i got a bone to pick with Rachel Reid and her portrayal of Fabian Salah.
while it’s entirely possible to write characters that aren’t white, male, wealthy or cishet without particularly profound or complex relationships to their intersectional identities - and like, it would be nice if not every story made a big deal out of not being white, male, wealthy or cishet - Fabian's characterization suffers greatly at the hand of Reid's ignorance.
in terms of queer Arab representation, he's pretty one-note. Reid has him eating falafel at some point, but offers nothing to really signify him as specifically Lebanese. and with only a single, brief mention of his Lebanese heritage in the entire book, Reid leaves Fabian little room for any concrete thoughts about how his Arabness is intertwined with his queerness. his heritage has virtually no cultural bearing on his character and is mainly made relevant to the story as it pertains to his appearance.
in other words, he is not situated in his Arabness. he is gay and femme before he is ever Lebanese.
queerness is widely thought of as antithetical to Arab identity, both in mainstream Western and Arab spaces. typical anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric within the Arab world frames queerness as a disgrace, something foreign that belongs in the West and has no place in Arab spaces. and i can't count how many times i've read and heard Westerners' favorite holier-than-thou claim that i should stay away from my family's home country, that they kill people like me for being queer and trans.
as if the West is some kind of safe haven for queer folks. as if hidden behind that declaration isn't a thinly veiled conviction left over from the War on Terror that Arabs are all ruthless terrorists and deserve the destruction the West has brought to our land and people. as if there isn't a deep and rich history of queer culture, community and resistance throughout the Arab world. as if governments are entirely representative of the people they govern. as if the institutionalization of homophobic and transphobic policies in Arab countries aren't, in large part, the direct legacy of Western imperialism. as if queer Arabs don't exist (which, hi. hello. yes, we fucking do.).
so let me be clear: my issue with Fabian is not that he is femme, gay and Arab. my issue is not with his unapologetic confidence in his queerness and sexuality. queerness and sexuality are not antithetical to Arab culture, heritage or identity. femme gay Arab men do exist in real life and have for centuries, long before Europe ever decided we were ripe for the taking. and men like Fabian deserve compassionate, three-dimensional representation.
my issue with Fabian is that Rachel Reid is apparently incapable of writing him as a femme gay Arab without simultaneously watering down and fetishizing each of those traits. and her portrayal of them is neither entirely compassionate nor three-dimensional. nor is it done with much regard to how they interact with one another.
because here's the thing. Fabian is really only femme and Lebanese insofar as it serves Reid's narrative. yes, he is the love interest in a gay hockey romance, of course he's going to be written in a way that illustrates the other main protagonist's attraction to him. but let's break down how that plays into his racialization.
Fabian's femininity is described as sensual, sophisticated and glamorous. his figure, clothes, makeup, skin tone and long lashes are described with deliberately erotic language and are positioned as traits that make Fabian "effortlessly sexy." even when he dances, something that “comes naturally to him”, it’s only used narratively as a precursor to sex.
on the surface, that doesn't seem so bad. these are all generally framed as positive traits. but ultimately, these traits primarily serve to thematically other Fabian as someone who embodies the things that Ryan doesn't have easy access to in the environments he inhabits. and descriptions of him from both Ryan and other characters have roots in the historical hypersexualization of Brown femmes.
take for example, belly dancing (the history of which i am about to oversimplify quite a bit for the sake of brevity).
from its beginnings, belly dancing in its many forms across the SWANA region has been practiced as an expression of feminine autonomy and a celebration in reverence of life. it is often practiced now at family celebrations and is widely considered a rite of passage for young women. over time, it has come to be understood as more of a performance of sexuality, thought of as immoral and undignified, influenced in no small part by the proliferation of the Abrahamic religions and Western imperialism. even today, though it is still widely practiced within and outside of its original context, dancers face heavy scrutiny and even persecution for their work.
as i've brought up before in my thoughts on Klinger from M*A*S*H, beyond the Arab world, the dance has been used by orientalists to delegitimize Arab femininity and frame it as an overtly sexual, backward and perverted practice. within this framework, it becomes exoticized, something entirely unknown to Western notions of gender and femininity, both forbidden in and wholly offensive to Western society. what Western audiences see has nothing to do with the intent and cultural significance behind the practice. instead, they see a suggestive performance for male entertainment and sexual gratification. furthermore, the fetishization of the dance is very much in line with the wider fetishization of the Arab world Edward Said describes in Orientalism: "the Orient was a place where one could look for sexual experience unobtainable in Europe." belly dancing is salacious and seductive to a Western male audience because of what it isn't.
likewise, Reid treats Fabian's femininity as something inherently erotic and enticing to his inexperienced white partner, a temptation made illicit by its queerness and perceived exoticism. Fabian's femininity and Arab heritage then become more of a sexually desirable aesthetic than defining pieces of his intersectional identity. more decoration than anything of substance to his character.
with all that in mind, i’m not convinced that Tough Guy is the subversive commentary on Western gender roles it tries to be. Fabian's narrative importance is as a manifestation of the things Western patriarchal society denies white, cis queer men. he is made exotic just by existing so completely outside of the realm of hockey, this sport that defines Ryan's both life and livelihood. he is everything Ryan literally cannot afford to indulge in.
and don't get me wrong. exploration of the taboo is a prominent and important theme within queer literature. but the crux of all these issues is that Fabian isn't really allowed to grow beyond that. he is first othered mainly in order to give his white love interest something to explore within himself. and Fabian's own character arc largely revolves around that white love interest's struggles with identity and anxiety. without much situatedness in his own identity, Fabian isn't allowed to grow beyond being both this sexual awakening and a significant source of support for Ryan. and i think that does a disservice to them both.
all of which is particularly frustrating considering that, again, Reid's portrayal of Fabian is rooted far more in her own orientalist biases than in the inclusion of queer Arab Canadians' actual experiences. as i said before, outside of what we know of his family, there is nothing on the page about what it meant for Fabian to grow up queer, femme and Lebanese in a predominantly white Canadian city. no mention of the prominent Arab enclaves in cities like Halifax, Toronto and Montréal. no exploration of how his family's obsession with a predominantly white sport could be linked with external pressures to assimilate or of how their confusion and disappointment in him might be indicative of internalized racism.
all in all, the tragedy of Reid's portrayal is that Fabian's identity actually makes him a really compelling character. it would have been interesting to explore how Fabian views his femininity in relation to his Lebanese heritage. how does he grapple with contradictory narratives around queerness and Arabness as someone whose identity is so at odds with both his family's and mainstream Western conceptions of gender, race and sexuality? do he and his family speak any dialect of Arabic? where do his family's feelings about his chosen profession actually stem from? his family is kind of nebulously Christian (at least it seems that way) - do they come from a Maronite lineage (who make up a significant portion of the diaspora)? do they make or buy ka'ak for Easter? how does his Christianity tie into all this? what thoughts does he have about primarily only having access to predominantly white queer spaces? has he been able to find queer Arab spaces?
fuck it - it could be as simple as what's his favorite Lebanese dish? even if his parents aren't big on cooking, food is still a significant part of the diasporic Arab experience.
by avoiding any attempts at a more complex, in-depth portrayal of her queer Arab character, Reid leaves Fabian with barely anything to anchor himself in his identity besides her own biases and misconceptions. i can understand wanting to steer away from speaking for experiences that aren't your own, but what she does do with Fabian's character is harmful and leaves much to be desired.
and if you don't feel equipped to do a particular experience justice, maybe then the move isn't to just go ahead with it anyway. maybe the move is to examine your own biases and do some honest research.
speaking of research, for more detailed accounts of the history of belly dancing, i recommend Rosina-Fawzia al-Rawi's Grandmother's Secrets and Sara Green's video "How Belly Dancing Became 'Shameful'".
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