M. Ali Abdi
Queering Life
In this paper, I will delineate how the course Queer Theory and Queer Politics has helped me to understand, analyze and critique the surrounding world better in the last couple of months. I would like to show how queer theory and queer politics have been integrated into, as David Halperin wished to happen for queer students, my “scholarly practices” as a researcher, my “professional life” as an activist, and my “identity” and lived experiences in everyday social relations (p343). To do so, I will draw on my ethnography in Turkey on Iranian LGBT asylum seekers, my human rights activism related to the Iranian pro-democracy Green Movement, and the experiences of my daily life, arguing that while the course has equipped me with new theoretical tools helpful for my scholarly practices and professional activism, it has exacerbated my personal life, making the surrounding world irresistible.
1- Scholarly Practice: the case of a bisexual asylum seeker
When I was in Turkey this summer to carry out a field study on Iranian LGBT asylum seekers, I met Peyman, a 27-year-old man, who had escaped from Iran after being unexpectedly captured during sex with his male partner by his father who then opened a case for his son in the court. Peyman was the only person, among the 44 LGBT asylum seekers that I deep-interviewed in Turkey, who self-identified as bisexual. In fact, he is the only person among 101 Iranian LGBT asylum seekers currently living in Turkey, who has opened a case in UN as a “bisexual”.
According to international laws, refugee is “the one who, owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his [sic] nationality …” (emphasis added). Thus, should LGBT asylum seekers wish to be granted the refugee status, they have to prove two facts during the interview session in United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; a) there is a well-founded fear of being persecuted in their home country because b) they are a member of a particular social group of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or transgenders.
Peyman had not had much difficulty in proving the potential persecution waiting for him back home. He had kept the document, issued by Iranian authorities, by which he had been summoned to appear in the court. When I asked him how he responded to the second question, that is how he proved to the UN lawyers that he is a member of the particular social group of bisexuals, he told me he had first introduced himself as a gay but not a bisexual. When I asked him why, he said,
“Prior to going to the interview session (in UN), I got consultation from the two organizations (IRQR and IRQO, which support Iranian LGBT asylum seekers in Turkey in different ways, including giving legal consultations) that it’s better not to say that I am bisexual, because it would make my case complicated. They (the two organizations) told me that all of the asylum seekers in Turkey are either ham-jens-gara (homosexual) or trans (transgender). UN lawyers may not expect a bisexual …”
Later, during his interview in UN, he had admitted that he is sexually attracted to both men and women, and that he is bisexual. When I asked what changed his mind, he said,
“I felt stolen. I knew who I was. I was born bisexual not gay. Gays think I am straight who sometimes fuck men. But I am not one of them.”
Considering Peyman’s case, I would like to raise four points:
1) The language chosen at international law to recognize the LGBT refugee, that is member of a particular social group, is very much in consistent, as it is expected, with the contemporary framework of liberal pluralism within which one has to be a member of a community (or rather an “imagined community”) to claim rights; a model which belongs to Anglo-American traditions which “almost always presupposes an ethnic organization of identity” (Warner, 1993: xvii).
2) Most of the gay men whom I talked to had proved the “authenticity” of their sexual identity during UN interview session by associating themselves to the “gay life” in Tehran, i.e. by explaining that they had been members of the gay community. Some, most of them rural dwellers, were not participating in Tehran gay life, but, by reading blogs and searching the internet, were aware that they were members of the imagined community of gay men and, like the case study of Wetson on rural gays, “they interpret[ed] themselves [and their subjectivity] through that attachment” (34). However, Peyman’s narrative delineates two of the problems with - in particular - phrasing the definition of refugee on international law as such which necessitates refugees being member of a community, and with - in general - identity politics. First, as it is illustrated from his account, he perceives himself as bisexual even before entering a community of bisexuals or gays, or as Warner puts it, “nearly every lesbian or gay [or bisexual] remembers being such before entering a collectively identified space” (xxv), and, second, he constructs his identity by anti-identification with both “gays” and “straights who sometimes fuck men”, but not by linking his lived experiences with those of other bisexuals.
3) What might explain the consultations of the two organizations to Peyman not to introduce himself as bisexual is that, since bisexual subject can neither be produced through “gender of sexual object choice” – since the gender of sexual object choice might fluctuate and any sexual behavior which is non-gender-specific is understood, for instance in psychoanalysis, as a deviation from the normal sexual aim – nor through “gendered subject position” – since the gendered subject position of a bisexual might vary for a lack of finite and gender-specific object choices – and nor through “chronology of sexual identity” – since one of the requirement for the recognition of a sexual subjectivity is, unlike what bisexuals might experience, the consistency of its sexual or gendered object choice – then, “the inability of bisexuals to argue that they were born that way … makes rights claims within the public sphere especially problematic” which is why most of the theorists of sexual citizenship also limit their arguments to gays and lesbians (Hemmings: 23-27).
4) Yet, this is not to suggest that identity politics or identity categories must be dismissed. Although queer theorists have diligently emphasized the instability and fluidity of individual and collective identities and group boundaries, criticized identity politics for grounding itself on the dichotomies of, among other things, gay/straight and man/woman and for adhering to fixed essentialist, semi-ethnic identities which would simplify the complicated internal dynamics of a community, obscure power relations between members of a same community, exclude those whose practices, interests, or beliefs do not fit within that community, and let communities express very specific political demands, they, that is queer theorists, have also repeatedly stressed that “[t]here is a political necessity to use some sign now and we do …” where “leverage can be gained through … minority-rights discourse” (Butler, 1993: 311; Warner, xxviii), as it is gained, to some extent, for Iranian LGBT asylum seekers in Turkey whose lives or freedom would be in danger should they be deported. Thus, queer politics has not replaced identity politics. It exists in parallel, always posing the question “how to use it [that is identities] in such a way that its futural significations are not foreclosed? How to use the sign and avow its temporal contingency at once?” (Butler, 312)
2- Professional Life: the case of “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign”
My life is dedicated to the Iranian pro-democracy Green Movement; a civil right movement which was formed during the last presidential election in 2009 but is rooted in more than a hundred year struggle of Iranians for democracy and human rights, and is constituted of, but could not be reduced to, a rainbow of Iranian women’s, students’ and workers’ movements, aimed at not necessarily toppling the whole regime down, but celebrating different lifestyles and promoting respect for human beings’ dignity and respectability.
Since I came to Budapest in Sep 2009, I have been involved in generating campaigns and organizing demonstrations in order to highlight the widespread and systematic violation of human rights in my country and raise the voices of my friends who are struggling against despotism in different ways back home.
The campaign which I would like to discuss is “We Are All Majid Tavakoli”. On December 7th 2009, the Iranian National Student Day, Majid Tavakoli, the Iranian leading student activist – and a good friend of mine – made a speech in a student demonstration in Amirkabir University, in which he denounced the Supreme Leader (the most powerful man of the country) for transforming Islamic Republic of Iran into a militarized, authoritarian, and oppressive regime.
As expected, Majid was arrested by security forces on the same day. But, some hours later, and unlike other similar incidents, his images were published on the pro-regime security forces online websites. The images were shocking for the average audience: Majid had been taken photo while wearing not his own clothes but “women’s clothes” with a chador[1] and scarf on his head. In fact, when he had been escaping from the university, he had worn women’s clothes not to be identified by security forces waiting for him at the university exit gate. Unfortunately, and unlike other successful escapes in drag, he was identified and arrested. The caption of the image on security forces website was straightforward: “Degenerate Student Arrested in Women’s Clothes while Escaping” (The photo is attached).
Publishing the image of Majid Tavakoli in drag was a victory for the regime. In a country where strict gender segregation and particular gender codes of behavior for men and women are cultivated and regulated by the government, and where a direct link is perpetuated between masculinity and heroism, broadcasting Majid Tavakoli in women’s clothes was meant to feminize and thus humiliate a prominent student leader, and disparage and ridicule the whole student movement.
Besides, as I understand better now, such image and its caption - like the image of the terrorist discussed by Puar and Rai (2002), which was widely published on websites or in posters in major American cities, depicting the turbaned bin Laden as the emasculated pervert deviant who is anally penetrated by the Empire State Building - did not only mean to belittle Majid Tavakoli or the student movement, but also, by juxtaposing three notions of femininity (understood from women’s clothes), cowardice (understood from Majid’s escaping from university) and degeneration (Majid in drag), it intended to legitimize the regime’s ideological configuration of gender, and normalize and discipline the very Iranian population.
In order to respond to security forces, I and some of my friends came to this idea: we made a group on facebook, entitled “We Are All Majid Tavakoli”, asking men, living anywhere in the world, to take a picture from themselves while wearing “women’s clothes” – that is wearing scarves on their heads - and send it for us, so that we can publish the photos in mass, in order to express solidarity with Majid, subvert the Iranian government’s intentions, and mock the regime’s ideology on gender binaries. There were expressions of discontent in the beginning from some men who compared such idea to “childish games”, but later, even before Iranian scholars in top US universities joined the campaign by taking photos from themselves with scarves on their heads, we had already received thousands of photos, and Campaign had been widely broadcasted on international media and newspapers, including CNN, BBC, Aljazeera, Washington Post, NY Times, France 24, Radio Free Europe, and tens of others (the critical analysis of how these media approached the Campaign is beyond the scope of this paper).[2]
Based on the body of literature that I have covered in the course Queer Theory Queer Politics, I would like to raise three points:
1) “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign” was – what I call - a queer one because, first, Campaign was structureless, horizontal, and without a leader; that is, there were just a facebook group and participants were meant to upload their photos there; (Yet, many did not upload their pictures on that group but published them on their blogs, other websites, etc.) second, participants who sent their photos were coming from all over the world, realizing the slogan “We Are Everywhere”; third, participants were from diverse groups, with different ages, belong to different races, different nationalities and even different genders, that is even women participated in the Campaign by putting beard and mustache while wearing scarf; fourth, although participants were not in the streets, they were making claims by their performance and body gestures in front of the camera, or in Abelove’s terms, by being “actorish”; and fifth, participants’ photos were – using Cripm’s words as he describes ACT-UP activism - “campy”, “funny” and “ironic” (p87) and were marked with – using Abelove’s words as he explains Queer Nation actions – “visibility”, “outrage” and “humor” (p33). That is, while the mass numbers of photos and their effective distribution on social networks bear the message of public frustration and rage against government’s practices and of a claim to the centrality rather than marginality of dissidents, and while the very act of publishing one’s non-normative photo online was a celebration of visibility with focus on – using Taylor’s words – “representation” and “recognition” (p202), then, males’ make-ups, women’s mustaches, and their body postures in front of the camera were also meant to make the campaign entertaining and comical and let both the audience and participants laugh.
2) As we know from Foucault’s analysis of power, since there is not a local center for power from which power emanates, that is “it comes from everywhere”, and since there are multiplicity of force relations always at play against which there is no ultimate resistance, then the effects or results of people’s resistances are not necessarily as same as what they were planned for (Foucault, 93-95). Unsurprisingly, “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign” got a new and unexpected meaning – at least a meaning that it had not been previously thought of: Iranian women’s rights activists embraced the Campaign for its what-they-called objection against the compulsory Hijab (veil) imposed on women by Iranian government. As succinctly uttered in the message of the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Winner Ms. Shirin Ebadi, the Campaign should be understood as part of the history of Iranian women’s movement struggles: “You! My sons! You not only supported your friend Majid Tavakoli, but you defended ‘being a woman’, you showed women are not inferior to men, you protested against discriminatory laws against women such as the compulsory veil … Let me celebrate your wise engagement, not just in the student movement, but this time, in the Iranian women’s movement.”[3] That is, since the Iranian security forces thought of women as inferior to men within the dominant ideological framework of the regime, they had posted the image of Majid Tavakoli with scarf and chador to compare him with women, or to put him in the category of women, in order to belittle his masculinity and heroism, and, in response, “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign” was understood by women’s rights activists as defending “being a woman”, as men do not feel ashamed of being a woman, as pro gender equality activism, and as a protest against discriminatory laws against women including, as the scarves on men’s heads were interpreted to symbolize, the compulsory Hijab.
3) Although we did not demonstrate in public space, the internet social networks as major social forces that link us all around the world and influence public opinion, allowed us to use our bodies as means of protest, as what Foster calls in Choreographies of Protest (2003), “reservoir of signs and symbols”, and as means for “collective connectivity” (p395). Like the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960s, where the prejudicially perceived as “irrational” and “intrinsically violent” black bodies opposed such stereotypes by their very act of non-violent protest, and like ACT-UP die-ins of the late 1980s, where sick and healthy bodies lay side by side “ushering the place of the body, dead or dying from neglect, into public space, and with it the repressed knowledge of an epidemic” (p411), we, in “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign”, produced and published masses of images of the as-it-was-understood-by-Iranian-security-forces degenerate and effeminate bodies of men in drag, flooded the internet social networks with as-it-was-understood-by-women’s-rights-activists ‘bodies on behalf of women’s bodies’, which, like the bodies of the participants of civil right movement sit-ins and ACT-UP, and with the symbolic scarves on the heads, “register … the effects of practices they [the bodies] were protesting against” (p411).
3- Identity and Lived Experiences: the world is becoming irresistible
I think living in this world has become much more difficult after the course. In fact, studying gender studies was enough helpful to decipher the social and delineates and deconstruct the patriarchal, misogynistic, and heteronormative presumptions embedded in social institutions, academia, cultural beliefs and practices, and etc. The course Queer Theory Queer Politics extended and enriched the previously learnt critical approaches. Yet, as I will briefly discuss, my life is just “fucked up”:
First; I simply cannot talk. While queer theorists insist on “the presence and importance of ‘words’ (discursive and linguistic processes) within the ‘material’ (Taylor, p206), and while they “undermine sexual categorization based upon a heterosexual-homosexual divide” (p199) it has become a continuous problem for me how and when to use the words such as, just to mention some, man, woman, gay, bisexual, transgender, lesbian, boy, girl, baby, youth, adult, elder, etc., without perpetuating the violent identical categories.
Second, if queer “is perpetuating the ‘aestheticisation of everyday life’ (Taylor, p213), I simply cannot resist hearing words with potential “negative” connotations, such as, again just to mention some, fat, old, short, bad, nasty, awful, unpleasant, lazy, ugly, etc., since they, I believe, are just social constructions whose uses are violent and engender discrimination. People, including gender studies students, do not get delighted when experiencing my reaction to the use of the negative words, or the words which are based on dichotomies. Most notably, I become totally frustrated when somebody uses the two words of strange and weird. Whenever in the class my lovely professor, Eszter, used the word “weird”, that is probably in every session, in terms such as “weird argument”, “weird activist”, “weird organization”, “weird paragraph” and etc, I always asked myself, isn’t the word “weird” opposite of the word “normal”? And isn’t use of such term loudly acknowledges that there are “normal arguments”, “normal activists”, “normal organizations”, “normal paragraphs”, and etc.? And, isn’t it very “non-queer” to use the word “weird” in the Queer Theory Queer Politics class? Or am I just becoming “too cynical”? (By the way, is it queer to use the term “too cynical”?! Doesn’t it imply that one can be “not cynical”, “less cynical” or “enough cynical”? Where is the “normal” and “standard” and “balanced” line of being cynical in relation to which “too cynical” is defined? Who defines and determines the location of that balanced line? Doesn’t queer theory mean to question and deconstruct such “balanced” locations?)
Third, doesn’t the “anti-mainstream” approach of queer theory lead to the differentiation between non-queers and queers? Doesn’t understanding Eszter’s use of the word weird in the queer class as “non-queer” foster the legacy of inclusions and exclusions, i.e. recognizing some as queers and some as non-queers? Isn’t the very basis of queer theory against such dichotomies?
Fourth, like queers who are accused of “reducing the question of social change to cultural representation alone” and “sidelining materialities” (Taylor, p200, 202), I am constantly questioned by my Iranian friends that, while there are hundreds of Iranians imprisoned for human rights activism, many of them my best friends, and while Iranians are pushing the project of modernity forward, that is struggling for democracy and freedom, then why I, as a human rights activist, devote this much time on the use of the words, on disidentification with identity categories, on arguing for fluidity of group boundaries, and on the other what-my-friends-believe-to-be non-real, abstract ideas? Is my “connection with … public [and I would add with reality] has eroded”, as Warner put it to criticize queer activists (p159)?
Fifth, whenever my lovely mother calls from Iran, she asks me if I have found an “appropriate girl to marry” since “it’s getting late and you are now 25”. Should I always respond to my mom that I do not want my sexuality to be regulated by the state, that I do not want the norms of straight culture discriminate against queers, that I do not want to be in complicity with fostering the existing hierarchies, that there are alternative life styles which people can choose so to recognize the “diversity of sexual and intimate relations as worthy of respect and protection” (p123)? Should I always respond that your understating of my age is very non-queer, since you identify it with “progressive, and thus future-oriented, teleologies as aligned with heteronormative reproduction?”(Freccero, p489)
Sixth, if three years ago my excitement was coming from, and I confess to that, issues such as family, love, marriage, girls, etc., the surrounding world has now become irresistible. Although the two courses of Anthropological Sexualities and Queer Theory Queer Politics have helped me experience new pleasures and new bodies, my life is now filled with more “ennui” than before. If queer “defines itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual” and if we might be able to say that “queer politics oppose society itself” (Warner, pxxvi, pxxvii), since “social realm … is interwoven with … normalizing methodologies of modern social knowledge”, then how is it possible to resist the pressure from society? With what methodological and epistemological tools are we equipped? And what are the alternative excitements and pleasures that queers can offer? Is there any way out of this what-I-call “fucked-up” life?
Conclusion
The course Queer Theory Queer Politics has enabled me to understand, analyze and critique the surrounding world better. It has equipped me with theoretical tools to use in my scholarly practices, guided me to understand and to be more self-critical of the kinds of human rights activism that I am doing, and has posed dilemmas in my daily life, in relation with friends, family members, and the very tiny elements of the social experience. The question is how to use both queer theory and queer politics in an efficient and productive way to increase pleasures and mitigate sufferings rather than exacerbating our physical and emotional conditions for always opposing the violent regimes of the normal.
References
Carla Freccero: “Queer Times,” South Atlantic Quarterly 106:3, Summer 2007, 485-494.
Clare Hemmings: “Bisexual Landscapes,” in Bisexual Spaces (New York and London: Routledge), 2002, 15-53.
David Halperin: “The Normalization of Queer Theory,” Journal of Homosexuality, v. 45, pp. 339–343.
Douglas Crimp: “The Melancholia of AIDS,” Art Journal, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 2003), pp. 81-90.
Henry Abelove: “From Thoreau to Queer Politics” in Deep Gossip (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London), 2003, pp. 29-42.
Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai, “Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots,” Social Text, no. 72 (2002), 117-49.
Kath Weston: “Get Thee To a Big City” in Long, Slow Burn: Sexuality and Social Science (New York and London: Routledge), 1998, 29-57.
Michel Foucault: excepts from History of Sexuality Vol. 1., trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books), 1988.
Michael Warner: “Introduction” in Michael Warner (ed.), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London), 1993, pp. vii-xxxi.
Michael Warner: “Normal and Normaller: Beyond Gay Marriage.” GLQ, Vol 5. No. 2., pp. 119-173.
Susan Leigh Foster: “Choreographies of Protest,” Theatre Journal, Vol. 55, No. 3, Dance (Oct., 2003), pp. 395-412.
Yvette Taylor: “Queer, but Classless?,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, eds. Noreen Giffney and Michael O'Rourke (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.), 2009, 200-218.
[1] loose black robe which covers the whole body from head to foot including most of the face
[2] to watch one of the campaign’s videos, look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNgN1rbXjLc&feature=related (last access: December 14th 2010)
[3] Available in Persian here: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5018956,00.html (last access: December 15th 2010)
