Queer Site in Global Contexts is OUT NOW

I recently had the honour of contributing a chapter titled 'Digital Dogma: Relating the Manifestations of Religion Online to the Practices and Experiences of Arab MSM (Men who have Sex with Men)' to the NOW RELEASED Queer Sites in Global Contexts (ed. Regner Ramos & Sharif Mowlabocus).

Digital Dogma Abstract

This chapter contributes to existing discussions of homonationalism by lending ethnographic detail to existing critiques of a Western rhetoric, which suggest that Arab faith cultures and Arab same-sex desiring individuals are incompatible. It intervenes in these existing discussions by providing a critical analysis that considers Arab same-sex desire within the context of current Arab cultural traditions. Through a series of interviews that investigate their digital and physical environments, I foreground the personal narratives of Arab men who have sex with men in the Gulf region of the Middle East. I employ interpretive analysis methods to explore the ways in which religion is tied to my participants’ everyday lives, identities, and practices in online spaces. I argue that through the mundanity of everyday life, religion is embedded in my Arab MSM participants’ online behavior, online interactions, and their understandings of the queer-coded online spaces they occupy. Through such an examination, I contend that the path towards advancing discussions of Arab same-sex desiring people necessitates that we reflect on the everyday narratives surrounding them.

Now available in Hardback and eBook!

Check out a preview of my chapter here.

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Access my chapter with an institutional link here.

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