Queer exceptionalism and exclusion: Cosmopolitanism and inequalities in ‘gay-friendly’ Beirut

Introduction

Dominant Euro-American discourses describe places where LGBTQ persons do not have mainstream public visibility as repressive, ‘non-modern,’ and in need of Western intervention (Long, 2009). These descriptions are particularly common in representations of nonnormative gender and sexualities in the Arab Middle East and the Muslim world. However, since the year 2005, the contemporary Euro-American press has hailed Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, as a new, gay-friendly tourist destination in the Middle East. ¹ For instance, in 2009, the New York Times published an article titled ‘Beirut, the Provincetown of the Middle East.’ ² Lebanon, a sectarian, Muslim-majority country, has often been regarded as exceptional in the Arab World for its seeming diversity and cosmopolitanism, with cosmopolitanism understood to invoke worldliness, diversity, inclusivity, and ‘openness’ to difference. These representations describe gay life in Beirut using a narrative of linear progress, gauging improvements in the rise of ‘tolerant’ attitudes and the growth of Western-style gay identities, gay-friendly spaces, and LGBTQ organizations. These depictions emphasize Beirut’s cosmopolitanism and exceptionalism in a region presently marked by war, conflict, and political and religious violence.

While the literature on LGBTQ lives in the Arab Middle East has focused on the marginality of queer communities (El-Feki, 2013; Whitaker, 2006), another growing body of research has taken into account the multiple positions that queer individuals occupy (Makarem, 2011; Merabet, 2014; Naber & Zaatari, 2014). In this article I build on the latter research and examine how gender, class, and normativity shape LGBTQ individuals’ everyday life experiences and their engagements with discourses of cosmopolitanism and national exceptionalism in Beirut. Even though scholars have considered formations and exclusions of LGBTQ spaces in ‘global cities,’ exclusions within LGBTQ communities in the Arab World have yet to be examined. I draw on transnational sociological studies of sexualities, states, and discourses (Currier, 2012; Puri, 2016; Savci, 2016), and ask how transnational discourses of modernity and exceptionalism get circulated and articulated by LGBTQ persons in Beirut.

Based on ethnographic research and 20 life-history interviews with LGBTQ individuals, I illustrate how LGBTQ persons in Beirut draw on their experiences of the city to create their own definitions of cosmopolitanism. First, I show that LGBTQ Beirutis create relational understandings of modernity and cosmopolitanism by situating Beirut in relation to other Arab cities, rather than just in relation to Euro-American cities. Whereas discussions of cosmopolitanism tend to assume Western urban centers as reference points for understanding the category, my respondents have different reference points. Second, my interlocutors focus on gendered and classed exclusions that they and other people face, particularly regarding unequal access to public and ‘gay-friendly’ spaces and LGBTQ organizations, which contrasted with the narratives of Beiruti cosmopolitanism and exceptionalism.

I find that discourses of sexual openness and gay friendliness in Beirut (seen as markers of cosmopolitanism) are laden with a value structure informed by gender, class, and religion. Building on the notion that cities are sites of ‘possibility and constraint’ (Hubbard, 2012; Oswin, 2015), I argue that ‘cosmopolitan Beirut’ is accessible as a gay-friendly space to gender-normative, cisgender, secular, and middle-to-upper-class LGBTQ people. For example, English and French language skills are required to participate in certain LGBTQ social settings.

Furthermore, Beirut’s seeming ‘tolerance’ of middle-to-upper-class, gay and lesbian tourists – and not of groups such as Syrian and Palestinian refugees, migrant domestic workers, gender-nonnormative, trans, and working-class people – is considered a sign of modernity and cosmopolitanism. Finally, I find that marginalized queer Beirutis, particularly gender-nonnormative, genderqueer, and working-class individuals, are most likely to question Beirut’s cosmopolitanism and to carve out new understandings of queer visibilities that challenge dominant understandings of modernity and progress.

By demonstrating Beirut’s multiple (often violent, classist, and racist) exclusions, hierarchies, and distinctions, my aim is not to re-inscribe the idea that the Middle East is inherently homophobic or ‘intolerant’ towards difference. Rather, using ethnographic research and interviews, I contribute to scholarship that examines the politics of omission of celebratory discourses of exceptionalism and the gay friendliness of cities and nations (Bell & Binnie, 2004; Oswin, 2012). In addition, I build on urban studies that foreground questions of inequalities and LGBTQ life (Haritaworn, 2015; Taylor, 2004, 2007; Tucker, 2009) by paying attention to gendered and classed inequalities in LGBTQ people’s experiences of ‘gay-friendly Beirut.’

Using an intersectional analysis, I show how my interlocutors construct their subjectivities around issues other than coming out, the closet, and mainstream visibility. I benefit from Anna Mehta’s (1999, p. 69) theorizing of gendered subjectivities ‘in terms of multiple, shifting, and potentially contradictory subject positions, which individuals take up through engagement with a range of discourses and social practices.’ By analyzing how queer individuals articulate discourses of cosmopolitanism, I shed light on LGBTQ Beirutis’ lived experiences of gender and sexuality and how they negotiate what is represented as a ‘cosmopolitan’ city.

Cosmopolitanism and ‘global cities’

Various scholars debate the concept of cosmopolitanism, particularly its value in analyzing multicultural and global cities and urban life (Binnie, Holloway, Millington, & Young, 2006; Plummer, 2015; Seidman, 2012; Vertovec & Cohen, 2002). Binnie and Skeggs (2004, p. 42) argue that cosmopolitanism ‘is most commonly conceived or represented as a particular attitude towards difference. To be cosmopolitan one has to have access to a particular form of knowledge, able to appropriate and know the other and generate authority from this knowing.’ Hence, cosmopolitanism is about a certain form of knowing and openness to difference: a sense of worldliness and ‘global citizenry’ (Kendall, Woodward, & Skrbis, 2009). Some scholars define it in terms of outlook and attitude (Kendall et al., 2009), consumption and lifestyle (Schwedler, 2010), global travel (Murray, 2007), and everyday life practices (Plummer, 2015). However, cosmopolitanism is also critiqued for being elitist, classist, and privileging Eurocentric understandings and ‘Western intellectual hegemony’ (Plummer, 2015, p. 93). Some scholars have disrupted the elitist category of the ‘cosmopolitan subject’ by accounting for non-elite forms of cosmopolitanism, such as working-class cosmopolitans (Werbner, 1999), and cosmopolitanism ‘from below,’ exemplified by migrants, such as ‘practical’ (Pecoud, 2004) and ‘strategic’ (Kothari, 2008) cosmopolitanisms. Shifting the focus away from ‘the global business and leisure class,’ these studies have redefined cosmopolitanism by conceiving it in terms of everyday practices and competences.

Research in urban sociology, anthropology, and geography centralizes the role of gender and sexuality in formations of cities and cosmopolitanism. Some research explores various ‘queer cosmopolitanism(s)’; however, it primarily focuses on gay neighborhoods or life in cities in the Global North (Binnie & Skeggs, 2004). More recent studies consider cosmopolitanism and sexualities in other major global cities, including Cape Town (Tucker, 2009; Visser, 2013), Manila (Manalansan, 2015), and Singapore (Oswin, 2014). Moving away from the binary of hetero/homosexuality, they examine gay gentrification and the exclusionary practices of gay communities, capitals, and spaces (Binnie & Skeggs, 2004; Haritaworn, 2015; Tucker, 2009; Visser, 2013). For example, Leung (2009, p. 102) questions whether urban centers are liberatory for queer life and illustrates that ‘cosmopolitanism as a social utopia also coincides with growing social inequalities manifested in urban spaces.’

Various scholars have also debated cosmopolitanism in the Arab World and the Middle East. Some frame cosmopolitanism in terms of progress narratives (Meijer, 1999), as anti-nationalist projects (Seidman, 2012), or as high-end and ‘Western’ consumption patterns (Schwedler, 2010). Historian Roel Meijer (1999) claims that cosmopolitanism and authenticity are at odds in the Arab World, arguing that Middle Eastern societies opt for ‘authenticity,’ rather than what he refers to as moving ‘forward’ towards a European model of cosmopolitanism. Urban comparative methods, such as those used by Meijer (1999), attempt to measure ‘cosmopolitan progress’ using linear progress narratives that employ Eurocentric understandings of cosmopolitanism (Binnie, 2014). Such approaches homogenize and neglect colonial histories of the Middle East.

Sex as progress

The discourse of Lebanon’s exceptional status in the Middle East has its roots in the colonial French Mandate, which founded Lebanon as a country primarily for the protection of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. ³ Prior to the 1975–1990 civil war, Beirut was also often described as the ‘Paris’ or ‘Switzerland of the Middle East,’ particularly for its banking industry, nightlife, and flourishing art scene. However, contemporary discourses of Beiruti exceptionalism emerge from the neoliberal policies of the 1990s Hariri government, which employed discourses of openness in order to attract foreign investments – particularly from the Arab Gulf – to rebuild the country after the 15-year civil war. The Hariri government and Hariri’s company, Solidere, reconstructed downtown Beirut (Masri, 2010). Downtown Beirut, prior to the civil war, had been a major hub for all Lebanese, became a high-end shopping district after the reconstruction, catering mostly to tourists from the Gulf (Masri, 2010). Despite violent conflict and political instability, Lebanon maintains its tourism industry, on which its economy is highly dependent. The government promotes tourism by highlighting Beirut and Lebanon’s exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism. ⁴

Since the mid-to-late 1990s, discourses of modernity point to several emerging social structures as signs of Lebanon’s progressiveness and cosmopolitanism, including the privatization of the media, sex tourism, LGB tourism, and certain measures of bodily autonomy for women. In addition, these discourses mark Beirut as distinct and more ‘Western’ than other Arab cities. Masri’s (2010) analysis of interviews with Beirutis reveals how this narrative often places Beirut’s cosmopolitanism in opposition to ‘traditional’ Muslim Arab values:

The presence of Khaleeji tourists [from the Arab Gulf] during the summer months offends the sensibilities of many self-defined ‘cosmopolitans’ residing in the city. Khaleeji men walking with their two or three wives and their children in tow through downtown Beirut fills many Lebanese with concern and threatens the perception of Beirut as a modern, cosmopolitan, city with a characteristic ‘Lebanese culture’ and identity. (Masri, 2010, p. 236)

Such assertions reflect the common trope of Lebanese imagining themselves to be ‘culturally different [from] and superior’ to ‘traditional’ Muslim understandings of sex and marriage.

Transnational discourses about modernity and progress, currently animated by the specter of Islam, often use sex and sexuality to determine a society’s progressiveness (Bracke, 2012). ⁵ Sexual politics, as Judith Butler (2010, p. 105) argues, often link modernity ‘to sexual freedom, and the sexual freedom of gay people in particular is understood to exemplify a culturally advanced position, as opposed to one that would be deemed pre-modern.’ In other words, the realm of ‘sexual freedom’ determines how people and places are positioned and assessed in relation to one another in transnational narratives of modernity and progress (Cruz Malavé & Manalansan, 2002). These transnational discourses of progress employ mainstream gay visibility as markers of freedom of expression and signs of national/cultural progress (Manalansan, 1995).

Methods

To examine how transnational discourses of modernity get circulated and articulated among queer Beirutis, I conducted ethnographic observations and 20 semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ activists and individuals in Beirut for a total of 15 months in 2008–2009 and 2013–2014, in addition to shorter fieldwork stints in 2011 and 2012. Whereas this article focuses on my formal interviews, I also rely on a larger number of informal interviews and interactions throughout my fieldwork, particularly at social outings and gatherings with friends and acquaintances. In 2012, I was introduced to an active member of feminist and LGBTQ organizing in Lebanon who helped me find interviewees in Beirut. I described my research as focusing on the relationship between gender, sexuality, and ideas of progress and modernity in Beirut. I relied on snowball sampling and explained that I was looking for individuals who identify as LGBTQ or non-heteronormative, and who have lived or currently live in Beirut.

My interviews were conducted face-to-face, with the exception of two conducted through Skype with individuals who were not currently in Beirut, and lasted between one and a half to two and a half hours. All face-to-face interviews took place in public in Beirut, primarily ‘gay-friendly’ coffee shops. All my interlocutors (ages 18–31), though not necessarily born in Beirut, had lived there for most of their adult lives. I conducted interviews primarily in Arabic, with some in English or French, and translated them into English. My interlocutors include cisgender men, cisgender women, genderqueer and bigender individuals. Their occupations include college students, as well as NGO workers, graphic designers, health-care professionals, and medical doctors. Some of my interviewees were involved in Lebanese LGBT organizing at some point in their lives. Interlocutors’ religious backgrounds include Maronite Christian, Sunni Muslim, Shiite Muslim, Christian Orthodox, and Druze. I have changed all my interlocutors’ names and identifying information to protect them and to ensure their anonymity.

I was primarily interested in how people recounted their experiences of Beirut and LGBTQ communities and how they invoked modernity and progress while speaking about gender and sexual nonnormativity. I started with general questions about life in the city, ‘diversity’ and openness, and representations of Beirut. Following that, I asked about self-perception and identification, community, exclusion, and gender and sexualities in the city.

To analyze my interviews, I used grounded theory or a ‘grounds-up approach’ where data are ‘the foundation of our theory and our analysis of these data generates the concepts’ (Chamaz, 2006, p. 2). I transcribed the interviews shortly after I conducted them, and thus was able to reflect on, code, and note themes that emerged beginning with the initial interviews. I organized my data based on emergent and recurrent themes from my interviews such as visibility, safety, access to space, and cosmopolitanism. For example, while I used terms such as ‘openness’ and ‘inclusive,’ my interlocutors used designations like ‘gay-friendly’ and ‘cosmopolitan.’ I did not explicitly ask about ‘safety’ or ‘access to space,’ rather, these themes, which are a focus of this article, emerged from my interviews. Analyzing my data, I found that people’s experiences of ‘gay-friendly’ Beirut were largely based on co-constitution of gender (and gender normativity) and class. In addition, the fact that many of my interlocutors were engaging differently with the dominant narrative of Beiruti cosmopolitanism and exceptionalism pushed me to reflect on and probe this further.

In the following sections, I start with how my interlocutors understand ‘cosmopolitan Beirut.’ Then, I discuss the gendered and classed exclusions that my interlocutors identified as underpinning their experiences of ‘gay-friendly’ Beirut. Finally, I discuss exclusions within queer Beirut and consider the limits of neoliberal notions of ‘tolerance’ in our understanding of cosmopolitanism and exceptionalism.

Narratives of exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism

Scholarship examining discourses of cosmopolitanism in the Global South tends to depict it as aspirational, using Euro-American cities as reference points, and envisioning cosmopolitanism as a particularly ‘Western’ phenomenon. ⁶ In addition to reflecting Eurocentric linear progress narratives, imagining that cosmopolitan discourses are only ever aspirational obscures the many ways that these discourses are employed. My interlocutors conceived of Beirut’s cosmopolitanism in relation to cities in the Arab World, rather than to Euro-American cities. While some claimed that Beirut was cosmopolitan and exceptional, others disagreed by pointing to its multiple exclusions. Middle-to-upper-class, cisgender women and men were more likely to highlight Beirut’s cosmopolitanism, since their more normative gender and class positions allow them to experience Beirut as exceptional. Those who saw Beirut as cosmopolitan and modern emphasized Beirut’s exceptionalism in the Arab Middle East by pointing to religious diversity and the possibility for a gay visibility not present in other Arab cities.

Some interlocutors, for instance, tried to prove Beirut’s exceptionalism by contrasting its religious diversity to more homogeneous Arab cities. For example, Samira, a 21-year-old cisgender woman, stated that Beirut is exceptional due to the diverse sectarian makeup of the city and its multiple feminist and queer initiatives. Samira identifies as lesbian and was born and raised in the Arab Gulf, but moved to Lebanon to study at a private university. Contrasting her experiences of Beirut to the Arab Gulf, she felt Beirut was exceptional in the Arab World. She says:

We are known as the most liberal. Technically, we are the only Christian country in the Middle East. Second, we have so many different religions, not one dominates. We have different backgrounds. In Beirut, we all come together. It’s beautiful to see 18–19 different sects mash up in one city. Yeah, you still have the Shia area, Sunni, Druze, Maronite. Yes, this is Beirut; drop that shit outside, leave your religions in the villages, and come to Beirut and work.

For Samira, being the ‘only Christian country in the Middle East’ functions as the exception that proves the rule: the Christian country whose presence demonstrates the non-modern, non-secular nature of the rest of the ‘Muslim’ Middle East. For her, leaving one’s religious sect behind makes Beirut more diverse and cosmopolitan. Thus, Samira considers people to be ‘more open’ to difference (and therefore ‘more modern’ and ‘cosmopolitan’) in Beirut than in Lebanese villages. Samira invokes what Halberstam (2005, p. 36) calls ‘metronormativity’: the assumed progressiveness of cities and urban spaces in relation to rural areas.

Samira also presents a relational understanding of cosmopolitanism by contrasting Beirut to other Lebanese and Arab cities and villages. She states:

In terms of gender and sexuality, people have expressed it in so many different ways and different spaces. It’s fascinating, for example, how Helem and Meem ⁷ started up as underground collectives that slowly branched out to society. In terms of organizing, they organized and reached out. This is history. This is not like Jordan or the Gulf where they prosecute you; here they didn’t prosecute us. They didn’t go out to look for gay people. I don’t know if it’s the nature of the government to just be careless, but we have freedom [here].

Samira finds Beirut to be exceptional in the Arab World (contrasting it to Jordan and the Gulf). She contrasts the ‘history’ in Beirut and Lebanon to the ‘timelessness’ in other places. Using other Arab countries as reference points, Samira produces hierarchies of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ countries in the Arab World. Samira also suggests that even the Lebanese diaspora in the Gulf was ‘less open-minded’ and ascribed to more traditional values than Lebanese people in Beirut.

Many of my cisgender male interlocutors also contrast the ‘exceptional’ gay life in Beirut to other places in the Arab World. Nonetheless, many point to the difficulty of being openly gay and the gay community’s exclusion of gender-nonnormative men. One example is Tarek, a 27-year-old, gay-identified, Muslim medical doctor. Tarek lived in Beirut all his life, until moving to Canada to pursue his postgraduate studies. In Beirut, he attended private schools and universities. Even after his move, he still spent significant time in Beirut visiting family and friends. Tarek claims that Lebanon is much better than other Arab countries:

I am always comparing [Lebanon] to ‘worse’ places: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai. As far as I know, there is no activism there … I know friends in Qatar; they tell me that gay life is more underground over there, more so than Beirut. Most gay men are married with kids and then resume their lives.

He adds, ‘Lebanon has become an outlet for other countries in the Middle East to go out, have fun, let go of the repression. This applies to straight people as well.’ Tarek’s description echoes common discourses of Beiruti exceptionalism, which position it as distinct in the Middle East, yet lagging behind its Euro-American counterparts. He says that Beirut is somewhat, but not completely open. He insists that people in Beirut are ‘not as open-minded’ as those in Canada, explaining that people in Beirut don’t accept gay men and lesbians. He feels that there is no anonymity in Beirut and that everyone knows everyone else, so he prefers Canada because, he said, ‘he could do whatever he wanted.’ To explain Beirut’s openness and cosmopolitanism, Tarek distances it from both its Canadian and Arab counterparts.

Most cisgender men find Beirut constraining and drew on their male privilege and gender conformity to navigate the city. However, like Tarek, many claim that Beirut is exceptional in the Arab World, but consider it is only open to a certain extent. My cisgender male interlocutors, who were mostly middle-to-upper class, express concern over the impacts of legal restrictions on their lives more often than other interlocutors. All cisgender men I interviewed agree that gender nonnormative men experience public harassment and are ridiculed.

Unlike findings from other research (Masri, 2010; Seidman, 2012), many of my interlocutors didn’t simply reproduce the claim that Beirut is cosmopolitan. Instead, many contested this claim by citing multiple exclusions targeting them and people they know.

Souraya, a 23-year-old Muslim queer Lebanese woman who attended the public university, states that Lebanese gay life is ‘distinct,’ not necessarily better than other countries in the Arab World. She says:

I don’t see things better than others. I see that the conditions of Beirut as being different than the conditions in Riyadh. I don’t necessarily see Beirut as open: in Riyadh, there is nightlife, and it is all underground. In Beirut, I know how to negotiate some areas more than others. That doesn’t mean that I feel safer. Maybe I feel more comfortable, but safety is something else.

Souraya claims that safety and comfort have different meanings in negotiating the city. She does not see Beirut as an ‘exceptional gay haven’; instead, she focuses on the different conditions and possibilities that make gay life possible.

Souraya questions the exceptionalism of Beirut, because she is aware of the multiple exclusions that exist. Souraya is attentive to how social and political economies produce developmental narratives of progress in Lebanon, particularly concerning gender and sexuality. She is critical of those who do not consider the role of government policy in shaping these discourses. Souraya argues that narratives of Beirut’s exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism are quite dominant because the Lebanese state and people use them to distinguish Lebanon in the Arab World:

All things have been worked on: in the government, politics and economics that Lebanon is exceptional … Sexually, it is a sexual haven. The Arabs come here … we have things that other Arab countries don’t have, and our women are different. They wear swimsuits; other women in the Arab world don’t. We have gay people that other places don’t tolerate. But for me, this is all very superficial, of course, and we the people who live here know that it is very superficial.

By saying ‘all things have been worked on,’ Souraya suggests that Lebanon has instrumentally worked on its exceptional and open image as a means of self-promotion to distinguish it in the region. She points to the state’s active role in the commodification of difference and diversity, especially in its postwar narrative of Muslim–Christian coexistence, a commodification intended to attract tourism and foreign investments. This narrative suggests that the presence of Christians marks Lebanon as exceptional in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Even though she claims ‘the people who live here know it is superficial,’ Tarek and Samira’s cases illustrate that this is not always true. Souraya suggests that Beirutis know that their cosmopolitan image is superficial and that Lebanon’s cosmopolitan image – created for self-promotion – masks many exclusions, particularly unequal access to ‘gay-friendly,’ and LGBTQ organizing spaces.

Whose gay Beirut? Policing gender and class

Gender and class determine who can experience Beirut as ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘gay-friendly.’ The gay-friendly spaces of Beirut require certain performances of classed, normative femininities and masculinities, in addition to economic, social, and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Skeggs, 1997). Some of my interlocutors suggest that queer normativity is highly racialized in Beirut. Souraya, for example, claims that class, gender, and racial codes govern Beirut and that the people who are welcomed are those who can afford to live in Beirut. She says:

Beirut is very classist: very, very classist. We might not feel it as Lebanese, but I am sure people who are not Lebanese feel it a lot, much more than we do. Beirut’s diversity is ruled by many codes, from nationality to skin color to societal status to class to the way that one looks. If she’s a woman like me with short hair, she’s not very welcome.

Souraya claims that non-Western (particularly nonwhite) foreigners are excluded much more than the Lebanese, pointing to the experiences of migrant workers from Southeast Asia and North and East Africa. However, she states that, as a Lebanese woman, she feels unwelcome in certain areas, because of her nonnormative gender presentation, particularly her short hair. Class privilege is central in shaping her access to and experiences of the city, which also makes her nonnormative haircut ‘acceptable.’ She still has access to Beirut, because she can afford to live there and move relatively safely between certain areas of the city. Since class shapes gender performances (Skeggs, 1997), Souraya’s gendered and classed position enables her to move safely between areas of the city.

One needs economic and social capital (gained mainly through queer networks) to access private semi-LGBTQ-friendly places. For example, Sirine a 28-year-old Lebanese genderqueer individual who was born, raised, and lives in Beirut, argues that, even though certain areas of Beirut seem ‘more open,’ they are not necessarily so. Sirine, who prefers feminine pronouns, compares her experiences of Beirut to those in France where she lived while pursuing her MA degree. She claims that in Beirut one is welcome despite one’s gender presentation, in private establishments, if one can afford access. This, she feels, is not only common to the Lebanese case. Randa, a genderqueer Lebanese NGO manager in her early thirties, recounts how places become more expensive when they are marketed as ‘gay-friendly,’ especially for tourists. She explains that many Beirutis cannot afford the prices of ‘gay-friendly places’ in Beirut: ‘If you are poor, you are excluded: you can’t pay in certain places.’ Class plays a central role in people’s access to ‘gay space.’ However, these spaces, as many interlocutors recount, require not only economic capital, but also ‘acceptable’ gendered presentations and performances that embody cultural and/or social capital.

Sirine claims that people never just respond to her gender presentation or sexuality but instead to multiple positions she occupies, such as being a foreigner or not. She brought up her experiences in France to challenge the idea that LGBTQ individuals from Lebanon feel safer in Western contexts. Sirine says she feels safer in Beirut than in France, because she is not a foreigner. In France, she wasn’t harassed only because of her gender nonnormativity, but because of her gender nonnormativity and her status as a non-citizen:

I was never scared for people to harass or attack me [in Beirut] and when they did it, it was – because it is my space, this is my city – I could retaliate. However, in other places, you can’t retaliate. Not because of your gender identity, but because you are a third-class citizen, and because they have all these issues of racism and migration.

Sirine feels less safe defending herself in France than in Beirut. She critiques both Orientalist discourses about the ‘non-modern’ status of Arab societies and discourses of Lebanese exceptionalism. For her, the narrative of modernity in both Lebanon and France is based on the ‘tolerance’ of only particular groups.

Like Sirine, several of my interlocutors suggest that access to gay friendliness in Arab or Western cities depends on privilege. One must embody ‘acceptable’ racial (as in the case of Sirine in France), gender and class positions, and be part of LGBTQ networks. For example, Mays, a feminist and queer activist in her late twenties in Beirut, refuses the binary of thinking about Lebanon as modern in opposition to the ‘traditional’ Arab World. Mays claims,

Clearly, this is an issue: to understand and define Beirut as progressive in comparison to Arab countries. Usually, Lebanon has all these oppressions: for example the Dekwaneh incident. It is not true that it is better. We are just as bad.

Like Souraya, Mays refutes the idea that Beirut is better than other cities in the Arab World by bringing up the multiple exclusions and oppressions that exist within the city. Significantly, she references the 2013 police raid and shut down of the gay club Ghost in the Dekwaneh neighborhood in East Beirut. During that raid, police detained, humiliated, and verbally and physically abused several gay and trans individuals (Marwan, 2013). Narratives of Beirut’s gay exceptionalism treat such incidents as anomalies. However, these incidents illustrate how police maintain ‘Beirut’s cosmopolitanism’ by policing subjects that are considered ‘outsiders’ to cosmopolitanism. Police forces regularly harass and assault queer individuals who embody marginalized gendered and class positions. Most people detained at Ghost were both working-class and gender-nonnormative and included Syrian nationals and refugees. This homonormative, classed, and gendered policing constructs some queer formations as acceptable and others as not (what Mays means when she says ‘Lebanon has all these oppressions’). Those deemed as ‘less appropriate’ queer individuals frequent spaces like Ghost, which many of my more privileged informants distanced themselves from and framed as a ‘nasty’ place. Like other global cities, Beirut’s gay friendliness is based on policing classed and gendered boundaries, and producing ‘others’ who embody racialized and ‘inappropriate’ sexualities.

Many of my interlocutors assert that having access to gay-friendly spaces and LGBTQ networks in Beirut requires having economic, cultural, and social capital. Therefore, networks (including activist networks) act as social capital, enabling access to safe(r) LGBTQ spaces. These networks also police class boundaries by granting people with economic capital access to the networks, while often keeping others out. In some cases, this type of social capital circulates globally. For example, Mays claims that her networks of queer activists primarily shaped her experiences of cities, such as New York City and Cairo. Therefore, she argues one cannot draw conclusions about gay life based only on one’s experiences of a city without centralizing the role of the networks one relies on. For Mays, Beirut is not exceptional; instead, people who have access to Beirut’s sometimes-quite-exclusive networks find it easier to navigate.

For many, the presence of gay and lesbian places is less indicative of growing openness and ‘tolerance’ than of capitalism and the profitability for establishments becoming gay-friendly. Randa, who was born and raised in Beirut, has been active in LGBTQ organizing in Lebanon since its inception as an underground ‘movement’ in the 1990s. She recalled how the ‘lesbian and gay community’ started as an online community, consisting mainly of a listserv and an online chat group, which eventually grew into an underground support group called Club Free. This group later led to the formation of the two LGBT groups, Helem and Meem. ⁸

Randa, like others, talked about the exclusivity of networks and private ‘gay-friendly’ establishments. She described how establishments in Beirut, such as bars, restaurants, and clubs, become ‘gay-friendly’ more readily than public spaces. ⁹ Randa insisted that these places are ‘gay-friendly’ not ‘queer-friendly’ places, since most places are transphobic. Hence, these places become ‘safe havens’ for some, while excluding those at most risk for public harassment.

Gender normativity plays an important role in people’s experiences of both public and private spaces in Beirut. Randa explained that people experience public harassment very differently depending on their gender presentation, and that trans women experience the worst harassment:

[Beirut] allows you the space you want, let’s be fair. Okay, if we go [to] the extreme, who are the most people who get harassed in Lebanon? They are the transsexuals. Their status is even worse than women, especially male-to-female. If someone hasn’t done any operation, and he looks like a sissy boy, they [will] be harassed by the rest. However, there are a few places they can be relatively safer in, but they are very few. The more special or queer you are, your circle gets smaller. We also have to talk about safety; maybe a trans person can go out during the day but is not able to go to most places.

Gay-friendly places in Beirut have historically discriminated against gender-nonnormative men (Merabet, 2014). In these spaces, classed and gendered presentations are still key to who is and isn’t welcome. Like Mays and Sirine’s discussions about accessibility and class, Randa claims that gay-friendly spaces are also exclusive to those who have the means to afford them and are part of the ‘right’ networks. For example, Randa claims that Acid, the first gay club (now closed), was ‘money-friendly’ rather than gay-friendly:

If we think of the very fancy places, the one where you pay 50 dollars entrance fee, people there don’t care. I went to a place recently, to a gay friend’s birthday. I usually go to an averagely priced pub. I don’t go to very expensive places. I also have to dress a certain way. I don’t like someone to impose on me. I went there, and I saw a lot of people from the gay community I know. They were there, they were dressed (shirt and tie), and they paid the money. If you are going to pay money, no one says anything, unless you are going to make out or dance with someone of the same sex. It will only be a problem if all of the LGBT community starts going there. But that is not going to happen, because so many don’t have the money.

Like Sirine, she claims that expensive places are less likely to discriminate based on gender presentation, since they are mostly concerned with profit. However, as Skeggs (1997) argues, highlighting only economic capital risks omitting the multifaceted ways that class operates in conjunction with gender. Randa shows how expensive places require particular gendered and classed presentations, such as her gay friends wearing ties and the expectation that she must dress ‘a certain way,’ reflecting a necessary embodiment of cultural capital, as well as habitus (Bourdieu, 1986).

Queer exclusions

Exclusions take the form of limiting access to many spaces, including gay-friendly spaces. Some considered normative queerness in Beirut to be very gendered, classed, and raced. Rabab, for example, talked about how gender, class, and religiosity shaped her experiences in queer and non-queer circles. Rabab, who identified as ‘bigender,’ yet at the time, preferred the pronouns she/her, was in her mid-twenties. Rabab, like many of my interlocutors, resists dominant understandings that assume a gay and lesbian subject, who is either out or closeted, and who aspires to certain forms of visibility. She recently stopped wearing the hijab, following a double mastectomy she underwent a few months before we met. She had also moved from a predominantly Shia Muslim area to a Christian quarter in Beirut, and describes people’s reactions to her taking the hijab off: ‘Many people congratulated me when I took off the hijab, both in my [new] neighborhood and within queer circles.’ Rabab said that people assumed that she was now ‘liberated,’ secular, and ‘more legitimately queer.’ She became more intelligible to people around her. Identifying as queer while wearing a hijab did not make sense for many in her LGBTQ circles. This is unsurprising given the ‘global war on terror,’ where Muslims are commonly constructed as oppressing women and LGBTQ individuals (Savci, 2016). Rabab refuses what I call ‘reconciliation narratives,’ which are dominant narratives that present LGBTQ Arabs and Muslims as always having to reconcile what are assumed to be mutually exclusive categories (LGBTQ and Muslim). She considers this framing to be informed by simplistic binaries. However, like many of my interlocutors, she explains how contending and intersecting parts of herself shape her life in Beirut.

Rabab stopped wearing the hijab because it was a clear gender marker, rather than because she felt it contradicted her queerness: ‘I only took the hijab off because I did not want to be viewed as a man or a woman. For me, it depends on the context. I have a flat chest, but I have a feminine voice, and I don’t have a beard, but most people assume I am a woman.’ Rabab rejects the idea, held by many in her new neighborhood and queer circles, that the hijab is oppressive and ‘not queer.’ She argues that it has saved her many times and as something that she will strategically use when she finds fit, particularly when visiting family. However, she recounts multiple incidents of harassment she has experienced while wearing the hijab. She said the harassment was worst in private establishments and in what she called ‘posh’ places. These included most ‘gay-friendly places,’ where, if she forgot she was wearing a hijab, people’s stares often reminded her. She felt that she was most discriminated against when she used to wear the hijab pre-surgery: ‘I found out, at the end, that nothing tops the harassment that I got from the hijab, but then I found myself content that people don’t assume my gender, and I like that.’

Rabab’s working-class background informs her gender identification with a working-class masculinity. She plans on getting a forearm tattoo that she feels will exemplify that masculinity. She repeatedly expresses that she is different from the ‘other queers’ for not attending private schools or universities, and for having less access to Beirut growing up (she was born and raised in a Lebanese village). She insists that cultural capital like fluency in English and/or French grants people more access to Beiruti LGBTQ communities, circles, and spaces. These requirements are examples of how some queer activists and circles unwittingly reproduce exclusions that they are critical of.

Rabab considers racism and classism to be directly linked to urban development and to cities like Beirut: ‘Lebanon is a very racist country. The racism is also most common in urban areas such as Beirut, which is a byproduct of urbanization and people thinking the space is open, diverse and cosmopolitan.’ Rabab refers to racism towards nonwhite foreigners, and to sectarian tensions, including against Shias, the historically marginalized religious sect, often considered to be less ‘modern’ than other sects (Deeb, 2006). As Souraya’s example demonstrates, gender and class remain determining factors in Shias’ experiences of Beirut.

Rabab refuses the claim that Beirut is more modern than villages in Lebanon. She recounts how, growing up in a predominately Shia village, she had very different experiences of sex and sexuality than people in Beirut. Rabab disrupts Samira’s binary about Beirut versus the village. She feels that her village, which might be considered more conservative, was more open than Beirut, particularly since people there talked about sex more often than in Beirut. Her characterization of her village as open compared to Beirut critiques the metropolitan discourses that construct Beirut as exceptional and open. Rabab asks, ‘how are we conservative? How are we traditional/uncivilized because we talk or don’t talk about sex?’ Rabab thus disrupts the binary between urban and rural, but does so by reproducing the idea that openness around sex and sexuality is a marker of progress and modernity.

Cosmopolitanism and ‘tolerance’

Many individuals recounted accounts of Lebanese racism in how the Lebanese state and people treat non-Western foreigners. Given the surge of Syrian refugees and migrant domestic workers, open racist practices have become common, whether it is symbolic (discourses around refugees), linked to access to resources (legal restriction on jobs, and visa restrictions), or limiting mobility. For instance, in July 2013, I saw banners on the entrances to some villages in Mount Lebanon ordering all Syrian refugees to register with the municipality and to follow a 7:00 p.m. curfew. Local government and municipalities justify such policies, which criminalize refugees, as needed to curb the increasing levels of crime and other offenses. In January 2015, the Lebanese government introduced, for the first time in history, a visa requirement for Syrians entering Lebanon. This ‘suspicion of the other’ also extends to Palestinian and Sudanese refugees and to migrant domestic workers from East Africa and Southeast Asia.

Particularly post-civil-war, the Lebanese state’s claims that Lebanon is built on the coexistence of Muslims and Christians is enacted in order to mark Lebanon as modern and cosmopolitan. These narratives of coexistence do not apply to migrants and refugees. Tolerance, as Wendy Brown reminds us, is ‘a political discourse and practice of governmentality that is historically and geographically variable’ (2006, p. 4). Tolerance of specific groups and not others therefore is a characteristic of progress narratives (Brown, 2006). The ‘modern’ narrative of tolerance depends on not tolerating certain vulnerable groups (gender-nonnormative, trans, and working-class people, as well as refugees) who it regards as non-modern (El-Tayeb, 2011).

Conclusion

In this article, I argue that neoliberal designations of places such as Beirut, as regionally exceptional, cosmopolitan, and ‘gay-friendly’ obscure multiple hierarchies and exclusions. Building on research on urban inequalities and LGBTQ life, I show that using elitist definitions of urban cosmopolitanism limits our understanding of the lived experiences of marginalized communities. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews, I complicate the idea that Beirut is a ‘safe haven’ for LGBTQ individuals and illustrate how Beirut’s seeming openness conceals a series of exclusions, particularly in relation to unequal access to space. For example, gender normativity and classism shape individuals’ experience of ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘gay-friendly’ Beirut. These exclusions are reproduced in LGBTQ communities, particularly affecting working-class, trans, and gender-nonnormative individuals.

Unlike claims that Lebanese LGBTQ individuals uncritically reproduce discourses of Beiruti cosmopolitanism, queer Beirutis engage with this narrative differently based on their gendered and classed positions. For example, my interlocutors negotiate what is represented as a ‘cosmopolitan city’ by contesting what cosmopolitanism means and by centering non-Euro-American cities. Building on research on non-elite cosmopolitanisms (Kothari, 2008), I argue that we should move away from understandings of (queer) cosmopolitanism as an elite category reserved for those who are deemed ‘appropriately queer.’

Transnational discourses on sex and sexuality are used as markers of progress for places and people. When used in Lebanon, I argue, they promote two claims about progress: one that modern homosexuality and gay rights are signs of state progress and the other that Lebanon is the most developed nation in the region. These narratives obscure race, gender, and class-based exclusions operating in Lebanon, such as the dehumanization and racialization of Syrian refugees, thus, reproducing different valuations of life.