I Like Women
Like Me!
By Sruti Bala
04 October, 2005
Countercurrents.org
It
all started in 2003 with what seemed like a harmless e-mail list: a
handful of Palestinian and Arab women living in Israel as well as in
the occupied territories of the West Bank began an exchange on the internet,
to share with each other in a secure space their experiences related
to sexuality. For a society torn by violent political conflict and shattered
by various levels of social tensions and interlinked oppressions, this
small step was significant, for it meant voicing for the first time
an issue that is absolute taboo.
There was a lot
to share and talk about: from the discovery of one's own sexuality,
to experiences of sexual harrassment and abuse from family and outsiders
for daring to divert from the compulsory heterosexual norm, to the invisibility
of women in general, but in particular of women who questioned their
prescribed gender roles. For these women, it involved a great deal of
struggle from wanting to raise their voices to actually being able to
speak. To begin with, it meant having to search for an appropriate language.
This was not only for practical reasons of enabling communication, since
some of the women living in Israel used Hebrew just as well as Arabic,
and others English, but also, as Rauda Morcos, one of the initiators
of the list, points out, because finding one's voice implied that language
needed to be re-appropriated: "I have forgotten my language, I
don't know how to say to make love in Arabic without it sounding chauvinistic,
aggressive and alien to the experience." The search for words to
express oneself, the search for different voices led to the founding
of ASWAT (Arabic: voices), a group of Palestinian Gay Women.
To be women, to
be Palestinian, to defy the norms of heterosexuality: ASWAT decided
to draw the links between these layers of oppression, which for a long
time felt too overwhelming to confront all at once. It also aims to
create a community that allows for a space where differing identities
do not constantly have to be negotiated and explained and fought for.
Running an organisation, arranging regular meetings and conducting concrete
work is no small task in a country which is, at least for holders of
Palestinian documents living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in
fact one large open air jail. On the one side, the expanding wall constructed
by Israeli Security Forces, which stretches
right through Palestinian land, added to the already heavy travel restrictions,
make physical meetings of the group a challenge in themselves. The actual
cultural and class differences between different Arab women whether
from within occupied Palestine or in Israel, also raised other types
of barriers, which had to be overcome in the search for support and
solidarity in a common cause.
To politicise the
issue of sexuality means to draw connections between discrimination
on grounds of sexual preference, the patriarchal social set-up in Palestine
and life under Israeli occupation. In doing this, ASWAT women are taking
immense personal risks. As the women from ASWAT say, in their working
statement: "As long as we women participate in the struggle for
national liberation, we are welcomed and our efforts are appreciated.
The moment women want to focus their energies in establishing independence
from the male occupation and structure, we are transformed instantly
into enemies." Currently, Kayan, Arab Feminist Organization provides
an office for ASWAT. Several women in ASWAT, already active in other
political associations and in peace and anti-occupation work, now strive
towards bringing sexuality to the agenda of political and social change.
Rauda Morcos, writer
and educator, living in a small town in Northern Israel, relates her
own experience of facing hatred and outrage because of what she stands
for. A journalist working with a leading conservative Israeli newspaper
(Yedeot Ahronot/ The Latest News) interviewed Morcos and published an
article about her poetry in July 2003. Although she mentioned her lesbian
identity in passing during the interview, this L-word gave the article
its juicy title, enough to make people want to read on. All of a sudden,
the Arab population of her home town, which she generally assumed to
have no interest in the literary supplements of Hebrew newspapers, seemed
to have read the article and had something to say about her. Local corner
shop owners made photocopies and distributed it, because, after all,
everyone knew it was about the daughter of so-and-so from their own
town. The consequences of that article were far more serious than Rauda
had imagined: her car windows were smashed and tyres were punctured
several times, she received innumerable threatening letters and phone
calls, and to top it all, 'coincidentally' lost her job as a school
teacher, since parents of pupils complained that they did not want her
as a teacher. Whether she liked it or not, Rauda had taken a step out
of the closet, at the risk of endangering her own life and being criminalised
in return. She however used this experience as a means of self-empowerment.
"In such situations," she comments in a tongue-in-cheek manner,
" you realise very quickly who your true friends are and who is
a waste of time. Once you step out of one closet, it becomes easier
to step out of the next."
Rauda is one of
the few women in ASWAT who is "out". The women in the group
come from all kinds of backgrounds and circumstances: some bisexual,
some lesbian queers, transsexual, and transgender, inter sex, some,
in her own words, just confused. Yet ASWAT provides the forum to be
open about these questions inside the group, and nevertheless find the
arsenal with which to fight their common battle. At the same time, it
also allows for searching for role models outside of Western gay-lesbian
lifestyle codes, for an expression of diversity in female sexualities
from within the diversity in Arab society.
ASWAT can be contacted
at: [email protected]
Sruti Bala can be
reacged [email protected]