Dear Privileged Person
I see you’ve resurfaced again. This time you’re a white American man pretending to be a lesbian Syrian blogger Amina Asraf — must be really nice to slip into personas at will like that, being secure in your safe little bubble that nothing *really* could happen to you.
You could write about nervousness and anxiety about illicit meetings with your lover — who doesn’t exist, at least not in the way you presented it to us. Saying, “The experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism” doesn’t help when you’re perpetuating the same —ism you’re supposedly ‘sad’ about, don’t even try to fool us with that shit.
Your blog has 1,550 readers via RSS and 2,166 followers on blogger, for MONTHS you’ve been pretending to be Amina Asraf who was supposedly ‘arrested’, which turned out to be a hoax. Appropriating queer and a POC identity is beyond disgusting, you have NO idea what it is to be us, to be Othered in your own supposed sourceland, to be the Other no matter where you go. This blog didn’t help raise LGBT awareness as some of your supporters are touting, you in your “well-intentioned” mission have actively endangered lives of queer people, while you are in no trouble or danger.
In addition to striving for validation, now Syrian bloggers will have to prove they are REALLY QUEER — whatever the fuck that means — and they’re not douchefucks like you to their readers. God forbid, next time someone is imprisoned how many people will think it’s another “Amina stunt”.
Being queer is hard enough, now you’ve jeopardised lives of many queer people in your wake and made their lives more difficult.
Fuck you.
No love ever,
J.
(All links through Liz’s Chasing Amina)
