ABSTRACT

Despite persisting cultural taboos and silence that covers the topics of sexuality and sexual nonconformity in the Arab Middle East, there has been a recent upsurge in studying sexualities and non-heterosexual identities in the Arab World (Whitaker, 2006; Khalaf and Gagnon, 2006; Habib, 2007). Still, there has been virtually no research on the ways that the normative status of heterosexuality creates gender and sexual divisions in the Arab World.