International Communications Association
Annual Conference, 19-23 June 2006, Dresden
Interest group on GLBT studies
att: David J. Phillips, conference planner (## email not listed ##)
Paper proposal (extended abstract)
B
ETWEEN
CYBERMEN
.
COM
AND
THE
P
ARC
DE
LA
L
IGUE
A
RABE
:
ON
-
LINE
AND
OFF
-
LINE
EXPERIENCES
OF
BEING
GAY
IN
CONTEMPORARY
M
OROCCO
Justin McGuinness, PhD
(contact ## email not listed ##)
Little academic work has been done (to the present writer’s knowledge) on the impact of the web
on the lives of men who have sex with men in the Arab world. The present paper, taking as its
focus Morocco, and in particular the major urban centres of Casablanca, Fès, Marrakech and
Tanger, uses ethnographic work to discuss how men whose sex-lives are focused one other men
make use of the net and its possibilities. As a form of shorthand, the term ‘gay men’ will be used
to describe this group, even though it is far from being the term used by respondents themselves.
The paper is thus in part concerned with how Moroccan urban gay men develop their identity
positions through the opportunities offered by a specific medium.
Sites of meeting
A history of urban gay life in Morocco is yet to be written. With the development of planned
cities, complete with boulevards, parks and spaces for public entertainments during the French
Protectorate (19912-1956), Moroccan gay men developed specific urban psychogeographies.
Each city had its repertoire of meeting places. In late twentieth century Casablanca, these
included the Parc de la Ligue Arabe, certain central hammams, cafés and streets and of course
nightclubs, notably Le Village, on the Corniche. With the rise of rigourist Islam in the late 1990s
and a perception that there was a rise in violent crime in the city, certain public sites which had
been heavily frequented by gay men declined in popularity. At the same time, the city – and
indeed Morocco as a whole – saw the opening of a new form of semi-public space, the cybercafé.
While high levels of illiteracy (around 60% and higher in rural areas) and the cost of access mean
that frequent access to the net is for a minority of the population, cybercafés could be found in all
but the poorest neighbourhoods of Morocco’s major urban centres by the mid-2000s. High-speed
internet access in private homes also expanded as of 2004.
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