LGBTQ Movements after 2011: The Challenges of Activism

Dossier LGBTQ Movements after 2011: The Challenges of Activism

The Arab Spring decade has unfolded incredible changes for the LGBTQ communities in the Arab region. Politically, LGBTQ activism has gained tremendous ground during the past decade, inserting itself more and more openly into social movements demanding radical change in the region, while challenging leftist and feminist heteronormative dead angles. Culturally, thanks to the growing visibility of LGBTQ singers, writers, artists, and thinkers, often at great personal cost, a transnational queer community is building itself. However, its demands have often struggled with multiple pushbacks, often spearheaded by the States, who are prompt to retaliate to please conservative audiences. To bear witness and offer critical perspectives on these changes, the Arab Reform Initiative is launching a series of short papers and interviews on LGBTQ activism since the Arab Spring. The series addresses different national perspectives and seeks to offer a conceptual framework to discuss the interaction of LGBTQ movements in the region with their immediate environment (feminist groups, the left, democratic forces, local activists, and those in the diaspora, etc.) and with their own history.