This is the final version. Available on open access from Heinrich Böll Stiftung via the link in this recordIn “The Locations of Homophobia,” Rahul Rao (2014, 174-175) invites us to complicate our examination
of homophobia by turning our analysis inwardly. Whilst I maintain the bearing of the sexed (read:
homophobic) colonial legacies on the contemporary discourse surrounding sexuality, including
homophobia, across much of the MENA region, I agree with Rao on the importance of turning our analytic
gaze inwardly in order to account for the agency of “local actors” in sustaining homophobic narratives and
practices. Three concrete location(s) of homophobia are identified in this paper: the role of the Lebanese
ruling-class elite in the neo-liberalisation (read: depoliticization through economization) of same-sex
desire, the alien rhetoric of local LGBT activism, and the “fractal orientalism” (Moussawi 2013) that
reproduces Beirut as an LGBT haven. I conceptualize the “reluctant queer” in relation to each in order to
challenge mainstream global media’s depictions of Lebanon as exceptionally LGBT-friendly, particularly
where LGBT activism is concerned
