Jordan has many interesting glossy magazines covering a full range of genres. Many of these cater to women and are lifestyle magazines like those we have in the U.S.–complete with interviews with American movies stars (though some magazines are better than others by highlighting Jordanian or regional celebrities, artists, etc.). Viva is one of these magazines. It’s an English-language magazine, like many of these are, and this month it was supposed to carry two articles that were eventually cut from the issue: one on queers in Jordan and the other on vaginal health. Unfortunately I cannot put all of the pages from the censored version of the magazine on my blog because there are some odd issues of compatibility between Blogger and Mac computers, but Hala’s blog has them all posted in downloadable, readable .jpg files.
I find the timing of all this interesting as today is the International Day Against Homophobia, something organized by or carried out by Amnesty International. Their main action campaign is centered around
decriminalizing sodomy in Nicaragua.
One of the most interesting issues related to queers in the Middle East can be found on Tanya Abjouqa’s website. Tanya is a photojournalist here who has been doing a story on Palestinian and Israeli drag queens who perform in Jerusalem.
Salam–
