بيروت # beirut

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So, this is your first Beirut Pride. Wonderful! Let’s talk.

“Queers for Secularism” — photo taken in 2010 from here.

Mentioning the civil war does not localize Pride. Localizing Pride would entail breaking the very framework through which Pride emerges in the first place and building something else entirely. For one week, we are invited to unite under a rainbow and check our problems at the door. Forget about your parents getting evicted, all these strenuous water bills, the sheer impossibility of actually planning to live a decent and sustainable life in Lebanon. No, the issue is that you are gay and that there is homophobia around you.

Putting a positive spin on Beirut Pride does not make it less harmful. While its organizers insist that it is a positive celebration of gayness — a culmination of the gayest cause (with a sprinkle of LBTQness) — it still largely speaks to a middle upper class gay audience and does not address intersecting struggles. This is a problem because, as Audre Lorde says, we do not live single-issue lives. Is there space to talk about race at Beirut Pride? Class issues? How about challenging normativity in our society instead of constantly asking for acceptance?

“Coming out” and visibility are valued and seen as signs of progress and civility. To be a straight ally becomes a liberal badge of honor. “Coming out” and visibility are not signs of progress though, and they are also not the only strategies to survive and thrive in this world. We need to rethink the value we place on visibility, especially as we witness the illusion of liberal democracy collapsing and shifting globally towards the right.

Pride and IDAHOT are constructs that erase the interconnectedness of different struggles. For years, many of us sat down in meetings across groups/organizations and argued about Pride and IDAHOT for hours on end. Our friends in Palestine have written a useful critique around it. Please read it.

Roughly translated, the sign in the back says: “Sectarianism in politics. What brought farts to hellos?”

We haven’t always organized in the form of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Lebanon’s most rad feminist queer and trans actions were far from perfect, but they happened with very little money, and a lot of people power and collective organizing. This can still happen.

Why are we celebrating corporations that are building their social capital and making profits off our shoulders? Who next, banks? The police? Who has our backs when we’re not two cute girls looking out into the ocean?

Some governments co-opt movements. They use a rainbow flag and a pot of gold to draw us in and proceed to use our struggles to naturalize and instigate racialized violence and exploitation near us. This is called gay imperialism. It’s a thing governments do. We should not fall for it, and yet, most NGOs take pots of gold from these embassies.

Some of the newer NGOs have been known to profit off the oppressions of gay and trans people and are now speaking loudly in their names. They have million dollar budgets. Why do we let this happen? What is this silence? We should research their work. Ask them where they get their funds. Ask them how their budgets are allocated. Ask them about the sex exploitation rumors they are associated with.

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Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck." ... I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. ...

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The movement.

A brief and incomplete timeline, with parallel and distinctive plot lines that are not so distinctive and not so parallel.

The movement is now an underground support group for lesbians. The movement is now a house for queer women and trans* persons. The movement is now a feminist queer magazine. The movement is now a feminist collective. The movement is now a non-governmental organization. The movement is now gender-mainstreaming. The movement is now straight-acting. The movement is now reforming the system. The movement is now a secular church accepting all major credit cards. The movement is now the system. The movement is now a cis woman and a straight man drafting grant proposals in a gentrified diner.

Oh, and I hear the gay movement is now a bear, but I'd say it's more like a blood-sucking parasite.

ps. here's the feeling wheel.

pps. ekh.

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Adrienne Rich, "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law."

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Susan Sontag on Love: Illustrated Diary Excerpts. Also see Susan Sontag on Art: Illustrated Diary Excerpts. Illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton.

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Audre Lorde, "Coping"

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"You wanna sit down? Together sometime, with like, with coffee, or something?"

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paradigm shift (credit unknown). 

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What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up 

like a raisin in the sun?  Or fester like a sore--  And then run?  Does it stink like rotten meat?  Or crust and sugar over--  like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags  like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

-- Langston Hughes

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Tracey Emin, People like You Need to Fuck People Like Me (2002).

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On historical analyses of sectarianism in Lebanon

I've been reading Tamara Chalabi's The Shi'is of Jabal Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation-State, 1918-1943. 

In her introduction, Tamara Chalabi says,

The experience of the Shi'i 'Amili community exemplifies the reaction and evolution of a Middle Eastern political minority community adjusting to the new nation state system, making use of the specific conditions it was faced with. The particular nature of the French Mandate politics in Lebanon was based on the distinction of identities within a particular attempt to enhance a specific identity, that of the Maronite Christians. 

...

The general sociopolitical and intellectual culture in Lebanon had always reflected the absence of any active role for the Shi'is. This assessment has been shared by non-Shi'is and Shi'is alike. Justifications for such views varied from references to the presumed political quietism linked to Shi'ism, to a reflection of urban disdain for "backward" peasants, to the Sunni paternalism toward the "lesser" Shi'i. The Shi'i community of Jabal 'Amil in this respect is interesting because it has suffered from inferiority throughout much of the twentieth century. The very word mitwali, the traditional way of referring to Shi'is of Jabal 'Amil, has a severely pejorative connotation as a label of backwardness and lack of "class." In this stereotypical rendering, mitwalis were viewed as incapable of contributing to the nation-building process and even to their own advancement. Such usages, however, have to be understood in the context of the social and cultural stratification that the new Lebanese governing class had engendered. This examination (and others) of internal development in the Lebanese Shi'i domain demonstrates that in fact Shi'i agency and action were at no point absent. The derogatory use of the word fell out of fashion by the 1980s with the emergence of potent Lebanese Shi'i forces and with the integration of the Shi'i middle class and elite into a wider Lebanese context. (5)

No words can describe what I felt when I first read the above passage and the rest of Chalabi's introduction yesterday. It is a history that I had only heard of in passing. For the past year, I've been sitting down with my father and having conversations with him about his memories of his grandparents, and of their lives in Kfarhouna, Jezzine. I've also been searching, at my own pace, for historical accounts that would include class analyses of Shia experiences in particular. My curiosity stems from a disconnect I've been feeling between my own experiences and a communal past that stretches beyond the civil war. I've been trying to understand what lies beneath this semi-secular upbringing that my parents have insisted on throughout these years.

Reading Chalabi has been a stark reminder of why I have so far been incapable of joining projects that call for secularism and/or the reform of the sectarian political system in Lebanon. These projects come with an assumption that we, the people, are all oppressed by them, a class of sectarian ruling warlords. We might be. Yet this is still a superficial understanding of today's governing dynamics. These projects would almost have you believe that, historically, we have all been on an equal footing - that your parents, your grandparents and everyone else's have had similar opportunities. Unless there's a class issue (awkward). I feel that for the sake of fitting us all under one common banner, such projects actually contribute to the erasure of rich communal histories and oppressions. I am not interested in looking at commonalities, or celebrating diversities, but rather find myself compelled to understand how such cultural nationalisms came to manifest themselves at one point or another in history. 

It is a problem when we fail to recognize that the sectarian system is built to favor some religious communities over others. How are we going to truly understand and dismantle today's politics if our advocacy is built on superficial statements that call for secularism and the end of sectarianism alone? To advocate for reform without analyses of the distinct experiences of each ethno-sectarian community (and their experiences of each other) is quite the futile exercise. So few of us are aware of these histories, and this is an issue. I will go ahead and blame our neocolonial schooling system and how we still only learn about World War I and II. But for those who are advocating for some change within the system, examining such histories is just as relevant as exposing today's corruption and abuse of power. 

“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.” -- Assata Shakur.

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A Documentary on Al-Nakba

Watching this Al-Jazeera special series answered so many questions I had on the Palestinian Nakba and the creation of the state of Israel. It's a must-watch for anyone looking for a thorough historical account of the dispossession and conflict. The narrative moves through the 19th century and into the 20th century with the British Mandate in Palestine and comes right up to date in the 21st century. Watch all three episodes here.

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Thinking about Resistance.

I fell asleep last night thinking about young women that have lead operations against Israel back in the 1980s.

I grew up listening to their stories - how Soha Bechara, member of the Lebanese Communist Party, at the age of 21, infiltrated Antoine Lahed's circle and shot him twice in the chest. The bastard survived it and now owns a Lebanese cuisine restaurant in Tel Aviv. She, on the other hand, was detained and tortured for years in an Israeli detention center in my mother's hometown, Khyam. Sana'a Mehaidli, member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, lead an operation in Jezzine, my father's hometown, against an Israeli convoy. She killed two Israeli soldiers and herself in the process. Others were injured. She was 16 years old. One of my oldest friends was named after her. 

Both Sana'a and Soha have described their operations as a duty towards the homeland, the people of the South, and the people of Palestine. A duty to resist invasion.

With Hezbollah highjacking anti-colonial resistance movements from the 90s onwards, and with our booming civil society movements, it looks like there aren't that many legitimate ways to "resist" these days. Hezbollah and Co. are now busy killing Syrian rebels in support of the Al-Assad regime, and civil society is pretty much drowning in funding proposals and making sure everything looks "civil" enough to the West. 

We're now stuck with "non-violent direct actions" - it really is depressing. Non-violence is a tactic. It is one of many. It's not always effective, and from what I've seen lately, it's just another gendered development tool to keep us all quiet and "civilized."

I would have rather lived in the 80s. Anything but now.

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Gurpreet Sehra, "Not Your Native Informant," 2010, Acrylic on Fabric.

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Visit Original Link

The FBI recently declared that Assata Shakur is to be added on the list of Most Wanted Terrorists. Malcolm Shabazz (Malcolm X's grandson) spoke out against FBI threats he had been facing and was killed shortly after.

I remembered Suheir Hammad's poem "My Letter to Anthony (Critical Resistance)" and how she says "i have always loved criminals" - one of those verses that you can never forget. We are all criminals.

 "My Letter to Anthony (Critical Resistance)"

I. this is not a pre paid call this is not a poem this is not a letter written from a woman on the inside this is a

dear nazik aka nymflow-9 aka bronx bomber aka anthony aka 42851-054 5812 hey brother i hope this finds you well and safe

i have carried these words for months through ports and air and i still have a hard time five years later writing you when i travel

but your letters i take with me the graffiti you throw at the end of a dozen handwritten double sided single spaced muslim oil scented legal sheets offer me a home in polyester hotel rooms

you have never been on an airplane

i think of that often when i try to help women place words together into rhymes or lines these women try to make sense of their lives

what makes me different i mean people actually pay you they say to read some poems and talk? shit i got a lot say let someone pay me to talk. fuck that just get me out of here and i’ll talk sing dance shut up if they want

i don’t tell them i get paid just enough for rent rent means a home even if you broke it’s home

we workshop poems and their stories are not original or fictional a woman will tell you every home she has ever inhabited has been broken into starting with her body

i never leave a prison without my head splitting down my spine an iron hand on my lungs

when you call anthony and that woman’s voice says this is a pre paid call press 5 to accept this call i press 5 count to 3 take a deep breath and pray we talk and when the voice interrupts any intimacy we’ve embroidered via phone wires with this call is from a federal prison we pick up the shards of our conversation desperate to finish before the next

II

i have always loved criminals i tell people who try to shame me into silence

with words like television conjugal college libraries they say can you imagine a library in a nigerian a chinese a colombian prison do you know what happens in the world americans are spoiled no idea how lucky we are here

even you often write how your time has offered reflection meditation deepened your faith but you 27 and have 10 years to go nowhere how much deeper you going to get until a system based on money deems you rehabilitated

i have always loved criminals and the way you bomb my tag butterphoenix all across your letters reminds me our affirmation is considered vandalism

i have always loved criminals and not only the thugged out bravado of rap videos and champagne popping hustlers but my father born an arab baby boy on the forced way out of his homeland his mother exiled and pregnant gave birth in a camp

the world pointed and said palestinians do not exist palestinians are roaches palestinians are two legged dogs and israel built jails and weapons and a history based on the absence of a people israel made itself holy and chosen and my existence a crime

so i have always loved criminals it is a love of self and i will not cut off any part of me and place it behind fences and bars and the fake ass belief that there is a difference between the inside and the outside

there is no outside anywhere anymore just where we are and what we do while we are here

and there are people anthony who make a connection between you puerto rican rhyme slayer beautiful man and young girls twisted into sex work and these people nazim they are working to stop prisons from being economically beneficial to depressed communities and these people bronx bomber they imagine a world where money can’t be made off the hurt of the young the poor the colored the sexualized the different and these people nymflow they never heard you spit lyrics and they won’t see the brilliance from these mere words but these people 42851-054 5812 they believe human beings can never be reduced to numbers not in concentration camps or reservations not in refugee camps not in schools and not in jails

these people brother they resist

i will share these words with them and i will in your name and in the names of all who imagine

stay well and safe resist and love suheir

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Notes on patriarchy and feminist spaces.

 Patriarchy is neither a person nor a gender. It is the tense and intimate reproduction of existing dynamics that regulate the shifting relationship between normative gender expressions and privilege. Our value, as human beings, as well as the respect and rewards we earn, often rely on our conformity within this system.

Gender anxiety is the projection of one's own insecurities on different relationships in attempts to continuously affirm one's position within such dynamics. In feminist spaces, acts of gender anxiety often translate themselves into the careful (and sometimes violent) policing of invisible hierarchies - ones that are undertoned when our sense of urgency is focused on the patriarchal beast out there. It is scary to think that this beast can actually lurk within.

We are all complicit, and this needs to be our first premise.

This is why I do not understand those who justify and normalize patriarchy by pointing to women’s complicity with it. The question is rather one of consciousness. It is also why I cannot relate anymore to those who are outraged when a feminist perpetuates oppression. The accompanying silence, however, is making me feel a lot more complicit than usual. I hate it.

We are not talking enough about the insidious process of (re-)victimization. Privileges do shift from one room to another, and in particular rooms, some of us just might not be the victim we sometimes felt we were. Perhaps this is the root of the problem: An inability to discern and articulate growing discrepancies between our discourse, issues we advocate for, and our changing locations, both as persons, and a collective within intersecting (and often contradictory) movements. We are not talking enough about process, that one annoying term most seem to be forgetting.

I’ve been saying for over a year now that I’m having a crisis of hyperconsciousness, in the sense that I am too aware of most issues that our organizing hasn’t been able to contain, and which have been again and again swept under the rug. I do not have many solutions in mind, but I am grateful for all those in my circles that haven’t forgotten, and that have also been mulling over these questions. It is a lot less lonely, and I do believe that exploring all of these issues is a decent way to move forward. It is a balance between understanding the responsibility that comes with getting involved and taking action, and not letting processes of self-reflection become paralyzing.

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The Sarcastic Arabic Mix. C'est le gazon total.