The Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC) at the Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality has the great pleasure to present its two-year nationwide study entitled “As long as they stay away”: Exploring Lebanese attitudes towards sexualities and gender identities.
This study was the first of its kind to provide nationwide attitudinal data on sexuality, alternative sexualities and gender identities, and is the largest of its type, scope and subject in the MENA region. It was designed to fill a serious information gap in advocacy work relating to sexual and gender rights in Lebanon by providing critical and previously unavailable information by measuring and qualifying attitudes towards sexual and gender rights in Lebanon. Read more via AFEMA
Read the full report "As long as they stay away” here
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This survey constitutes a main deliverable of a project entitled “Lebanese Attitudes towards Private Liberties”. It is designed to fill a serious information gap in advocacy work relating to sexual and gender rights in Lebanon by providing critical and previously unavailable information by measuring and qualifying attitudes towards sexual and gender rights in Lebanon.
With the groundwork knowledge acquired from our activist backgrounds, we had embarked on this project not knowing to what extent Lebanese public attitudes would reflect tolerance and acceptance towards this delicate topic, especially when looking at the national context, not just Beirut. While some results were expected, this project did yield promising and unexpected results on which future advocacy work could be based.
Views on sexuality highlighted the importance of the right to sex for enjoyment, free from coercion, judgment and criminalization. While the Lebanese public primarily saw homosexual and transgender identities as a medical or psychological issue, results consistently and repeatedly point in the direction of general disapproval of the use of violence, punitive actions, and imprisonment. Personal attitudes towards individuals with non-normative sexualities and gender identities ranged from a position of advising, helping and medicating, to a position of avoidance, ostracization and marginalization.
It is no secret that attitudes with regards to sex, sexuality, and sexual and gender minorities in Lebanon have yet to develop towards more equality and inclusivity.
What this first large-scale study in the region suggests, however, is that the Lebanese public’s belief in any individual’s human rights to safety and non-violence is a ground on which we can work towards a more just society.