ABSTRACT
This chapter presents arguments for adopting a regional and relational lens as a productive feminist approach in theorizing and analysing sexuality in the Middle East (West Asia). Sexuality Studies as an academic field of inquiry not only traces its origins to European history but is also intimately linked to the modern transnational travelling of ideas and politics, including Orientalist knowledge production about West Asia. At the same time, various social movements and activists claim the relevance of Sexuality Studies and specifically Queer Theory to understanding current sociopolitical realities in the region. This tenuous relation traps feminist knowledge production about sexuality in a perpetual West–North versus East–South, imperial–decolonial, binary debate. The author argues that a productive feminist approach to theorizing gender, sexuality, and desire more broadly, is the privileging of a regional and relational lens that promises to re-route the conversation away from this tenuous frame.
