This paper examines the ways in which Arab-Israeli citizens are facing a crisis of masculinity due to their position within the matrix of the Arab-Israeli conflict. While early work on feminist issues has focused on the subordination of women to men within society, and ways in which that should be challenged, later works have challenged the very notion of categories such as men and women having any true meaning (Butler, 1990). Extending this observation, it has been argued that it makes little sense to talk of a singular masculinity. Rather, at any given moment, there exists a multiplicity of masculinities, which are said to be in competition. Based on a careful examination of secondary and literary sources, this paper is situated within an interpretivist framework of research that places an emphasis on language and other symbolic systems as means of understanding societies and cultures. Relying on Homi Bhabha's concept of the 'Third Space' and the concept of hegemonic masculinity first developed by R.W. Connell, I argue that Arab citizens of Israel find themselves 'trapped' between two dominant masculine cultures, the Israeli and Palestinian, within neither of which they enjoy full inclusion or exclusion. Within these societies, three coexisting scripts of hegemonic masculinity emerge: (1) the Soldier; (2) the Martyr/Resistance Fighter; (3) the Provider. Arab-Israelis are barred from accessing all three of them. Within the dominant Israeli society, they are granted certain rights and opportunities as citizens of the state, while their non-Jewish and Palestinian/Arab status structurally excludes them from the nation and thereby attaining the hegemonic masculine script of the Soldier. With regards to the larger Palestinian society, where the image of the fighter and fida'i provide the most dominant image of masculinity, Arab-Israelis are alienated by their perceived membership within the Israeli state and their virtual inability to violently oppose the occupation. Moreover, due to the increased role of women in the labor force and the effects of welfare state institutions on the ability of women to provide for themselves, Arab-Israeli men are finding their role as Provider being undermined. Finally, this paper will explore emerging alternative and competing masculine scripts within the Arab-Israeli population in response to this crisis.

In 2007, the Iranian President Ahmadinejad declared that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Public figures in other countries in the region, including Egypt and Turkey, made similar comments. In contrast to this rhetoric of denial, numerous Internet sites bear witness to the existence of queer people in the Middle East. In this presentation, I address this contradiction by focusing on the politics of visibility and queer uses of digital media. I argue that queer uses of digital media shed light on local queer practices of strategic visibility and thus contextualize the advantages, as well as drawbacks, of digital media for queer agency and subjectivity in the region. The internationalization of LGBT rights and lesbian and gay identities contest our monolithic conception of visibility, and its manifestations globally require us to consider it in the plural as "practices of visibility." Current scholarly debates have already engaged queer visibility: Massad (2007) describes the insistence in international gay rights discourse on visibility as "incitement to discourse" and criticizes it for threatening the existence of same-sex sexual practices outside the discourse, while Binnie (2004) and Habib (2009) argue that researchers render the emerging agency of local queer populations visible. The Internet adds another layer of complexity to these discussions: since its inception, the Internet has been a tool of empowerment for many queer groups in the Middle East; however, the anonymity and invisibility that renders the Internet an effective organizing tool can also further bolster invisibility and silencing, which seem to be part and parcel of queer experience in a region that has historically overlooked same-sex contact in privacy, while privileging heterosexuality through family and kinship ties in the public domain. Regarding visibility as potentially, but not always, agency-laden, this presentation will identify two contrasting instances of queer visibility, one entrenched, the other emergent: the "travesti" (Turkish transliteration of "transvestite") as an embattled mainstream queer subject in Turkey versus the Internet-mediated negotiation of visibility by Legato, an intercollegiate Lesbian and Gay Association, which uses the Internet to recruit and train student activists on college campuses. Drawing on my interviews, as well as analysis of Legato website and mailing list, I will demonstrate that the Internet's role in queer agency and subjectivity is twofold: it has been instrumental in coming out, but it has also become a "digital closet."

The development of the feminist movement in the Mashriq during the last century is reflected artistically by some contemporary Arab women authors who deploy literature as a political instrument. Besides their feminist calls for gender equality and social transformation, these writers let a daring cry for women's liberation in relation to national liberation. Furthermore, they gradually moved away from the typical representations of women as subverted and segregated to portraying women as active participants in social and national movements while addressing the status of other sexual and ethnic minorities. Hence, times of national crises bring another dimension to the literary feminist discourse in the Mashriq: the deconstruction of the social order and traditional gender roles allow these women authors to gradually break through their subordinate status and express their feminist consciousness. Likewise, times of war provide an outlet for other sexual minorities, that is, homosexuals. On this topic, Huda Barakat (b. 1952), a contemporary Lebanese woman novelist, utilises the figure of gay men to explore the dynamics between masculinities and femininities against the backdrop of the Lebanese civil war. Barakat, in "The Stone of Laughter" (1994), masterfully examines how women and gay men--as subordinate genders--react to, grow within, and rebel against other forms of 'hegemonic masculinity' (to borrow Connell's term) during times of war. This paper investigates the construction of gender identity during the Lebanese civil war through a detailed literary analysis of Barakat's "The Stone of Laughter". It examines the literary representations of women and gay men in order to test feminist critique and the manipulation of homosexuality to illustrate feminist calls in disguise. It explores the intertwining representation of both women and gay men as sexual minorities against the unravelling Lebanese social and national structure. Subsequently, this paper argues that forms of subordinate masculinities and femininities can be challenged, deconstructed, and reconstructed during national crises. Accordingly, it suggests that, during times of war, the emerging feminist consciousness embraces other subverted sexual minorities and simultaneously represents their struggle against predominant forms of sexuality.

Meem--an organization for queer women and transgender persons in Lebanon--published the book Bareed Mista3jil (Urgent Mail) in 2009.1 With a new focal point on Arab women, which Meem groups under the umbrella of "queer," we hear the stories of people who are absent in historical discussions of homoeroticism. While the forty-one narratives in Bareed Mista3jil address a number of themes such as family, emigration, and activism, this paper focuses on the intersections of religion and class with sexuality. In the metanarrative of this book, Meem presents religion, tradition and conservatism outside of the queer public space that this organization creates and allows for; however, as a book, Bareed Mista3jil shows the complexity and diversity of people's embodiment of their sexualities and gender identities. For example, in Bareed Mista3jil there are stories about some women who are more challenged as pious individuals by their being part of a queer public space than they are by their own families. Likewise, the narratives of lower and working class women show that the queer public sphere in Beirut is both a place of immense support and a source of intolerance. The tension between the metanarrative and the multiple and complex stories allows us to address the challenge of talking about homoerotic desire in the context of the Middle East. In this paper I use the stories of queer women and transgender persons in Lebanon to talk back to hegemonic understandings of homosexuality, challenge presumptions about the incompatability of piety and (homo)sexuality, and confront notions of who and what spheres are capable of being tolerant of different expressions of sexuality and gender identity. While Bareed Mista3jil is not an ethnography, in many ways I use the narratives to do anthropological work and complicate understandings of what it means to be a queer subject in Lebanon. Using this text as "both [a] source for and object of analysis"2--the forty-one narratives in Bareed Mista3jil become the informants of an ethnography about queer identities in Lebanon. 1 Meem, Bareed Mista3jil, (Beirut, Lebanon: Meem, 2009). 2 Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society, (California: University of California Press, 1992), 5.