and give me warmth,”
and I watched as Dalal curved and swayed his arms in the air, above the steering
wheel, mocking the carnal, provocative nature of Haifa’s voice. I listened on as Dalal
proceeded to tell Mousa about how he learned to belly dance from watching Haifa in
her early 2000 music videos, treating the microphone as if it was her lover’s yearning
mouth. Mousa laughed and teasingly called Dalal “sharmoota”, the Arabic word
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meaning ‘whore’. Dalal’s response was a lovingly demure laugh, a tap on the wrist
and the rejoinder, as if speaking to a female, “Oskoti!” (Quiet, you!).
We turned into the Shmeisani neighbourhood, which has been notorious for late night
cruising, and according to Dalal, is known as a place you can also pick up men on
certain nights in certain hours. Dalal, his effeminate nickname among friends, began
to explain to me which areas were known for picking up men. We drove past the
public hospital onto Al-Thaqafa Street (ironically means ‘culture’) and Dalal dangled
his wrist out of the window pointing to men he could identity as gay. “Look, look!
Did you see the way he eyed me! Oh he wants it!” he squealed. Then, to both my
horror and delight, he shouted “Allah erhamni min jamalak!”(May God protect me
from your beauty!), I watched, silently slouching in the backseat out of view, as the
man made a grimace and continued in his conversation. I asked Dalal if he ever gets
nervous making these “cat calls”, worried about repercussions or if someone might
respond in a deleterious or aggressive manner. He responded, with pursed lips and an
eye roll, “Why should I? They’re all gay, they just aren’t open about it, habibti,”(my
love).
We continued to cruise through the night, patches of silence and patches of noise as
we found parts of Amman that were saturated with men celebrating that night’s
football match, parts with families picnicking and smoking hookah and more not so
apparent parts with men looking to have sex. The night ends with us back in Jabal el
Weibdeh, the fruit of our efforts futile, so we decide to buy packs of cigarettes and
pizzas from Oliva. We sit on the trunk of Dalal’s car and I feel the shift as his
normally buoyant mood becomes sombre. Mousa lights up a cigarette and they begin
to talk about a man Dalal has been sleeping with, that he met from the mobile app
Grindr. “As usual, it’s going nowhere,” quips Dalal. I inquire curiously as to why not.
“Because they never do. There is no such thing as real love, there is no real relation,
it’s all just sex,” he responds, as he lights a cigarette from Mousa’s pack. Until then,
Dalal had not opened up about his desire to actually find something “real” or have a
relationship. Most of his talks are about how he slept with some “rich guy” from
Dubai that he met on Grindr, or how he thinks the waiter at the café we frequent is
sexy. It was in that moment that the somewhat disheartening realisation hit me:
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Finding a genuine relationship in this context was not an easy feat. While Grindr
aided in terms of connectivity and finding other men whom you might have some sort
of connection or interest in, it does not serve as a platform for creating a lasting,
meaningful relationship. Dalal began to talk about the lack of examples of stable gay
emotional relationships in Arab media, and mentioned the book ‘Aroos Amman (Bride
of Amman). The novel, written in Arabic and published in 2012 by Jordanian author
Fadi Zaghmout, tells the story of a closeted gay man who decides to marry a woman
to fulfill his and his parents desires to have a family. Despite being in a committed
secretive relationship to a man who openly identifies as gay, the character goes on
with the marriage and continues to find ways to pursue emotional and sexual
relationships with men outside of his marriage. In the end, his wife discovers the truth
as he leaves the computer screen with chats with men open, and they decide to stay
married despite the reality, the wife accepting that family is more important than the
sexual intimacy of their marriage. Dalal sighed with each heavy puff of the cigarette,
saying, “I cried when I read that book… Ya Allah, [God] I hated how he got married
just for the people, and I hated that she stayed with him…” Mousa, who is staunchly
against the act of marriage to appease society and family, strongly agreed. I said to
Dalal, “Inshallah (God willing) you find a stable love that you don’t have to hide one
day, habibi (my love)” as he continued to solemnly suck on his cigarette.
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Image 4: Mousa and friend lounging at Graffiti Cafe
1.2 ‘GAY INTERNATIONAL’ AND LOCAL IDENTITY
On a particularly warm day in late August, I sat with Tareq, an 18-year-old I had met
in passing several times in 2013, at Rumi Cafe. I got to know more about Tareq
because I frequented a café he worked at this summer, and we often said hi in passing,
or he would tell me about how stressed he was about his broken iPhone screen or his
money situation. As we ordered our coffee and he began to roll a cigarette, we began
to talk about American films that featured gay characters. “I just don’t feel I relate to
them at all… I hate how it creates a standard for how to be gay,” he said, his thin
fingers rolling tobacco into transparent sheets of paper. I had not seen this side of
Tareq yet, as our interactions had been of a basic, friendly nature, sharing stories
about new love interests or men we found attractive. A few times he sat with Mousa
and I as we went over notes, but he was oblivious as to the specifics of my research.
When I asked him if he might be willing to sit down and talk with me about some of
his experiences, he agreed but said, “Well, I am not so into the gay scene, so I don’t
know how helpful an interview with me might be. What information would you even
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want to know?” When I told him that I just wanted to hear his story and experiences,
he agreed but was still somewhat hesitant, feeling like perhaps he didn’t have much to
share. The youngest of my interlocutors, it seemed to me that some of his opinions
and perceptions on the topic had been formed by some of the older men he spent time
with. One of whom, that I did not get the chance to speak with explicitly on the topic
but know on a personal level, was referenced by Tareq several times:
I love Zahir. I love that he’s so outspoken, intellectual. I like that he is gay but
it’s not who he is. He has not allowed this aspect of his life define his
personality or his character. I just don’t like the ideal that our sexualities
define any of who we are. It’s just a small section of it. That rainbow flag
doesn’t define me in any way. (Tareq, Amman, August 2015)
It was in this conversation, and many others like it, that Massad’s argument about
‘Gay International’ became pertinent. His book Desiring Arabs (2007) criticises the
aim of Western gay rights activists to create a ‘Gay International’ (Massad 2002,
Massad 2007), a term he describes as an orientalist project to define the gay subject
on an internationally homogenous scale. Something Massad does not acknowledge,
however, is that an Arab man can choose to identify as a gay man, as there is no
correct way to experience an identity or sexuality, and the experience is wholly
subjective. Throughout my research, I found that some interlocutors rejected the
notion that ‘being gay’ was anything like it was in Europe, United States or Australia,
and maintained that how they saw themselves had more to do with their direct
surroundings and local contexts. That is not to say, however, that increased exposure
to Western imports (via the Internet, technology, etc.) has not had any impact on daily
life.
The ‘global queering’ model was presented by gay rights activist and academic
Dennis Altman, delineating the ways in which globalised economic and technological
flows from the Western world were accompanied by Western sexual identity
categories and the “globalisation of lifestyle and identity politics” (Altman 1996: 33).
This model aligns with Joseph Massad’s model of the Gay International (2002), who
stated the same explicitly in regards to Middle Eastern sexualities, contending that it
created gay identities where they did not previously exist.
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While acknowledging the strengths of Massad’s work, I would like to point to
Foucault, who states that although subjects always find themselves “entangled in
power relations” (Foucault 1980:93), they are not exclusively constricting. Massad
employs the notion of Western agents asserting power that furthers a precarious
juxtaposition between East/West, failing to point to individuals’ abilities to decipher
and experience their own subjectivities in their own contexts. In Jordan, this identity
is not concretely defined, and is a perpetual state of transformation and exploration,
engaged with myriad factors external and internal. Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff
(2004) has stated that by using terms like Westernisation or globalisation we do not
necessarily imply a top down power structure, but rather one that is intermeshed.
Instead of viewing the interlocutors of my research as without agency to manoeuvre
or navigate, I argue that they are capable and are constantly adapting despite a
situation, which might provide some constraint. The identity, goals, challenges and
perspectives of the LGBT community outside of Jordan do not shape Jordanian
perspectives but rather have an influence on ideologies and mentalities. In discussing
the Western perspective of the existence of a globalised gay identity, my gatekeeper,
Mousa found many qualms.
You can’t possibly say that here in Jordan, or in the Middle East in general,
that being gay is like it is anywhere else in the world. There are many aspects
of life here that affect who we are and what we become and our sexual
identities are affected by the local context of wherever we were raised.
(Mousa, Amman, July 2015)
Mousa agreed though with Massad in that the supporters of Gay International create a
discourse that places the liberal identity politics of the West as the enlightened and
moral truth as a direct contrast to the perceived repression of LGBT individuals that
persists in the Muslim world. My data mostly aligns with the hybridisation argument,
defined by Julienne Corboz as “the complex interplay between local and global
forces, and the consequent production of heterogeneous identities” (2009:2).
Massad states that, “When the Gay International incites discourse on homosexuality
in the non-western world, it claims that the ‘liberation’ of those it defends lies in the
balance. In espousing this liberation project, the Gay international is destroying social
and sexual configurations of desire in the interest of reproducing a world in its own
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image, one wherein sexual categories and desires are safe from being questioned”
(2002: 385). The common understanding found within the agenda of the Gay
International is that in order for a gay individual to truly live a liberated, free life, they
must ‘come out’ and be open about their sexualities, embracing them in every aspect
of their lives. In Jordan, this perception does not apply in the sense that it might in the
Western world, and the stories of my interlocutors throughout this thesis will further
serve to explain and argue this case. This persisting tension between the global and
the local serve as a sort of pressure cooker for identity creation. Corboz noted that,
‘”particular interlocutors in particular localities appropriate and negotiate global,
regional and local ‘circuits of knowledge’ in order to construct their sexual identities”
(Julienne Corboz 2009: 4). This notion of a passive other is not real, as the creation of
a sexual identity is actually a perpetual negotiation between values that define life in a
certain context and new information (that comes in the form of Internet, social media,
travel, etc).
Globalisation plays a compelling role in the development of contemporary sexualities.
As accentuated by Dennis Altman: “If by globalisation we understand the range of
shifts in the social, economic, and cultural spheres which are part of the growing
movement of peoples, ideas, trade and money across the world (Held and McGrew
2002; Soros 2000), then globalisation affects sexuality in a number of interconnected
ways” (2004: 23). Medical anthropologist Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer’s research
(2000) supported the theory that tradition, culture and religion are forces that are
always present, but that an enduring friction between global and local is always being
negotiated. This tension could be felt in the stories and experiences of my
interlocutors, and lies at the very crux of the navigation of daily life.
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1.3 ACTIVISM IN AMMAN: PUSHES FOR CHANGES IN
TERMINOLOGY AND AWARENESS
On May 17th, a group of Jordanian activists organised an event to coincide with the
International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia11 (IDAHOT). In my only sit
down with Khaled, he was the first to mention the event and some of the drama that
surrounded it. The event, organised by activists in tandem with the International Day
Against Homophobia and Transphobia, stirred up chaos in Jordanian media. Khaled
shared with me that this event caused “gays” to become the talk of the town, with
several Jordanian media outlets printing stories and photographs about the event. The
event, which was attended by the American ambassador to Jordan, intended on raising
awareness about the LGBT community in Jordan. The activists (all from the region)
had not intended the event to receive so much attention, and negative attention at that.
It did not take long for news outlets to write that suddenly the American ambassador
was calling for gay rights in Jordan, hoping to push for the same rights that had been
given in the United States. Though this information was incorrect, and the
Ambassador had actually attended on a personal invite and because she herself has an
LGBT daughter (information I found out later from another interlocutor), the parables
of inaccuracy spread throughout Amman. Khaled, who was one of the main
organisers of the event, defended it profusely to me, hoping also to hear my
encouragement and support.
As I sat with Hakam in the dewy basement of his Shmeisani home, I felt as if I was
watching a thespian’s monologue, and this room, where he takes his make-up clients
and stores his collection of books, was his stage. Hakam stood above a table lined
with lipstick and creamy foundations, and went on about the ‘gay community’,
laughing as he said, theatrically, “Gay community? Hooneeeeeey! There is no gay
community. Here in Amman, the community mimics tribal culture. It consists of
small clans of groups who get along, groups who want each other’s blood, groups
who support each other but don’t interact…It’s a mess! Anyone who thinks there is
one happy, cohesive gay community that sticks together, holds hands and dances
11
More information about the day and its global LGBT movement can be found on the official
website: http://dayagainsthomophobia.org/
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under the rainbow is sorely mistaken!” Being one of the oldest interlocutors that I
spent time with, Hakam has experienced life in Amman through many periods of
transition. Nearly 50, Hakam maintains a fierce, self-proclaimed “diva” personality,
and is not shy when asked to share his opinions on the so-called ‘community’ or on
how activism in Amman is “done all wrong”. Hakam was one of the first of my
interlocutors to share his opinion on the IDAHOT event, saying “I, along with Madian
(owner of Books@ Café) kept stressing the point that the event should not be
publicised, I kept saying not to shine a light on it, that it just does not work that way
in the Middle East, but nooooo, no one listened to me, did they? And see what
happened! That event took us back fifteen years. Provocative things like the LGBT
page with the rainbow and Jordanian flags don’t help,” he sighs, shaking his head as
he fiddles with tubes of lipstick left on the makeup desk. It was then that Hakam
shared that he believes positive changes can happen within greater Jordanian society
in terms of acceptance, but the methods in which information and awareness are
spread must be intertwined with local values. “We must not do away with the things
that define our culture, as silly as they may sometimes be,” he adds.
Nabeel, whose story I will go into in further detail in Chapter 4 (see pp. 69), also
noted some of the key issues with the IDAHOT event, stating that washing the issue
with Western values only distances the Jordanian society from understanding it.
They reject the rainbow. They reject the word ‘gay’. It’s not the American
embassy supported agenda. If we truly want understanding [in Jordanian
society], we need to send the message that ‘we are you. We are your brothers.
We are Jordanian.’ We need to create our own brand of activism that applies
and appeals to local contexts. The key word is awareness. Jordanians think
homosexuality is a harmful thing. When we reach a point when Jordanians
realise that homosexuality is not inherently harmful, that is when real
acceptance can begin,” I questioned, then, what might be a logical starting
point for this awareness. (Nabeel, Amman, July 2015)
This notion was mimicked by several other interlocutors, including Mousa, who said
that “I think the best way to change a society is to accept the way a society thinks –
after you put yourself in their shoes and understand them, you can learn how to work
with them to modify things to be better without doing away with aspects that are
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important to them.” Another interlocutor, Saher, also rejected the notion that a
rainbow could possibly be a unifying factor of the LGBT community both abroad and
in Jordan, and urged for a push for “a genuine Jordanian gay culture and identity.” He
continued:
If Jordanian activists decided to make the foundation accessible to liberal
elites to act, things could change. Because homosexuality was de-criminalised
in the 1960s, the issue is not on a legal level, but rather on a society level. If
there is inherent cultural legitimacy, like perhaps a re-interpretation of Islamic
text to be more tolerant and accepting of homosexuality, a foundation could be
built from there, as religion is a value that is understood and relatable. A good
lobby of influential Jordanian supporters from liberal political elites would
also be a huge turning point for activism and awareness here. But really I
believe only through these two paths will any real acceptance begin on any
level. (Saher, Amman, July 2015)
The same notion was echoed also by Nabeel, who continuously emphasised the
necessity of including religion in the argument when trying to build or fight for
awareness or tolerance. “Individualist views are not the mainstream – activism here
has to take advantage of the conservative values and use them when trying to make
any sort of social change. Do not fight the norms but see what cultural values you can
use to build acceptance and synergise those things,” he added.
Even Mousa, who identifies as an atheist, echoed these notions. “Activism that
inherently demonises, blames or problematises local values, like religion and family,
will ultimately be rejected,” he states. The disagreement in the general community on
how to approach activism is problematic for a few reasons, as it does not allow for a
synergy of thoughtful force to work together towards one cause. I felt a very real
tension between interlocutors’ viewpoints, with even men who were friends
disagreeing with the actions of others in the community for provoking the wider
society and creating a backlash that is generally not constructive in the long run in
promoting tolerance or awareness.
Madian, the owner of Books@ Café, discussed his role in the IDAHOT event,
explaining that for him, it was a chance to talk about some key issues that face the
community regionally. He spoke firstly about terminology and the need for media to
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adopt non-derogatory terms for ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’ in Arabic, and then about the
‘shame culture’ about HIV. As an older member of the community and a key figure,
some men would come to him if they felt they could possibly have contracted HIV
and he would help them arrange tests or figure out solutions, but he confessed that
many men are too ashamed to even address the subject at all, and that needs to change.
When people first started to recognise the role Books@ played, they thought it
was this ‘gay café’, as if there are television screens with gay porn playing
everywhere or something. The problem is that the society villainises the whole
concept. They need to see that we are society people, family people. These
gay pride parades are very hurtful to us. (Madian, Amman, August 2015)
CONCLUSION
We can see in this chapter, as Dennis Altman (2001: 64) states, “the
interconnectedness of the world is both a threat and an opportunity”. Throughout the
various stories and viewpoints shared, particularly in sub-chapter 2.3, the interrelation
between globalised viewpoints and local ones creates a tension that continues to be
questioned through the community. While some members of the community push for
change and awareness by adopting the rainbow flag as their mantra, like Sa’eed’s
LGBT Awareness in Jordan Facebook group, others reject the idea that that has
anything to do with them or their identities. One side staunchly argues that a
‘Westernised’ ideal of gay freedom and identity is not liberating, but in fact,
diminishes the legitimacy of the cause throughout Jordanian society, while the other
wants to seek solidarity with a global movement that defines itself with the notion that
‘to be out and proud is to be free’.
The creation of safe, comfortable spaces for men to go and be with one another, as
seen in sub-chapter 1.2, illustrates the enduring human need for a sense of
camaraderie and community. Like Tom Boellstorff outlined, “The places of gay and
lesbi worlds are sites of belonging and recognition to find people who are the ‘same’
(sama) as oneself because they too ‘desire the same’’(Boellstorff 2005: 126), places
like Books@ Café and Graffiti Café, whether consciously or not, lent a sense of
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belonging and solidarity to a community that often feels as if it is so torn between
ideologies. But it is in those spaces that all of those differences seemed to dissipate as
I watched interlocutors who I did not know knew each other interact, greet each other
warmly and share their news. The creation and maintenance of such spaces is critical
to providing a sense of community for these men, especially if they at times feel
ostracised from greater society.
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2. CYBERSPACE
At the beginning of the world’s introduction to the Internet, Sherry Turkle (1984,
1995) wrote extensively on the way in which spaces for interaction online allowed
individuals to create or act out various identities in ways in which they could not in
real life. For some interlocutors, the cyber web functioned as a gateway to
information that could not be found in daily life. When pressed with questions about
what they were feeling – sexually, emotionally, or otherwise – the Internet served as a
bountiful source of knowledge. Throughout my research, I found that the Internet
played a pragmatic role in informing interlocutors’ opinions and knowledge, and I
seek to highlight the constant interplay between offline and online as one of dialogue;
a sub-cultural communion that moves across spaces and through digital and corporeal
identities. In taking a concentrated look at usage of social media (Facebook, mobile
dating apps, Instagram, Twitter et al) and usage of Internet in a more capacious sense
(blogs, informational/informative websites, conversation forums et al), this chapter
will examine the role cyberspace inhabits for these individuals in particular.
Throughout this chapter, I will extrapolate how the Internet acts as a space in which
the men move, and has played a role in connectivity, developing opinions,
perspectives and divulging information.
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2.1 WEAVING THE WEB: THE INTERNET AS AN ENGINE FOR
KNOWLEDGE, HOPE AND ANXIETY
Image 5: During the summer (2015) Jordanian media outlet Kharabeesh uploaded this comic about a
gay boy hugging his mom saying: “It’s a disaster, mom! I found my husband cheating on me with the
door man!”. An interlocutor shares it, commenting that it is rude and silly to “make fun of gays”.
Before the emergence of the Internet, the social scope of the gay or MSM community
was rather slim. The introduction of this platform created an easily accessible virtual
space whereby men could retreat and look for just about anything they might seek.
Suddenly men could be connected to men throughout Jordan, and were not limited to
people they might know in real life. Muhannad, a 24-year-old from Karak, a smaller
city 140 km from Amman, tells me about the shift the Internet brought to his life
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during his teen years. As we sit in a corner of Graffiti café, Mousa beside us listening
along, Muhannad tells his story:
When I was 15 and finally had access to the Internet, the first thing I typed in
the search engine was ‘Pokemon’. The second was ‘luuti’ (derogatory term for
homosexual). I had seen the word being used in American film subtitles, so I
typed it in curious as to what I might find. I was scared so I did not open any
photos or videos, but I read about what the term actually meant. The older I
got, the more I used the Internet to research and discover. It was a kind of tool.
When I was 17, I started to get active on social dating sites like Gaydar and
Manjam. It was hard in Karak, because mostly the gays were in Amman, but I
somehow felt comforted by the fact that through the simple click of a button, I
suddenly was connected to a world of men who feel the same way I do.
(Muhannad, Amman, July 2015)
Muhannad, who now lives in Amman, is one of the interlocutors whom, in a time
when he felt most isolated by his identity, found solace in the Internet. He states that
he realised a general overarching sense of support that took him out of the isolation he
felt in regards to his sexual identity. There is, however, a problematic side to this
being that most information found online about gayness or homosexuality tends to be
geared towards a ‘Westernised’ audience. Blogs or pages that encourage people to
‘accept’ or ‘come out’ with their sexualities would not necessarily apply in a
Jordanian context. It may also serve to increase resentment or feelings of guilt, as
could be seen with 20-year-old university student Hadi. Originally from Aqaba,
Jordan’s only coastal city located approximately 4 hours away by car from Amman,
Hadi turned to the Internet when he first felt physically attracted to a male cousin.
Once he thought he could perhaps understand more about why he felt that way, he
claims he ended up “on the wrong side of the Internet”, finding a slew of graphic
pornographic gay photos and American blogs that talked about the importance of
telling family and friends ‘your truth’. Hadi confessed that when he found this
information online, he began to feel like he should be able to do those things but knew
intrinsically he couldn’t. This ‘mediascape’, a coin termed by Anja Apparadui (1990),
created an image of the world that Hadi felt he should be able to relate to. Many of
my interlocutors that would do searches expressed a desire to be able to relate to the
information they found online, despite knowing the context was of a completely
different nature.
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While I do not necessarily subscribe to the notion that online communities (created on
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter et al) replace public spaces like cafes, bars, and
restaurants as the port of social interaction, like stated by Howard Rheingold (1993), I
believe in this context they acted as an additional space in which individuals could
partake in whichever views, opinions and actions that they felt in an intangible space.
Rheingold defines these virtual communities as “social aggregations that emerge from
the [Internet] when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough,
with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace”
(Rheingold 1993: 5). Examples of this can be seen in Muhannad’s interaction in
online forums about atheism (that eventually transitioned into real space), or Hadi’s
discussions with Americans on blogs about being gay. Boellstorff (2011) states that
online worlds are merely another expressive realm, parallel to offline worlds, and
neither is paramount to the other.
“Btehki inglizee?”: English as cultural capital in and out of the virtual
world
Hadi, who learned English in school at a young age and states that it is even
sometimes used with his family at home, was able to access a plethora of information
online effortlessly because of the language. Other interlocutors who do not speak
English would be using Arabic terms to search, and even if they came across such
websites or information in English, most likely would not try to read or understand it.
Anouk de Koning noted the advantage English played in the Middle East by using the
term ‘cosmopolitan capital’ to denote “familiarity with and mastery of Western
cultural codes, as well as local cosmopolitan ones. Such cosmopolitan capital most
clearly entails fluency in English and an ability to use the mix of Arabic and English
common in upper (middle) class circles, as well as Western diplomas or degrees from
educational institutes that are associated with Western knowledge…It also entails
knowledge of the West, Western consumer culture, as well as, e.g., local
cosmopolitan dress codes. Such cosmopolitan capital overlaps with, and oftentimes
doubles as, locally distinctive cultural capital” (de Koning 2009: 27). In instances
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where interlocutors wanted to search or connect (presumably with individuals outside
the Arab world) in specifically English, language became cultural capital and fluency
in English acted as a signifier of a higher-class position.
There existed overt disparities between groups of my interlocutors when it comes to
speaking English. Mousa and his close friends spoke in Arabic, with the occasional
English word like ‘gay’ or ‘out’ (usually denoting that another word in Arabic might
not feel accurate or comfortable). Among other interlocutors, our discussions were
held in English with the use of Arabic descriptive terms or when quoting a family
member or friend. In my first month of fieldwork, when I joined Khaled to Graffiti
café, the group of men there were all sitting around Nadir’s phone. Nadir was flipping
through a gay dating app on his phone called Hornet, commenting on photos and
showing the screen to the guys. When he stumbled upon a man who chose to write his
profile description entirely in Arabic, he read the profile out loud followed by a deep
cackle. This group of men, who spoke mostly in Arabic but all have excellent
command of English, proceeded to make jokes about the guy and that he would
probably speak dirty in the bedroom in Arabic. Nadir started to be jokingly flirtatious
in Arabic, with all the men around him laughing hysterically at the thought of the
heavy Jordanian Arabic accent being used salaciously. Later on in fieldwork, I asked
one of the men why that thought would be so funny. He shrugged and said, “Takhayli
fe wahad hafartali12 ‘amm behki ma’eki bel ‘arabi w ento bel takhet!”(Imagine a guy
[of a certain class] speaking with you like that in Arabic in bed!) There was a sense,
and this pervading notion existed with groups of my Jordanian friends and family
members as well, that if you do not speak English well you come from a lower
socioeconomic background. English in many Jordanian contexts is thought of as a
prized possession that somehow set an individual apart, making Arabic the basic
language and English a necessary addition and skill. This is not to say that that
particular group of interlocutors did not use or speak Arabic with each other, but that
to have a command of English was an important loaded signifier of class standing. It
12
The term ‘Hafartali’ is a colloquial Ammani word that is typically used in a derogatory or joking
manner to denote someone who lacks civility or is uncouth in general nature. The term can also denote
someone who would not speak English well and is of a perceived lower socioeconomic status.
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would imply you went to international schools, not Jordanian public schools, and/or
studied or lived abroad.
For some interlocutors, English also made the difference in the kind of information
they could access online. Hadi said that knowing English made the process of
searching for information online much more efficient, and it felt like once he
discovered information there was always more.
Eventually I decided to tell my mother, because this blog shared a few coming
out stories and I thought, well I am 17, maybe it is time. The blog suggested
that we should all be proud of who we are and I tell our families…I was young
and did not think about the fact that this blog wasn’t really speaking to
someone like me… so when I did it I somehow expected a reaction similar to
the ones I was reading about on the blog. It didn’t exactly happen like how I
expected it would. My mother doesn’t believe sexuality is something you can
choose, and because she is a nurse, she was more understanding but it still was
not like how the blog depicted it might be. Looking back though I am happy I
told her…she’s just asked that I don’t share it with the extended family. (Hadi,
Amman, June 2015)
In Hadi’s case, the Internet acted as a virtual support group that allowed him the
confidence to make a big decision in his life in a time where he felt he did not have
anyone else to talk to. Similarly, when Mousa first moved to Amman, he began to use
Facebook as a tool to meet new, like-minded people. This platform was primarily how
he met many of the friends and interlocutors that we spent time with throughout my
research. When I first sat down with Sa’eed, one of Mousa’s closest friends, he told
me that they met through Sa’eed’s LGBT Awareness in Jordan Facebook group in
2014. Mousa found the page and sent a message asking whom the admin was, and
from there, the mutual desire to create a cohesive ‘gay community’ bonded the two.
Sa’eed received quite an amount of backlash through this page, with menacing
comments stating that being gay is a disgusting sin sometimes even aggressive threats.
When I liked the page and commented on a few videos, I received two anonymous
messages from fake profiles claiming to be curious about how to get into the
community but realised later they were just trying to poke fun or humiliate me for
being active and supportive of the page. Now I have discovered two ‘LGBT
Awareness in Jordan’ pages with a skull and cross bones across a rainbow Jordanian
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flag as the main image. Both pages, with the same imagery and information and a
minimal amount of likes, continuously post videos talking about the science of why
homosexuality is wrong, in Arabic. Sa’eed has since taken down his page as he got
busy with university and work, and realised also that it might be better to garner
support in the community along with other activists to found/plan something that
could bring tangible change. After taking the page offline, he realised that a
collaboration of efforts would be much more beneficial in the long run than a page he
began and ran on his own. The original lack of support that he complained of earlier
in the summer from within the Jordanian LGBT community perhaps ties back to
notions discussed in Chapter 1, in which trying to paint the rainbow flag and relate it
to Jordanians just furthered them from understanding and juxtaposed the entire issue
against a ‘Westernised’ import of homosexual identity.
Khaled’s My.Kali magazine, which does not classify itself as an LGBT magazine but
rather an ‘online conceptual social webzine’, often touches on topics of sexuality. The
only media outlet of its kind in Jordan, the group behind it (mainly consisting of
Khaled and his close friends) is perceived as a defining group in the gay community
in Amman, as most people know about it in some way or another. Once I became
friends with a few of the people I knew that worked on the magazine, I could see
other friends were mutual friends and that, online, the group of people was quite
intermingled. The Facebook page and e-magazine are also frequented by many of the
interlocutors I met throughout the research, though Mousa’s group of friends did not
talk about My.Kali at all. Most of them said that they do not interact with any of these
types of “LGBT” causes, as they don’t feel it’s particularly relevant to their beliefs.
While they do talk about these things amongst themselves, it was not something they
needed to research more about in the virtual world.
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2.2 SAFETY, SECURITY AND SEX IN A VIRTUAL WORLD:
HOW AND WHERE IS CONNECTION MADE?
In August 2014, illicit photographs of men throughout Amman were taken from
Grindr and placed on a BlogSpot page and an Instagram profile called ‘Gay
Jordanians’. Snap shots revealing names of various men’s profiles were taken and
placed openly on the Internet. According to one interlocutor, the person behind the act
had hacked the server and uploaded nudes and other scandalous photographs of the
men from Grindr. I recall seeing the frenzy that this event stirred among my friends
on Facebook, with various people sharing the page and asking others to report it so
that it could be taken offline. Sa’eed told me that while his photo was not shared,
several of his friends were and that the results, for some, were disastrous. Mousa
noted that he felt it was the first time in which he saw the community rally together
for a mutual cause. After the pages were successfully taken offline, many
interlocutors said that a pervasive sense of insecurity persisted. Men were very
hesitant to put any revealing photos on apps like Grindr, and refrained from sharing
excessively personal things online. Sa’eed, who still uses Grindr on a regular basis,
states that while he will put a face photo, he uses a location changer so he cannot be
tracked. Eventually things returned to normal, but several men in the community
began to see a need for workshops in which safety precautions online would be
addressed.
Mousa, Sa’eed and several other local activists have already held a few workshops,
and are continuing to work on organising them to promote awareness about the
importance of security in the virtual world. When noticing that men were uploading
or sharing information that should have been more private, or that blackmail was a
common occurrence in the community, they decided that workshops in which they
discussed methods to promote safety online, like data encrypted chat applications like
SureSpot, Cryptocat and TextSecure. When discussing an individual’s personal safety
within the gay community, Mousa noted that, “the community itself is the biggest
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problem, not so much the government, but the people who interact within the gay
community.”
Hadi reflected on some of his experiences on mobile apps like GuySpy, Planet Romeo
and Grindr:
On Grindr, many men don’t have face photos, and they are very secretive.
You can talk for several hours but they don’t ever send a photo of their face,
so you feel like ‘who am I even talking to?’ It’s a somewhat safe place
because there is an understanding that if you’re using this page you are
interested in men, but there is still always this feeling of fear… and I have had
lots of interactions with older men, in their 40s or 50s, who would confess that
they are married but just want to have fun with a guy. I would tell them that
they are gay but they would insist that they are not. Grindr is just not a place
to actually date or have a real connection with someone. It’s for sex. It’s also
incredibly clichéd…men are so obsessed with positions… the first thing they
will ask is ‘are you top or bottom?’ (Hadi, Amman, June 2015)
I asked several others if they felt the need to know a man’s sexual position before
considering even meeting them through Grindr or similar dating apps, and some said
yes. Mousa reflected on this stating that it was an obsession with fitting into some
stereotype, and being top, vers, or ‘botmeh’ (colloquial Arabic word likely re-adapted
from English meaning ‘bottom’) was sometimes thought of as signifier of whether a
man was more dominant and masculine or docile and feminine. Several interlocutors,
like Sa’eed, shunned the whole concept, saying, “It’s incredible bullshit! Who cares if
I am top or bottom…sex is sex and shouldn’t be about which position you are…”
Many Grindr profiles will be explicit about their preference, or will even give
themselves the user names like “Gay bottom”, denoting immediately the only position
they are interested in.
Mousa’s friend Dalal, also an active Grindr user, stated that, like Tinder, the app is
great for sex but almost impossible to use for finding an actual relationship. When I
asked where men might find someone they could actually be serious about, he said it
mostly happened through mutual friends or girl friends who also knew other gay men
and would act as the go-between to introduce the groups to one another. Hadi agreed
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and said that he preferred to meet guys through his girl friends in real life and not rely
on the cyber web for that.
The persisting paranoia – not just from the 2014 scandal but also from the general
lack of security in the virtual sphere – encouraged some men to desire alternative
modes of connectivity. Mousa’s close friend Bilal stated that he prefers to find men
on Facebook. He says because he leaves his profile public, he will get messages from
random men or sends messages “testing the waters” and that it “usually works”. He
shared his distaste for Grindr, saying that, “I used Grindr once but I hated it. It’s only
for ‘gays’. I had ManJam for a week but I also deleted that. I didn’t like it either.”
When Bilal stated that Grindr is only for ‘gays’, I believe he meant that it is only for
men who openly identify as gay, typically found in West Amman (neighbourhoods
like Jabal el Weibdeh, Jabal Amman, Abdoun, Shmeisani). Because he shared many
stories of men he had sex with who would fall into the MSM category, it appeared
that he enjoyed that challenge of seeing how far he could get with men who did not
identify as gay in any way or were not found on an app in which sex with a man is an
implied desire. He also mentioned that, “On apps like Grindr, I felt like I would like
all the guys and want to have sex with all of them, it was too easy!”
Most of the men I spoke with agreed that apps like Grindr could easily aid the process
of ‘hooking up’ or meeting someone to have brief fun with, but the notion of meeting
someone on an app like that with the intention of having a relationship was laughable
to most men. I asked all of the interlocutors who were in steady, committed
relationships where they met their partners, and nearly all of them met them either
through another social circle, out somewhere in Amman, or through mutual friends.
Many men reported that Grindr left them feeling used or completely jaded as to the
existence of real emotion and connection with another man, though they would often
return to it after interim breaks.
Throughout the period of my research, I realised that some interlocutors, primarily the
friends of Khaled, were very connected to gay men throughout the Middle East. It
seemed like a web that was glued together through various introductory points,
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My.Kali being one of them. Khaled stated that My.Kali had garnered a lot of attention
throughout the Levantine region (Lebanon, Egypt, Syria), and he met a lot of different
people through it that he would never have gotten to know otherwise. Like Benedict
Anderson (1991) argued that geographic propinquity is not a fundamental factor in
the formation of a community, the communities of these men in Amman were able to
stretch past their geographic boundaries through the cyber web. This tool allowed for
men to meet friends, partners, and like-minds to share experiences with when they felt
as if their options in Amman were limited in number. One interlocutor, Rayyan,
whose story will be told in more depth in Chapter 4, met his current Lebanese
boyfriend on Facebook through mutual friends and describes why he thinks meeting
online out of Jordan might be better:
The serious dating pool here is very shallow, and we are also limited because
many of us live at home. For that reason, connecting to guys online that live in
Beirut or elsewhere, for example, makes it easier because a relationship can
get serious outside of Amman. It also opens up the door to see how many
different kind of men are out there. In Amman, it feels like everyone truly
knows everyone else or has already dated or slept with each other. (Rayyan,
July 2015, Amman)
Later in fieldwork, in talking with my youngest interlocutor, Tareq, he mentioned
Rayyan and how they had met through Grindr and made out with each other. Not
knowing of course that I also knew Rayyan, he showed me his photo when trying to
describe how attractive he was. It was then that I realised how truly interconnected
this sub-community was, and the risks of someone finding out through another person
were relatively high, making the reputation of a man a very delicate, sensitive subject.
CONCLUSION
The Internet’s existence within the community posits both a haven for connectivity
and certain precariousness. This concept can be demonstrated through the various
stories woven throughout the chapter. In certain cases, like that of Muhannad, whom
despite a pious display of self at home with his parents, began to become more
curious about other forms of religious identity. The Internet offered a wealth of
information and allowed Muhannad to connect with progressive Muslims, and
eventually, atheist groups. The close friendships he built through these online pages
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and forums eventually translated to real life, and thanks to the Internet’s limitless
options, he was able to find a sense of self in them, outside of his familial
environment. Likewise, Hadi was able to interact, as a young teen, with others in his
age group around the world, curious about their sexualities, how they feel and how
they can disclose this information to their families. His story of finding solace in these
blogs and chat rooms demonstrates the ways in which the Internet became each
individuals” imagined community during times when they perhaps felt as if they did
not have one in real life.
Despite the fact the Internet can offer a certain escape, it is important to state that I
believe it does not become all encompassing but rather another space in which
identity is negotiated. As stated by Phillip Agre: “So long as we focus on the limited
areas of the internet where people engage in fantasy play that is intentionally
disconnected from their real-world identities, we miss how social and professional
identities are continuous across several media, and how people use those several
media to develop their identities in ways that carry over to other settings” (Agre
1999:4). It is also important to note that this chapter does not suggest that all
interlocutors use digital media in the same way, or that there is an overarching truth
about cyberspace waiting to be discovered, but rather than the use justifies the means.
Many interlocutors maintained particular aspects of their personalities across social
media, not making changes depending on viewers or interactions. As stated by
Foucault “relations of power-knowledge are not static forms of distribution, they are
‘matrices of transformation’’’ (1976: 99), and in the case of usage of Internet,
interlocutors are again in the process of regaling and navigating those power and
identity structures on a daily basis.
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3. THE MOSQUE
"Would ye really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, ye are a
people (grossly) ignorant!” (The Quran, 27:55)
"And (remember) Lut: behold, he said to his people: "Ye do commit lewdness, such as
no people in Creation (ever) committed before you. "Do ye indeed approach men, and
cut off the highway? and practice wickedness (even) in your councils?" But his people
gave no answer but this. They said: "Bring us the Wrath of God if thou tellest the
truth." (The Quran, 29:28-29)
While I will not go into great depth about Islamic references to same-sex practices, as
it is infinite in both discussion and argumentation, these two common quotes from the
Qur’an, which reference homosexuality, are discussed and deliberated often.
Boellstorff notes the attention given to homosexuality in dominant Islamic text and
interpretation: “On the relatively rare occasions when Islamic figures speak of male
homosexuality, it is typically in terms of absolute rejection: ‘Homosexuality is clearly
a social illness, a morally evil trend that must be eliminated, not a human right to be
protected as [Western] gays now claim.” (2005: 575).
In more recent years, Islamic scholars and leaders like Dr. Scott Siraj Al-Hajj Kugle
and Imam Daayiee Abdullah have tried to argue that Islam does not explicitly claim
homosexuality as a sin, but rather the act of having intercourse with a member of the
same sex, and that all texts are open for interpretation.
Being an Islamic country that follows Islamic Sharia law and tradition, the shadow of
religion intersects with numerous aspects of daily life in Jordan. While homosexuality
is not illegal or punishable by law in Jordan, there is an overarching unspoken rule of
‘moral decency’ in the public sphere. I found that during discussions with
interlocutors, the topic of religion came up organically many times. For many,
religion plays a concrete role in the selving process, and defines home life and
perspectives on various issues. The dichotomous relationship between being gay and
religious is addressed through interlocutors’ personal experiences and viewpoints
throughout this chapter. Ethnographic data will reveal how interlocutors view religion,
how it shapes familial relationships and future decision-making.
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Image 6: Inside of Kulliyet al Sharia mosque in Jabal el Weibdeh
3.1 DISCOVERING SELF IN RELIGION: SEXUALITY AND ISLAM
INTERTWINED
For safety reasons, I was introduced to one of Mousa’s friends through an encrypted
mobile app chat called SureSpot. Our interactions continued that way, and through an
encrypted voice chat later on. Khaldoon was raised in a religious family in a
conservative neighbourhood in Amman called Sahab. His father, a sheikh in the
neighbourhood mosque, Khaldoon began to follow in his footsteps as a young teen.
When he first started feeling that he might be physically attracted to men, he put the
idea out of his mind and assumed it was just a temporary phase he was experiencing.
When he was seventeen or eighteen, Khaldoon sought help from a sheikh at the
mosque in his neighbourhood. He told the sheikh that he wanted to be honest with
him, and wanted his help to “solve his problem”. They prayed together in the mosque
and the sheikh advised him to pray more, to plead for forgiveness and to stay
overnight in the mosque and ask to be cured. Khaldoon recalls that night vividly:
I remember looking to the left and seeing a man in the mosque; a man I knew
from the mosque who was married and had kids. I knew he was kind of gay
because he would notice other men around. He told me ‘the sheikh told me to
sit with you, to find a solution for your problem’. I was surprised the sheikh
told him. I was embarrassed. He told me to trust him, to tell him what I was
feeling. He asked me to explain more, and I felt my face turn red. He asked
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questions, and I answered. He told me he felt the same and that when he asked
the sheikh for advice, the advice was to marry a woman. We shared stories
that night, and then he came on to me. Then we had soft sex [oral sex] at the
side of the mosque. I don’t know what happened but I felt that he wanted to
take revenge on the sheikh somehow. He told me that the marriage didn’t help
get rid of his feelings and that it probably wouldn’t help me either. That it isn’t
something we can change. (Khaldoon, Amman, June 2015)
The two men then washed up in the mosque and prepared to leave. When they exited
the mosque early that morning, the muezzin13 snidely asked Khaldoon if he was
“cured yet”. It was then that he felt truly betrayed by this religious leader, whom he
had confided in about one of his most troubling personal problems. That day, he
walked 9 kilometres and decided he would never return to that mosque. He remained
a practicing Muslim, and still kept his long beard, a physical marker of pious Islam.
He would also begin to punish himself physically if he did have sex with a man,
hitting himself with a hose until he would bleed, wetting himself with scolding water.
Those years were very physically, mentally and emotionally hard on Khaldoon, and
by the time he was 21, he decided to get married. The family arranged the match, and
the two wed. Khaldoon’s new wife was the daughter of a well-known local imam, and
the two moved into the apartment above his parents’ apartment. After the marriage,
Khaldoon felt grappled with the question “I feel nothing for her. Why did I do this?”
so he decided to travel to Saudi Arabia for ‘Umrah14 to see if he could find some
solace there. After he returned to Jordan, Khaldoon’s new wife noticed an emotional
and physical distance between herself and her new husband. Khaldoon often made
excuses – that he felt physically ill or was just tired – and slept in their spare bedroom.
I tried to create a natural relationship, but I was acting. I was trying to act as if
had felt excited or happy, but there was no sexual relationship between us.
Eventually I had to tell her the truth. I told her ‘ana ma baheb el banat. Baheb
el shabab,’ (I don’t love women. I love men) She of course was shocked and
asked why I did all of that, and then told me that I shouldn’t tell anyone but
that I must also tell her father I wanted a divorce. They both told me that I
have a sickness, a disease. He told me that I must tell everyone in the family
13
The man who calls the Azzan (call to prayer, 5 times a day).
‘The word ‘umrah is derived from I‘timar, which means a visit. However, ‘umrah s means paying a
visit to Ka‘bah, performing Tawaf (circumambulation) around it, walking between Safa and Marwah
seven times’ (Daher 2007: 224).
14
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that the divorce would be my fault; that I am the sick one. So 300 people from
my family came one day and I had to confess that the issue is with me and I
am the sick one. I tried to explain using examples from the Qur’an [pause]. I
really felt at that moment totally alone, and that no one understood me, and I
was a villain. (Khaldoon, Amman, June 2015)
After the divorce took place, Khaldoon retreated back into his piety, looking to find a
sense of comfort and peace. Some time passed, and religious leaders in the
community began to suggest that Khaldoon marry again, that he was just lonely and
needed to be with a woman to cure his perceived sexual perversions. In 2005, he got
engaged to another woman, and that engagement lasted for 3 years. Khaldoon admits
that his relationship with this woman was very cold and distant, and that they did not
speak much. When he would go to visit her at her familial home, he states, “It did
not feel like a very close or loving relationship”. Yet he forged on, as he believed
this might be his last chance to do the ‘right thing’ and ‘cure’ himself. At this point,
his sister noticed something strange in his behaviour and confronted him about it.
Unsure how to explain that he just did not feel anything towards the girl, he avoided
the subject entirely. Eventually, the two wed and Khaldoon realised that he needed to
try to have sex with his new wife. In order to perform, he decided to take Viagra.
The medication caused an adverse reaction in his body, and much to the horror of his
wife, blood began to spill from his eyes. They immediately went to the hospital and
his wife was shocked to discover that sexual stimulant medications were the cause
for the bleeding. After this event, Khaldoon’s distance from his wife only increased,
and eventually she confronted him. He finally admitted to her that he believes he is
homosexual. Shocked as she was, she agreed to continue living that way because she
did not want her religious family to find out. “Her family was the type that
‘mamnoo’a television, mamnoo’a kol eshe’ (television is prohibited, everything is
prohibited), so she stayed married to me because she had more freedom,” Khaldoon
explained. For a while, this ruse worked, until Khaldoon’s increasing agnosticism15
pulled the cloak down on his life and marriage.
Sometime that year, Khaldoon had released a video online discussing atheism (he
also spoke extensively about faults he found in Islam) and discussing mithly jinsiyeh
15
Khaldoon defines his agnosticism as “not believing in organised religion, but acknowledging the
existence of God”.
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(one of the least derogatory Arabic terms for homosexuality). The video, which
clearly showed Khaldoon’s face, garnered attention from Wizarat al-Awqaf
(Ministry of Religious Studies) where Khaldoon was employed. They decided to
bring him in and interview him, asking questions to provoke Khaldoon into
admitting he is an atheist, a traitor and a homosexual. After this interview, he
realised his entire family knew about the video and their reaction, as he states, was
“very aggressive, and it was not the first time my brother physically hurt or abused
me, so I was feeling very unsettled.”
Various threats to his life from his family persisted, and they demanded to have
Khaldoon’s social media passwords. They took his computer to the base floor
apartment (where the family lived) and were discussing how they could kill him. “I
heard it all. They kept saying ‘wasakht sharaf el ‘aaley’ (dirtied the family’s honour)
and that ‘something must be done’,” he says. It was in that moment that Khaldoon
decided he needed to flee Jordan. With the help of several friends, a car and hotel
was arranged for that evening, and the next day he left the country. Khaldoon, now
away and safe from the threats of his family, states that he does not believe that it is
impossible to be religious and gay. His own professed agnosticism, he claims, stems
more from his own questioning of religious ideals than his sexuality. “The gay
people rejected my proclamations about religion more than straight people. They
said ‘we are sinners, and we should change our ways,’ I decided to stop taking part
in organised religion and feel much healthier now,” he admits.
Khaldoon’s story illustrates how, for many men in Amman, religion is at the
foreground of daily life. His experience depicts the intricacy that accompanies the
navigation of this aspect of their lives. Though Khaldoon’s case is not representative
of all men, it was not uncommon to see the understanding of homosexuality through
a similarly religious lens. Religion gives individuals a context in which they can
frame and further understand events of moral and intellectual property.
In this regard, it was clear that interlocutors were consciously choosing and
navigating their own perceptions towards religion, and as stated by Hirschkind:
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Perception is not a moment of passivity but an act, a performance that links
the sensory sedimentations of the past to the horizon of present actions.
Fashioned outside explicit awareness, in the interval between subject and
object worlds, such linkages occur in the encounter between what Bergson
refers to as virtual memory – and a sensory surround (Bergson [1896] 1990)
Such an approach moves us away from a mentalist understanding that locates
experience in a silent interior toward one that places it in a body practically
engaged with the world. (Hirschkind 2006: 29)
For some men, doing away with religious values, despite the conventional, prevailing
understanding is that they are not supportive of their sexualities, meant in some ways
doing away with a connection to the family and greater society. This multifarious
connectivity to family and value, which is mimicked throughout the thesis in various
other aspects, is also the case of Bilal. On my first meeting with Mousa’s friend Bilal
at Books@ Cafe, he immediately ordered a hookah, almost as if it was a comfort
blanket to aide in opening up to me for our interview. We sat alone on a couch, with
Mousa and his friends at our back, ordering drinks and cackling loudly at each other’s
stories. Bilal began to explain, in exclusively Arabic, that he goes by two names.
“One of my names is Bilal, and that is who I am when I am out with the gays, or
people who know I am. My other name is Mohammed. So do you want me to talk to
you as Bilal, or Mohammed?” He asks. Somewhat taken aback by the straightforward
approach he employed, I responded that he may answer in whichever way he feels
comfortable, but that really I didn’t have questions, and more that I wanted to hear his
story, the way that he wants to tell it. He began to explain the origin of his two names,
his two personalities:
I went out with a friend from work… he is the first person that noticed that I
have two personalities. One is very straight, pious, and the other is… well,
who you see today. At home, I am the ideal… I wear dishdasheh16, pray 5
times a day, help my mom with everything she asks. Everyone in the
neighbourhood treats me like a sheikh, coming and asking me questions about
religion… I am having a hard time picking what I want to do with the future.
If I travelled, who will take care of my parents? I met with sheikhs to get away
from the atmosphere, went on ‘Umra twice. I would check out guys there in
Saudi too [laughs]. I never felt I really belonged in this Islamic atmosphere,
but I can’t decide between my gay friends, straight friends and the
sheikhs…(Bilal, Amman, July 2015)
16
Defined as a traditional ankle-length garment worn in Middle East.
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The difficulty Bilal had in separating those identities was clear. As he took breaks
between talking to me about himself and smoking on his liquorice flavoured hookah, I
felt the tension in his voice. Mousa later told me that Bilal’s internal struggle garners
much criticism from their gay friends, who wish that he would just choose a ‘side’.
He states that Bilal’s polarising views on the opposite ends of the spectrum is
frustrating, and that sometimes, “he will just get in a phase where he wants to criticise
us and what we do so he will send messages saying that we need to repent and our
sexualities are wrong. It’s hypocritical but it is how he feels.”
3.2 RE-DEFINING ISLAMIC VALUES: “THE QUR’AN DOESN’T
CONDEMN THE ORIENTATION, JUST THE SEX”
Nabeel, like Khaldoon, remained convinced of the fact that it is possible to be
religious and to identify as gay. Other interlocutors echoed this testament, but mostly
agreed that a re-interpretation of homosexuality in Islam would be necessary in
moving forward. As discussed in Chapter 1: World vs. Jordan vs. Amman, a modified
version of Islamic teaching may be one of the key ways in which tolerance and
awareness could be fostered in Jordan.
Other interlocutors also felt the need and curiosity to make sense of themselves, their
sexualities and their feelings through the religious framework in which they were
raised. Muhannad, whose story will be told in further detail in Chapter 4, began doing
more in-depth research about Islam when he was around 20 years old.
I came across the profile of a woman on Facebook, a prominent Muslim
woman17, not wearing a headscarf. I thought ‘oh, that’s cool’, then I found a
page on her profile called ‘Muslims for gay rights’. From there, I came across
a lot of progressive and reformist Islamists who have a more inclusive
interpretation of the Qur’an. It was then that I thought ‘oh, homosexuality was
just misunderstood, it was never haram (forbidden)’… that was such a
relaxing phase in my life because I made peace with my identity, my religion.
I was raised to be religious, pious…so I felt like with this new information I
was satisfying my God and myself, and didn’t have to give anything up.
(Muhannad, Amman, July 2015)
17
Muhannad was referring to Irshad Manji, an author, educator and advocate of a reformist
interpretation of Islam. Most recently published the book Allah, Liberty and Love: The Courage to
Reconcile Faith and Freedom
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Eventually, that phase ended and Muhannad became more interested in agnosticism,
joining groups on Facebook with similar-minded people. According to him, his
agnosticism ultimately became atheism18 once he joined an atheist chat group that
would regularly meet in Amman and discuss religion and God. But Muhannad is clear
on one thing: “my atheism has nothing to do with my sexuality in any way.” He still
supports progressive versions of Islam among his gay Muslim friends, and believes,
like Mousa, that religion can and should be used as a tool in activism.
Dr. Scott Siraj Al-Hajj Kugle, who utilises a constructionist approach in his analysis
of sexuality in Islam, repudiates the notion that homosexuality is explicitly forbidden
in Islamic text (the Qur’an and Hadith). Through the Story of Lut, Kugle along with
several other classical Islamic scholars argues that the tale is not condemning
homosexuality but rather greed, oppression and a ‘rejection of the prophet’s ethics of
care’ (Kugle 2003: 214). Kugle continues to discuss the importance of a renewed
thematic and semantic analysis of the Qur’an: “The Qur’an does not present this
narrative completely in one place. Rather, various parts of Lut’s story are mentioned
in different places as reminders. Thematic analysis has trained us to be wary of
interpreting one part of this story separate from the composite whole that is created by
the repeated and varied presentation of parts of the story in scripture. The deeper
meaning of Lut’s struggles will be lost to us if we do not try to construct these textual
incidents into a cohesive narrative while simultaneously being attentive to the context
of their incidence” (ibid. 209).
Various interlocutors referenced this route of re-interpretation on numerous occasions.
Understanding the importance of religion throughout the country, even interlocutors
who identify as atheists believed that a renewed analysis would be the key difference
in garnering acceptance throughout society and for the men’s own perspectives on the
subject. Many men’s discomfiture with religion was founded in the framework of the
conventional society viewpoint, which originates from a non-contemporary, unrevised
interpretation that homosexuality is perverse and punishable by God. One
interlocutor’s mother in particular, after reading his mobile phone messages and
18
Here, I use the term atheism as Muhannad uses it to describe his beliefs as a ‘non-believer of
organised religion’.
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discovering her son had had sex with another man, exclaimed: “Ya Allah! (O, God!)
The further you drifted from religion, the closer you got to perversion! Wallahi (I
swear to God) if you prayed more, actually fasted in Ramadan, you wouldn’t want to
do these things!” These common familial reactions were also the rationale behind
seeking Islamic psychiatry (explored further in Chapter 4) as a cure, believing that the
rational solution to the perceived problem must come from the root of the subject’s
connection to morality.
Nabeel, and another interlocutor, Saher, highlighted the discrepancies found within
religious scholarly interpretations of homosexuality’s condemnation within the
Qur’an and Hadith. The primary concern with the lens in which most interpretations
have been done is that they leave no room for relocations of authentic discursive
experiences. Similarly, Andrew Yip (2005) discusses the importance of interpretative
authorities to help devise new, individualised personal experiences through religious
text, though he is unable to advise on the specifics.
CONCLUSION
While the ubiquitous general opinion of homosexual behaviour in Jordan is partially
formed by society’s dominant religiosity, men’s perceptions of the topic differ based
on experience and personal belief. Some men, who stated they felt rejected by their
religion and not accepted due to nuanced understandings of the Qur’an, used this
notion as a basis for a re-subjugation of their religious understanding.
Khaldoon’s story illustrates the multifarious process that some men go through in
navigating their religious identities within a Jordanian context. He, and other
interlocutors like Muhannad, Mousa and Nabeel, noted the crucial role that a reinterpretation of Islamic text would play in promoting a more positive image of
homosexuality in the Muslim world. Several men indicated that this might be one of
the fundamental ways for the regional LGBT community to move forward and
cumulate a greater general societal acceptance. Kugle highlights the necessity of a
varied discursive lens when translating Islamic text, which previously had been
interpreted with a patriarchal prerogative: “Contemporary scholars attentive to
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injustices against gay and lesbian Muslims approach the question with the same moral
agenda as feminist scholars. They use the same critical techniques of rereading the
scriptural texts through new lenses in order to free the text from its former patriarchal
confinement.” (Kugle 2003: 202)
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4. HOME
In Jordan, the role of family and kin form a valuable and important part of daily life.
Just as with religion, the two aspects form a significant portion of the lens through
which life is experienced. As seen in the previous chapter, religion – even if not
particularly important to the interlocutors themselves – is often a critical and defining
part of home life. With the nuclear family and the expanding network of kin and nonkin relations at the axis, an unquestionably large role in the experience and stories of
interlocutors is played out at home. When interlocutors either realise or come to terms
with their sexualities, intimate moments in the home become at the crux of the
understanding of self and their own positionalities.
This chapter explores kinship within the selving process, the intimacies of
denial/avoidance found in disclosure, decision-making within the familial unit, the
Western notion of ‘coming out’ and impact on the interlocutors’ outlooks and futures.
4.1 WHAT IS HOME: UNDERSTANDING KINSHIP AND
BELONGING AT HOME
Feeling a sense of comfort at home is important, and came up rather often in my
research. Suad Joseph states that the intrinsic importance of kin and family relations
form the frame to which Arabs see themselves, “…a person’s boundaries are
relatively fluid so that persons feel a part of significant others. Persons do not
experience themselves as bounded, separate, or autonomous” (1999: 12). Because the
family relationships play such a key role in the understanding and creating of the self,
it is only natural that this will have a heavy impact on personal choices in life. The
complex intertwinement between beings and close others means that these roles of
father-son, son-brother, son-mother, brother-sibling are placed at an axis of risk, and
consequently constitution of self and all that it means is at risk. Anthropologist Farha
Ghannam delineates the importance of these kinship relationships in the gendering of
the masculine self, defining this process as the ‘masculine trajectory’. (Ghannam 2013:
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7) These ‘masculine trajectories’ are “characterised by contradictory, dynamic states:
achievements and failures, stability and fluidity, clarity and ambiguity, coherence and
contradiction, recognition and misrecognition. A male trajectory may be oriented in
its path, often following expected and collectively defined social expectations such as
getting married and fathering children.” (Ibid.,7). Thus, the complexities of ‘coming
out’ and navigating that process may disrupt that trajectory.
This collectivistic worldview impacts the way the self is conceptualised, and it is
through this lens that the web of reality and daily life is seen. The value can be
highlighted by the question upon first meeting someone of ‘what is your family
name?’ to the importance of settling down with someone from a ‘good family’.
Family and home organise so much of daily life in Jordan that it becomes betwixt
with the very creation of self. Maintaining group dynamics and a sense of kinship is
an important value in Jordanian society, and can be illustrated through the many
experiences and conversations with my interlocutors throughout this chapter. Joseph
(1999) also further elaborates the crucial nature of ‘patriarchal connectivity’, which
highlights the integration between self-value and value placed on kin. Maintaining a
semblance of ‘normalcy’ seemed to also be an important action for interlocutors, as
many noted feeling emotionally unsettled when familial relationships were not
amiable. In a sit-down at an art gallery and café called Jasmine House in Jabal el
Weibdeh with an interlocutor named Hussein, he described some of what he went
through when his mother inadvertently found gay porn on his computer:
My mom has been through many things in her life. She was blamed for many
things that she did not even do. Raising seven children, her daughters living
outside the house before marriage…which is outside of the norm…The family
and [general outer society] others blame her. I did not want to come out as a
gay person and add something to my mom’s plate. Haram (In this context
used to denote personal guilt), and people would blame her and not me. I
always wanted to be a good thing for my mom – I always worked hard in
school so I could please her. I didn’t want to be a bad person like everyone
else. But I guess in the end, I ended up being the worst in her eyes. (Hussein,
Amman, August 2015)
At that point, Hussein began to cry and describe the ways in which he sought to
rectify the situation. He felt weighed down by the guilt and perceived shame he had
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brought to his mother despite having worked so hard to be ‘the best son’ he could be
to please her.
4.2 ‘COMING OUT’ AT HOME: “TO BE, OR NOT TO BE”
Though the notion of ‘coming out’ is often thought to play a big role in the lives of
gay men universally, it was a topic that was avoided or danced around in conversation
with many of my interlocutors. When asked directly whether or not they had
disclosed their sexualities to their families, stories and responses were rarely
favourable. Even those who do not speak English fluently would speak about these
experiences of disclosure and hopes for recognition in English, highlighting the
notion that in Arabic, no adequate equivalent of the phrase exists, or one that feels
suitable. Typically, when one interlocutor asks another “Enta out?” (Are you out?), he
means, in particular terms, “Have you disclosed your sexuality to your immediate
family?”. In this quest for representation, a form of hope is addressed, one in which
the subject hopes to disclose the totality of their being by disclosing their sexuality to
their loved one.
Doctor of comparative literature D.A. Miller wrote about the notion of secrecy and its
functions, stating: “the subjective practice in which the oppositions of public/private,
inside/outside, subject/object are established and the sanctity of their first term kept
inviolate. And the phenomenon of the ‘open secret’ does not, as one might think,
bring about the collapse of those binarisms and their ideological effects, but rather
attests to their fantasmatic recovery. In a mechanism reminiscent of Freudian
disavowal, we know perfectly well that the secret is known, but nonetheless we must
persist, however ineptly, in guarding it.” (1988: 207). Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
supported such theory, noting, ‘Even at an individual level, there are remarkably few
of even the most openly gay people who are not deliberately in the closet with
someone personally or economically or institutionally important to them.’ (1990: 2)
Examples from my research will support the notion that even the men who are most
‘open’ about their gayness were still relatively private with some individuals in their
lives for a variety of reasons. This intricacy created an understanding that one must
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manoeuvre carefully, weighing options and gauging whether disclosure to an
individual is necessary or not. A constant sense of negotiating of identity values and
expression could be seen in these moments, as interlocutors were made to understand
on a person-to-person basis who needed to know, who could know, and who simply
did not need to. In these matters there seemed to be a pervading sense of that false
binary; ‘in’ or ‘out’, when the reality is much more complex and fluid.
In certain cases, the coming out process was eased by the perceived indifference of
family members. Dalal, who could be perceived to carry himself effeminately, came
home one day to find one of his brothers and father fighting. Though he stated he
thinks they had an idea because of things he had said, clues he left behind and pictures
on the computer, he decided to seize that moment of tension and tell them (in Arabic)
that he is gay. “There are 50 years between my dad and I. I’ve always been ‘Ibn
Mama’ (Mama’s son). I am very close to my mom. Anything I need, I get from her,
and then she gets it from dad, so I don’t really have to communicate with him. B
Shakl ‘aam, ‘aam ba’yesh hayati (in general, I am living my life). They know I am
gay but they don’t do or say or ask anything about what I do. They don’t care about
my love life,” he tells me, with Mousa beside him in the front seat, as we sit parked
on a noisy street in Jabal el Weibdeh. Only 23, there is a tangible sense of disconnect
in Dalal’s voice, and as he moves quickly on to talk about how well he does in
university. “Many people know that I am a great student… maybe I am trying to
prove myself. Like… I am not just gay, I am something more,” he continues. The 50year age difference between Dalal and his father causes him to feel a generational
division between them, as he explains that a keen sense of disapproval has somehow
created an intrinsic feeling that he must prove himself in order to rectify his sexual
orientation. Dalal was not alone in this sentiment, and that need to ‘prove’ something
was mimicked in other stories. Interlocutors felt the need to prove somehow – to
themselves or to their families – that despite being something that is not generally
approved of, they can still be productive, worthy members of society.
One of my only Christian interlocutors, Rayyan, explained the experience of his
coming out story. Rayyan comes from a rather affluent business-owning family who
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are very involved in Amman’s upper class community, always a part of high society
events and gatherings, and is also one of the few interlocutors who has lived
extensively outside of Jordan, as he also holds a Canadian passport and studied there.
I had first met him three years ago when I worked as the editor of two local Jordanian
magazines, and we were writing an article about his fledging music career. With
perfectly coifed hair, perpetually bronzed, moisturised skin and a glimmering white
smile, Rayyan makes an impression when he first meets people. Though he does not
exude any feminine or stereotypically ‘gay’ mannerisms, people often comment that
he is ‘metrosexual’19. I only came to know of his sexual orientation through a friend
of mine, who happens to be his cousin, but was told to keep the information to myself.
When I presented my thesis research to Rayyan, stating that I was interested in
speaking with him anonymously and hearing about his opinion and experiences, he
was very willing, and even stated that there was no need to change his name in the
research as he is proud of who he is. During our sit down at a relatively new farm-totable organic café in the Jabal Amman neighbourhood, his general sense of security
and confidence was apparent. His choice to conduct the interview entirely in English
is also worth noting, as it further highlights the apparent privilege in his upbringing.
He is confident, good-natured and speaks clearly and assertively. Though he did not
go into great detail about his experience of disclosure, he stated that he chose to tell
his father before anyone else in his family. “I told my dad [that I am gay] when I was
about 23 or 24 years old. One of the brilliant things he told me was that he thought it
was a choice. He said that ‘you chose this lifestyle because it makes you feel more
liberated, but it may actually limit you more – explore your sexuality but don’t let it
define you…My mom, however, found out in a not so pleasant way,” he pauses, his
mouth forming a grin as if he is replaying the moment in his mind, “She came back
from a trip earlier than expected and found me in my bed, sleeping next to a guy. She
19
‘The metrosexual is consistently configured as a heterosexual metropolitan man who spends time
and effort on his appearance. The values of the hedonistic, style-centred metrosexual lifestyle place
little emphasis on long-term relationships or parenting. The metrosexual may well represent a more
attractive, or compatible version of masculinity for some women, in that metrosexuals are better
groomed and dressed than most other men and have a penchant for so-called ‘feminine’ interests and
activities, such as shopping, cooking and the arts.’ (Metrosexual Identification: Gender Identity and
Beauty Related Behaviors, International Business & Economics Research Journal)
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talked to a friend of hers that has a gay son in Canada, but she had still no idea how to
take it. Until now she does not mention it, does not bring it up.” It was clear that
although his sexuality was now out in the open, the subject was not easy to broach
and a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach was further employed. Like other interlocutors,
Rayyan dwelled within a liminal space in which issues were avoided, fronts were
upheld and questions were not asked.
Rayyan’s experience further highlights the looming crisis ‘coming out’ presents.
Sedgwick (1990) examines the phenomena of ‘coming out’ and its implications on
surrounding parties, stating that it is primarily an epistemological scene, in which all
members are naturally entangled and which threatens all identities in a heterosexist
culture. As demonstrated in Rayyan’s case, his ‘coming out’ impacted both his
parents in different ways despite their perceived inaction or notable changes in their
day-to-day lives. Rayyan also shared that he believes the realisation is most
threatening and challenging for mothers. “A lot of gay guys here are worried about
their mothers. So I feel like if mothers had an outlet to speak to others and understand,
it might help. We care for them and we don’t want to hurt them. That’s why I keep
who I am dating and what I am doing to myself, I don’t need to parade it around and
make my mom or dad feel badly,” he says. There’s a sense that Rayyan has come to
terms with the reality of the situation, and does not want to push limits or overstep
invisible boundaries he feels are set in the household and in greater society.
“However… if I ever want to have a fulfilled life emotionally, I would need to move
out… but I am just so comfortable at home,” he lets out a laugh, then begins to
describe the recent renovations he has done to his bedroom and private bathroom.
In listening to his friends re-tell their ‘coming out’ stories to me, Mousa began to
speak about the necessity of creating a space for these disclosures. He uses a
metaphor to explain further, “There’s a frog in a glass. Once you pour boiling hot
water on him, he immediately jumps out. But if you pour the water slowly, in small
increments, he adjusts his body temperature accordingly and remains in the glass,”
fascinated by the analogy, I ask him to continue explaining. “Basically, coming right
out and stating the fact you’re gay is not wise. You have to give subtle references to
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homosexuality, prodding people to think and be aware about it. Ease them slowly into
the knowledge; do not just thrust it upon them without warning. Arabs are emotional
thinkers, not logical ones. You have to appeal to that emotional side. Using science to
explain what it means to be gay would not appeal to Arabs, using American or
European film or television wouldn’t resonate… it must come from the heart. We
must utilise the local tools we have,” he added.
Psychiatry: ‘The Miracle Cure-all’
In one particular sit-down lunch with a 24-year-old named Nabeel, he shared his
mother’s rather volatile reception of the news of his sexuality. Always having noticed
Nabeel was a somewhat effeminate boy and teenager, his mother made every possible
choice to ‘straighten’ his path through means of tae kwon do lessons, Islamic
schooling and making arrangements for him to spend more time with his father and
less with his five sisters. At age 14, Nabeel decided to seek guidance and information
on the subject, and went to speak to the psychiatrist at the Islamic Centre:
He was acting so nice when I told him I feel attracted to boys…then I was
surprised to learn he actually went and told my mom. She was so
confrontational about it. That son of a bitch recommended an Islamic
psychiatrist for me, who decided to give me hormone therapy, and my mom
went along with every suggestion he made. It was the worst period of my life.
(Nabeel, Amman, July 2015)
Nabeel then proceeded to go into detail about how the hormones impacted his general
wellbeing and mood, making it rather clear that for a large period of his adolescence,
he struggled immensely. “I reached a point where I began to fake feelings to make
them believe I was ‘developing’ or ‘improving’. The hormone therapy actually got so
bad that on my 15th birthday I attempted suicide – I ingested all the pills in the
medicine cabinet. My mom broke into the bathroom and found me there, took me
immediately to the hospital. It was during those three days…” Nabeel pauses, takes a
deep, measured sigh and a sip of his coffee, and continues, “that I had moments of
clarity. I realised I had to take this approach to life where I need to be self-sustaining.
I decided I needed to cut ties with my family.” It is during these moments where
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interlocutors make deliberate choices – choices to let their sexualities form part of
their identities, or to separate them to remain visible as potential leaders of additions
to the nuclear family in the future. To ‘come out’ is akin to disclosing to your family
that you will likely never marry, never have offspring, and therefore, never add to the
family lineage. To part with their heterosexuality is to part with the imaginings of
their own eventual heterosexual family units. This, for many of my interlocutors, is
the most difficult part.
Similar to Nabeel’s story was that of 24 year-old Adnan. Adnan’s father passed away
when he was 10, leaving him to be raised by his mother, along with his two brothers
and younger sister. Emotional and highly self-aware, Adnan became certain of his
sexuality when he was 14:
I had this picture of a male underwear model, named Alex, and I would just
look at it a lot. I remember when I told my mother. It was not a huge decision,
just something I thought I was sharing about myself. I remember there was a
mattress on the floor and a chair beside it. I told her ‘Mama, biddi ehkelek
eshe… Ana gay’ (Mom, I want to tell you something…I am gay). She kept
shaking her leg nervously and so when I slept, I woke and found her still there,
sitting on the chair, her leg shaking. The first thing she told me was that she
told my uncle, and that we are going to a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist made
the diagnosis on his own that I was severely depressed and he put me on
medication. We didn’t talk about being gay. The second psychiatrist I went to
[in Amman] wanted to convert me, he wanted to ‘cure’ me – kind of like
conversion therapy. So he made me watch the same gay porn video everyday.
He created a graph of how satisfied I am with the video and at what part I
experienced peak pleasure, and then he immediately afterwards he would
show me photographs of attractive women. Other than the conversion therapy,
I found that the therapy helped me with my anxiety and depression. He helped
me to fight the depression, but not my gayness. (Adnan, Amman, July 2015)
Adnan’s experience with psychiatry, unlike other interlocutors, was twofold. Though
he did not feel the conversion therapy did anything to change his sexual feelings, they
helped him work through some of the other feelings he had in regards to his own
struggles with anxiety and depression, and for that reason he came out of most of
them with a positive experience. Other interlocutors however looked poorly on the
concept of conversion therapy. However, despite their usual reluctances, the
interlocutors whose families pressured them to go to therapy in search for a ‘cure’
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complied to appease their families, and sometimes even to see for themselves if it
would do any good. Several interlocutors conceded that “Well, if I could fix this, I
probably would. It would save my family and me a lot of heartache and trouble.” This
admission could point to the fact that regardless of location, not fitting neatly under
the umbrella of global heteronormativity entails an individual is different, and
therefore might face challenges due to these differences.
Sa’eed, one of Mousa’s closest friends and an LGBT activist, had particular trouble
with psychiatry and his mother. In addition to being religious, Sa’eed’s mother was a
fervent listener of Dr. Amjad Qourshah, an academic sheikh who hosts a radio talk
show. Known as a voice of homophobia among the LGBT community, Dr. Amjad’s
exhortations can be summarised by this quote: “homosexuality is a sick illness that
will seep through the veins of society, slowly but surely tainting the bloodline of our
culture and religion and it must be cured.” Sa’eed, who applied Mousa’s general
theory that the way to get your family to accept the facts is to build a slow crescendo
with the information, dropping subtle hints in order to slowly get them used to the
idea of being gay, failed miserably with his mother. Though his father was more
accepting, his mother was adamant that his ‘deviant’ sexuality was merely caused by
lack of religious education, and she immediately scheduled conversion therapy with
Dr. Qourshah. Articulate and inquisitive in nature, Sa’eed went into great detail about
his first meeting with Dr Qourshah:
When I met him, I knew it was important to appeal to his ego. I mentioned
that I am a follower of his talk show and asked many questions about the show
in general, stating that I was fascinated by his ability to discuss social, legal
and psychological matters to a Jordanian audience that does not usually even
think of such matters. I began then to discuss transgender and middle sex, and
was surprised when he mentioned that the Iranian government subsidises
trans-surgery. Unlike being homosexual, he said he could understand that it
was in the brain and that being trans was not a choice. Then I diverted the
conversation back to homosexuality, and that was when his tone became
aggressive and he started to recite verses from the Quran. ‘You’ve committed
a form of obscenity that no one has committed before you’ (When God
referenced the people of Sodom and Gomorrah). This was when I began to
make clear the difference between being gay and sodomy. I told him that one
is a choice and the other is not, and that the difference is consent, and that the
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Quran addresses the action, not the orientation. This was when the sheikh said,
‘Let me give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is not a choice.
Do you ever think about getting married?’” It was in this moment that the
conversation seemed to come full circle, with marriage being the issue in
which those who are staunchly against homosexuality do not understand. Not
getting married disrupts what is societally seen as a merit of success and
normality, and not being able to fulfil this duty disrupts a very basic
understanding of the natural progress of life. (Sa’eed, Amman, July 2015)
Sa’eed’s experience with conversion therapy did not end with Dr Qourshah.
Determined to fix the perceived problem of his sexuality, Sa’eed’s mother took him to
a therapist that Dr Qourshah recommended. Sa’eed describes the experience of
entering the office with his mother to find a man, barefoot and draped in a long
poncho, with amusement. His mother began to speak, telling the new doctor about
how she heard environment has a huge impact on homosexuality, and wanting to
know what she could do to be a part of his recovery process. It was then that this
doctor politely asked his mother to leave the room, as the discussion should be
between only the patient and doctor. Reluctantly she left the room and the doctor
began to tell Sa’eed that, unlike other therapists, his approach was not to re-instill
religious virtue into the patients but rather looked at sexuality through a scientific lens.
“He asked me why I was there. I told him ‘closure. If there is a way out, let’s see.’ I
knew it wouldn’t change, bas min baab ino jarabet kol eshe…” (I tried everything).
The lengths Sa’eed goes through to appease his mother only further highlights the
importance of maintaining and protecting these kin relationships. Despite knowing
that his feelings will not change, Sa’eed tirelessly continues on with the various
approaches his mother suggests in order to ‘find a cure’. His relationship with her
only further continues to strain when she tells his grandmother and aunt that he is gay
and that they are doing whatever they can to ‘cure’ him, and need the extended
families support.
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4.3 “WELL, ONE DAY, I DO WANT TO GET MARRIED…”
Suad Joseph (2013) highlighted marriage as a marker of life stage progression in the
Arab World: “The phenomenon of ‘waithood’, delayed marriage, throughout the Arab
world, has meant protracted periods of living with parents. Typically, in any case,
men and women in the Arab world live with their parents until marriage. This is
partly because of the preference of youth to live with their families, and also because
they cannot afford housing on their own” (2013:118).
The value allocated to marriage marks the overlapping of gender ideals within
structures of kinship in Jordan. The integration of personal life with familial life is an
important aspect of the general structure of Arab kinship. This marker seems to
transcend socioeconomic lineation, religion or familial background, making it an
important stepping-stone and measure of success and perceived happiness within
society. A discernable obstacle for my interlocutors, the matter seemed to spring up
time and time again, without any prodding or question asking on my end. As almost
all of my interlocutors were unmarried and in their early twenties or thirties,
complying with Jordanian custom they mostly still lived at home20, making the matter
all the more relevant. This sense of connectivity provides “…the values shaping the
beliefs and guiding the behaviour of members of the society” (Joseph 1999:12). Issues
faced by these men must be seen in that context, as a failure to marry could then be
deemed a failure for the entire collective unit.
The recent law legalising gay marriage in the United States21 happened at an ideal
time during my fieldwork in Amman, triggering a wave of conversation and
deliberation on the topic. Through Facebook, I was able to gauge the vast diversity in
opinion on the subject. From supporters changing their profile photos to the rainbow
hue, to Jordanian artists stating, indignantly, “dish of the day: homo-nationalism.
Marriage ≠ equal love. Gay rights ≠ gay marriage”, it was clear that the new law hit a
vein in the collective thinking of the Jordanian community. I was curious to explore
the topic and see when and how it arose on its own, learning very quickly on that it
20
The few older interlocutors or exceptions to this case moved out for reasons related to their sexuality and usually
ended up back home with their parents.
21
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0
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occupied a huge space in the minds of many of my interlocutors. Mousa, and other
interlocutors who opposed the new law, stated that they abhorred the belief that in
order to obtain full legal rights, individuals must enter a legal union. Rather, they
believed that gay men and lesbians should be recognised within already existing
structures of the state.
For many reasons, talks of the future were laughed off or almost entirely avoided, as
they brought about intense feelings of anxiety for most of the men. During a
conversation about his newfound atheism, Muhannad began to tell me about a girl he
met in the atheist group meetings. The group, which he connected to through
Facebook and would meet and hang out with in Amman, consisted of mostly
Jordanians and a few foreign expats. Muhannad explained that his new fellow atheist
friend Fatima is a lesbian, and timidly quipped, “she agreed to marry me to save us
both the eventual anguish!”. After a short pause, he continued: “After three years, I
am going to face so many issues. When I am 28/29, they’re [parents] gonna force me
to marry – these social pressures are very real – and I have to take a decision.” Being
the analytic mind that he is, I knew Muhannad would have already carved out his
foreseeable options, so I asked what they are. “One is to leave Jordan. Though it’s not
so easy. To either the Gulf or somewhere in the West… the other choice is isolating
myself from my family, though I am so in love with them… and just continuing on as
an individual, separate of them.” Seeing the wavering hesitation in his voice, I asked
if a marriage to Fatima might be a feasible option as well. Muhannad’s childlike,
round face lit up in an immediate smile, “Well, one day I do want to get married. I
just love the idea of having a family, kids…my parents becoming grandparents. To be
honest… I would love that! Best of both worlds.” In that moment we both looked up
to see Mousa, legs crossed, eyes in a squint, lips pressed together in a disapproving
smirk. “That would never work, and it’s fooling no one,” he retorts. Silently, however,
I empathised with Muhannad’s dream, and I understood. Given the two more viable
options – either leaving your home country or staying but isolating yourself from the
family you love – the third option does not seem so awful. It ticks off the boxes of
success markers, it pleases everyone’s family, and you don’t have to ‘run away’ from
anything or isolate yourself. Pondering Mousa’s response, Muhannad continued:
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I am delaying thinking about it. Maybe I will do a PhD to further delay things.
I am currently working on a proposal for one, so if I got that, it would buy me
a couple of years and my family would understand. A lot of people may find it
so easy to separate from family, but I really love my parents and I do not want
to lose them. I just wish I could just bring my boyfriend to the house…[pauses]
But my father just does not have access to information about these types of
things because he does not speak English, and he keeps joking about finding
me a bride. It’s a serious thing though, because it kind of defines our lives.
Going abroad to continue my education would at least buy me some time.
(Muhannad, Amman, July 2015)
Because education is so highly valued, it could grant temporary exemption from
marriage. Mousa nods in support of furthering his education, but continues in the
same vein about sham marriages: “It just never works. Of the stories I have heard, if
you marry a homosexual girl, it just ends up in a fight for some reason or another. It
probably works better to be in a cover marriage with a straight woman, and just have
affairs with men on the side.”
Bilal, unlike Muhannad and Sa’eed, proudly proclaimed that “Akeed ma rah atjawwez,
rah adalni a’amel sex ma’a ay Hada ba’ayjebni” (Of course I won’t ever marry. I
will continue to have sex with anyone that I want), continuing on saying that since
God made him this way, he will continue to be this way. His proclamation highlighted
the notion that not all men want to marry, and do not define happiness through
marriage or building a family, and that may not have anything to do with their
sexualities.
For some interlocutors, the option of leaving Jordan is perceived as the most desirable
and rational choice. Marwan, a 30-year-old artist and graphic designer, recently left
Amman after concluding that relationship-wise and opportunity-wise, he had reached
his limits within the confines of the country. In a steady relationship with a European
man, Marwan is the last unmarried son in his family. His mother, an elderly
Palestinian woman, has made it her top priority to get Marwan married, and has
expelled much of her energy in making arrangements for this to happen. A year ago, it
was difficult to make plans to even see Marwan, as he was often accompanying his
mother on trips to Ramallah to meet a potential wife in the forms of distant female
cousins or relatives. Marwan, an intellectual who is outspoken and bold in both his
appearance and outlook on life and completed both his bachelors and masters degrees
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in the United States, was still unable to disclose his sexuality to his mother. His
mother, having met his partner on several occasions under the pretence that he is
Marwan’s roommate, was none the wiser. During several conversations with Marwan,
whom I worked with at the magazines from 2012 until 2014 and had since became a
close friend, the option of disclosing his relationship and orientation to his mother
seemed to not even be an option. Though his two brothers knew because they had –
several years prior – seen incriminating evidence on the computer, no one had told his
mother. For a period of time, Marwan continued to make excuses like “financially I
am not ready for marriage” or like Muhannad, “I want to continue my education”, but
eventually he became exhausted by the creation of these distractions. Now, he
confessed that “I just learned not to give a fuck,” and living outside of Amman, in
Europe, made this process a lot easier for him. “It’s less intense now, but I still kind
of play along. I did not want to raise any brows or anything. She talks to me about her
going to check out girls for me and pay the families visits and all that crap. I would go
like ‘yea sure, just make sure you pick a good one before getting me involved
though’.” Now married to his partner, the level of detachment is unequivocal and
Marwan works to keep his social worlds distinct from one another. When back home
in Amman visiting his mother and family, he slips right back into the role of dotting
son, knowing that the truth might just shatter his mother.
It is this astounding fear of crippling disappointment that makes the navigation of this
process so intricately delicate. Later on in the research process, I began to notice some
similarities in the mind-sets of my interlocutors. A sentiment of ‘living in the
moment, the future is not near’ had been adopted as a method of coping with the
reality that the future might be riddled with complexities and confronting decisions.
With the majority of the men in their twenties or early thirties, a ‘we will deal with it
when we get there, but we don’t need to think about it now’ mind-set was adopted
that allowed for a certain sense of momentary, fleeting security.
Perhaps the most striking example of the fluidity of “out” or “in” the closet is the
prevalence of the sense of ‘waithood’ that many of the interlocutors resided in. It is in
this somehow sheltered stalled transition period and “time of relative inactivity and
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uncertainty” (Brown et al, 2009) that most interlocutors continue to inhabit. Another
problematic aspect of this period is the ‘inability to fully participate in adult life is a
form of social exclusion that is also economic, in that, for example, someone who is
not employed cannot get credit’ (ibid., 2009). In this liminal grey space, as if the
future is decades from now and any definite decision is unnecessary and could
potentially be cataclysmic, that many interlocutors seemingly dwelled in.
CONCLUSION
This chapter examined the broad state of hesitancy, anxiety and fragility found within
the navigation of home life. In almost every conversation with interlocutors, I could
see the clandestine yet somewhat self-evident lines had been drawn about who to
disclose information to, who to share things with, and what bits of information must
be kept private. Regardless of socioeconomic status, religion or personality, each man
had found a way to safely carve out his ‘coming out’ story in a way that makes sense
to him within the confines of his life and the branches that extend from it. The various
‘coming out’ stories shared throughout the chapter highlight the complexity that
riddles the process, and how men were striking a balance between disclosure and
recognition, walking the tight rope between the two. In a sense, to come to terms with
one’s sexual orientation meant to close a door on the reality of securing the future of a
marriage, children and continuing the family name. In many instances, the difficulty
of choosing to disclose their sexual identities meant to lose another future that is also
important and valuable in their eyes. It was not necessarily something that felt
empowering or liberating – it many ways, it felt constricting.
Those who do choose to disclose their sexualities to family do so in the hopes that
they may feel emancipated, and received with a level, however miniscule, of
recognition and understanding. The palpable sense of interconnectivity within the
Arab-selving process is made most clear in these instances, as the navigation of this
process and that of the acknowledgement of the importance of marriage is so
entwined with kin and society, with an ingrained understanding that ‘we are part of
this society, and in some way, must respect and act as such’. Nabeel, who has faced
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great emotional, physical and mental trials in his coming out story, still felt the
undeniable, intrinsic need to tell his mother, “now that I am self-sustainable I can be
gay and I want to self-identify as gay. But I won’t be openly gay in the community, I
don’t want to embarrass or shame you.” Despite his mother’s continuously hostile,
chastising reactions, Nabeel did not want to disrupt the sanctity of her or the family’s
position within society. Understanding the potential danger in a situation in which he
behaves in a lackadaisical or disrespectful manner in public, Nabeel, like many other
interlocutors, continued to appease, and somehow protect, his family and their
subjectivities through these cautionary steps and changes in behaviour.
The disentangling of the disclosure process creates a space of potential liberation for
many of the men, and I argue that there is also a sense of accountability entwined in
the experience of sharing such delicate information with kin and other close
individuals. The interlocutors who chose not to disclose their sexualities to their
families, like Marwan, did so out of a responsibility and desire to both protect and not
shatter her idealised image of him. To ‘come out’ to his mother would be, in many
ways, a bid for a response and for recognition, and for her to break her own
subjectivity. Within the confines of his own subjectivity, Marwan maintained that the
responsibility lied within him to keep in tact his mother’s reality in order to protect
them both from a shattering disconnect from their existing intersubjectivity.
The trepidation and anxiety found in the process of coming out is the aftermath of
adverse responsibilities and the realisation of one’s role in others’ experiences of their
own subjectivities. The understanding, on the interlocutors’ behalf, that ‘coming out’
has consequences for others involved and on their own positionality within society,
only further problematizes the experience. It also partially means that interlocutors
must face the reality that the notion of marriage, here a life marker of success, must
be abandoned and new compromises must be made in order to navigate the imminent
future. Interlocutors dwell, then, in the uncertainty of choices and live knowing that
not all their needs – physical, social, mental and emotional – can ever fully be met.
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FINAL CONCLUSION
Throughout the chapters, my fieldwork focused on the subjectivity of their
experiences as they moved through spaces in which they live out their daily lives. By
contextualising these subjectivities against the framework of Joseph Massad (in
Chapter 1), who argues vehemently against the import of an “othering” ‘Gay
International’ identity, I intended on highlighting the fact that the spectrum does not
fall either here nor there. Instead, I contend that the concern should not be about
which discourse is most apt in the creation of sexual subjectivities, but rather a focus
on the local and context specific navigations of daily life through certain sexually
subjective frameworks. The chapter of ‘World vs. Jordan vs. Amman’ then sought to
highlight the creation of safe, comfortable spaces in the city for men to go and be with
each other or their friends. During fieldwork, I got to observe the sense of community
that had been built in primarily two neighbourhoods, consisting of various spots and
places the men frequented. As outlined by Boellstorff, “The places of gay and lesbi
worlds are sites of belonging and recognition to find people who are the ‘same’ (sama)
as oneself because they too ‘desire the same’’(Boellstorff 2005: 126). Spaces like
Books@ Café and Graffiti Café created a sense of belonging and solidarity to
interlocutors that often feel a tension between ideologies. Jabal el Weibdeh’s Graffiti
Café in particular seemed to regularly be a place in which interlocutors suggested to
meet-ups, and I witnessed its net of intimacy as I saw countless conversations of
private matters being discussed there openly and safely.
From chapter 1 we moved into chapter 2: ‘Cyberspace’. This chapter delved into the
various roles the Internet played in the lives of interlocutors. Many men maintained
particular aspects of their personalities across social media, not making changes based
on viewers, platforms or interactions. As stated by Foucault, “relations of powerknowledge are not static forms of distribution, they are ‘matrices of transformation’”
(1976: 99), and in the case of usage of Internet, interlocutors are again in the process
of regaling and navigating those power and identity structures on a daily basis. This
chapter discussed some of the precariousness found, however, in safely navigating
this realm. In particular reference to dating and sex, some men shunned the usage of
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apps like Grindr or Hornet in that they sometimes felt exposed and unsafe. This
chapter also noted the role English played when using the Internet, as it worked as
‘cultural capital’ and an advantage for the interlocutors who felt comfortable
communicating in it. This chapter discussed the general role the Internet played in
shaping daily life for interlocutors. I do not suggest that all men used digital media in
the same vein, or that an enveloping reality about the role the Internet played could be
defined for all interlocutors, but rather that it served as another space in which
identities were being negotiated and navigated.
Chapter 2: ‘Cyberspace’ transitioned into Chapter 3: ‘Mosque’, first giving a brief on
general views of homosexuality in Islam. The chapter went on to discuss the various
ways interlocutors had chosen to navigate the centrality of religion in their lives.
Some denied, others rejected, some were somewhere in the middle. The story of
Khaldoon in sub-chapter 3.1 highlighted the evolution of perspective and fragility that
lied within it. Many interlocutors highlighted the importance of calling for a reinterpretation of religious text that would allow for a more accepting, tolerant
viewpoint in Islam. This re-interpretation, spearheaded by Dr Scott Kugle, could be a
genuine starting point in changing current sweeping negativities on homosexuality
throughout the Middle East. Many interlocutors seemed to have hope for this
happening in the future, and as stated by Kugle:
A new and evolving Shari‘ah is a politically and religiously necessary project.
It would offer Muslim-majority national states in post-colonial situations a
way of resolving many of the contradictions created by European
colonialism’s imposition of modernity through violence and domination,
without having to destroy the nation state or reject some of the more valuable
innovations of modernism. It would offer immigrant or indigenous Muslim
communities in North America and Europe a way to reconcile their religious
faith and community aspirations with the reality of living as minorities in
states that enshrine secular legal traditions and cultural values (2003: 228).
Lastly, Chapter 4: ‘Home’ enters the home space, discussing themes of kinship,
disclosure and marriage. This chapter especially highlights the fragility and fluidity
that persists in navigation of home life. From the disentangling of the disclosure
process, which creates a space of potential liberation for many of the men, to the
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perpetual ‘waithood’ in which some interlocutors continue to dwell, home life is a
space in which men are constantly entangled in processes of ‘selving’ (Joseph: 1999)
and decision-making. The interlocutors who chose not to disclose their sexualities to
their families, like Marwan and Muhannad, chose not to out of a sense of
responsibility and desire to both protect and not shatter idealised images of
themselves. To ‘come out’ to their mothers would be, in many ways, a bid for a
response and for recognition, and a break their own subjectivities. To ‘come out’
would also mean to shatter a life stage that is typically seen as a marker of success,
and perhaps in the eyes of the families, mean an ultimately unfulfilling life. This
chapter highlighted the intrinsic sense of responsibility many of my interlocutors felt
towards their families, but it also highlighted the ultimate uncertainty of choices.
It seems fitting now to return to Foucault, who stated that he was inherently sceptical
about the tendency to “relate the question of homosexuality to the problem of ‘Who
am I?’ and ‘What is the secret of my desire?’ Perhaps it would be better to ask
oneself, ‘What relations, through homosexuality, can be established, invented,
multiplied, and modulated?’ The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of
one’s sex, but rather, to use one’s sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of
relationships” (Foucault 1994: 135). Foucault’s consternation towards the tendency to
answer and define questions of sexual subjectivities can be reflected throughout my
research. With each chapter of this thesis, I aimed to create an account of the breadth
of diversity found in the lives of my interlocutors. Weaving through tangible spaces in
my interlocutors’ daily lives, my thesis illustrates the diversity of subaltern lived
experiences.
This research sought to highlight some of the contrarieties in defining sexual
identities, and did so through a lens of subalternity. John Beverly highlighted the
complexity in this process, and in particular with subaltern identities:
I recognise, of course, that there is no identity that is not in some way hybrid,
beginning with the fact that we are all the genetic product of two quite
different people; that identity is decentred, plural, contingent, provisional,
performative; that all signification is founded on absence of lack; that binary
taxonomies of population are a feature of what Foucault calls ‘biopower’; that
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what subaltern studies makes visible is precisely the fissured character of the
national narrative itself. The way it is intersected by other histories, other
modes of production, other values and identities. (Beverly 1999: 16)
With the primary emphasis of my thesis on the subjective, unique daily experiences of
my group of interlocutors, who all come from varied socio-economic, academic and
personal backgrounds, I hoped to highlight the notion that sexual identities cannot be
taken as universal, but rather a multiplicity of woven truths, values and hopes. The
experiences of my interlocutors did not fit into one pre-subscribed box, and highlight
the lack of ability to create a unified imagery of ‘what it means to be a gay Arab’ or
‘gay Jordanian man’. Conclusively, my research seeks to prove just that: there is not
simply one approach, process or way to identify. Likewise, my examination of the
presence of collective group identities in the community does not illustrate certain
inclusion by mere association, but rather illustrates an enduring tension that persists
among groups. Understandings of subjectivity and selving have moulded the
progression of my thesis, and the productions and conceptions of self have formed the
groundwork of my understanding of my interlocutors. Through the elastic, intricate
positionalities of my interlocutors, an idiosyncratic story of the complexities of
understanding, navigating and creating identity and sexuality is told.
With this thesis, we turn to the vast and vibrant corners of a localised community of
men in Amman, Jordan to reveal aspects of the navigation of daily life. By no means
definitive, this research can hopefully be the starting point to a comprehensive map of
regional sub-communities of living gayness that sources connections between
individuals according to the individuals themselves. Beginning with a broader,
zoomed out view of the landscape of viewpoints on homosexuality globally and then
more regionally, my research begins to unpack and detangle a dizzying slew of
assumptions and presumptions. It is important to note that the primary age group of
my interlocutors, the fact they are all men, and the limited time I had to conducted my
fieldwork all plays roles in the research outcome. That being said, it is my hope that
this thesis can add to the literature on subjective subaltern sexual and identity
experiences, and can be a starting point for research on marginalised sexual identities
in Jordan, as current research in the country on this topic is extremely limited. In
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going forward, it would be interesting to see how the changes in the region on
political, economic and social levels will impact these subjectivities. In the future,
how will things change? Will marriage and religion become more or less important?
This research demonstrates the notion that no straightforward answers exist, but rather
emphasises the fluidity, nuances and complexity of such lived experiences in Amman.
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