Sexuality today can be considered as a broad umbrella term that encompasses sexual identities, sexual acts, feelings, desires, and bodily expressions and performances. Sexuality continues to be understood by some as an innate and natural expression of desire, which is an argument that dates back to the late nineteenth century in Europe, during which time sexologists began to explore physical and biological basis for sex(1). European and North American sexology operated with a set of assumptions, namely that natural sexuality was heterosexual and that that the purpose of the sexual desire and drive was reproductive. This specific scientific view is what led to the marking of certain sexualities, behaviors and acts (namely same-sex ones) as unnatural or simply other. During the same period, several sexologists including German Magnus Hirschfeld and British Havelock Ellis among others offered a challenging voice and argued that homosexuality was natural and should not be criminalized(2).
Psychologists also significantly shaped the understanding of sexuality. Most notably, Austrians Kraftt-Ebing and Sigmund Freud explored sexuality as a central psychological affair that determines one’s personal development. Freud in particular held the view that “sex is at the core of the self”, and subsequently theorized the field of psychoanalysis in which he proposed that people undergo several stages of sexual-psychological development(3). According to academic Steven Seideman, although Freud’s work built on previous sexology, he viewed sex not only as procreative, but rather as a pleasurable drive that can be expressed or oppressed, which in turn shapes the individual’s psychological development(4). Freud’s works were translated into Arabic in the 1950s and subsequently gave birth to the term “jinsiyah” which carries the dual meaning of sexuality/sexual and nationality as well as the word “mithliyah” (sameness, denotes homosexual orientation)(5).
These two views – the sexological and psychological – fall under the understanding of sexuality as an innate biological drive. A second view sees sexuality as a socially constructed set of feelings, behaviors, and acts which are shaped by one’s socioeconomic conditions (class), racialized marking, and gender identity. Perhaps most influential in the deconstructive strain of thinking has been Michel Foucault who in 1976 wrote a philosophical history of European sexuality and theorized questions of power and discipline of bodies in society(6). He historicized how modern Europe came to understand sexuality as a “sexual” affair in itself, and how it became central to a state’s and a society’s disciplining of their citizens(7).
In this vein, it is important to mention that the very establishment and separation of sexuality as a field of studies is thus based upon historical socioeconomic developments in the European and North American contexts. Foucault has been critiqued for not properly examining the overlapping links between the emergence of “sexuality” as a field and European colonial and imperial endeavors(8). Today, sexuality and attitudes around it have become a main area through which to build a civilizational difference between a “progressive” Europe and North America, and a “backward” Middle East(9) (see LGBTQ).
Studies of sexuality in the Middle Eastern context predominantly include efforts to historicize sex and desire, and the academic debate has been influenced by a similar split between essentialism and constructionism. Essentialist theorizing includes writers such as Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe, who understand same-sex desire and acts as trans-historical(10). Others, such as Khaled El-Rouayheb, explored male same-sex desire and sexual acts in the period between 1500-1800 in the Ottoman Arab-Islamic world, and argued that male same-sex desire was organized very differently from how we understand it today: desire did not operate as a basis for identity(11). Rather, same-sex desire was organized around binaries between sex for love and sex for lust, active and receptive sex roles, and sexual acts as permitted or outlawed by religion(12). Thus, although figures such as “Luti” and “Ma’bun” [مأبون] existed in this period, they did not refer to identities that are based on “homosexuality” but rather to sexual roles.
In 2007, Jospeh Massad proposed an extensive history of Arab sexuality in which he examined the effects of colonization on Arab intellectual thinking and traced the process through which Arab intellectuals adopted European Orientalist concepts(13). Importantly, his work delved into the writings of Arab historians and intellectuals on themes of sex and sexuality, thereby creating a basis and notably, how the Arab Nahda included a re-writing of past sexual acts, attitudes, and figures. In the same year, Samar Habib published a study on women’s same-sex desire and narratives of sexuality in Arabic poetry and literature from different historical periods(14). Habib argued for taking academic essentialism seriously and studying “sameness” rather than only “difference” in the history of (homo)sexuality. Finally, the most recent published work on “queer” sexuality comes from an anthropological intervention by Sofian Merabet who theorizes queer men’s same-sex desires in the city of Beirut(15). Studies of same-sex sexuality and desire continue to multiply(16), including works on Iran and Maghreb, and a special attention to sexual-rights debates. However, most studies remain within the literary and historical fields with minimal anthropological interventions. In Lebanon, leftist collectives during the 1990s and 2000s saw the emergence of sexuality as a political issue, which produced a vivid debate within these circles. In fact, these leftist mobilizations led to the creation(17), at a later stage, of Helem, an organisation to protect LGBT rights(18).
