Gender Dictionary: traveling concepts and local usages in Lebanon

قاموس الجندر: مفاهيم متنقّلة واستعمالاتها المحلية في لبنان

The English term “sex” refers both to the biological classification of male and female, as well as to physical sexual intercourse. Its Arabic equivalent “jins” refers to the same two meanings as well as to gender. However, “jins” did not always carry these meanings. In fact, up to the late 19th century “jins” still meant type or kind as per its Greek origin “genos” and did not refer to sexual interactions(1). Joseph Massad argues that “jins” acquired the biological meaning (as well as national one such as in the word’s derivative “jinsiyyah”) in the early twentieth century through translations of works such as Freud’s(2).

The European and North American modern view of “sex” underwent key shifts, namely one from considering sex, sexual acts, and sexuality as “natural” and innate, to a view that sees sex as social(3). Resorting to “nature” to understand sex has historically led to limiting women’s choice in sex and reproduction as it was argued that sex was necessary for procreation and is part of a “natural” life cycle. Thus, by defining natural sex, one had to also define unnatural sex. This is a definition that changes in correspondence to the social conditions in a particular context, but in general it has included non-heterosexual, non-penetrative sex, and non-reproductive sex.

Sex as an act continues to be dominated by a heterosexual penetrative understanding which demonstrates a phallo-centric approach to sex. This means that non-penetrative acts are seen as less sexual, less valued, or even less “serious”. Often the effect is to erase the wide array of sexual practices and experiences that exist, including for example non-penetrative sex between women. A phallo-centric approach to sex also feeds into denying that women’s central sexual organ is the clitoris (its sole biological purpose is pleasure), and not the vagina. This view clearly departs from a male-centered understanding of sexual pleasure that casts women’s sexual pleasure as secondary.

A central component in the modern definition of sex today is the requirement of consent. Any sexual act taking place without the consent of all actors, is considered rape. Typically, rape has also been defined – using a phallo-centric view – as the act of unwanted penetration which in turn legally labels all non-penetrative and non-consensual sexual acts as “attempted rape”(4). In 2014, the Lebanese state passed a law addressing domestic violence in which it introduced a “marital right to intercourse” thereby effectively erasing consent as a key requirement to sex in marriage and ignoring the phenomenon of “marital rape”(5).

In addition, the Lebanese penal code continues to differentiate between rape survivors on the bases of their virginity (see “Hymen” definition). In contrast, the reality that NGO practitioners and social workers observe is a coercion of sex as a “religious duty” inflicted on women, even when they do not consent to it.

The modern nation-state is actively involved in policing its citizens’ sex practices and regulating reproduction, usually celebrating marital heterosexual relations at the expense of criminalizing non-marital and homosexual relations, or paid sex. The Lebanese law includes several articles that police women’s bodies, their right to abortion, their right to consent (see analysis of rape under Lebanese law in the definition of “Hymen”), and their rights to sex/reproductive healthcare. It also criminalizes non-marital sex under article 487 and 488(6), homosexual penetrative sex/homosexuality under article 534, as well as others’ solicitation of sex outside of the state’s “superclubs” under articles 523, 524, 526 and 528(7).