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Grindr & MOSAIC Release Report, Capturing Experiences of GBTQ Community in Middle East and North Africa
When Grindr for Equality and the MENA Organization for Services, Advocacy, Integration & Capacity Building (MOSAIC) set out to document the experiences of Grindr users in the Middle East and North Africa, it was important to all of us that we dig deeper than the typical topics that come up when people talk about anti-LGBTQ discrimination in the region.
While we asked the nearly 2,000 respondents how many had experienced violence (35%), faced employment discrimination (50%) and housing discrimination (15%) because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, we also fielded questions that would bring out the stories of LGBTQ resilience. We wanted to specifically highlight those who are building happy queer lives for themselves, even when surrounded by people and institutions who are working hard against us.
For instance, despite a common belief that coming out to families is impossible in the region, a full 29% said their parents knew about their sexual orientation or gender identity, and 6% even said their families fully accepted them for who they are.
It was equally thrilling to see the number of people who reported self-acceptance. Nearly three quarters of those who answered the survey (72%) said they are happy with their sexual orientation or gender identity. One respondent wrote, “In spite of all the suffering and risks, I am happy and proud of my sexual orientation – I wouldn’t want to be anyone else.”
The most interesting finding was around LGBTQ+ friendship. In order to help assess respondents’ social support systems, we asked about their social lives – who they could trust and turn to for support. For me, the finding that 78% of respondents had friends that are LGBTQ+ helps explain people’s self-acceptance.
This talk of friendship highlights what was important to me personally about the process of creating this survey. This project was born out of my own friendship with Charbel Maydaa, a queer Lebanese activist who runs MOSAIC. When I started at Grindr, he was one of the first people I called to discuss how we could best leverage the app’s unique reach within the community to further his work in the region.
Charbel and I gathered a group of LGBTQ+ activists representing advocacy organizations in seven countries – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, and Palestine – and spent three days in Istanbul discussing what we hoped to achieve with this survey. We focused on developing questions that would most support the activism in the region by delivering data that could be used for future grant applications, public persuasion campaigns, and advocacy work to change policies.
That meeting also created some of my most important friendships since then. One activist I met that week is now my associate director of Grindr for Equality. Another has become a sister to me in my chosen family, and I had the great honor of officiating her wedding last December. And for many of the other activists present, we have become close friends and collaborators, working together to amplify the incredible work they’ve been doing for years in the region.
It’s so often these friendships that help LGBTQ+ people get through the hard times when they face discrimination, and the same applies to activists. The only way we can achieve our mission to create a world where LGBTQ+ people can truly be free is for us to support one another, share our resources, and take risks that will amplify each other’s work. I’m proud to have centered our friendships in this project, and I believe the results will prove to be more useful because of it.
– Jack Harrison-Quintana, Executive Director of Grindr for Equality, VP of Social Impact at Grindr
To view the full report, “The Regional Livelihood of GBTQ Using Grindr,” please visit www.mosaicmena.org/publications, or via direct link docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/dba79f_a20db964582842c0bcd4c3cdc8d31bfb.pdf.
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