Iraq’s Queer women: Survival under false identities and secret lives
15 Feb 2023
“I am constantly reprimanded for rejecting marriage proposals, especially since turning thirty. I often think of emigrating, as fleeing seems the only escape. If my family discovers my sexual orientation, they will kill me in the blink of an eye”. The cruel reality for lesbians who want to live their lives freely.
Twenty-two-year-old Rawan1 resorts to social media to post about her sexuality and to engage with her peers. This allows her to create a virtual community to which she belongs. In a country like Iraq, which is rife with religious and sectarian intolerance as the predominant social pattern, Rawan cannot reveal her real sexual identity, as it could cost her life. What makes matters worse is that she lives in Karbala (a sacred religious place for Shiʿite Muslims) and belongs to a very religiously strict family.
I wanted to discover what lesbians go through as a result of their sexual orientation, besides the marginalisation, discrimination, domestic violence, and lack of protection that women generally face at the hands of society and the state. This question was my starting point for this report, for which I turned to social media to reach out to lesbians. I announced on my page and to my network that I was looking for lesbians willing to talk about their experiences for an article. I did not expect such a response nor the large amount of information and detail I received about how this community deal every day with a society that rejects them and calls for their deaths. Rawan was the first to respond to my message.
“Ever since I was little, I felt like there’s something…”
In 2016, Safa, 20, was attracted to one of her female classmates at a school in her hometown, Basra, but she was not fully aware of her feelings. She realised her sexuality after some research and reading, and chose some of her friends to tell them about how she felt. She said, “My father often threatens us with weapons if we make the slightest mistake, so imagine if he discovers that his daughter dates girls. As for my brother, he would hit me until my bones break if he finds out, and my mother would definitely lock me up and force me to marry the first man that knocks on the door. The entire society considers us immoral, and my family is part of that society”.
For Safa, hiding her sexuality is not a choice. She urges all her peers to similarly dissemble so they can avoid danger that could result in murder. This is why she makes sure to hide her sexual identity in the very religious community in which she lives. Some believe that killing gay women and men is a legitimate implementation of Islamic Shariʿa Law, which puts the threat to lesbians’ lives within a religious domain. Human Rights Watch stated that “summary executions, without trial, based on rumor and accompanied by torture, at the hands of armed gangs – all these strike at shariʿa standards of evidence, legality, and justice”. Yet many armed groups in Iraq implement their own interpretation of Shariʿa.
Qamar, 18, who grew up in a conservative Baghdadi family, began to realise her attraction to girls at the age of seven. At that time, she thought she would marry her classmate when she got older. Although she had never witnessed a same-sex marriage, she remembers dealing with those feelings as entirely normal. She later became aware that people like her existed when she found two girls at her middle school together in a storeroom. She told us, “The state must recognise us as normal people and enact laws to protect us and legalise our conditions”. Many women, whom I interviewed, narrate the same experience. Their attraction towards women was natural during their childhood and they did not know they were defined as “lesbians” until they grew up and were exposed to other experiences and lifestyles through the internet.
Not only the rejection, but also “correction” attempts
Society does not only stigmatise gay women’s feelings as “deviant” but tries to “rectify” them. “I constantly get corrective rape offers by men who follow me on social media”, Rawan said. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) defines corrective rape as a form of rape perpetrated against someone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity with the intention of forcing the victim to conform to heterosexuality or a normative gender identity. In other words, it is about forcing a lesbian to have sex with a man, thinking that it would divert her desires towards men instead of women. Rawan added, “They try to violate me using such an excuse”.
On the 1st of December, 2022, the Shiʿite cleric and leader of the Sadrist Movement, Muqtada Al-Sadr, called for a million-strong petition against “homosexuality” or the LGBTQ community by peaceful, moral, and religious means. Using the same moralistic tone, he claimed that the aim is to “educate and guide” the gay community to turn away from their “forbidden desires and chaotic lustful liberties”. In the petition, al-Sadr pledged to oppose the “calamity” of same-sex relationships by “moral and peaceful religious means without using any type of violence”. However, such calls are likely to cause lawlessness and a tendency to resort to physical and psychological violence against the gay community, as it legitimises determining what is natural and what is not by society. This crusade also allows anyone to guide and correct the “unnatural” subject in whichever way they see “appropriate”, whether at home, school, on the street, in police stations, or even in hospitals.
It was not the first time Al-Sadr made such statements. On 28 March 2020, when the pandemic broke out in Iraq, Al-Sadr tweeted that legalising same-sex marriage was one of the reasons for the pandemic. This continuous incitement has made Iraq one of the most dangerous countries for LGBTQ community members. A Human Rights Watch report issued in March 2022 documents how armed groups in Iraq, along with other individuals, kidnap, rape, torture and kill lesbians and gay men, who also face harassment and violence by security forces rather than protection. As violence and insecurity affect Iraqis in general, the report emphasised that this is exacerbated when it comes to lesbians and gay men due to their gender expression. Although most of these reports focus on gay men, lesbians face similar risks, at least from their families.
Domestic violence against lesbians
Moralising tirades not only come from the wider society but also from families. Violence is dealt out by both. The Human Rights Watch report confirms the increased level of domestic violence against LGBTQ community members in recent years, as “families have become aware of the state-sponsored anti-LGBT discourse and are perpetuating violence against their children based on their gender expression.”
Qamar’s elder sister found out about her sexuality. As Qamar was browsing her phone one day, her sister peeked and noticed queer content. When asked by her sister, Qamar told the truth under tremendous psychological pressure. She says, “My sister chose to ignore the fact as if it was not true, but since then, our relationship has become frosty. I once told her that a girl sexually assaulted me, and her response was to ask me about my virginity. She then avoided me as if I was diseased”.
The high-risk level for Safa prompted her to hide her sexuality except for five people, including her sister, who now sees her as “sinful” and often admonishes her to take the “right path.” Safa eventually pretended to “correct” her sexual orientation and abandon social media, lest her sister reveals the secret to her father. She tells us, “I hope everyone can learn to accept difference. No one is born to be just like their family or society at large. Let your family members breathe, experiment, think for themselves, and make their own decisions. Love and accept them as they are, not as you want them to be”.
As for Meem, who completed her studies in mass communication eight years ago and achieved her goal of working in the field of media, she suffers from her family’s insistence for her to get married and restrictions on her freedom as she gets older. “I am constantly reprimanded for rejecting marriage proposals, especially after turning thirty. I think of emigrating fairly often, as fleeing seems the only escape. Once my family discovers my sexual orientation, they will kill me without a blink of an eye”, she said. Meem lives in Babil, and she does not consider her sexual identity, which began to emerge at the age of 12, an obstacle as long as it is hidden. But she hopes society and her family accept her lesbian sexual orientation and that of her peers.
The situation in Kurdistan
The situation in Kurdistan is no different. Seventeen-year-old Yassa, who lives in Erbil, senses that she has been different from other girls since childhood. Her brother sexually molested her when she was six years old, and the abuse lasted for eight years. She did not dare tell her parents, but she threatened to expose him in the end. She says, “I despise men because of my brother and father. The former damaged my childhood, and the latter restricts my basic rights”. Only two years ago, she discovered that women like her exist and that her sexuality is “natural, as everybody has the right to live the life they want”. Only some of her classmates know about her sexual orientation and what she has been through. She will make sure that her family never know as she may face dire consequences, including forced marriage, due to the limited liberties she has within her strict family. “In Kurdistan, lesbians get insulted and heinously incriminated as soon as their names are mentioned in front of anybody, regardless of how reputable they truly are”, Yassa added, while expressing her fear of a forced marriage. According to her, she would rather die than marry a man.
A complicit health system
Up until the 1970s, the scientific community considered “homosexuality” to be a psychological disorder. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declassified it as a disorder and considered it in the context of sexual orientation. It was followed by the American Psychological Association in 1975 and the World Health Organisation in 1990.
After years of “disciplinary” abuse by her family, nineteen-year-old Bevin decided one day to seek out a gay rights organisation in Erbil after school. However, she could not reach an entity that could help, and ended up in a police interrogation room. The police detained her at a checkpoint and contacted her family due to her young age. She tells us about her escape, “I did not plan for it properly. When the police asked me, I only said I was being abused and did not mention my sexuality. I knew they would return me to my family, and if my dad knew about my sexuality, he would not hesitate to torture me to death”. Her parents promised the police not to abuse her again, and she had a mental breakdown lasting for days. Biven says, “They did not repeat the abuse afterwards, as they feared I might escape again and bring them shame. We belong to the Shabak ethnicity, which is known for its extreme strictness, especially regarding women”.
Her mother took her to a psychiatrist because she believed her daughter’s sexual orientation was a curable illness. Bevin told him she was a lesbian in the first session. After several sessions, the psychiatrist diagnosed her with severe schizophrenia and linked her lesbian sexual orientation to mental illness. He told her that it would go away with the prescribed medications. Bevin was forced into home-schooling due to the excessive side effects of the medications that caused hypersomnia. After three years of treatment, she discovered that her medications were only anaphrodisiacs that reduced her sexual desires. She adds, “I searched for my medications by coincidence on the internet because they had paralysed my life and made me drop out of school; I was shocked to see the results. I trusted the therapist and told him about my feelings, and he most likely informed my mother as they were in regular contact”. The internet was Bevin’s way to learn more about her sexuality. She says, “Since I was a child, I have been attracted to girls, but I did not know that it was normal until 2018 when I learned the terms, lesbian and homosexual, then I realised that there were other people like me… I am not ill. Lesbian sexual orientation is neither a depravity nor a disorder. Medical treatment changed nothing. I have my own essence and do not want to compel myself to change for their pleasure”.
Psychologist, Wissam al-Dhanoun, confirms that being gay is still considered a mental disorder in Iraq, and that therapists are trained to treat it through psychotherapy sessions. Therapists mostly get theoretical training due to the scarcity of queer people attending national consultation clinics in which training takes place, as they prefer visiting private ones.
No legal protection
The gay community faces numerous legal challenges and marginalisation that no other segment of society witnesses, as the Iraqi government fails to provide them with protection. According to a former member of the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, Anas al-Azzawi, a committee for transgender affairs was formed by the Commission in 2012. Still, nothing was created for other LGBTQ community members. Advocate and women rights activist, Nawras Hussein, confirms that the Iraqi constitution does not include any legal articles that espouse gay rights or protect the LGBTQ community from violation. “In fact, same-sex marriages fall under Article 376 of Penal Code 111, of 1969 which is still in force. It stipulates that “whoever obtains a marriage certificate knowing it to be invalid for any reason in secular or canonical law and whoever issues such certificate knowing the marriage to be invalid is punishable by a term of imprisonment nor exceeding seven years or by detention”, says Nawras. Moreover, Article 401 of the same law states that “any person who commits an immodest act in public is punishable by a period of detention not exceeding six months”, which may be used to criminalise consensual same-sex relations, although it does not name lesbian and gay sexual orientation as an “immodest act”.
At the legislative level, attempts are increasing to criminalise gay sexual orientation publicly. In July 2022, the Parliamentary Legal Committee announced a “parliamentary move to enact a law criminalising homosexuality in Iraq”. In September 2022, members of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) introduced a bill to Parliament that punishes any individual or group who advocates for LGBTQ rights by detention or a fine. The bill also suspends licenses of media outlets and civil society organisations that “call for gay rights”. Regarding gay rights in the Kurdistan region, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the regional government about the special measures taken against members of the LGBTQ community and activists working on gender and sexuality issues. The KRG denied receiving reports regarding LGBTQ community members while stressing that defending gay rights remains legislatively illegal.
While Iraqi political blocs seek legislation to criminalise lesbian and gay sexual orientation, Yassa says, “My ultimate aspiration is to live without pretence or fear that force me to hide my reality. All I want is to have a peaceful life”, which applies to other lesbians. When we asked Qamar what could change society’s perception of queer people, she said, “I do not think it could ever change, but if governments enforce laws to protect us, society would be obliged to accept differences, and it would become normal”.
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Twenty-two-year-old Rawan1 resorts to social media to post about her sexuality and to engage with her peers. This allows her to create a virtual community to which she belongs. In a country like Iraq, which is rife with religious and sectarian intolerance as the predominant social pattern, Rawan cannot reveal her real sexual identity, as it could cost her life. What makes matters worse is that she lives in Karbala (a sacred religious place for Shiʿite Muslims) and belongs to a very religiously strict family.
I wanted to discover what lesbians go through as a result of their sexual orientation, besides the marginalisation, discrimination, domestic violence, and lack of protection that women generally face at the hands of society and the state. This question was my starting point for this report, for which I turned to social media to reach out to lesbians. I announced on my page and to my network that I was looking for lesbians willing to talk about their experiences for an article. I did not expect such a response nor the large amount of information and detail I received about how this community deal every day with a society that rejects them and calls for their deaths. Rawan was the first to respond to my message.
“Ever since I was little, I felt like there’s something…”
In 2016, Safa, 20, was attracted to one of her female classmates at a school in her hometown, Basra, but she was not fully aware of her feelings. She realised her sexuality after some research and reading, and chose some of her friends to tell them about how she felt. She said, “My father often threatens us with weapons if we make the slightest mistake, so imagine if he discovers that his daughter dates girls. As for my brother, he would hit me until my bones break if he finds out, and my mother would definitely lock me up and force me to marry the first man that knocks on the door. The entire society considers us immoral, and my family is part of that society”.
For Safa, hiding her sexuality is not a choice. She urges all her peers to similarly dissemble so they can avoid danger that could result in murder. This is why she makes sure to hide her sexual identity in the very religious community in which she lives. Some believe that killing gay women and men is a legitimate implementation of Islamic Shariʿa Law, which puts the threat to lesbians’ lives within a religious domain. Human Rights Watch stated that “summary executions, without trial, based on rumor and accompanied by torture, at the hands of armed gangs – all these strike at shariʿa standards of evidence, legality, and justice”. Yet many armed groups in Iraq implement their own interpretation of Shariʿa.
Qamar, 18, who grew up in a conservative Baghdadi family, began to realise her attraction to girls at the age of seven. At that time, she thought she would marry her classmate when she got older. Although she had never witnessed a same-sex marriage, she remembers dealing with those feelings as entirely normal. She later became aware that people like her existed when she found two girls at her middle school together in a storeroom. She told us, “The state must recognise us as normal people and enact laws to protect us and legalise our conditions”. Many women, whom I interviewed, narrate the same experience. Their attraction towards women was natural during their childhood and they did not know they were defined as “lesbians” until they grew up and were exposed to other experiences and lifestyles through the internet.
Not only the rejection, but also “correction” attempts
Society does not only stigmatise gay women’s feelings as “deviant” but tries to “rectify” them. “I constantly get corrective rape offers by men who follow me on social media”, Rawan said. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) defines corrective rape as a form of rape perpetrated against someone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity with the intention of forcing the victim to conform to heterosexuality or a normative gender identity. In other words, it is about forcing a lesbian to have sex with a man, thinking that it would divert her desires towards men instead of women. Rawan added, “They try to violate me using such an excuse”.
On the 1st of December, 2022, the Shiʿite cleric and leader of the Sadrist Movement, Muqtada Al-Sadr, called for a million-strong petition against “homosexuality” or the LGBTQ community by peaceful, moral, and religious means. Using the same moralistic tone, he claimed that the aim is to “educate and guide” the gay community to turn away from their “forbidden desires and chaotic lustful liberties”. In the petition, al-Sadr pledged to oppose the “calamity” of same-sex relationships by “moral and peaceful religious means without using any type of violence”. However, such calls are likely to cause lawlessness and a tendency to resort to physical and psychological violence against the gay community, as it legitimises determining what is natural and what is not by society. This crusade also allows anyone to guide and correct the “unnatural” subject in whichever way they see “appropriate”, whether at home, school, on the street, in police stations, or even in hospitals.
It was not the first time Al-Sadr made such statements. On 28 March 2020, when the pandemic broke out in Iraq, Al-Sadr tweeted that legalising same-sex marriage was one of the reasons for the pandemic. This continuous incitement has made Iraq one of the most dangerous countries for LGBTQ community members. A Human Rights Watch report issued in March 2022 documents how armed groups in Iraq, along with other individuals, kidnap, rape, torture and kill lesbians and gay men, who also face harassment and violence by security forces rather than protection. As violence and insecurity affect Iraqis in general, the report emphasised that this is exacerbated when it comes to lesbians and gay men due to their gender expression. Although most of these reports focus on gay men, lesbians face similar risks, at least from their families.
Domestic violence against lesbians
Moralising tirades not only come from the wider society but also from families. Violence is dealt out by both. The Human Rights Watch report confirms the increased level of domestic violence against LGBTQ community members in recent years, as “families have become aware of the state-sponsored anti-LGBT discourse and are perpetuating violence against their children based on their gender expression.”
Qamar’s elder sister found out about her sexuality. As Qamar was browsing her phone one day, her sister peeked and noticed queer content. When asked by her sister, Qamar told the truth under tremendous psychological pressure. She says, “My sister chose to ignore the fact as if it was not true, but since then, our relationship has become frosty. I once told her that a girl sexually assaulted me, and her response was to ask me about my virginity. She then avoided me as if I was diseased”.
The high-risk level for Safa prompted her to hide her sexuality except for five people, including her sister, who now sees her as “sinful” and often admonishes her to take the “right path.” Safa eventually pretended to “correct” her sexual orientation and abandon social media, lest her sister reveals the secret to her father. She tells us, “I hope everyone can learn to accept difference. No one is born to be just like their family or society at large. Let your family members breathe, experiment, think for themselves, and make their own decisions. Love and accept them as they are, not as you want them to be”.
As for Meem, who completed her studies in mass communication eight years ago and achieved her goal of working in the field of media, she suffers from her family’s insistence for her to get married and restrictions on her freedom as she gets older. “I am constantly reprimanded for rejecting marriage proposals, especially after turning thirty. I think of emigrating fairly often, as fleeing seems the only escape. Once my family discovers my sexual orientation, they will kill me without a blink of an eye”, she said. Meem lives in Babil, and she does not consider her sexual identity, which began to emerge at the age of 12, an obstacle as long as it is hidden. But she hopes society and her family accept her lesbian sexual orientation and that of her peers.
The situation in Kurdistan
The situation in Kurdistan is no different. Seventeen-year-old Yassa, who lives in Erbil, senses that she has been different from other girls since childhood. Her brother sexually molested her when she was six years old, and the abuse lasted for eight years. She did not dare tell her parents, but she threatened to expose him in the end. She says, “I despise men because of my brother and father. The former damaged my childhood, and the latter restricts my basic rights”. Only two years ago, she discovered that women like her exist and that her sexuality is “natural, as everybody has the right to live the life they want”. Only some of her classmates know about her sexual orientation and what she has been through. She will make sure that her family never know as she may face dire consequences, including forced marriage, due to the limited liberties she has within her strict family. “In Kurdistan, lesbians get insulted and heinously incriminated as soon as their names are mentioned in front of anybody, regardless of how reputable they truly are”, Yassa added, while expressing her fear of a forced marriage. According to her, she would rather die than marry a man.
A complicit health system
Up until the 1970s, the scientific community considered “homosexuality” to be a psychological disorder. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declassified it as a disorder and considered it in the context of sexual orientation. It was followed by the American Psychological Association in 1975 and the World Health Organisation in 1990.
After years of “disciplinary” abuse by her family, nineteen-year-old Bevin decided one day to seek out a gay rights organisation in Erbil after school. However, she could not reach an entity that could help, and ended up in a police interrogation room. The police detained her at a checkpoint and contacted her family due to her young age. She tells us about her escape, “I did not plan for it properly. When the police asked me, I only said I was being abused and did not mention my sexuality. I knew they would return me to my family, and if my dad knew about my sexuality, he would not hesitate to torture me to death”. Her parents promised the police not to abuse her again, and she had a mental breakdown lasting for days. Biven says, “They did not repeat the abuse afterwards, as they feared I might escape again and bring them shame. We belong to the Shabak ethnicity, which is known for its extreme strictness, especially regarding women”.
Her mother took her to a psychiatrist because she believed her daughter’s sexual orientation was a curable illness. Bevin told him she was a lesbian in the first session. After several sessions, the psychiatrist diagnosed her with severe schizophrenia and linked her lesbian sexual orientation to mental illness. He told her that it would go away with the prescribed medications. Bevin was forced into home-schooling due to the excessive side effects of the medications that caused hypersomnia. After three years of treatment, she discovered that her medications were only anaphrodisiacs that reduced her sexual desires. She adds, “I searched for my medications by coincidence on the internet because they had paralysed my life and made me drop out of school; I was shocked to see the results. I trusted the therapist and told him about my feelings, and he most likely informed my mother as they were in regular contact”. The internet was Bevin’s way to learn more about her sexuality. She says, “Since I was a child, I have been attracted to girls, but I did not know that it was normal until 2018 when I learned the terms, lesbian and homosexual, then I realised that there were other people like me… I am not ill. Lesbian sexual orientation is neither a depravity nor a disorder. Medical treatment changed nothing. I have my own essence and do not want to compel myself to change for their pleasure”.
Psychologist, Wissam al-Dhanoun, confirms that being gay is still considered a mental disorder in Iraq, and that therapists are trained to treat it through psychotherapy sessions. Therapists mostly get theoretical training due to the scarcity of queer people attending national consultation clinics in which training takes place, as they prefer visiting private ones.
No legal protection
The gay community faces numerous legal challenges and marginalisation that no other segment of society witnesses, as the Iraqi government fails to provide them with protection. According to a former member of the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, Anas al-Azzawi, a committee for transgender affairs was formed by the Commission in 2012. Still, nothing was created for other LGBTQ community members. Advocate and women rights activist, Nawras Hussein, confirms that the Iraqi constitution does not include any legal articles that espouse gay rights or protect the LGBTQ community from violation. “In fact, same-sex marriages fall under Article 376 of Penal Code 111, of 1969 which is still in force. It stipulates that “whoever obtains a marriage certificate knowing it to be invalid for any reason in secular or canonical law and whoever issues such certificate knowing the marriage to be invalid is punishable by a term of imprisonment nor exceeding seven years or by detention”, says Nawras. Moreover, Article 401 of the same law states that “any person who commits an immodest act in public is punishable by a period of detention not exceeding six months”, which may be used to criminalise consensual same-sex relations, although it does not name lesbian and gay sexual orientation as an “immodest act”.
At the legislative level, attempts are increasing to criminalise gay sexual orientation publicly. In July 2022, the Parliamentary Legal Committee announced a “parliamentary move to enact a law criminalising homosexuality in Iraq”. In September 2022, members of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) introduced a bill to Parliament that punishes any individual or group who advocates for LGBTQ rights by detention or a fine. The bill also suspends licenses of media outlets and civil society organisations that “call for gay rights”. Regarding gay rights in the Kurdistan region, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the regional government about the special measures taken against members of the LGBTQ community and activists working on gender and sexuality issues. The KRG denied receiving reports regarding LGBTQ community members while stressing that defending gay rights remains legislatively illegal.
While Iraqi political blocs seek legislation to criminalise lesbian and gay sexual orientation, Yassa says, “My ultimate aspiration is to live without pretence or fear that force me to hide my reality. All I want is to have a peaceful life”, which applies to other lesbians. When we asked Qamar what could change society’s perception of queer people, she said, “I do not think it could ever change, but if governments enforce laws to protect us, society would be obliged to accept differences, and it would become normal”.
