| It’s
hard to know just how widespread bisexuality
is in the Arab world, or if it is indeed
more common but just less talked about than
anywhere else. But whatever the parameters,
or the reasons for it, there is no denying
that it is part of sex in the Arab world.
Perhaps ironically,
one country where bisexuality among men
may be high, and privately acknowledged
if not publicly accepted, is in Saudi Arabia,
the most conservative culture in the Arab
world, particularly when it comes to sex.
Paradoxically, that sexual conservatism
may be one of the strongest factors for
both bisexual behavior as well as unspoken
tolerance in Saudi Arabia.
Unlike other Arab countries,
women are not seen publicly in Saudi Arabia,
unless they are covered in the traditional
abayahs, or long black gowns. For the most
part, women in Saudi Arabia always veil
their faces as well as their bodies.
“We call them
MBO’s,” laughed Khalid, a 28-year-old
Saudi man who was educated in England. “Moving
Black Objects.”
In Saudi society, men
are totally separated from women, except
for the closest of family members, like
sisters and mothers and wives. A Saudi man
who does not travel overseas will probably
not even see the face of a woman who isn’t
a close relative until the day he marries,
said Khalid.
That means that women
are totally inaccessible to men for any
kind of sexual liaison, he said. “But
it doesn’t mean that men aren’t
having sex,” he said.
Khalid defined himself
as “basically straight,” but
said that he had had plenty of sex with
men in Saudi Arabia. “Everyone does
it. It is something that men know, that
is accepted that will just happen as a way
to have sex,” he said.
Does that make Saudi
men bisexual?
“If you asked
them, they would say no, and most men probably
don’t relate to that,” he said.
“And if they did admit it, they would
tell you they were the ‘active’
partner, because that is seen as OK, that
is seen as being manly and just satisfying
needs.”
But he said he knows
of many men who marry women, and yet continue
to have sexual trysts with other men.
“So yes, I do
think that makes us a more bisexual society
than most. In some ways, we have less hang
ups about it than the West. Here it is just
something that is, and men do it and do
not make a big deal about it. Of course,
they have to hide it, and deny it, but everyone
knows it is there, just under the surface.”
*** |
 |
Despite
having lived in the Arab world and having
traveled widely in it, my conversations
with women about sexual issues have been
extremely limited. Men simply do not approach
women to talk about sex, even as a journalist.
Accordingly, information on bisexual women
is much sketchier than on bisexual men.
One Arab woman living in London did agree
to talk to me about bisexuality, on condition
of anonymity.
“You have to realize that in most
of the Arab world, the issue of women having
sex with women doesn’t even come up
most of the time, because people don’t
even think of it. Women are not seen as
sexual without a man,” said Nadia,
who is a lesbian.
In some ways, it can be even more dangerous
for women to be bisexual than for men, she
said. Mostly that’s because women
have less social power than men, she said.
A man can do just about anything he wants,
as long as he is discreet. A man’s
wife, for example, typically would not be
able to question him if he stayed out late
at night or went away for a weekend, or
hung out a lot with a male friend.
But women are kept to stricter rules about
where they go, with whom, and at what times,
she said. Also, she said, the consequences
of a woman being discovered by her husband
to be having an affair with another woman
could be grave. “The woman is usually
at the mercy of the man.”
On the other hand, she said, the total
lack of consciousness around the fact that
a woman might want to have sex with another
woman as well as with men can in some ways
work to help bisexual women, she said. “Because
it’s not even on the radar screen,
it’s like it’s stealth,”
she said. “It pretty much goes undetected.”
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