In the past, binary, and mostly Eurocentric frameworks divided gendered and sexed Arab worlds into domestic vs. public realms, or culturally sanctioned vs. taboo practices and desires. Scholars of Arab communities continue to engage with and transform the discourses of gender and sexuality, and demonstrate the multiple intersections of the public, private, sanctioned and transgressive. This multidisciplinary panel seeks to contribute to a critical and transformative discourse of gender and sexuality by examining representations of gendered and sexualized public places in and beyond the Middle East.
When the state deliberately used sexual transgressions in order to intimidate protesters in public squares, we also witnessed push back from protesters, social networks, and artists. A blue bra became a symbol of a woman's right to her body, a body that the state must not violate. On the other hand, sexual transgressions, as in the case of the embrace of non-hetero-normative identities, can create spaces for empowerment and resistance. What is seen as transgressive has both the potential for pleasure and affirmation, or oppression and denial, and not always in predictable ways. This panel addresses questions including: Which public spaces become gendered and sexualized, and in what way? Who assumes the right to speak about sex and gender, and what terms and discourses do they chose? What are the effects of these discourses on actual bodies and body politics?
One paper examines Beirut graffiti that engages with rape, sexual harassment/sexism, and homosexuality and contends that young graffiti writers have expanded the public discourse on the street from one that venerates sectarian leaders and martyrs to one that engenders discussions of gender and sexual politics. Another paper examines the aftermath of wide-spread sexual assault, allegedly committed by organized gangs of North African men in a public plaza in Cologne on New Year's Eve of 2015. Initial narratives about hyper-sexualized Arab men as well as proper behavior of German women led to debates about ways sex and sexuality may be portrayed and discussed in and across German and migrant communities. A third paper explores themes of sexuality, single motherhood, and sexual harassment via film screenings and theater performances in Casablanca, paying attention to audience reception. A fourth paper analyzes Ghayeb, an Iraqi novel, and argues that the novel's portrayal of the systematic disabling and poisoning of women's bodies mirrors the destruction of public and private spaces in Baghdad.
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Kimberly Canuette Grimaldi
The threat of sexual violence or public revelation of sexual transgression is often used to coerce and control populations. In times of war, especially with a powerful aggressor, the state maintains its power over its own population through constant surveillance and immediate show of force. Betool Khedairi’s 2003 novel, Ghayeb or Absent depicts a young woman living, working, and surviving in Baghdad during “Operation Desert Fox” in 1998. At its most apparent, this is a novel about the atrocities of foreign bombardments of Iraq but it also explores state corruption within Iraq and the violation of the female body. This paper analyzes the interactions between the state and three of the many female characters in the novel. These interactions are insidious, cancerous even, and violate the sanctity of the home and body. The consequences of these violations are writ large on bodies of the women in the novel, leaving them sick, deformed, and traumatized.
This paper argues that the systematic disabling and poisoning of the women’s bodies in the novel mirrors the destruction and poisoning of both private and public spaces in Baghdad. The apartment building that these women inhabit becomes a metaphor for the violated woman. Missiles penetrate its shell and spies infiltrate and uncover its residents’ secrets. The main character, Dalal suffers from a facial deformity as a result of a stroke. Though she believes she has found a relationship built on desire and affirmation in spite of her disfigurement, she soon learns that her partner is a spy. Ilham, a nurse, contracts cancer from her exposure to depleted uranium shells and turns to corruption and the black market selling of human organs to finance her care. She too is arrested after her business partner and lover betrays her. Umm Mazin, unable to leave her home due to the trauma of shelling, is arrested for selling spells and charms and forced into the street. She too is separated from her assistant and caretaker, also a woman, who has been the one permanent fixture in her life. The lives of the three women in the novel act as case studies in violation and corruption of romantic love and sexuality. The state, seeking to control its population, inserts itself into the private relationships of its people, placing spies in their beds and demanding that lovers betray each other.
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Dr. Jess Newman
This paper explores the tensions that surround public discussions of sexuality in Morocco through ethnographic analysis of film screenings and theater productions in Casablanca, Morocco. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the paper considers how the location and audience profiles at different events influence the reception of different productions. Specifically, this paper addresses a screening of the documentaries Bastards (dir. Deborah Perkin 2014) and Breaking the Silence Around Street Harassment: Moroccans Speak Out! (Global Girl Media 2013) and a production of Naïma Zitan’s (2012) Dialy.
The paper interrogates how audience members negotiated different understandings of gender and sexuality through their participation in question and answer sessions or discussions. By paying close attention to the language and behavior of audience members and the content of the productions themselves, this paper explores how different events attempted to foster spaces for frank discussions about single motherhood, street harassment, and sexuality.
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Dr. Lucia Volk
As Germans were celebrating New Year’s Eve in public plazas across the country in 2015, groups of men sexually assaulted women, setting off one of the fiercest public debates on sexuality and gender in recent German history. German media was initially attacked for not reporting accusations of sexual transgression in Cologne, accused of shielding the alleged perpetrators, North African migrants, from blame. At the same time, German women were accused of careless behavior. As time went on, the debate shifted, as reports of sexual assault arrived from other New Year’s Eve celebrations, and as it became clear that North African men were not the only alleged perpetrators.
German feminist organizations shifted discussion from demands for limiting migration to demands for a strengthening of sexual assault legislation, which was debated and passed in the summer of 2016. Media began debating responsible coverage of migrants and migration issues amidst heightened sensitivities over Germany’s acceptance of an unprecedented number of refugees, predominantly from Syria. The Ministry of the Interior debated more effective security measures without resorting to racial profiling. Migrant and feminist organizations debated proper language to debate gender and sexuality in culturally sensitive ways, both among migrants and Germans. A multi-cultural and multi-lingual online sex education program went online, promoting a discourse of sex and sexuality as part of a public health campaign.
Based on a reading of news coverage, online material by migrant advocacy organizations, migrant opponents, and the government, as well as interviews conducted in Germany, this paper shows a reframing of migration politics in public debates in Germany in the first half of 2016. As cultural difference became more narrowly defined as gendered difference, government agencies argued more forcefully that they needed to protect both women and the nation. As a result, women’s groups who fought for more rights for women made tangible gains, but only at the expense of further restrictions of migrants’ rights.
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During the Lebanese Civil War, Beirut’s visual culture was dominated by posters of political leaders and martyrs, sectarian slogans, and other territorial and terrorizing visual markers as evidenced by studies including Maria Chakhtoura’s La Guerre des Graffiti and Zeina Maasri’s Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War. In the past decade and a half, however, Beirut’s postwar public spaces have been transformed at the hands of both anonymous pedestrians and famous street artists. Calligraffiti murals commemorating (male and female) singers and poets, stencils advocating for social justice, and rushed scrawls proclaiming non-normative sexual identities, now intersect with warlike visual markers and compete with them in the construction and interpretation of space. Such new street artifacts engage with various discourses, including gender and sexuality, in ways that did not exist during the civil war era. Multilingual scrawls such as “Gay is OK,” “fight rape,” and “kissi mish msabbi” (my vagina is not a swearword) and stencils of the “the lady in the blue bra” occupy the city’s walls, thus transforming the public sphere into a polyphonous platform for articulating the evolving concerns and commitments of Lebanon’s youth, beyond the framework of sectarian politics. Engaging with studies of visual culture, gender and sexuality, and spatial theory, this presentation offers a discourse analysis of gender-centered graffiti and street art present in Beirut. I argue that while sectarian militias and their divisive markings still occupy much of Beirut’s public spaces, new civilian actors are staking claim to the city and engraving their aspirations on the walls, including their desires for gender justice and civil society. Such graffiti and street art seeks to expand the discourse on the street from one that venerates political leaders and exacerbates sectarian tensions to one that engages with a number of social issues including homophobia, sexism and gender violence.
