Egypt’s Wipe-Out-the-Queers Bill
Forbidden colors: A rainbow flag is waved at Mashrou’ Leila’s concert in Cairo, September 22, 2017 Egypt’s crackdown on transgender and gay people started almost exactly four years ago, just a few...
View ArticleAs If: On Alaa Abd el Fattah
Bread, freedom, dignity: Street art in downtown Cairo, 2015, photo by ChrisJ for TrekEarth In a quarter-century of visiting prisons or sitting in courtrooms and prosecutors’ offices, I’ve never really...
View ArticleEgypt: Interrogating the terrorist Scott Long
“Source of Inspiration”: cartoon by Andeel, Mada Masr, November 2016. Sisi says: “A true pasha, by God.” I hadn’t meant to write about this. It’s small compared to what many Egyptians face, or fear....
View ArticleSelling out: The gays and governmentality
On October 13, Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej died. 88 years old and the longest-seated of the world’s shrinking stock of monarchs, he was almost uniformly revered by a grieving public. Certainly...
View ArticleCairo, and our comprador gay movements: A talk
Photo taken and publicized by Egyptian journalist Mona Iraqi, showing arrested victims of the 2014 Cairo bathhouse raid over which she presided On June 16, I gave a Human Rights Lecture as part of the...
View ArticleMeet this policeman. He is going to arrest you.
Major-General Amgad el-Shafei, from Al Wafd, May 2015 … “You” can mean many things, of course. Not all my readers are gay or trans or sex workers, though some are (hi there!). Nor are they all...
View ArticleEntrapped! How to use a phone app to destroy a life
Love in the age of Grindr and Tinder. From http://media.giphy.com/ NOTE: For advice on how to avoid police entrapment and protect yourself on the Internet, see here (in Arabic) or here (in English and...
View Articleتحديث: الشرطة المصرية تقوم بالقبض على من يُشتَبه في كونهم من المثليين و...
الشرطة تستخدم هويات مزيفة على شبكة الإنترنت للقبض على المُشتبه في كونِهم مثليين أو من متحولي النوع الإجتماعي. قامت الشرطة مؤخراً بالقبض على أربعة أفراد آخرين. يبدو إن تم القبض عليهم من خلال إستخدامهم...
View ArticleOliver: Thoughts on love
Oliver, in a photo taken by a friend while I was in hospital for a week in May My little cat Oliver, whom I loved dearly, died in July. He was perhaps ten months old – with rescued street cats, of...
View ArticleAhmed Seif al-Islam: In dark times
Ahmed Seif el-Islam, photographed by Platon for Human Rights Watch, 2011 Ahmed Seif al-Islam died one year ago today. I had meant to write something then, but I didn’t have the heart. No one had much...
View ArticleGay hanging in Iran: Atrocities and impersonations
Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, Iran, with the Shah Mosque at its nearer end. Photo from Iranian.com I. Everybody on earth knows that last week a deal on Iran’s nuclear program was announced....
View Articleالشرطة المصرية تلاحق المجتمع المثلي / Internet entrapment in Egypt: Protect...
الخصوصية ترقد في سلام / R.I.P. privacy (English version below) نحن نعلم الآن أن الشرطة في مصر تستخدم تطبيقات الهواتف في القبض على من يشتبه في كونهم مثليين أو متحولي/ات النوع الإجتماعي. مؤخراً تم القبض...
View ArticlePaper Bird: Three years old and growing
Origami Wren by Roman Diaz, folded by Gilad Aharoni: from giladorigami.com It’s midway through this month of fundraising for A Paper Bird. Please consider giving $5, $10, $100 — whatever you can – to...
View ArticleTweet for Egypt on IDAHOT: Why it’s important
Image by Amr Okasha for http://www.correspondents.org/ar/ It’s the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOT, for short). Here’s one important thing you can do. Tweet, or...
View ArticleRemembering the Queen Boat, fourteen years after
Defendants in the Queen Boat trial wait in court for the verdict to be read, Cairo, November 14, 2011: photo by Norbert Schiller The night of May 12, 2001 – fourteen years ago today – I worked in my...
View ArticleDeport me!
So they’re going to deport gay foreigners from Egypt. My phone started ringing a few mornings ago, reporters wanting comments: solicitous but always with a subtext of What’s going to happen to you? I...
View ArticleJohn Kerry to LGBT Egyptians: Enjoy jail
It’s so embarrassing. Sometimes I forget who I’ve just been torturing. Sisi meets with Kerry in Cairo, September 13, 2014. Photo: Aswat Masriya/Reuters I have on good authority from sources here in...
View ArticleNew arrests of alleged trans and gay people in Cairo
Seven victims: Still from Youm7 video, February 27 Some of us hoped the acquittal of victims in Mona Iraqi’s bathhouse raid would resonate longer than a few days or weeks; maybe prosecutors and police,...
View ArticleOne of Mona Iraqi’s victims tries to burn himself to death
Shameless I: Lt. Col. Ahmed Hashad of Cairo’s morals police — responsible for numerous arrests in Egypt’s brutal crackdown — appears on Mona Iraqi’s program, February 4 One of the 26 men arrested,...
View ArticleEgypt’s Atrocity Investments Fair (Part one: The British connection)
Malouka Aldlouah in court; photo from Al Youm Al Sabbah (Youm7), January 31, 2015. I tried to blur her face; Youm7 didn’t. Look at two photographs. Above is Malouka Aldlouah, a 25-year-old transgender...
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