I often feel like I’m asking for the impossible when I ask for recognition and protection of LGBTQ rights in Afghanistan. How can a regime that refuses to recognize women’s right to exist in public ever accept, recognize, or respect the rights of LGBTQ people? It’s a valid question. One worth asking, and one worth thinking about.
What I really want to share is why I support LGBTQ rights and why I respect and recognize them.
I have not always been so open-minded. I was born into a Muslim Afghan family, and I grew up in Kabul, a city that barely tolerated the presence of women, even before the Taliban. I grew up with a narrow worldview. With that background and environment, you can easily guess that yes, I was homophobic.
I didn’t know any LGBTQ people in my social circle. Looking back, I suspect there may have been a few, but no one ever disclosed their identity. I have no idea how my previous homophobic self would have reacted if one of my friends had come out to me.
I remember how I reacted when I saw a trans woman in Kote Sangi, a busy city roundabout in Kabul. She was tall and elegantly dressed in a navy-blue suit and flat shoes, shopping for a headscarf. I passed her on the street, and I still remember the look I gave her. It was a look filled with disgust and hatred. It was a look I had never given anyone before.
I was angry: angry at her existence, angry at her right to walk on the same street as I, a cisgender woman. That moment stayed with me. It haunts me. I carry the guilt of that look to this day. I am deeply ashamed of the part of me that was so bigoted, so easily shaped to hate.
At the time, I knew nothing about LGBTQ people or their rights. I had never read about their lives or struggles. Instead of understanding, I had only a conditioned hatred. As I’ve come to realize, hatred is a powerful emotion that often comes from a place of ignorance.
I wasn’t illiterate in the literal sense. I was intellectually and emotionally uneducated. I had opinions and emotions long before I had facts. I had chosen to hate before I had taken the time to learn or to understand.
It’s when we begin to learn — about anything — that we are far less likely to respond with hatred.
Where did that hatred come from? For me, it came from a deeply conservative and homophobic society that often dresses bigotry in religious cloak. In the Afghanistan of my youth, I only heard of LGBTQ identity as an abomination that needed to be condemned. The mullahs raved from their pulpits that hell’s inferno waited for gay and lesbians. I was told that being LGBTQ was a choice that people were “recruited” to take. I was told homosexuality was condemned in the Quran’s Sura Lut. Although I had never read the story myself, I was indoctrinated to hate LGBTQ people.
Aside from that one moment on the street in Kote Sangi, I had never knowingly encountered anyone who was openly a member of the LGBTQ community in Afghanistan. I remember a strange and troubling conversation with a university classmate, in which he talked of a book that claimed lesbians “recruiting” other women. At the time, it scared me. I didn’t want to be recruited. And yet even then, I sensed how absurd the claim was. In those days as a university student, I believed anything printed in a book was the scientific truth.
That was the extent of my understanding of LGBTQ people for much of my early years.
Things started to change when I came to Canada and actually got the chance to read and educate myself, and have LGBTQ friends who told me their stories. My homophobia was slowly transformed into acceptance and sympathy.
Those changes helped me sympathize with the LGBTQ community in Afghanistan. I cried hearing about Afghan LGBTQ individuals who had been violently abused, not just by society or the Taliban but by their own families. I heard stories of fathers threatening or attempting to kill their own children because their daughters or sons are gay. These were not isolated incidents. Every Afghan LGBTQ person I’ve spoken with carries deep scars, both physical and emotional. The people who should love them the most often are their greatest source of harm.
Of course, the Taliban are doubling down on the hatred that already exists in society to isolate LGBTQ individuals and ensure they can abuse and punish them. Sadly, society seems to be complacent, content, or even pleased with the Taliban’s treatment of LGBTQ people, whether that is killing them by collapsing a wall on top of them or violently raping them in their detention centres.
Imagine being born gay in Afghanistan. Imagine that your very identity is the source of danger. You cannot tell anyone who you are. You are not allowed to fall in love. You are forbidden from marrying the person you love. To be a member of LGBTQ community in Afghanistan is to be born into illegality. You live at the very bottom of the social hierarchy. You are dehumanized. Violence against you is not only accepted, it is justified.
As a straight woman, I can never fully understand what that feels like. But I have broken down in tears more times than I can count as I listen to LGBTQ individuals recount their life stories.
I am not even talking about the violence inflicted by society as a whole. Even the so-called intellectuals, the roshanfikran, many of whom like to wear the badge of human rights defenders and women’s rights advocates, stay silent on the question of LGBTQ rights or even take offense at their mention.
Some of these so-called progressive voices told me it is politically inappropriate to talk about LGBTQ rights. They say it “distracts” from the main issues of Afghan society. They believe we should work toward a free, democratic Afghanistan where “everyone’s rights” are protected. But in their version of “everyone.” LGBTQ people are left out.
At Zan Times, we focus on human rights violations, especially those targeting women and LGBTQ individuals because these are the two most marginalized groups in today’s Afghanistan.
And I completely disagree with those who say “This is not the time” to speak about LGBTQ rights. If we claim to care about human rights — about everyone’s right to dignity and safety — then we must begin with those who have always been marginalized or excluded. When the rights of the most vulnerable are protected, then we can hope that everyone’s rights will be.
That is why I believe we cannot speak of human rights while ignoring LGBTQ rights.
That is why I stand for and support LGBTQ rights.
Zahra Nader is the editor-in-chief of Zan Times.
