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?

Saba7o girls and boys w ya3tikon l 3afye,

After the outing of the issue 0 of our Magazine “Bekhsoos” titled: Bekhsoos l homophobia

And after the Internal and International admiration that this magazine has collected, it’s time for everyone to get their brains back to work and start preparing for the next issue.

Quoting the crazy Editor-in-Chief:

…so break in the articles. I already have quite a few, (many thanks to all those who’ve already submitted stuff), and it would be great if you could submit some before the 19th midnight. Anything post that deadline will not be accepted, sorry!
The theme of this issue is Pride. It would be preferable if your submissions (writing, artwork, anything that can be uploaded on www.bekhsoos.com) are Pride-oriented; not just the Pride Marches and/or Parades, but more like what the concept of Pride means to you. If you have nothing to say concerning Pride, but have another topic in mind, please, by all means, do not hesitate to share it.

So what you need to remember is:

Tell us about Pride
Submit your articles before the 19th
Write in any language you feel comfortable with (Arabic, French, English, German, Spanish, Armenian…); our team of translators will translate it, or we would cooperate with you on the translation
For the Meems that live abroad, in countries where the Pride Parade is organized, it would be nice if you tell us about it, if you’ve never participated in it, then it would be interesting if you tell us why. In brief, just tell us, we are curious and there are lots of other curious people out there.

So for submissions or further information please contact the Editor-in-Chief: Jenni on the following email: jenni@meemgroup.org. Or if you’re too shy then just contact me and I will take care of communicating with her.

So juice those pens and amaze us.


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Salut tout le monde,J’ai l’honneur de vous invitez à contribuer dans une oeuvre magnifique. Cet oeuvre s’appelle Bekhsoos (avec double O et non OU, faites attention). Bekhsoos est le fruit de la collaboration de toutes les filles et les garcons de Meem. C’est une magazine sympa et tres cool (egalement avec double O et non OU). Le numéro 0 de Bekhsoos est déjà disponible si vous voulez le consulter.

Mais on n’a pas de temps à perdre, numéro prochain ne va pa tarder à paraitre et je veux voir votre contribution dans ce nouveau numéro. Le sujet général sera le Pride et je suis certaine que vous avez beaucoup à dire sur ce sujet.

Alors installer vous bien et écrivez, une fois terminé, il suffit de l’envoyer à Jenni (jenni@meemgroup.org) et que le spectacle commence. mais faites attention il faut l’envoyer avant le 19 Juillet pour que l’équipe puisse le publier. Alors… Yalla pas de temps à perdre

N.B.: si vous voulez consulter le numéro précédent visitez la page suivante: www.bekhsoos.com