Queer Muslim Sex Worker
By: Majnooni Confessions
Tags: Women, LGBTQ, Sex, Muslim, Sex Work

Q ueer Muslim Sex Worker: These are labels that aren’t supposed to go together, but in the life of Maryam, a genderfluid Pakistani Muslim person living in London, they do. A newly released, independently-funded podcast with this title by journalist Amy Ashenden aims to shed light on how Maryam’s different identities are sexualized, vilified, and ostracized in their own ways.

As she navigates her various forms of closetedness “like a maze,” Maryam’s candor lets the listener in on how stressful this life is. In fact, it is so stressful that she’s often had suicidal thoughts because of it. At the end of the podcast, Maryam relates how since finally being disowned by her family after hiding her sexuality and her experience in the sex industry from them, she’s been unable to focus on her responsibilities, dealing with the trauma of abandonment by numbing out with alcohol and partying at strip clubs. I feel for her because I can relate to that sense of hopelessness.

In a culture with highly communal values, your life is not your own. Your life actually belongs to your family, and anything you do or say can either bring honor or shame to them. For this reason, it’s extremely rare for Muslims to talk openly about gender and sexuality.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t Muslims who are LGBTQ, it just means they’re not welcome in the Muslim community. As Maryam observes, “I’ve never seen a queer Muslim person who came out to the community and was welcomed with open arms.”

If being gay is bad news to the community, being a sex worker is even worse. However, the Muslim community itself creates the necessity for survival sex work by rejecting members of the community who are queer. As Maryam explains that she is saving the money she earns from webcam work to support herself in case she is rejected or disowned by her family for being gay, she illustrates how Muslim youth are not exempt from one of the most typical ways young people first become involved in sex work: by being disowned by their parents for being gay. The ability to take ownership of our bodies and sexuality is even something that draws people like us to do sex work.

My recommendation to Muslim youth who ask me about coming out is always to wait until they’re financially self-sufficient. We already know what happens to people like us. “I think I’d be sort of exiled from the community until I changed my ways,” Maryam says sarcastically when asked what would happen if she came out.

When traditional Muslim family values clash with the individualism that is the hallmark of Western culture, we take up a new fight beyond oppressive regimes and occupation back home and racism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment here. Now we’re fighting for the freedom to be ourselves, beyond those labels and intersecting identities.

From the beginning, you can see this struggle as a part of Maryam’s narrative, as she laughs while recounting the odd clashes in her life between fucking her girlfriend one minute and facing homophobia in the mosque the next. It almost comes off as something lighthearted, as if she is playing a game. Anyone who has ever done sex work knows that it works best the more fun you make it for yourself. And there is something fun about rebellion. To take that freedom for yourself is liberating in a way that makes sense to anyone whose body, virginity and sexuality has been policed since childhood, the way that Muslim girls’ and women’s bodies are policed by our families and communities. That policing even extends outside of our communities, as non-Muslim people often feel compelled to tell us what we should be and how we should act based on their perceptions of our community’s mores. Maryam relates, “I’ve had … white gay people ask me how I sleep at night because I’m sinning. It’s just really intrusive.” When people have been taught cultural values which mandate that women’s bodies don’t belong to them, Muslim women are inherently oppressed, LGBTQ Muslims don’t exist, queer people are immoral, and sex workers deserve to be abused, to get them to see a Muslim LGBTQ sex worker as a multi-dimensional human being is next to impossible.