A boy to be sacrificed
A riveting opinion piece:
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"In the Morocco of the 1980s, where homosexuality did not, of course, exist, I was an effeminate little boy, a boy to be sacrificed, a humiliated body who bore upon himself every hypocrisy, everything left unsaid.
...
I was barely 12, and in my neighborhood they called me “the little girl.” Even those I persisted in playing soccer with used that nickname, that insult. Even the teenagers who’d once taken part with me in the same sexual games. I was no kid anymore. My body was changing, stretching out, becoming a man’s. But others did not see me as a man. The image of myself they reflected back at me was strange and incomprehensible. Attempts at rape and abuse multiplied.
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It all came to a head one summer night in 1985. ... These men, whom we all knew quite well, cried out: “Abdellah, little girl, come down. Come down. Wake up and come down. We all want you. Come down, Abdellah. Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you. We just want to have sex with you.” ...But my brother, the absolute monarch of our family, did nothing. Everyone turned their back on me. Everyone killed me that night. ...To save my skin, I killed myself. And that was how I did it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/opinion/sunday/a-boy-to-be-sacrificed.html?_r=1&hp#
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It struck me that the vicious nickname they used was "the little girl." I am convinced that as long as there is sexism, there will be homophobia. They seem to be two sides of the same coin.
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