Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: Histories and Representations

In: Routledge Research in Gender and Society

Abstract

This book, the first full-length study of its kind, dares to probe the biggest taboo in contemporary Arab culture with scholarly intent and integrity - female homosexuality.Habib argues that female homosexuality has a long history in Arabic literature and scholarship, beginning in the ninth century, and she traces the destruction of Medieval discourses on female homosexuality and the replacement of these with a new religious orthodoxy that is no longer permissive of a variety of sexual behaviours.Habib also engages with recent ""gay"" historiography in the West and chal