Today is IDAHO, the international day against homophobia 2009. Today is the day we commemorate the victims of homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia in general. Today is the day we remember that we are oppressed.
Not that we are ever granted the luxury of forgetting that we are opressed, not that we are ever granted the pleasure of not being a prosecuted minority. No, ya reit. In fact what happens is that we try to ignore it most of the time, we close ourselves up in our community that we forget the pressure, or at least pretend to forget it. But then life bites us in the ass and we are reminded that we are not meant to exist. It is just enough to take a quick look at the world around us to remember where we belong.

Go to California where Harvey Milk was murdered over 2 decades ago, California, the GAY CAPITAL of the world and look at the prop 8. Look at A7mar bl Khat l 3areed. Look at the beautiful initiative of the Baltic Pride and how it was being sabotaged. Look back at Ebru's murder and finally the barbaric attack on gay men in Sassine.

You look at all that and you think to yourself: What the hell are we fighting for? It's feels overwhelming sometimes that we would have to fight this much for the simplest of rights, that on may 2009, homophobia is still the norm and we are still the criminals just because we are true to ourselves. May 2009 and we are still struggling to fight homophobia, shameful don't you think?

But then again, if you look closely at our tiny little world there is so much more than the homophobia, to every act of homophobia there is and will always be even greater acts of LGBT resistance, to every aggression there will be reactions.
Afterall, they killed Harvey Milk but soon Milk will take over the 22nd of May, it will be the "Harvey Milk Day". Prop8 may have passed but there will always people rebels like Melissa Etheridge that will put her money where her mouth is and that knows what she is giving to society. Yimkin there will always be programs like A7mar bil Khat and there will always be violence, because they just don't understand us, but there will always be demonstrations to tell them that we are willing to be peaceful but we will not be passive!

Pazuzu

Hello everyone - this is a call to an urgent action by all of us.

Wednesday, January 27 at 9.30 pm (Beirut time), LBC is going to tackle the subject of homosexuality on their show A7mar bel khatt el 3arid.

It is very important for us to watch this show to write about it, blog about it, and comment about it. It is also very important to CALL IN to express support for LGBT in Lebanon and to correct whatever wrong things they people will be saying on the show.

So please make sure you watch the show Wednesday at 9.30pm and call the numbers that appear on the screen. Call from Lebanon, the Arab world, and internationally.

When you call, here are some points you should raise:

1. Doctors, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and experts all agree the homosexuality is normal. Therefore, it shouldn't be treated as a topic of "a7mar bil khatt il 3areed"
2. Lebanese media should deal with this topic supportively, not just put homosxuals or transsexuals on display.
3. There are hundreds of thousands of LGBT in Lebanon and they are tax-paying citizens. They deserve full rights as anyone else.
4. Last Thursday, two gay men were beaten up brutally by soldiers on Sassine Square. This inhumanity towards homosexuals is not accepted. And existing

---

Meem will be blogging live on Wednesday as the show is taking place. Watch the show and have your opinion about everything.

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?

Date: January 2nd 2009

Location: the House

Good evening everyone and welcome to the first live blogging of our Annual retreat. I have been thinking of doing this for a while now and it is happening now and here is how it will take place. The 2 days biannual retreat is taking place, starting on Saturday the third of January 2009. On Friday (which is today) we are having a preretreat where we talk about feminist thingies in Meem. I will be putting updates quite often as discussion takes place, for reasons of personal security the girls will be presented according to their nicknames, we will be compiling the outcome later on (once the retreat is over).

And remember that this retreat gathers the most active (because they came 24h after new year’s eve, come on give them some credit for that) and most influential (because they are deciding about Lebanon’s Queer future)members of Meem. So there will be a lot of things that will sound unusual or too far fetched but… well that’s how we like it.

So shall we start?

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?

Je ne comprends pas
Pourquoi les gens ne me comprennent pas
Pourquoi les gens ne m’aiment pas
Et je ne les aime pas

Pas de compagnie
Pas de vie
Pas de rire
Mais seulement un cri

Une amie est a cote de mois depuis longtemps
une amie est gentille avec mois depuis longtemps
Et avec cette amie je suis contente merci dieu pour cette connaissance que j’ai eu avec cette amie

~~Meem~~

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2008

This Monday, I was reading this interesting article: Tonight we are going to party like it’s 1985 in which the author, Helen G who is a Transwoman, is denouncing the nomination of Julie Bindel (no seriously check out the link to her Wikipedia page, it’s short and interesting) for the Stonewall awards.

Why you may ask? Because, according to Helen, Julie is a Transphobe. Interesting, non? You see this case may not be directly relevant to our cause or our struggle as Meems, but it does in a way portray the everlasting, internalized xenophobia. Let me summarize for you what has been discussed in those articles:

You have on one hand, Julie Bindel and whoever she represents, who says things like:

As a lesbian, I no longer want to be lumped in with a list of folk defined by ‘odd’ sexual practices, she means anything that is not Lesbian
Transsexuals, having received short shrift from heterosexual society, asked to be included in our rainbow alliance
Queer (anyone who is into “kinky” sex)
Questioning (those having a think about who and how they might shag in the future)
finally (for now) Intersex (those born with biological features that are simultaneously perceived as male and female)
The mantra now at “gay” meetings is a tongue-twisting LGBTQQI.
But I for one do not wish to be lumped in with an ever-increasing list of folk defined by “odd” sexual habits or characteristics. Shall we just start with A and work our way through the alphabet? A, androgynous, b, bisexual, c, cat-fancying d, devil worshipping. Where will it ever end?
No seriously that is exactly what she says, I did not in any way alter any word she said, you can follow the link to her article to check. Now to be honest, I do understand her frustration… Or at least I feel like I should understand it somehow. For example, Lesbians were heavily implicated in the birth of the feminist movement, but then their cause was silenced to ensure the safety of the feminist cause, they gave more than they took. Then in the gay movement they were very implicated also but they were quickly rendered invisible, for all so many reasons. And I have heard a few times trans people make it very clear that they are not homosexuals, NO, they were just born in the wrong body!

So I guess I understand where all the frustration may come from.

Now on the other hand you have Helen G and whoever she represents (apparently a lot of Trans individuals, and more specifically Feminist Trans women) states that the Lesbians never did and never will accept transsexuals as true/full women.

Which gets me to ask myself a few questions, like for example: why is it so difficult for trans and homos to work together? Let’s look at the Lebanese scene, I work on queer issues. I have been working with gays and lesbians for like 2 years now and though the gay/lesbian community admits the presence and importance of trans issues, though they want to be inclusive, it is not that simple. Sometimes I even wonder if Trans people want to be part of the queer scene. Sometimes our goals are so different that I wonder what could possibly bring us together?

For LGB individuals the goal is to be accepted as people that are attracted to people from the same sex. Trans individuals want to be accepted as individuals whose sexual organs do not coincide with their self-identified gender. Right?

Of course it can be right! If this is how you perceive your activism then the previous statement is true for you. And in that case, I don’t really see how you can combine both in one group that works for the same mission.

But keep in mind that this is not how everyone sees activism, this is not how I see activism and this is not what Meem’s mission statement consists of. My activism in Meem is just part of a greater cause, it is the struggle for diversity. I don’t really care if I am accepted as a woman that loves women and I don’t care if I am woman that is not really a woman that does not belong to the female gender. I honestly don’t care. I allow myself to be with the person I am in love with and I allow myself to be person I am, gender and social standards are not really my problem, even prison is not really an issue for me.

My struggle, my goal, my grail is to alter society so that no one would suffer discrimination, no one would feel wrong because of their sexual orientation, their gender identity, their sex, their ethnic origin, their religion, their political choices, their social class… I want no one to suffer from discrimination… Enough already!

Is this feasible? Is it realistic? Probably not, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. I want a mission that makes sense and for me this definition makes sense. And through this definition, trans individuals and homos fight for the same cause, eradicating heteronormativity and this is only one aspect of what I want to work on. But it is the same social mechanism that leads to both homophobia and transphobia. It is those little social boxes that we are supposed to fit it:

“perfect boy, perfect girl, perfect love, perfect marriage proposal, perfect wedding, perfect kids, in a perfect house, with the perfect dog and the perfect cat that have the perfect fight.”

I fit nowhere in that definition, neither do gays, lesbians, bisexuals, queers, questioning, transgender, transsexual, transvestites, Intersexes, single mothers, shy men, atheists, anarchists, people who can’t afford fancy wedding rings and outfits… and so many others. And all of these groups are my activism allies.

Well I guess that says it all for me… I am queer and I am here to stay. Yes attack me, beat me, insult me, laugh at me and put me in jail. It is ok, you don’t know any better. I do. Heteros may not agree, lesbians may not be interested and trans’ may ridicule me, but then again, I have had worse, I have survived times when I didn’t agree with myself, when I was not interested in my own ideas and when I ridiculed myself. What do you think that you can do to make it worse for me?

I guess Bon Jovi was right, it’s my way. It’s now or never.

Pazuzu

Pointing your fingers at me
I’m so different…
Marginalizing me
I’m so different…
Spitting at me
I’m so different…
Hurting me
I’m so different…
Blaming
so different…
Hitting me
I’m so different…
Underestimating me
I’m so different…
Hunting me
I’m so different…
Dumping me
I’m so different…
People,
I’m going to live my life…
Carry on and never give in
I’m going to make my own destiny
I AM WHO I AM
With or without you
I’M INDIFFERENT






11/09/2008

~Silent Soul

~POWER TO THE FINOCHIOS

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

There’s a YouTube video that’s been circulating quite a bit of late that gay people in Lebanon seem to love. It’s being touted as an “educational video to be shared with family and friends which answers frequently asked questions about the origin of homosexuality. The video takes us on a conversational journey with three animated characters (George the gay guy, Martha the lesbian, and Christian the homophobe), and attempts to make the argument through reference to flawed scientific studies that homosexuality is inborn, innate, static, and unchangeable, and that’s why society must find it in its heart to tolerate the queers. You can watch the video here:



I hate this stuff. It offends me. Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, it would follow that if sexual orientation were not actually genetic or inborn, then it would somehow cease to be acceptable or worthy of social tolerance. I understand why some gay people like this line of argument: “It’s not my fault, I was born this way, please accept me”. But for gay activists, those who are (supposed to be) actively working to challenge the structures of society that allow for discrimination on the basis of non-normative sexuality to be propagating this bullshit is not only ignorant, it is also supremely irresponsible.The scientific “evidence” presented in the video is flawed in the first place. The birth-order argument, which claims that boys who have older brothers are more likely to be gay because pregnant women carrying male children produce anti-bodies against them, and therefore the more boys she has, the stronger her antibodies become, causing the boys to become increasingly “feminized”. If ever there was proof that there is no such thing as objective knowledge in science, and that just like every other form of knowledge production it is filtered through the lens of normative cultural tropes and beliefs, then this is it. Heteronormative society holds that only males can be attracted to females, and only females to males, and that’s the way it should be. Along comes science, and instead of questioning or problematizing this belief, it takes it as a given, attempting to explain homosexuality by proving that there is something of the female in gay men, and that’s why they end up being attracted to members of the same sex. For queer activists to promote this view is horribly, horribly wrong, not only because of flawed scientific methodology, but because they don’t even feel the need to question the heteronormative basis on which these arguments are built.And y’know, it’sactually ok to question science. Seven years after homosexuality was removed from the DSM-II (the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders), the doctors decided to replace it with a new illness that they termed “gender identity disorder”. So the gays are now safe, but the trannies, they’re the ones who are f***ed up in the head. It’s no longer deviant sexual desire, it’s now deviant gender identity. In the diagnoses of both homosexuality and transgenderism, the explanation is that the person does not conform to what is deemed “normal” male or female. Unsurprisingly, the gays have nothing to say about this.


And to top it all off, this apologetic “it’s not a choice video” ends with a supposedly funny skit where Martha the lesbian mentions how this one girl that she knows “goes back and forth” only to elicit a look of horror from George the gay guy who nudges her frantically and tells her to shut up. SHHHHH! DON’T LET THEM KNOW ABOUT THE BISEXUALS! THEY’LL RUIN EVERYTHING! Because really, how can the “gay gene” explain people whose sexuality is fluid? The very idea that sexuality is fluid is antithetical to orthodox gay rights activists whose entire argument is predicated on the belief in discrete, separate, stagnant, and categorical identities. The sexual and gendered expressions that straddle that uncomfortable space in-between, the transgenders, the bisexuals, the queers, have always been marginalized. And that marginalization seems to be completely acceptable. Hypocritical chants of “Celebrate Diversity” may be more honestly re-written as “Celebrate Some Diversity (the others don’t count)”.

What these gay rights activists fail to realize is that our struggle is so much bigger than this, and framing it in this way is extremely detrimental because it puts the bar so low. At the heart of this struggle lies everyone’s right to sexual freedom, the right to choose their own sexual partners without violence and discrimination, and regardless of whether their choice is due to a genetic mishap or not. And this means everyone. Decriminalizing homosexuality because “gay people don’t have a choice” does nothing to end discrimination against heterosexual people for sexual non-conformity (like women who have sex before marriage, honor crimes, or you-better-bleed-on-your-wedding-night-or-you’re-divorced syndrome). The right to freedom of choice becomes meaningless, and gay people themselves will suffer for it despite their current short-sightedness. If we don’t have an LGBT movement in Lebanon that can see this, then maybe its time for something new.

Shax

Hey everybody!


So far, in our Book Club meetings, we have been reading about, and discussing, important issues like racism, the rights of physically disabled members of LGBT communities, social struggles and academia, and queer and transgendered identities, among others. And so we will continue. In the coming meeting, we are going to read something by a Lebanese Canadian lesbian about being a working class queer Arab woman in North America.

So join us this Monday, August 18 (5:30 sharp, at the House), to read excerpts from Joanna Kadi’s Thinking Class: Sketches from a Cultural Worker, as she shares her personal experiences and her opinions about the mainstream North American lesbian and gay community, and its mainstream culture in general. Kadi is one opinionated woman.

I hope to see you all there on Monday.

Enjoy your weekend,

The Calm Activist

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

I was checking my inbox, when I found an e-mail announcing a workshop called “What Happened to the T in LGBT”, it didn’t mean much to me, of course I was going to attend since it’s one of Meem activities and a foreign person was being hosted. It was only a couple of days ago when we were having a discussion about transgender and queer people, and how Meem should work more on including their issues. I remember getting lost in that conversation, my ideas concerning gender and queer theory were blur and I couldn’t relate to any of these issues, I knew that if I were to think about it, it will confuse me even more.
And then it was Friday, the day I met Sinan, the feminist trans-guy who was here for the workshop I read about.
Hearing him talk about gender in general, his own experience with figuring out his gender identity, queer theory and the way he relates to it, and how he came to identify as a feminist, it changed me. Everything was suddenly clear to me, and another flow of thoughts came rushing, thoughts that helped me understand a bit more my own gender identity, but more importantly made me realize what it really means to be inclusive of all LGBTQ issues, and not leaving behind any of them. His passion, his understanding of the cause, his perspective… Although I can’t explain what exactly changed in my way of viewing things, I know it made a huge shift. They say that there are certain people who come into your life and inspire you in a way that changes you, I was inspired.

~Ran~

Dear diaries;

What have happened to the world? Or what have become of that world.
You are one piercing away of becoming a bitch, drug dealer and alcoholic, typical stereotyping which is totally wrong. You are one size away of running out of choices while shopping; tops and pants keep stretching into a smaller size than my baby niece can wear, Seriously, and I am not complaining because I am a fat woman, I’ve always been, but now am complaining because it’s so degrading for women, now they have to be anorexic to shop!
Wear your bra before you get out of the house, sit like ladies, don’t stretch your legs too wide, don’t smoke it’s not lady like! Excuse me Sir?
Last time I had a very interesting debate with a guy who asked me, what if a guy liked you – well he lost me at that part- and asked you to remove your piercing so he would go out with you. Now beside the fact that I was wearing my very big obvious feminine sign that I guess he didn’t see, I was bleeding heat from the top of my brains after his question. I mean please would people please stop propatizing… stop propertizing (it’s supposed to be something like using as a property, but is that even a word?). I mean we cook and raise babies, we drive, we work, we pay our own bills, what else do we, as woman, have to show to prove we are not men’s property anymore.

Dear diaries;

People drive in cars like crazy, gay people get bashed everyday, you tell your mother that your queer, and the second day you wake up she asks you when are you having a boyfriend and then grandchildren……
Id’ like to live in a accepting world you see, but then again stereotyping is everywhere, discrimination is everywhere, tonight, I am disgusted of the world.

Dear diaries;

What have happened to the world.
People… I used to believe in people, Not anymore.

Once again, my brain is functioning on the wrong side of common logic…

There’s a me that is the hardcore of moral values and would step on my heart not to cross a boundary. And there’s the other me that lost focus like a school girl smitten in a teenage crush!

There’s a me that wants to go back to the day before I met you and skip every second I spent with you. And there’s the other me that wants to stay around you, swallow the pride and enjoy those little sparkle butterflies that twirl in my stomach every time you throw a spontaneous look toward me.

There’s a me that believes if my life was a movie, I would be the “bad guy” that should be expelled to the island of green beasts and unforgivable sinners. And there’s the other me that believes if my life was really a movie you would see how much I want to give you and how much I’m longing to take off the load of pain I see in your eyes… And we would run off together to the island of make believe.

There’s a me that’s so petrified of my eager eyes telling on me and destroying my little image in your perspective. And there’s the other me that’s so petrified that you will never see me and I’ll just die one day soon without you knowing how I really see you.

There’s a me that’s wondering which wall I should bang my head into to wake myself up from these vibes of stupidity. And there’s the other me that’s wondering which wall I should draw your face on with a big “I like you” signature beneath it.

There’s a me that wishes to take the constant given advice from everyone around me and turn it into a “straight ticket to heaven” prayer. And there’s the other me that wishes God and all the heavenly angels are on my side just this time around!




I dedicate this to you and the other you knowing that I will never have either…

Don’t worry the first me wins every time but you will always be everything I want in a girl.

Jexy

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