Constructing Their Own Liberation: Youth’s Reimagining of Gender and Queer Sexuality in Iraqi Kurdistan
Constructing Their Own Liberation: Youth’s Reimagining of Gender and Queer Sexuality in Iraqi Kurdistan

Author(s): Hawzhin Azeez
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, History, Social Sciences, Economy, Literary Texts, Psychology, Essay|Book Review |Scientific Life, General Reference Works, Geography, Regional studies, Library and Information Science, Sociology
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Queer Sexuality; Iraqi Kurdistan; Iraq; Kurdistan
Summary/Abstract: Youth across the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) are consistently an influential generational cohort that contributes to progressive and evolving visions of Kurdishness. Not only are they impacting the nature of Kurdish identity through their activism and shrewd use of social media, but they are also moving toward a more critical views of patriarchal nationalism (Kurdayetî) and challenging gender norms. In the past half century, the KRI has become the locus of Kurdish nationalism, which has acted as a means of entrenching patriarchal, clientelistic, and patrimonial attitudes in the name of the national and Kurdish struggle against the Iraqi state. More recently, this patriarchal nationalism has become increasingly fragmentary, promoting a sense of disconnect and apathy within society, since the political elite has reduced Kurdayeti to a tool used to loosely legitimize their diminishing claims to power. This approach by the political elites has failed to create a united and consistent shared sense of belonging in society for a largely adolescent and youth cohort. Kurdish leaders continue to use past glories, struggles, successes, and achievements to maintain power, even as their current policies no longer feasibly represent or entice the evolving interests of a substantially youthful population.

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