Queer exceptionalism and exclusion: Cosmopolitanism and inequalities in ‘gay-friendly’ Beirut

Abstract

This article examines how LGBTQ individuals in Beirut articulate discourses of progress, modernity, and exceptionalism in light of the regional geopolitical situation. While transnational discourses portray Beirut as an open and cosmopolitan city in the Arab World, the study focuses on how LGBTQ individuals engage with and negotiate these discourses in their everyday lives. The author examines the gap between discourses of Beiruti openness and exceptionalism, and the realities of exclusion experienced by LGBTQ individuals in Beirut. Focusing on unequal access to space, the author asks, for whom is Beirut cosmopolitan and gay-friendly? Drawing on ethnographic observations and 20 life-history interviews with LGBTQ individuals in Beirut, the author finds that LGBTQ individuals in Beirut create relational understandings of modernity and cosmopolitanism that situate Beirut in relation to other Arab cities, rather than just Euro-American cities. In addition, gender normativity and class shape LGBTQ individuals’ access to several types of spaces. Finally, it is suggested that scholars must be attentive to celebratory discourses of exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism of places, and conceptualize them as relational and contextual designations which obscure inequalities that characterize those places.

World Citizens on the Periphery: Threat and Identification with Global Society

“…Mount Lebanon has a reputation for exceptional openness to the outside world, but many local and outside observers consider the narrative of a globally oriented Greater Beirut to be a myth propagated by political elites. They point out that most of its are decidedly local in their day-to-day concerns, experiences, and social networks(Arzūnī 2012; Dāgher 2012; Fregonese 2012;Moussawi 2017;Seidman 2012). Moreover, Mount Lebanon is in many ways broadly representative of the Lebanese population as a whole.…”

Introduction to special issue “Geographies of Sexualities”

“…The process of creating placebased distinctions that are intertwined with meanings about sexuality occur at a global level insofar as the West and the Global North are seen as more progressive and more conducive for the expression of same-sex sexualities and LGBTQ lives compared to the East and the Global South (Brown, Browne, Elmhirst, & Hutta, 2010;Puar, Rushbrook, & Schein, 2003;Puri, 2016;Swarr & Nagar, 2004;Wilson, 2006). Even within regions generally understood as less embracing of same-sex sexualities, distinctions are made such that certain cities or countries are understood in comparison to others as better spaces for LGBTQ people; for instance, Prague in the Czech Republic within Central and Eastern Europe (Nedb alkov a, 2016), Taipei in Taiwan within Asia (Brainer, 2019), Cape Town in South Africa (Oswin, 2005), and Beirut in Lebanon within the Middle East (Moussawi, 2018). Likewise, the distinctions made between urban and rural spaces continue to matter to narratives about sexuality insofar as rural areas are seen as inhospitable to LGBTQ lives in contrast to cities (Abraham, 2009;Halberstam, 2005;Myrdahel, 2016;Waitt & Gorman-Murray, 2011;Weston, 1995).…”

“…For instance, work focused on tourism campaigns that market global LGBTQ urban meccas asserts that such efforts turn those spaces into commodities to be consumed; these scholars then question how global patterns of inequality shape who has the ability to consume the commodities (Markwell, 2002;Puar, 2002;Rushbrook, 2002). Similarly, other work argues that the interpretation of certain cities as global LGBTQ meccas can obscure the struggles that LGBTQ people may experience within those cities (Markwell, 2002;Moussawi, 2018). Scholars have also addressed how attempts to create a shared global queer identity obscure the differences that exist across regions and between countries with regard to expressions, experiences, and articulations of same-sex sexualities (Hoad, 2007;Swarr, 2012).…”

Baumann, H; Kanafani, S; (2020) Vulnerability and Public Services in the Lebanese Context of Mass Displacement: a Literature Review.

“…('where is the state?') or mafee dawla ('there is no state'), as noted by multiple authors (Nucho, 2016: 1-2, 127;Obeid, 2014;Obeid, 2015: 435; see also Mouawad & Baumann, 2017). Such literature discusses the claims, especially found in policy discourse, that government institutions are incapable of responding adequately to the infrastructural and service needs of arriving refugees.…”

“…Literature that takes the state seriously in Lebanon notes the so-called 'resilience' or durability of the or selectivity of public service provision (Mouawad & Baumann, 2017), or in the spatialisation of sovereignty through the observation of daily practices in public spaces, for instance where the state governs by either extraction or neglect (Saksouk-Sasso, 2015). In her work on Hay al-Krad, the ghetto where Sunni Kurdish migrants settled upon their arrival from Turkey in the 1920s, Mazraani shows how citizen status becomes a shield against socio-economic and political marginality for this community that has historically been subject to ethnic and class stigma.…”