Women's Rights Club Holds Conference on Gender and Sexuality

The AUB Women's Rights Club (WRC) concluded its activities this year with a two-day conference on gender and sexuality in Lebanon and the Arab world. The first day of the conference, May 17, featured a panel discussion in West Hall, which marked the International Day Against Homophobia. Guest speakers Iman Al Ghafari, assistant professor of English at Tishreen University in Syria, and Jared McCormick, a master's candidate at the AUB Center of American and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES), focused on the issue of gay rights in relation to women's rights and lesbians' rights.

In discussing the situation of gay men and women in Lebanon and the Arab world, references were made to Joseph Massad's essay, "Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World," and to Urvashi Vaid's "Divided We Stand," from his book Virtual Equality. Finally, as an example of sexism and racism, the panel cited the murder of Sakia Gunn, a fifteen-year-old African-American lesbian whose untimely death passed almost unnoticed, as compared to the attention given to the equally brutal murder of Mathew Shepard, a white college-educated American gay male. This was to highlight how little attention is given to abused homosexuals who are both non-white and female.

The second day of the conference featured a lecture given by the women's rights activist, Rasha Moumneh. Her lecture, entitled "Women's Rights, Homosexual Rights, and the Law," was sponsored in collaboration with Helem, the Lebanese non-governmental organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights. Moumneh reiterated several of the themes discussed the previous day; namely, the precedence taken in the struggle for gay men's rights over that for lesbians' rights. She referred to this new kind of discrimination as "the birth of gay fascism" and referred to the double discrimination Lebanese lesbians face in their exchanges with mainstream women's rights NGOs in Lebanon. Helem's managing director, George Kazzi, responded that the women's supposed lack of involvement with Helem is not contingent on gender issues or power dynamics, but rather on the lack of public visibility of the women themselves.

Moumneh stressed that all axes of oppression, both homo and heterosexual, are interconnected and thus need to be holistically dissolved by the community as a whole. She said that in igniting discourse about homosexuality in the wider public sphere of Lebanon and, by extension, the Arab world, a great deal more work and activism is still needed. Moumneh concluded with a discussion of a variety of gay-related issues of concern in Lebanon, among them support of the international community, the effects of globalization on gay culture, homophobia and identity politics, and the changing attitudes of people toward the homosexual community.