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© 2016 Ghassan Moussawi ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2016 Ghassan Moussawi ALL RIGHTS RESERVED QUEER DISRUPTIONS: MODERNITY AND NON-NORMATIVE GENDER AND SEXUALITIES IN POST-WAR BEIRUT By GHASSAN MOUSSAWI A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Sociology Written under the direction of Arlene Stein And approved by __________________________________ __________________________________ __________________________________ __________________________________ __________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May, 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Queer Disruptions: Modernity and Non-Normative Gender and Sexualities in Post-War Beirut By GHASSAN MOUSSAWI Dissertation Director: Arlene Stein My dissertation addresses the changing historical meanings of sexual practices and identities, and the effects of political turmoil and conflict on the experiences of LGBTQ individuals in post-war Beirut. Drawing on ethnographic observations, life history interviews and content analysis, I rethink how claims of modernity and progress operate by focusing on queer sexualities in Beirut since the year 2005. Dominant Euro- American understandings of coming out and LGBTQ visibility are often used as indicators of non-Western societies’ modernity and progress. My work complicates this stance, illustrating how queer lives in Beirut unsettle and disrupt binaries of visibility/invisibility and tradition/progress. In addition, I show how dominant narratives of modernity view the emergence of “gay rights” in the Middle East as a marker of progress, without taking into account local exclusionary practices. I examine public discourses, personal narratives, and collective organizing strategies in a number of different contexts. ii Unlike much research that focuses on how sexuality emerges as the most salient marker of difference in LGBT people’s personal narratives, my research illustrates that LGBT individuals in Beirut emphasize how gender, class, and sectarian identities act as their primary modes of visible self-making. Rather than treating queer visibility as a hallmark of progress, individuals devise strategies of visibility such as creating and living in what they refer to as “imagined bubbles.” Queer Beirutis’ strategies vary across different family and social contexts and are shaped by political turmoil, regional instability, and sectarian conflict. Using a feminist intersectional lens, I highlight how various queer social circles contest, yet unwittingly reproduce, the exclusionary practices of Beirut’s cosmopolitanism that sideline gender-nonnormative and transgender persons, as well as migrant workers and refugees. Marginalized queer Beirutis, particularly working-class and gender-nonconforming individuals, question Beirut’s cosmopolitanism and carve out new understandings of queer visibilities that challenge dominant understandings of modernity and progress. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dedicated to my family: Haifa, Ali, and Sarah Thank you so much to my wonderful committee and mentors for their support and guidance throughout this process. I have been very fortunate to work closely with several inspiring mentors. Thank you to Arlene Stein, my dissertation chair, for believing in my project and for her constant support and encouragement. She has been an invaluable mentor and friend since my first day at Rutgers. Arlene encouraged me to pursue topics that I was passionate about and to be methodologically open and flexible. She also pushed me to be a better and clearer writer and to always think about how to make my work accessible. Judy Gerson’s unwavering support and invaluable advice from the beginning of my graduate career shaped how I approach my research and teaching and taught me how to really value interdisciplinary research. She showed me how a good mentorship relationship is based on mutual respect and honesty. I am truly grateful. Ann Mische’s excitement about my project, and her constant encouragement and support, helped push my thinking and consider how my work contributes to several sub- disciplines. I cannot be more thankful for her belief in my project and for her genuine enthusiasm, guidance, and friendship, even after she moved to Notre Dame. Zakia Salime’s critical comments, feedback and advice have been very helpful in shaping the theoretical foundations of my work and helping me contextualize and think of my broader contributions to multiple fields of study. Thank you! I am honored that Roderick Ferguson accepted to serve on my committee as external reader; his work has and continues to inspire and inform my own thoughts on queer theory in many ways. His wonderful insights and feedback will help me in shaping my project for the future. I iv cannot thank Ashley Currier enough for all her mentorship during my last year, particularly in helping me think of my project as a whole and for all her invaluable advice, support, and encouragement in my year “on the market.” Thank you so much! Steven Seidman’s friendship and support helped me throughout most of my years in graduate school. Thank you for encouraging me to pursue a PhD in Sociology and for your friendship along the way, Steve. I would also like to thank the following faculty at Rutgers for their support during different phases of my graduate training: Ethel Brooks, Deborah Carr, Phaedra Daipha, Carlos Decena, Lauren Krivo, Paul Mclean, Julie Phillips, Robyn Rodriguez, and Richard Williams. My heartfelt thanks to the wonderful administrative team and staff at the Sociology department at Rutgers for their assistance and support. Thank you to Tamara Crawford, Marie Ferguson, Shan Harewood, Lisa Iorillo, Diane Molnar, Amy Shockley, and Dianne Yarnell. I am grateful to the Institute for Research on Women and the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship for funding my dissertation research. Thank you to the fellows and participants of the Institute for Research on Women’s (IRW) 2013-14 seminar on “Decolonizing Gender/Gender Decolonization,” for their support and feedback with an early draft of chapter seven. At the IRW, I want to especially thank Nicole Fleetwood and Sarah Tobias for their support, Nadia Guessos for her invaluable comments and feedback, Ashley Falzetti for her support and encouragement, Juno Parreñas for the wonderful comments, Simone Alexander, and Colleen Martin. I was also fortunate to take part of the 2014-15 IRW seminar on v “Feminist Optics: Gender and Visual Studies” as IRW’s Learning Community Coordinator. In that seminar I want to thank Annie Fukushima, Fakhri Haghani, and Maya Mikdashi for their support and friendship. Thank you to the following friends and colleagues in the Sociology department for their support and friendship at various stages of this process: Brittany Battle, Heather Batson, Analena Bruce, Kevin Chamow, Christene DeJong, Dilara Demir, Shruti Devgan, Neha Gondal, Victoria Gonzalez, Tsai-Yen Han, Kelly Kato, Ying-Chao Kao, Elizabeth Luth, Etienne Meunier, Manjusha Nair, Jason Phillips, Alicia Raia-Hawrylak, Eiko Saeki, Theresa Simpson, Kirsten Song, Lindsay Stevens, Nil Uzun, and Niina Vuolajarvi. The constant support and encouragement of my good friends helped me get through this: Lynn Darwich, Jane Deeb, Marie Anne Gebara, and Ruth Markert. Thank you so much for your encouragement and for reassuring me that it will all be fine. Many thanks to my friend Victor Chedid for being there all this time and for making sure I take breaks, relax, and enjoy myself. Erik Wade, thank you for all your patience, support, and friendship, throughout the most challenging years of this process. Thank you so much for reading my chapters multiple times and for all your editing. Finally, thank you so much for all my interlocutors for trusting me and sharing their worlds with me. I hope that this project does justice to the stories they shared. As per Rutgers graduate school guidelines; I acknowledge that close versions of Chapters 3 and 6 of this dissertation have previously been published. A version of chapter 3 appears as “Queering Beirut, the Paris of the Middle East: Fractal Orientalism and Essentialized Masculinities in Gay Travelogues,” in Gender, Place and Culture: A vi Journal of Feminist Geography (Volume 20, Issue 7), and Chapter 6 as “(Un) critically Queer Organizing: Towards a More Complex Analysis of LGBTQ Organizing in Lebanon,” in Sexualities (Volume 18, Issue 5-6). In addition, a close version of a section in chapter 7 “Lebanese Masculinities: distancing and exclusion” appears as “Not ‘Straight’ but Still a ‘Man’: Negotiating Non-Heterosexual Masculinities in Beirut,” in Introducing the New Sexuality Studies (2nd edition). vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents............................................................................................................. viii List of Tables, Figures and Photographs ......................................................................... xii Chapter 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................1 “Because Lebanon is not Kandahar” ..................................................................................1 Research questions and overview of
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