Egyptian queer women’s quiet activism within repressive contexts in the Middle East

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study highlights an unconventional form of LGBTQIA activism within restrictive contexts in the Middle East. Building on the triangulation of data findings obtained from activists’ social media accounts from 2014 until 2022, this study argues that Egyptian queer women mobilized quiet activism as a safe form of individual engagement within a repressive and anti-queer context fuelled by social disdain. Tracking women’s individual life stories, this study revealed an unfamiliar strategy of action that has been overlooked by scholarship addressing the LGBTQIA advocacy as a collective action in the Middle East. While scholars have entrenched the LGBTQIA advocacy within a logic of collective activism and organized cyber/groundwork, this study underlined quiet activism as a coping mechanism with state repression in order to contest the state persecution of queer citizens and violation of individual rights and freedom. Being at the intersection of individual engagement, transformative events and personal emotions, quiet activism is an adaptive form of entanglement with repressive contexts through non-confrontational and unchallenging tools of action, such as personal encounters and emotions.KEYWORDS: Queer activismindividual engagementpersonal emotionstransformative eventsEgyptthe middle east Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 This is a pseudonym given to an Egyptian trans-sexual activist for security concernsAdditional informationNotes on contributorsShaimaa MaguedShaimaa Magued is associate professor at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University. Her work focuses on identity politics, gender studies, mobilization and transnational advocacy, and Middle East Politics and is published in renowned peer-reviewed journals such as Current Sociology, Mediterranean Politics, Politics, and British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. She earned her PhD in International Relations of the Middle East from SciencesPo Aix in 2012 and was awarded prestigious research fellowships, such as the Carnegie Short Term Fellowship at the University of Minnesota (2015), the Fulbright Fellowship (2018-2019), and the Ernest Mach Fellowship from OeAD in Vienna (2021-2022).