My story is the story of hundreds of people.
The story is that of differences.
The difference that isn’t allowed,
Which you’re scared of and hate,
Because you know it’s haram.

You’re not missing much.
It’s really not enjoyable.
No kind of pleasure whatsoever.
He’ll make weird faces and you’ll lie there doing nothing.
It only takes 3 minutes.

Ever since childhood, people have treated me like I’m strange, provocative.
Ever since I was a child, I never felt like all the other boys.
gender identity, gender violence, harassment, body image, sexuality, social pressure, social stigma

I am a 23-year-old guy.
I come from a well-known family.
I graduated a year ago from business school.
From the moment I was born,
My life has been full of suffering.
My father was very harsh on me and my siblings,
But I was almost the only one affected by his cruelty.
He used to beat me over the smallest mistakes.
He used to humiliate me,
Call me names in front of people,
And degrade me in front of my friends.

Everyone felt bad for her when they broke up.
“We’ll take you to a doctor for a virginity test. We need to know if he left you because you slept together,” her father said.

My father was the first person to touch me.
I used to tell myself that I was imagining it.
When he’d touch me with his leg from behind,
I’d tell myself he was just being playful.

"No, Hatem is such a girl. He's shy and doesn't like talking about asses and boobs and stuff like that!"

When you would try to touch me,
I felt like you couldn’t see me.
You could only see the body you were about to touch.

It felt as if I was in a wrestling match.
That his purpose was to invade and destroy everything.
That he had no intention to listen.
That survival was for the fittest.

There are a lot of things I don’t have a problem with.
I’m an open-minded liberal.
But I never imagined this would happen to me or anyone I know.
With a blank look on my face, I told her/him, “No, I can’t.”
And I ran out of the room.