In Meem we are often asked why we never do high profile media work? Since we are so progressive and we are so comfortable with our gender and sexual identity, why don’t we just go on TV and say it out loud, if we want to reach out to each and every Queer and Trans in Lebanon? And trust me their argument is quite strong, we are not ashamed of who we are, we love our identity, we love being who we are. Homosexuality is not the problem, Homophobia is. God loves us, it’s bigot and hypocrites that God despises. But we don’t want to go public, we don’t want to reveal the names of Members. Why? Because when anyone comes to Meem, it is not advocacy that s/he looks for, it is support. Some people choose to remain in the closet for the rest of their lives and that is their choice and their decision. It’s really cool to go down in the streets and to scream: Civil Rights or Civil War… hm, actually that wouldn’t sound so cool, but I am sure we can find some slogan that makes sense to our society and to our community. It’s really exciting! I personally can’t wait for the day when I would stand in the Lebanese parliament and ask all those men (and wives/sisters/daughters of men) a few questions. I can’t wait to ask them why I am still not a citizen just because I happen to have a vagina? Why do I need a man to give my children a last name when I already have one? Why is it that society would much rather see two men shooting each other instead of seeing two loving each other? Why is it that my gender is decided by a doctor just by looking at me naked? And I would like to ask them why my society is segregated according to something as superficial as sexes? Why do I have to choose which bathroom to go to, what wardrobe to wear, where do I get to sit in a car? So many questions I would like to ask them while looking them straight in the eyes and see them baffle and have nothing to answer, or giving me answers that wouldn’t convince anyone. But the truth remains that if I am ready others or not, if my parents would accept me others wouldn’t accept their queer kids, some would much rather see their daughters dead and never see them changing their gender. And we tend to under-estimate how much we need or want our parents to love us and accept us. We like to tell ourselves inno eh ibloune ibloune, ma ibloune yostoflo. But in the end of the day, we love our parents, we really and truly just want them to love us. We don’t want our mothers to cry and we don’t want our fathers to be sad. It’s not because we don’t conform to social standards that we will not love our parents. It hurts us when they don’t accept us and sometimes, it is really much better if we wait till we are ready to risk it all and come out to them. A lot of people (including LGBTQs) take the coming out process lightly; they think that it’s easy. But it’s not, the long term effect of social rejection can range from depression to physical illness. And it all makes you wonder, is it always worth it?

I was reading the other day this article, it’s mainly statistics conducted on young people which showed a higher percentage of teenage pregnancies among the gay population. Shocking, no? I mean why would gays and lesbians want to have sex with the opposite sex, which is the only way to get an unwanted pregnancy? It must be that homosexuals are not really homosexuals as they claim, it must be that they became homosexuals because they had a bad experience with the opposite sex (e.g. an unwanted pregnancy). Those who never had a pregnancy case must’ve had another sort of bad experience.
Well, I doubt it. No not because I never had bad experiences with men. I mean I had bad experiences with men but then again almost every woman I know has had at least one horribly bad experience with men; that was not enough to turn almost every woman I know into a Lesbian, hell even I am not a Lesbian.
But read the article carefully, the scientist himself/herself gives you a hint to where to look for the answer. Homosexuals seek heterosexual sex to cover up for the fact that they are homosexuals. Other explanations could be given, but the need to hide your homosexuality is enough to get you in trouble.
Which takes us to the real problem behind this unhealthy phenomenon, homophobia. You see as Meems we never recommend a coming out to anyone. It is dangerous to do so. Even if you are accidently outed and therefore predict problems, deny it! Say it is not true and do whatever it takes to convince others that you are not gay! Hypocrite you may think but this is often less dangerous than facing homophobic parents.
Keep in mind people, heal homophobia not homosexuality. Homosexuality is healthy biodiversity, homophobia is a dangerous form of xenophobia. Just as being black is not an illness, racism is. The Jews were not the problem, Hitler was.
What usually happens with sexual minorities like ours is that we are not born into our minorities, black people are born from black families, now they may be the only black family but at least they have their parents that are like them. And the same is for Jews for example. But you can be a homosexual born from heterosexual parents. In that case you will feel very alienated, you feel that you are alone, and that you are probably wrong, something must be wrong with you. And invisibility weighs heavily on you, you realize that others will not understand. If others know, they will react negatively, they might look at you differently, but they might also mock you or physically attack you. If you work, you may lose your job. So you better not be outed!
This is particularly the case when you are still in school, for many reasons:

School environments are the most obvious examples of peer pressure and conformism pressure. School regulations, or the fact that the kid’s life is centered on his school, the spirit of competition, the idea that anything else than your school is negligible once compared to your school performance… all these factors contribute to making your school experience a really difficult one if you don’t conform to the majority.

You cannot control your school environment, you may be totally convinced that your homosexuality does not influence your normalcy (which is rare but still) you are forced to be in an environment strongly influenced by parental authority (LBGTs trying to raise awareness in schools are first and foremost scared of parental disapproval and fury, even when the legislation is favorable).
As a result, please don’t be gay in school, unless you live in some areas of Belgium where they like homosexuals. There is like this unspoken law that says that you cannot be gay in school, very few people escape its tyranny.

This is why this study is so relevant to our work in Meem. You see, we painfully lack studies on queer issues in the Middle East. Turning to other regions for material can help, but it has its limitations, if they survey homosexual adults then the situation they live in is different than the situation of adults that live here in Lebanon. Unfortunately, school environments are still a bit closer to our situation right now in the Middle East. Plus, this study emphasized the results of homophobia, instead of trying to explain homosexuality. I honestly don’t care what made me queer, what I care about is how I am treated because of my homosexuality. And this study, just like many others, proves, that homophobia kills, thus the urgency of dealing with it. The world didn’t start admitting the existence of Gay Men in the States until the HIV epidemic, and this is only one of the problems that the homophobia imposes on us.

The homophobic society we live in uses the results of its homophobia to prove that we are sick leeches that need to be dealt with at all cost. And that is one of the reasons why we work to break the Lesbian stigma. We don’t smoke because we sleep with women, we don’t do drugs, we don’t cut our veins, we don’t abuse our lovers because we sleep with women and we don’t do any of it because we have a problem with our gender identity. No. We suffer all these problems because of homophobia. Because we are not accepted, not even from those that we need to accept us, we suffer all this because our own parents would much rather see us dead than see us for who we really are, because our life-long friends would stop wanting our friendship because they fear us as predators.

To change all that, in ourselves and in others, we wish to change things. We want you to see our true colors, and love us because or in spite of them. Is that too much to ask for?

There were two girls, living apart
Once they met, and the flame burnt their heart
This was the apple, this was the sin
And the whole world dumped them in a bin

God is Love, and Love was their blame
They had to pretend and become with no name
To hide themselves from the wolves of society
That made hunting these girls their best specialty

Condemned for loving one another
They lost father and mother
No friends, no support, no understanding
And these two lovers were left with nothing

Criminals…CONVICTS
Being themselves caused them to pay through their nose
But instead of giving up their love, they chose to live in conflicts
Carry on, and make out of their love a prose

The day will come when the world will see
That their Apple is nothing but the fact of what they can really be.





~ Silent Soul on 04/09/2008

I always keep fresh basil between my diaries pages, I wish you can smell it! It’s the essence of memories and time.

You know, I miss going to bed without worrying about tomorrow! For just one night, one day not to worry about surviving tomorrow and another day of war.

Basil leaf © 2007 by brr2

I wish somebody told me when I was young, that life can wait. I wouldn’t have rushed into growing up. It’s true what they say, when we are young we can’t wait till we grow up, but then again when we are raging wars towards life and fighting our way in, sometimes we just want to stop, drop everything and go play.







But with what, play with what? Dreams?

And here if I may quote miss Tori Amos: “ So many dreams on shelf” and all what is between your hand is your personal profile declaring, in every page, You as a Failure.

The worst thing after disappointing the people you love; is disappointing yourself.

And I did…..

Not so hard to figure out, not so hard to measure.

You know how hard it is to wake up and get out of bed when you know you have nothing to do, and you know that whether you got out of bed or not, nothing in the world would be missing you, not even you. You are just a lame addition to the world. A perfect waste of energy and space.

Good things happen, to someone else indeed, I guess to someone who’s not living on the edge.

I met a friend a few days ago and he told me, when you hit rock bottom, the only way to look is up. But when you hit the bottom, and you say that’s it there wont be something worst, and then you slip deeper and deeper……

Now now, let’s blame it on gravity. Gravity keeps pulling me down, and guess what, there is nowhere else to go.



~Anonymous~

They judge you
They don’t even know you
You have known me for a year
Or maybe for two
You have known me for three years
Or maybe moreYou don’t know my favorite color
Do you even know the color of my eyes?
You don’t know my fears
Do you even know what makes me laugh?
You don’t know my past
‘Cause you never bothered to ask
Do you even know what happened to me when I was a child?
You don’t know what this all means to me
Do you even know what I need?
Most probably you don’t even know my name
You never gave me credit for making an effort
To change what you hate about me
‘Cause you never knew who I was
When I come asking for advise
You push me away
And this is not what a friend would do
And this is not what a family would do
And this is not what a lover would do
A friend won’t showoff
A family should support
A lover should give
And that’s what you don’t do
This is not a cry for sympathy
Nor a cry for help
This is not a cry for attention
Nor a cry for care and love
It’s a cry of “wake up and smell the coffee”
When you care you ask
When you are asked you help
When I have been always there for you
You should always be there for me too!

L.A

How can you not believe
A soul you created
A spirit you gave birth to
Throw me in a river and say goodbye
There is nothing for me to add
More than that; I can’t stand
I gave you chances
I gave you excuses
I am fed up
From your accusations
How can you break the heart
Of a being you created
How can you leave behind
A child that needed you the most
And I am heartbroken
To see the tears in my eyes
Because of you
They say that without you I’m nothing
And how many times I believed so
But it’s time to let go
All the past shall be forgotten
And the future should be built
With you out of my life
And it’s time to erase you
From the beautiful picture I have drawn
Though I know deep inside
That it is hard enough
And it’ll tear me apart
But I have done my best
And you never even tried
To make it up to me like you have said
Throw me in a river and say goodbye!
Throw me … And say goodbye!
Goodbye!

~By L.A.~

Today is a historical day to me for my mom gave me the sign to never tell her about my sexual orientation. It’s a day I will never forget So I was on a women’s beach with my family and there was this lifeguard (a female of course) who hit on me bluntly in front of everyone and particularly in front of my mom and aunts. She sounded like a lesbian to me but I took her as a nice lifeguard who is trying to make friends.
However, as my mother noticed the approaches of the girl, the way she started “ghannijing” me and getting closer to me, she and my aunt suddenly came to me and asked me to get out of the pool. And so I did with a questioning face! Here comes the weird and funny part; when I asked them why did you ask me to get out of the pool my mom answered with fear:

What if she is a lesbian, ya mama shakla lesbian hay!

I laughed on the inside but I tried asking questions to know why my mother got terrified of the lifeguard (a girl) hitting on me. So I asked:

Why would you be afraid of lesbians, mom? Inno do they bite?!

Her answer was:

Everything not normal is terrifying to me and I don’t want you to talk to her again or be next to her.

But this girl never stopped trying to talk to me. So my mother got even more terrified and confessed:

My heart beats so fast from fear every time she talks to you

And so I finally got the sign from my own mother showing how I should never tell her about her daughter being a lesbian, about the truth under my skin, about who I really am and about who I am proud of being. I felt the disappointment, the fear and the irony. I was disappointed because I never imagined people were afraid of lesbians, I mean what are they, terrorists?!?! I was disappointed because it came from my mom, the sign I’ve been waiting for, came out as a negative one. I always wanted to tell you, mom, but after today, I can never imagine telling you, maybe you would be scared of me. I felt scared too, because I kind of defended lesbians, and myself indirectly, while my mother was looking at me with these skeptical eyes of hers, so now I have to watch out for every step so she wouldn’t notice. What a shame it is to be hiding from who you really are and how shameful it feels not to be able to loudly defend women and myself in front of the woman who brought me to this world! The irony was that my mother never got scared when a guy talked to me, I mean if the lifeguard was a guy, would she react the same way? Are lesbians so abnormal in her eyes to the level of preferring a guy hitting on me instead of a girl? And she always refused for me to have a boyfriend (before I even discovered that I’m a lesbian). I hope my experience is a lesson for people to never out until their parents give them the positive safe sign. I wish my mother gave me the sign I’ve been waiting for since 3 years, but she left me highly and deeply disappointed.

Teddy