The Iranian government believes that homosexuals are deviant individuals who have, for some reason (psychological, social or physiological) deviated from the balanced and natural human condition and need help and support to stop sinking any further into the ‘swamp of immorality’.
LGBT rights in Iran since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 have come in conflict with the penal code, with international human rights groups claiming floggings and death sentences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals.
Homosexuality is a crime punishable by imprisonment, corporal punishment, or in some cases of ‘sodomy’, even execution. Gay men have faced stricter enforcement actions under the law than lesbians.
Any type of sexual activity outside a heterosexual marriage is forbidden. Transsexuality in Iran is legal if accompanied by a sex change operation; however, transsexuals still report societal intolerance as in other societies around the world.
Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, the legal code has been based on Islamic Shari’a law. All sexual relations that occur outside a traditional, heterosexual marriage (i.e. sodomy or adultery) are illegal and no legal distinction is made between consensual or non-consensual sodomy. Homosexual relations that occur between consenting adults in private are a crime and carry a maximum punishment of death.
Image may be NSFW.
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It’s in this context that Andreh Omidi was born.
Today, this amazing artist, a poet as well as a photographer is opening his first exhibition on Second Life with the support of Gallery X, of the Brokeback LGBT Centre and of the Rainbow Gates Network.
We had the opportunity to meet him and got this exclusive interview.
Hello Andreh, your photo exhibition is opening this month at Gallery X and you received the support of the Brokeback LGBT Center. Can you tell us first a bit more about yourself, your character on SL and the person you are in real life.
Firstly, thank you to Gallery X and to you also for your support. I cant begin to tell you what it means to me. I am a gay male in my 30’s and I am a submissive leather bottom in collared Service to the same Master in SL and in “real life”. I’m also a photo-journalist covering the Middle East and Eastern Europe. I moved to the west about six years ago after meeting Master at a gathering of NGO’s in Syria. As grateful as I was to leave, I head back in soon for work and I am excited to go back and begin to work in a more documentary style of reporting. I am a bit apprehensive as well but I know I am much better prepared inside and out to walk through it now and to see what I know I will see with more objectivity than I could have before.
I’m not going home this trip, I am going to help out some NGO’s in another struggling region and this is important to me. To be there and to help is my way of paying respects to my friends as it is to let those friends still living and having hard times know we haven’t forgotten them.
I don’t play a character in SL though I might one day Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Right now my avi is just an extension of me if this make sense. We are who we are here as much as off world all failing included. When I travel or Master travels we meet here for play and to talk or just to explore. Master and I still don’t gather in gay circles SL or RL very much but we have been out from time to time to some private S&M venues in both worlds. I’m as shy here as I am in rl so I’m told, though recently I did join some groups hoping to widen my network and explore some personal interests like virtual photography and art.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
(Andreh)
You were born in the Middle East, which is not the most gay-friendly region on earth. How did you manage to cope with homophobia and how did it shape and influence the adult and artist you became?
Out side of small groups in collaboration for change who seem to find a solidarity that keeps their spirits up, I’m not sure anyone really copes well with what’s going on in the M.E. If its not a direct personal threat to your own safety of that of your family on your mind, then the lies and complicity, the frustrating bigotry that surrounds you being gay drives you pretty crazy. It turns you inward to early in life. Its hard to come out of that closet. Not being able to rest in your skin and just be who you are, this is the worst feeling and I know its not exclusive to the M.E but a shared experience of gay people globally who are in the same situation.
I coped I think, by accepting people hated. I stopped trying to not be hated. I survived by learning to give myself first aid, spiritual, mental and physical and through fetishisation of the experiences I had. All survivor tactics apparently, though I didn’t know that at the time. While some people at home who are gay seem to have Teflon skin, or as much as money can buy, for most of the gay people I know and knew growing up ours has been a daily and literal life and death struggle so you become a bit paranoid, especially about keeping networks safe. Now I find the opposite a trouble – learning to speak out. For me this is still “danger” so it comes slow.
The murders of several people close to me at the hands of authorities simply for being gay, has shaped me a great deal. It’s been a primary influence to my life and my spirit. Witnessing murders of men I knew as a teen and not understanding why, is why I took up photography in the first place and why I chose the partners I later did and maybe even still do. Today, ongoing injustice alongside my experiences of freedom from all the lies that surround what it means to be gay is a big part of why I continue today to work with NGO’s and Human Rights groups in the area.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
We see some signs of evolutions or revolutions taking place in the middle east. Do you think they will have an impact on the way LGBT people are perceived or accepted?
Truthfully I don’t see the current revolutionary spirit directly helping or directly harming the cause of homosexual men and women in the ME, at least not yet. I see the issue of being one whose roots are religio-political more than the general idea of gay sex or gay relationship per se. Until that political mess is resolved I feel nothing else can be. We have a good history of cultural elasticity so I am hopeful that if political stability comes so to will a wider social reason reemerge. I still see the stalemate going on overhead still and the issue of homosexuality being used as a football as much today as ever it was when I was growing up, Its used as a weapon and as a tool of propaganda on both sides. It is that argument I bowed out of a long time ago in order to survive mentally.
Today I focus more on human rights as a whole as I feel that whatever we do, whatever we think we are, we are all human. In some M.E locations, this is not the case though as people who are gay are still viewed as sub human to justify ongoing murder so this is where I focus my efforts. To have gay people legally and socially viewed as human would be a good starting place for everything else I think.
I am hopeful that the sheer volume of interconnectedness – regular people meeting regular people- that revolution has allowed into the region will have a more lasting effect, if only longer term and that this relationship exchange between human beings itself will eventually bring about a lasting and legal changes in wider society. I guess am just too aware that in some places revolution has occurred, even more insidious forms of Sharia law have come into affect as a result, so I remain skeptical and observant, but quietly hoping.
I know there is a large push on right now from the Israel based GLBT networks to try and include homosexuality openly in the social media conversation that is occurring between nations, though this mostly falls on deaf ears where it needs to in Iran as the exact same issue – the freedom of gay people inside Israel compared to Iran – is being used region wide as a reason to oppose any change. So, the stalemate goes on. People keep dying.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
A lot of people are using SL to live freely their sexuality especially when they are forced to hide it in real life. As a photographer, your insight on virtual reality is interesting. How do you perceive Second Life? Is it a game or another form of reality that you would be interested in photographing ?
SL is so much like a back room on a chai khooneh ( tea house), so much occurs here unknown to “authority” that its almost taken on a cloak of ‘sacred’ space. For many of us, its also a place of first resistance or at least first exposure the possibility of resistance and pluralist thought.
When we first came to SL we were still in hiding and yes, SL was just like a dark room where the concept of privacy was able to be experienced ‘first ‘ hand, and later, where love not just the freedom to fuck without physical risk could be explored. With careful planning, no one could see into our world or know of our existence here, none could interrupt our escape, so it has been very special. Much better than MUDs Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Today now I am away from home, it is less about this sense of urgency and secretion, it’s more a case of SL being a calm non local space in which to mentally begin exploring freedom, which is, to begin to recover and heal and all of what that means. For me, learning to be who I am and what I am without flinching, fearing and using panic as a driving force has been vital to restoring my humanity and faith in humanity and a lot of that healing has taken place within the “safety” of SL spaces.
When I get time off I do go to SL gay venues and I can be a bit of a shy tart, but I still feel something of an outsider. I’m sure its not the venues at fault as they’ve been fine, but more a case of me, I’m just not use to the simple things, like being welcomed or being accepted for who I am just yet, outside of my private leather family circle I mean. I am also used to hiding so its second nature to leave before things really start or to enjoy just sitting and watching people, not to speak. This is why I do like to take SL pictures as they speak for me when I can’t. My pictures focus a lot on sex but mostly, on power dynamics however they are expressed. I am interested most to see how other people find and express their comprehension of freedom through power exchange.
Making an exhibition is something extremely personal. Artists reveal a lot about themselves in their work. When you were living in the Middle East, you were used not to reveal anything. This must be a very strange feeling, no ?
Yes! Amazingly so. This exhibit has asked a lot and it has given a lot of my self back to me. The processes of revelation that have occurred as well as what has come out of me through undertaking it, have been some of the more terrifying and truly cathartic experiences I have had in recent years.
In and through this exhibit I made the decision to let go of the fear and important to me, to release the pain of my past so I could really embrace a new beginning not just think one into being. So it was and has been a process of skinning and rebirth that has stemmed from a place inside me that I am not sure I could ever describe in words. Maybe one day I will be able to, in pictures Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The exhibition will be on all of January and February 2014 at Gallery X: