Feminists are not certain that homosexuals “fall under their category” (unless they are also feminist).

As Laurie says, “GLBTQ Muslims were willing to fight for us [feminists] when we are not specifically their “issue.” ”

Homosexuals are not certain that transgendered folk “fall under their category” (unless they are also homosexual…except…hmm).

Transpeople were at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots and the beginning of the gay (and hopefully all other kinds of queer) rights movement. Yet the Human Rights Campaign removed gender identity from its initial ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) proposal, because it wanted to ‘get sexual orientation through first.’ It’s dubitable if it would have come back for transfolk later.

There is an historical pattern of minority B somehow ‘within’ minority/oppressed class A, where although B is on the front lines in achieving equality for A, the members of A never feel personally called to help B later and instead keep oppressing them.

Perhaps this is because group B isn’t a perfect subset of A (gender and sexual orientation, sexual orientation and gender identity, being distinct and all). But it seems to B, being nonetheless in some ways reliant on A (since all deal with gender norms and paranoia), that A’s equality has to be achieved first (how can heterosexism be properly challenged if sexism hasn’t been?).

No, not everyone in A agrees with the folks in B. Nevertheless – don’t those people in B, who fought so hard for A’s cause, deserve their cause to be considered? And couldn’t some people from A, if they /do/ agree with B, help them out? We’re all connected. Oppression is only good for the people on top. Once you get there, are you really going to turn around and not only ignore but help oppress those who helped you from the start? Really?

I don’t know that the rights of homosexuals falls under the feminist category… I guess for Muslim feminists who is homosexual, it does. It might be more of a “moderate Muslim” cause… Not all Muslim feminists necessarily agree with homosexual marriage (even though I would hope all Muslims would agree with them not being persecuted… which I know is not the case…)

@Sobia: Muslim lesbians fit into the Muslim homosexuals category for me. Yes, they can also be Muslim feminists.

The title assumes that there are not queer Muslim women who are feminist. There are, we are in your mosques, schools and families. We are the ones also rallying to support the rights of our communities from the violence we all expererience no matter our sexuality. What is distressing is that there is often an assumption that in order to be a part of Muslim “communiites” you have to leave your sexuality at the door.

At the AWID conference many queer organizations such as MEEM, received homophobia from feminist organizations. Which is ridiculous homophobia and sexism are linked to the same deep rooted systems – colonalism, captailism and colonalism. You cannot end one without challenging the other.

I hope MMMW continues to try to talk about this but am still disapointed with the overall choices in articles to write, stories to notify about and issues to focus on in this blog. It does not reflect queer Muslim women.

Some reading:
http://www.imaan.org.uk/
http://backup.curvemag.com/Detailed/382.html

Some Progressives also selectively forget that the Muslim gay community has been on the forefront of women’s rights issues in Islam. GLBTQ Muslims were willing to fight for us when we are not specifically their “issue.” But most Progs will not even mention their ground-breaking work (for our sake) or only give a simple not to it when discussing the history of gender justice here in North America.

I fully believe that Muslim Feminists have good hearts and good intentions on the whole, but somehow their hearts and intentions stop short of GLBTQ rights.

All this gets me soundly angry (as you can tell). Alicia, I want to thank you with all of my heart and mind for bringing this issue up and speaking to it with some justice.

‘What is being attacked in homophobic societies here are not actually the identities “gay”, “lesbian”, or “homosexual” the way we understand them – these are terms that have been developed in and adopted from Western sexology – but really the “feminization” of men and the “masculinization” of women.’

How is this not your fight also, if you are a feminist? Same-sex attraction/relationships are threatening to traditionalists precisely because they highlight the fluidity of gender.

I agree with your basic point, but I was confused by your analogy: Are you talking about the US? Because Black American men got the vote 60 years before white (or black) women.

The whole USA feminist movement as an analogy just irks me a little bit because there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Yes, a lot of 2nd wave feminists had a lot of race issues and ignored the plight of their black and poor sisters, but it’s not like these movements were completely antagonistic. They overlapped in a lot of ways and third wave feminists as well as sectors of the suffragists are/were very involved in anti-racism fights.

Rights movements aren’t versions of spoils systems like they used to be, or at least they shouldn’t be. Basic issues such as bodily autonomy cut across all sectors of Muslim women’s movements.

What about Muslim lesbians then?