Gay life in dubai
How can a sense of belonging be forged in a setting where one’s existence is forbidden? That is the question that LSE’s Dr Centner and his co-author Harvard’s Manoel Pereira Neto explore in their groundbreaking research into Dubai’s expatriate gay men’s nightlife.
But it was not an easy topic to research. Dr Centner explains: “It's an illegal, or criminalised, identity and establish of behaviours and practices, so in a very general sense, it's a taboo. And taboo subjects are very often under-researched, sometimes because people own a hard time gaining access, gaining that reliance, but also because, even if people gain that access, there could be significant repercussions for themselves as researchers, or for the people who are the research participants.
“As two queer researchers, we were able to enter the worlds of relatively privileged Western gay expatriates. Secrecy is often the norm, but the field was familiar to us, through previous visits and study projects.”
These were indeed ‘parties’ ...[but] not bars identified as gay. Not a single venue’s webpage uses the word ‘gay’ or related euphemisms, nor undertake they hint at targeting
LGBTQ+ Visitor Considerations
This blog post provides some insights and advice for Queer visitors by Homosexual people living in Abu Dhabi.
Author and Audience
The primary composer of this document is a cisgender gay Arab-American guy. He has lived in the UAE with his cisgender gay European-American companion for almost a decade. They both have academic jobs, and love living in the UAE.
The author’s advice and observations are based on his encounter of living in the UAE, and his awareness of issues faced by other members of the LGBTQ+ collective there. The intended audience of this document are Queer conference attendees of EMNLP 2022.
This document is not intended to provide official legal advice.
Many thanks to all the community members (LGBTQ+ and allies) who helped with scrutinizing and editing other versions of this document.
The Public and The Private
Emirati identity values a separation between public and private lives in a way that’s different from some Western nations. In Abu Dhabi, regardless of gender individuality or sexual orientation, public displays of affection are generally frowned upon, especially prolonged intimate actions.There is no dress code but general
We recently saw that Dubai is due to hold a conference on LGBTQ+ rights and to say we were shocked would be an understatement.
We haven’t yet travelled to Dubai as a gay couple, partly because we are apprehensive to…
To investigate further we connected with Liam, a gay guy who lived in Dubai for most of his life to learn more about the reality of being queer in Dubai and find out what advice he had for gay travellers thinking about going.
We always believe it’s important to give people a voice and to share stories of genuinely living in a country as an LGBTQ+ person.
Read our interview with Liam below to study more about gay life and gay travel in Dubai:
Gay Animation in Dubai & Advice for Gay Travel
Meet Liam
Sion: Hi Liam, please provide some background on yourself and your time living in Dubai to get us started.
Liam: Hi, my name is Liam and I was born in 1993 in the UK however in the early 90’s my family started working in the Middle East. In 1999 they decided to move to Dubai and have been there ever since.
I lived in Dubai from age 5 to 18 when I moved to Leeds for University and since then normally visit Dubai 2-3 times a year.
G
Richard Ammon
May 2016The world moves on… and much of it does not. While the West has taken an enlightened view of homosexuality Muslim countries have entrenched deeper against this spontaneous variant of sexuality. But not all have grown as backward as Afghanistan, Libya, Saudi Arabia. I traveled to the UAE where I visited four of the seven emirates (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Fujairah) but primarily Dubai. Here the world seems to have moved forward–along with Abu Dhabi–into the 21st century (depending on one’s station in life) with a ‘one legged’ race to the future, essence significant advances in architecture and commerce.
However when it comes to freedom of speech and squeeze, it’s another story. Said an expat American friend living in Dubai: “ neither speech nor the press are free here. You won’t hear what happens to people who say what the government doesn’t want said. People have a wonderful idea of what the limits are and don’t usually push them.” The Sheikhs who sprint Dubai are not to be criticized and any ‘unusual’ activity’ is finest kept out of sight and sound. That said, there are no morality police in the streets switching women who we