Who is deviant here?
In a recent guest lecture I have been giving at the American University of Beirut about graffiti and street art, I found myself explaining one specific artwork, emphasizing the fact that the word “gay/homosexual” and “deviant” are the same in the Arabic language (Chaz). It said: “Who is deviant? Your mother is deviant. I am only a homosexual.” Someone in the audience immediately replied: “Only…. a homosexual?”
Naturally, the presence of such a narrow-minded person in the audience could have been left undisturbed. However, I decided to take the bull by its horns and I said: “Studies have shown that people with the most homophobic tendencies are the ones who unconsciously gravitate towards homosexuality.”
Later, I received a flood of emails from students attending the lecture and who thanked me for what I had said. But it seemed puzzling for me that it was not the students themselves who stood up against the ignorant words of their friends. They waited for me to do the reaction on behalf of them.
Unfortunately, this is a common trend in Lebanon and in the Middle East. My blog Beirut/NTSC (Never Twice Same City) dares to say out loud what other people only whisper, and I find myself always under both attacks and kudos for saying things that I have said. One of my first remembrances as a journalist was people equating something they read in one of my articles with either ignorance from my part, or a latter addition from the editor. They asked: “Do you even understand what you wrote? Is it someone who inserted this sentence after you turned the article in?” Answering them that what was written and its consequences was something I took responsibility for always ended up shocking them.
In Lebanon, we have a proverb, which I find infuriating: “The hand you cannot break, kiss it and wish for it to be broken.” For me, this proverb symbolizes everything that is vile – and sadly hypocrite – in our society. It invites people, instead of saying their beliefs out loud, to hide them and wait for tide to change.
Unfortunately, the tide changing is normally something due to outside circumstances, and so these people end up once more as passive followers rather than active actors. And unfortunately, they cannot take pride because it was a situation where their voice was not the agent of change in it.
In the meantime, I keep getting “anonymous” comments in reply to my daring blog posts, and to my chagrin, these people do not leave any link for them to be contacted back, as if simply saying things anonymously is the worst of evils when it comes to expressing their minds. But at least, there seems to be a tendency these days for them to express their minds…. Even if, right now, it still happens anonymously.
Tarek Chemalyjournalist and university lecturer
Beirut, Lebanon
