When I posted on Saturday about the problem of pink-washing, I expected something of a reaction. Now, I’ve never lived nor even visited our neighbor to the southwest (if for no other reason than that it is illegal for me to do so; my personal opinions do not matter on this) and, frankly, I have no particular opinion for good or bad on the subject of gay rights inside Israel. It doesn’t especially matter to me.
What I do have rather strong opinions on, however, is the use of gay rights here and elsewhere in the region as an excuse.
What many people, including some of the commentators here as well as people quoted in the original CNN piece, seem to do is to create a dichotomy of two choices for Arab LGBT people. The choice isn’t between liberation and the closet in their minds: it is between either supporting foreign military occupation and intervention and brutal secular dictatorships or supporting harshly anti-gay regimes.
That is the choice proposed by those who I accuse of pinkwashing Assad (and Mubarak and Netanyahu and George Bush and Saddam). They give us the ‘choice’ of gay rights achieved only by denying entire peoples of their right to choose to live as they want. Their supposition is that the only way to protect ‘gay rights’ in the Middle East is by denying whole sectors of the population autonomy and basic liberties. Either support gay rights by defending brutality or unite with the oppressive evils of your wicked and damned society.
I reject that. I reject the notions that lie behind these thoughts, that westerners know what is best for the Arabs, better than any Arab does; that my culture and my religion are made up of evil and wicked people who are nothing but vile brutes who can only be constrained by force; that the Arabs are not ‘ready’ for democracy.
I reject being used as an alibi for those who would echo the words of Kipling and consider us as ‘new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child.’ That sort of imperialist thought was wrong then and wrong now. We are not asking, "Why brought he us from bondage, our loved Egyptian night?" We are not savoring oppression.
Quite the opposite in fact. I’ve spoken to many LGBT people who actually live here and I do not hear them clamoring any more loudly for the White Man to lift our burdens than do our hetero-friends and families. We don’t want to be used as fodder for hatred by those who hate our societies. We want to be free.
And, most importantly, we actually believe in our people.
We don’t see things as being an either/or choice: it isn’t a choice between supporting dictatorship or giving up on rights for ourselves as LGBT people. We see things much more hopefully. We see our struggle as fighting homophobia in our own societies as though there were no dictators or military occupations and as fighting against dictatorship and occupation as though there were no homophobia. We want to win both struggles.
And, we believe, that when we win freedom from dictatorship and occupation, we will not have things easy; we know that. Then, we must not cease from struggle. In a free Syria, we will still struggle to change society but we will not repeat the mistake of the past, the mistake common to everyone from Allenby to Assad to Saddam to Nasser to Ben Gurion to Netanyahu to George Bush to Ousama Bin Laden and on to everyone who accepts the hopelessness of the pink-washers’ narrative:
We will believe in the Arab people and believe that change doesn’t come at the barrel of a gun or on the heel of a boot. Change comes from persuading others.
That is what we will do; I for one am willing to stake my life and my freedom on the wisdom of the people of Syria.