“A Thing of the West”: On Passing Through Lebanon

From my personal sketchbook.

It usually goes without saying — I will say it anyway — that each individual undergoes different experiences and faces them in her/his/zheir own unique way. Just as some highly respectful people refuse to speak on behalf of others when no one asked to be represented by that speaker, so shall I maintain that the pleasures I have reaped and the trials that have encountered me as a transman residing in Beirut are my own.

That being said, I feel I must address an issue that has repeatedly made itself known throughout many an interpersonal interaction between myself and others, mostly cisgendered individuals who sincerely sympathize for my “situation”, but cannot ever truly empathize with me.
Upon making my gender identity known, I am often met with appreciated albeit all-too-formulaic expressions of the aforementioned sympathy delivered in the form of advice. Now, see, this is common social practice, especially between good friends: one voices a concern or confesses some personal strife, and a good friend is typically inclined to receive this information with a sympathetic ear and/or useful advice at the ready. As reassuring as it is to know that people try hard to care about the quality of my life, I cannot help but speculate the range of responses I receive when I posit my transgenderism not as a problem that requires solving, but a mere fact I feel comfortable sharing since I presently have no intentions of ever “passing” for a cis-male. Such responses include the pressing inquiry as to my long-term plan about leaving Lebanon, and therein lies the real problem.

I must admit that, in the past, when asked if I intended to leave Beirut behind to set up my new life elsewhere, my reflexive response was some cousin of a definite “Of course!” or a sardonic yet secretly wistful “Inno, what do you think?” I have no explanation for the firm conviction that my being trans would necessitate migration to the western world, where people are supposedly far more accepting of my self-proclaimed male identity, other than that this suggestion was the most frequently uttered piece of advice I had ever been given, and was always so unequivocally stated that the mere prospect of offering up a counterargument seemed so ridiculous. In hindsight, I knew nothing of the West other than what I had aggregated over the course of a childhood spent in front of the television absorbing its culture with wide-eyed fascination, observing its spectacular “otherness” that repelled my elders, yet inspired within me infantile dreams of enjoying its so-called freedoms.

Socio-political strife, pointless sectarianism, insufficient salaries and wages, constant threat of war, corrupt and power-hungry representatives whose grips on their positions are vise-like, lack of promising educational opportunities for Lebanese graduates, lack of proper law enforcement, lack of legal regard or concern for the rights of women, the overall apprehensive mistreatment of the LGBTQIA community…name your reason for wanting to leave if you haven’t left already. Still, it strikes me as odd (understatement of the century) that the only reasonable solution to my “problem” would be to uproot my entire life for the possibility of having a better one in some strange far-off place across a vast ocean, away from family and friends who consistently cautioned me never to grow too attached to the overcrowded waiting room that is Lebanon before a good portion of them flew the coop themselves. It would appear this, too, has become common practice.

A great many of us are led to believe that we simply don’t belong here for one reason or another. We are born or brought here, we grow up and endure the chaotic goings-on we later come to quietly appreciate, but we continue to exhibit the overt distaste characteristic of the Lebanese people lest any one of us express an actual iota of affection toward our home because, after all, we do not belong here. I, a transman, do not belong here, for transgenderism, according to my many sympathizers, is a thing of the West. Believing this myself, I sailed for years through the veins of Beirut as another speck eagerly anticipating the day I would permeate Lebanon’s borders to join the 20-odd million other Lebanese living abroad. This thought, once a delightful flight of fancy, now fills me with a distinct distaste rooted in deep sadness which I am forced to swallow each time I am presumptuously told that I would be better off somewhere in the United States, Europe, or Australia. Fuck it, who knows? Maybe I would be better off. That is not what bothers me. What bothers me is the immediacy at which I am expected, by others and myself, to succumb to the ostensible fact that the uncompromising status quo is here to stay, while I…am not.

I am going to ask a difficult question that is directed more to myself than to you, the reader, but by asking it here, I can only hope that I am on the right track to finally finding an answer:
If I leave Lebanon to seek out my life elsewhere, if I abandon the ideals I was told never to possess in the first place, if I shove a geographical space between myself and the family who would scarcely accept me, if I take everything I have learned and all the life-lessons I have amassed from my life here to a foreign place, and if I tell myself that Lebanon wasn’t/isn’t/never will be the home I deserve, will I be contributing to my country’s continued existence as the waiting room from which many of us reluctantly transition because we are convinced it will never become the home we truly deserve?

Sincerely wondering,
Lore

P.S. It should not have been so difficult to type the words “my country”, and yet, it was.