In our 2018 sexuality hotline report we analyzed hotline calls through the lens of mental and emotional wellbeing. This year, we’ll be looking at how the concepts of normal, abnormal, natural, and unnatural all deeply affect many aspects of sexuality, gender, and the sexual and reproductive health and rights of callers. 

Normal is not as normal as we are told it is. In fact, everything we have come to understand as natural is a social construction made to serve political interests that benefit the maintenance of the status quo. Even language to describe what normal is or isn’t just ends up re-enforcing a characterization of natural vs. unnatural which alienates and disempowers those who fall out of the norms with regards to sexuality and gender. 

About this report Sometimes claiming something is normal or natural offers the illusion of comfort and perhaps an apologetic sense of belonging where one does not belong, but ultimately in doing this we are applying normative principles to the fluidities of sexuality and gender and not being true to the very essence of the diversities in these experiences. Questioning what we have been taught and asking ourselves: “why is this perceived as normal or natural?”, “did someone decide on my behalf if this is normal?”, or “who is benefiting from this being labeled normal/ abnormal?” allows us to rethink why normal is inherently seen as good, and abnormal as bad.

To show the differences and world of possibilities within the abnormal, and maybe even to reconstruct a much less rigid normal, is so important as it establishes that there are no norms without exceptions. Why would we ever believe a normal that is constantly betting against us when we can reimagine a new normal that encompasses our understanding of the world and that encompasses a greater range of experiences.

This third edition of The A Project’s sexuality hotline report reflects on the data collected via calls/chats/emails made to the hotline in the year of 2019. From January 2019 to December 2019, the hotline received a total of 441 calls. The majority of callers are cis women, Lebanese, and between the ages of 20-25. Similar to previous years, the majority of our callers are based in Beirut. However, unlike years before, the hotline counsellors witnessed an increased number of calls from North and South Lebanon, and almost half of all the calls made to the hotline this year were by first-time callers looking for information and/or someone to talk to. This year, the sexuality hotline report is evidence of limitations to health knowledge and access created by social expectations that try to maintain heteronormative ideals, morals, and paths. 

Every call made to the hotline this year may be classified as challenging/questioning the social structures that are imposed on us. Topics on gender identity, relationships, sexual orientation, sex, pleasure, Report summary and virginity consisted of over two hundred calls to the hotline. Forty-one conversations actively discussed the morals and ideals of medical patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality. Two hundred and twenty calls were about unwanted pregnancies and contraception – a defiance of heteropatriarchy’s procreative expectations of those who are assigned female at birth. Other calls discussed sexual violence and challenged the gendered expectation of keeping quiet, staying silent, and normalizing it as a taboo topic.

On topics such as sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which are highly shamed and associated with deviancy and amorality, callers sought knowledge that is inaccessible or purposefully kept from them about their bodies. They questioned how to secure what they wanted for their wellbeing while bypassing religion, family authority, and the legal system: all entities of power we’re taught not to disobey. Overall, the hotline witnessed the burden callers feel from attempting to juggle abiding by and not abiding to expectations of sexual norms, and how, in fact, there is nothing natural about it. This report is a modest ‘Topics on gender identity, relationships, sexual orientation, sex, pleasure, and virginity consisted of over 200 calls to the hotline.' reflection of the contradictions of sexual normalcy, and the repressive reality attributed to the many individuals who seek to challenge such “norms.”

Read the full report here