Blogging etiquette
I’ve been blogging lightly for the past few days, partly because I’ve been a bit sick (there’s a terrible stomach flu going through Cairo) and because I’ve been pretty busy with stuff that pays the rent (the story will be out this Saturday in The Times, and will get some big play from what I hear.)
But there’s been something I’ve wanted to post ever since a reader alerted me to it. It’s a post by Arab Street Files in response to a post of mine about the arrest of gays in Cairo. Read it and you will see that it’s sickeningly homophobic and, rather perversly, seems to rejoice in the fact that men who are innocent of any wrongdoing under Egyptian law (homosexuality is not illegal here).
The reader who let me know about it asked me, essentially, whether I endorsed this since I’ve out Arab Street Files in my sidebar. The answer is, of course, no. I don’t endorse it. I put Arab Street Blog in my sidebar because it’s one of the very few political blogs about Egypt that I found, and thought it was good to let people know that it existed. I thought in the past that some of what he wrote was interesting, and this latest post does not change that. So for now I won’t remove it from the sidebar, and I hope that doesn’t offend too many people. I disagree with most Shia Pundit, for instance. Granted, it isn’t (as far as I know) spouting off hate speech. But I often fundamentally disagree with it and only have it in the sidebar because I think it’s interesting to read different points of view. And I can also change my mind and take someone I find offensive, boring or whatever off the list.
I realize, as Arab Street Files points out, that most Egyptians strongly disaprove of homosexuality. I know that this is a fundamentally conservative country whose social mores, in some cases, are comparable to Europe and America 50 years ago. But I’m not moral relativist or multi-culturalist. I don’t like it, and think it’s wrong. But then again I’m an atheist and social libertarian, and I know that means I’m at odds with 99% of the people I live among. But that won’t make me change my mind.
One last point. Arab Street Files ends his post writing:
So forgive me for not showing much concern for the plight of a few pleasure-seeking fags who got arrested for debauchery. I’ve got a government to overthrow.
Well, in that case you’ve missed the point. The thing that troubles me about the Queen Boat and other gay cases in Egypt is that they are seemingly pointless attacks on ordinary Egyptian citizens. I spoke to one of the human rights organizations that will represent them (at the end only 15 were charged and will go to trial, not 62, although a few more are still in the limbo of administrative detention) and was told that after being kept for a day and beaten, they were told that they would be released if they signed a piece of paper. Many signed without reading it. The piece of paper was a confession saying that they were homosexuals and that they were prostituting themselves. It will now form the cornerstone of the case. As the human rights worker told me, “that’s what they [the police] usually do.” Unfortunately, this is an all too common strategy in Egyptian police stations, and it has created the kind of atmosphere that makes you want to overthrow the government. Cases of persecution like this, when the victims aren’t even political activists who pose a threat to the regime, show what’s fundamentally wrong with Emergency Laws and other anti-terrorist legislations that start being used as a replacement for real, honest police work. Next time they decide to randomly arrest someone and charge them with being gay (ensuring their public humiliation in this country and almost total lack of support), just remember it could be you.
