REPRESENTING RESISTANCE Ayse Toprak’s Mr Gay Syria and LGBTQIA+ Rights

Since 2009, the annual Mr Gay World competition has been celebrating the diverse experiences of gay men around the globe. In order to be successful, entrants must first prove their chops by winning their respective national titles before progressing to the international stages of the contest. There, the unsurprisingly handsome entrants pose – with bare chests on display – for their official photographs. But, beyond the allure of sexy men preening themselves for a gay-male gaze, there is a professed political impetus here, too: according to the competition website, the organisers want to raise awareness that ‘in many regions on our planet being gay is a challenge and a fight for basic human rights’.

Human rights were certainly foregrounded in 2016 when one delegate was notably absent. Husein Sabat was the first refugee to be given a national crown; as Mr Gay Syria, he was all set to ignite a defiant spark of representation for the Syrian LGBTQIA+ community. However, his refugee status proved troublesome, his visa application was rejected and he couldn’t travel to Malta to compete with the other national winners. Deprived of agency both as a gay man and as a refugee, he faced a very particular predicament that illustrates the broader sociopolitical bind suffered by LGBTQIA+ refugees.