Violence in Lockdown: Sofia Talouni and Gay Male Outings in Morocco under Covid
The last year has been a particularly challenging one for LGBTQ+ people in Morocco, and queer men in particular (queer and LGBTQ+ will be used synonymously). After the first case of Covid-19 was announced on 2 March by the Moroccan government, a state of emergency and a total lockdown was imposed by20 March. As in many other countries around the world, already marginalised groups were disproportionately affected by these measures. Many Moroccans lost their jobs, homes, and other forms of stability.
Queer Moroccans working in the entertainment, beauty, and sex industries were hit particularly hard, their work either forced to come to a complete halt, or to go even further underground. On April 13, Sofia Talouni, a transgender Moroccan Instagram influencer, called on her followers to download queer dating apps to locate gay men.
Her largely female, cisgendered, heterosexual audience created fake dating profiles to expose the men on these apps by posting screenshots of their profiles on Facebook and other social media, forcibly outing many individuals who had little chance of escaping their now abusive household situation due to lockdown. At least one suicide [link in French] has been associated with this. Unfortunately, this particular example highlights very clearly how the criminalisation of sexualities, (cyber)violence, and Covid-19 restrictions have combined to heavily impact queer Moroccans this year.
Legal Context
Article 489 of the Moroccan penal code criminalises 'lewd or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex" with punishments ranging from 6 months to 3 years imprisonment, and a potential fine between 120 to 1200 dirham (roughly between 10 to 100 Euros). The law is frequently enforced, and its scope can be interpreted rather broadly.
One such example can be seen in the town of Ksar el Kebir in 2008, when rumours were spread of a “gay wedding” occurring in a house in town. Word of the ‘wedding’ spread sufficiently enough that a sizeable crowd showed up and marched on the local mosque. The crowd then “attacked the car of a jeweler accused of funding the party, ransacked [a man’s] wine store and pelted his house with stones and bottles as his family hid within.” Eventually, the house was destroyed and four of the people involved in the “wedding” were imprisoned.
Regardless of what actually happened - the only ‘evidence’ found was of a man dancing suggestively in women’s clothes - this example highlights the legal and social threat of even appearing to be affiliated with homosexuality. Furthemore, homosexuality in Morocco has two other H’s to contend with: Hchouma (shame) and Haram (sin).
The culture of fear and being forced to live in the margins means there are precious little reference points, resources, or visible examples to help queer individuals navigate their feelings. Moreover, multiple recent reports speak of families evicting queer family members, or workplaces firing queer employees once their sexual orientation or gender identity is discovered. This level of persecution of and discrimination against queer individuals is common throughout Morocco, including from law enforcement officials.
“[T]here’s nowhere to hide, now you’re shut in with your family… if you’re outed, where are you going to go?”
A 2017 study found all queer individuals surveyed had been subject to some form of violence due to their sexuality. This violence can be classified into three categories: physical - e.g. arrests, intrusions into the home of assumed gay couples and subsequent assault, imprisonment and the threat of being raped in prison by fellow inmates; social - e.g. homophobic family members, contract termination from employers when a person is revealed to be queer, and landlords ending tenancy agreements; or institutional - the legal violence engendered by Morocco’s Penal Code and its desire to control sexual relations between consenting adults.
Furthermore, Covid restrictions starting in March exacerbated already existing issues. After a steady increase of coronavirus cases throughout March, Morocco declared a state of emergency, and the country entered lockdown on 20 March.
The emergency decree, which prohibited residents from leaving their homes without local authorities’ permission, contained measures to fine individuals up to MAD 1,300 (roughly 120 Euros) and sentence them up to three months in prison if found guilty of violation. As a result, many queer individuals were strictly confined at home with queerphobic families, and risked being outed and ostracized by their families and community.
Indeed, Shereen El Feki, an expert on sexuality and masculinity in the Arab region, noted “there's nowhere to hide, now you're shut in with your family… if you're outed, where are you going to go? We know that domestic violence is currently rising around the world, it's not just women who experience gender-based violence."
Sofia Talouni
On 13 April 2020, Sofia Talouni, a transgender Instagram influencer, started an Instagram Live feed in which she encouraged her 600,000+ followers to download queer male hookup and dating apps such as Grindr, Hornet, and Planet Romeo, and create fake dating profiles where they would pretend to be gay Moroccan men. As these apps are GPS-based, those creating the fake profiles would be able to know and expose queer men around them.
Talouni’s motivations are unclear but some cite a desire for approval from the Moroccan public and an attempt to sell more products from her beauty/cosmetics business, in addition to internalised homophobia, as being her main motivations. Talouni is clearly aware that lockdown restrictions will make it easier to identify and expose queer people: "These apps will show you the people who are near to you”
She said in her now-deleted video “One hundred meters, two hundred meters, even just one meter, just next to you in the living room… since everyone is together at home, it could show you your husband in your bedroom, it could show you your son who might be in the bathroom."
Screenshot From Sophia Talouni’s Instagram Live Video
Talouni further attacked Moroccan queer and AIDS organisations, stating “for me, an organization needs to be responsible. An organization that stops the spread of homosexuality in Morocco, instead of contributing to the spread of queerness.” Part of the video can be viewed here.
The consequences of her video were predictably dire. Talouni’s followers who created fake profiles on dating apps would take screenshots of profiles or ask for pictures of the queer male users; these pictures were then widely circulated in several homophobic Facebook groups, with the aim of exposing these men to friends, family members, employers, landlords, and more. Soon after, distress messages poured in on social media. Queer teenagers told stories of a father chasing his queer son down the street while beating him, someone else’s cousin died by suicide, someone else was exposed and evicted by homophobic friends and was asking for money because he had nowhere to go and no stable income. One man reached out to the Moroccan LGBT Facebook group, writing: “I'm in great trouble. Everyone knows now that I'm homosexual, and my neighbor sexually harassed me, so I decided to flee. I have nowhere to go—especially during lockdown." Further compounding the discrimination was that these events occurred during Ramadan, a time where people are even more concerned about morality. As Samir el Mouti explains: “a lot of people become a watchdog for so-called wrongdoings and they are outing people, calling on them to repent.”
Response to the Outings
On April 16, a few days after the video was broadcast on Instagram, Nassawiyat - “a collective of queer women and trans activists in Morocco established to peacefully combat all forms of violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression” - and other feminist and LGBTQ organisations published a collective statement calling on Instagram and Facebook to remove Talouni’s video, citing it as hate speech, and respond to the ongoing anti-LGBTQ campaign in Morocco.
Facebook and Instagram initially considered Talouni’s video a matter of free speech, but Talouni’s Instagram account was shut down the following day following sustained pressure from these and other, international organisations. After her account was removed, Talouni attempted to make several more accounts on Instagram and continued to spread the same message as before, calling homoexuals “germs, filthy ones, sons of whores, and hypocrites”, before these accounts were also blocked.
Facebook eventually removed the groups circulating photos and screenshots from the dating apps. Planet Romeo and Grindr both issued warnings to their users not to share photos, and Planet Romeo removed all accounts created after April 13, when Talouni broadcast her first video.
However, for many, the damage had already been done. It is impossible to ascertain exactly how many people were affected by the anti-LGBTQ campaign, but Nassawiyat reports more than 100 people contacted them informing the organisation they had been outed.
This number does not account for victims living in smaller areas that were even harder to reach than usual due to lockdown restrictions, nor does it include those who did not seek, or were not able to seek, external support from friends or organisations. It is further likely that many queer individuals outed by these events have suffered from continuing abuse and harassment in the weeks and months after Talouni’s initial video.
The influencer, for her part, later (partially) apologised, claiming she did not intend for this campaign to happen. Instead, she intended to draw attention to how many people in Morocco are gay and wanted to humanize them; she “wanted people to think of gay people as the man or woman next door and to stop the negative fantasy about who gay people are, how they look like and how they live.” Her choice of words regarding gay people in earlier videos make this explanation seem rather unlikely.
Present day
At time of writing, Morocco is in partial lockdown. The Health State of Emergency has been extended until at least 10 April 2021, and a curfew is in place from 21:00-06:00 until at least 15 April 2021. However, domestic transport is operational, and businesses and services can open, provided they comply with certain health regulations. Greater freedom of movement means a small part of the immediate danger faced by queer individuals has vanished, yet major problems clearly still remain.
Queer victims of abuse and harassment can expect no support from the police or government, and Morocco has remained indifferent to statements from organisations such as Human Rights Watch calling for the depenalisation of queer identities and the cessation of discrimatory laws and practices.
Whilst organisations such as Nassawiyat and others are working hard to provide safety and support for the queer community, the sad reality is that there are precious little rights and resources for queer individuals at any given time, let alone during a pandemic and a homophobic outing campaign.
