You Are What You F•ck

The culture of body count

Ground Rules

If you are born & raised in Lebanon, chances are, you have been taught the following patriarchal rules:

Rule #1: Women are not allowed to have sex before marriage. The social construct of virginity shall always prevail. If a woman has sex before marriage, she immediately qualifies as a “sharmouta” (wh*re).

Rule #2: Men are EXPECTED to have sex before marriage. The social construct of “being a man” shall always prevail. If a man fails to have sex before marriage, he immediately qualifies as a “kesseye” (a pussy).

Rule #3: Men are expected to have sex with women. Homosexual activities are not allowed. Sex work is also frowned upon.

I will leave the reader to ponder on how two people can have sex in Lebanon out of wedlock without at least one of them being in the “cultural wrong”.

Protecting Manliness

“Khabbe el wej w nik el 3esh” ~ A Lebanese Macho Man

For men, conversations about female bodies and their objectification start at an early age. As a teenager in my village, I would hear young men publicly discussing who they slept with and how they did it in graphic detail. In every instance, confidentiality was nowhere to be found. And it’s not just their close friends they are talking to, nor is it an advice they are seeking, but rather, it’s a monologue of power and control in front of countless people, teenagers and adults alike, that validate their own sense of manliness and signals to other men out there that they are far ahead in this cock race. Even worse, they take pride in the exploitation of vulnerable populations like refugees and migrant workers and how they “incentivize” these women to sleep with them.

The real danger of this culture is its infectious nature. Rather than hormone-filled teenagers healthily exploring their sexualities, they are slowly but surely indoctrinated in this culture. My friends and I used to fantasize about being like these men; we used to reduce every woman’s worth to the sizes of her breasts and ass; we used to fight over who will have the highest body count (and the biggest d*ck that will undoubtedly attract more females). In short, we used to fight over who was more manly. Why? Because this manliness determines our social status in our community, how respected we are, and how powerful we are perceived. Inadvertently, it determined our self-worth and self-esteem. Our self-worth as men is proportional to how many women we bed (body count). This, unfortunately, can also be seen in the queer community, as queer men boast about their body count and often, objectify other men to the size of their d*cks/assess. That being said, many factors from western influence to sexual oppression play a role, but queer men are not immune to the aforementioned local influences. The truth is, as men, queer or not, we should do better.

The Candy-Wrapper Argument

“El benet lezm tkun mhazabe, mratabe, w mouti3a” ~ The nun at my school

For women, it’s not just sex that is prohibited, it’s sexuality as a whole. Your entire sexual experiences are reduced to your reproductive potential. Heck, even in certain marriages, sex is only a conduit for making babies.

Unlike men, your worth as a woman is not just closely related to how many people you don’t sleep with, but more importantly, your worth is linked to the presence or absence of a vestigial mucosal membrane called the hymen. In fact, in certain communities, you can have sex then undergo hymenoplasty to “restore your virginity”. This practice, other than being an essential survival tool in certain circumstances, is also a testimony of how fragile masculinity can be. Husbands cannot bear to have their wives “maftu7in” (“open” like when you unwrap a candy or open a soda can because that’s what women are reduced to…). Men would breakdown when faced with the knowledge that “their woman” was being sexual with another man. The need for control over women’s bodies is not a new patriarchal concept.

What strikes me most is that men and the cis-heteronormative rules are always the ones to blame. Yes, some women oppress other women. However, these women are often oppressed themselves. And yes, many men are indoctrinated in these cultures and unknowingly subscribe to them. The fault is in the system and it affects everybody who doesn’t subscribe to the status quo. However, it affects some more than others. And so, the more you are privileged by the system, the more you hold power to dismantle it.

Finally,

For every non-binary and trans* individual, I cannot begin to imagine the emotional & physical damage these cultures may have inflicted on you. Not having the proper knowledge and experiences to tell your stories, I nevertheless wish that your stories be told as loudly as any cis story.

God may have blessed you with Barbies, a backyard with a pony in it, a boyfriend named Jake, and an unwanted pregnancy that your father paid to terminate so that you could go to college and major in being a basic bitch — none of these things make you a woman! ~Elektra from Pose (series)