​What is the idea of dating apps?
Dating apps seem like good tools for people who are interested in dating and relationships. These apps ease the whole process of looking for a partner. They are good for shy people who usually are terrified of making the first move and they are a fast way to connect to other people and decide whether or not to spend more time with them. 
Tinder might be the most popular dating app, but there are other apps too such as Bumble, Her, Grindr and many more.
Some of these apps are available to heterosexuals as well as to members of the queer community while some others are used exclusively by the queer individuals and are considered their private space.
 
The danger that surrounds the Iraqi queers who use dating apps?
Queers in Iraq are exposed to a greater danger if they use dating apps compared to heterosexuals. If your sexuality and preferences are mentioned in your bio and one of your friends or relatives finds your account, you will be in a big trouble.
The majority of teenagers and adults living in Iraq who use dating apps do not feel fully comfortable using them and the fear becomes even more if they were members of the queer community. That is why, many people tend to put fake profile pictures or give wrong location until they spend some time knowing the people they are talking to.
Kareem is a queer person from Iraq and he comes to tell us about his personal experience with dating apps. Kareem says that he started using dating apps about ten years ago, and he has been using various types of apps since then including Grindr, Hornet and Tinder.
He explains, “From my point of view, I see that some of these apps are helpful so I use them when I’m bored to get to meet new people. Sometimes, I end up making new friends with the people I talk with on these apps so we share our Instagram accounts and we stay in touch.
As an Iraqi who lives inside the country, I say that it’s pretty scary to fully show yourself and be yourself on dating apps. You always have to keep a little bit of you hidden until you fully understand what kind of person you are dealing with.
If you ask for my advice, then I ask everyone is to stay away from Grindr because it has an extremely toxic environment. The majority of its users are judgmental and they are obsessed with criticizing each other. Hearing criticism over and over again will affect your mental health negatively and makes you hate how you look and how you feel about yourself.
Personally, I think that Tinder is one of the best applications that queer people can use in Iraq. Although it is not exclusive for the queer community, but you can still make it as queer as possible through the app settings as you can choose “females only” or “males only” to avoid any encounter with heterosexuals.
My advice to everyone, no matter what city you live in, is to not go out on a date with someone who you do not know much about. First, you need to spend some time trying to understand their mentality and their view of the queer community. Only then, you can think of taking the next step.
Just because you exchanged Instagram accounts or Facebook accounts or talked for a while, doesn't mean that you can trust them. People can be really different in real life compared to how they look like online.
I made such a mistake when I matched with a guy on a dating app a while ago, I added him on Instagram and we talked for a month. I thought a month was enough for me to know him well so I went out with him on a date.
 I was shocked because the guy was completely different from the person I spoke to on the app. He turned out to be a homophobe even though he was a member of the queer community. He kept telling me how I deserve to be killed for being queer and for supporting the queer community.
That experience was terrifying and helped me learn a good lesson. That is why I advise you to be careful because dating apps are available to everyone so you can’t reveal the whole truth of a person through them.”
 
Iraq does not believe in the idea of ​​dating apps
Iraq is still considered a conservative country so Iraqis who live in it are still unable to express themselves freely. They are still controlled by their family, tribe, and religion. All these can end anyone's life at any moment.
Up to this day, even heterosexuals can’t use dating apps openly. They won’t even find support from their families if they got into a problem with someone they met on dating apps.
It’s even harder for members of the queer community to solve any problems related to dating apps and that’s why being extra careful is the best thing to do.
Different people have different opinions about dating apps as some think they are totally healthy and helpful in finding good partners while others think of them as means for entertainment or even free spaces for criticism.
Dating apps come with some risks that IraQueer likes to shortly mention for the sake of educating people.
Some people tend to use dating apps to get information about other users then end up blackmailing them. This alone can put people’s lives in huge danger. Also, dating apps are one reason that pushes people to be shallower by teaching them how to judge other by their looks only. One other risk of using dating apps could be the risk of developing depression and having low self-esteem as a consequence of hearing bad judgments from strangers over and over.
In the end, it is up to the individuals. They are free to choose whether to use dating apps or avoid them. IraqQueer cares about the safety of the queer community, and for this we advise you to think carefully before talking about your orientation with people you meet on these apps. Avoid giving full confidence to anyone and make sure to not meet them unless you have enough information and understand of who they really are. 

​The Iraq News Agency published today that the Iraqi Parliament’s legal committee is organizing a movement inside the parliament to legislate a law prohibiting homosexuality in Iraq and banning any kind of activity related to the queer community. Individuals like Muqtada Al Sader tweeted earlier a proposal for a day dedicated to fight against homosexuality. Official legal experts claimed that a 2001 law punishes homosexuality with death penalty. This proposed law constitutes another attack by Iraqi officials on the LGBT+ community. For nearly two decades, LGBT+ Iraqis have been the victims of rape, torture, and murder. The Iraqi government did not only fail to put an end to these crimes but has actually committed many of them through police forces and armed groups. Iraqi officials have continuously used LGBT+ people to spread fear amongst Iraqis and distract them from the real problems facing Iraq including the failure to form a government and the failure to provide the most basic services for Iraqis. The passage of this law will put LGBT+ Iraqis at great danger as it will allow the Iraqi government and armed groups to be legally protected when committing these crimes. Such a law will also put LGBT+ advocates and allies in danger reducing the already limited spaces available to LGBT+ advocacy inside Iraq and threatening the young queer movement in Iraq. The lives of LGBT+ Iraqis are on the line. We call on allies in the Iraqi government and the international community to act immediately. We urge the international community including the United Nations, European Union, Embassies, and International Organizations to put pressure on Iraq to refrain from passing this law. We also call on Iraqi LGBT+ people to join the fight for queer rights in Iraq. IraQueer is dedicated to advocating for LGBT+ Iraqis and we need to step up as a community to fight these attacks. If you have questions, please reach out to: [email protected] In Solidarity, IraQueer Team.

​A few days ago, the University of Kufa announced that its College of Engineering held a seminar under the title “The Psychological Impact of Homosexuality on The Student in The Academic Behavior” as a way to remind mothers and fathers who attended the seminar about the importance of keeping their kids away from any websites, applications, and cartoons that include the topic of homosexuality, or as called in some parts of the news “Deviation”. As it is mentioned in the seminar, homosexuality is a soft war against our societies specifically the Muslim ones.
 
How do children and teenagers in Iraq learn about homosexuality?
It is important to point out that Iraqi educational system lacks the educational curricula that discuss the topic of homosexuality in a scientific manner. Also, our educational centers lack the teachers who can respond to their student’s questions about such topic properly. 
So how do children and teenagers learn about homosexuality? Most often, children and teenagers learn about homosexuality through warnings and intimidations of their mothers and fathers. A result of that would be creating a negative picture about homosexuality and about the word itself. This is why we see that some children, teenagers, and even adults, in some cases, use the word "homosexual" as a way to offend each other and express the existence of a problem or an illness.
Another way for children and teenagers to learn about homosexuality is through their electronic devices. We all see the huge numbers of children who walk around carrying electronic devices through which they are able to watch hundreds of videos, read posts, and follow certain individuals who might teach them wrong information on topics such as sex, homosexuality, and others. Unfortunately, many are now learning about sex through pornography and about homosexuality through social media accounts that distort the image of the LGBT+ community and directly link homosexuality with moral decay.
The hatred that children learn to hold against homosexuality and homosexuals does not go away. As these kids grow older, their desire to express that hatred grow with them and push them to look for any opportunity to express it. The problem is that some of them end up realizing that the closest people to them are from the LGBT+ community. Perhaps their brothers, sisters, or closest friends are gay. Or even worse, these children might grow older and realize that they are gay and that is when they start hating themselves or fearing that someone knows about them.

How come our educational centers in Iraq divide science into two parts, one that it teaches to students with pride, and one that it associates with moral decay?
There is a great number of universities in Iraq that include various university departments and specializations from which teachers, engineers, doctors, nurses and many others graduate every year.
The curricula in these educational centers are based on purely scientific foundations and laws that came from experiences, research and studies. The question is, how can universities that believe in science refuse the fact that homosexuality is scientifically proven to not be a mental illness? What is the difference between someone who argues that one plus one equals three and someone who says homosexuality is an illness!?
Linking homosexuality to genes, environment and psychological state is not based on any scientific basis and spreading wrong information among students only makes things worse.

What if the son, daughter, relative of one the speakers or attendees is an LGBT+ person?
LGBT+ people are literally everywhere as they are members of the Iraqi families. We often don't think about it this way because we don't hear about their numbers and we all know why, it's impossible for LGBT+ people to show themselves in public when their lives are in danger.
How do you imagine that the daughters and sons of attendees or speakers would feel if they were LGBT+? How much fear do you think they carry knowing that their mothers and fathers are the ones who spread hatred against them and urge others to hurt them?
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What are the risks of holding seminars like this in Iraq?
Iraq suffers from countless problems. Therefore, holding such seminars that spread hatred does not make things any better in the country.
Iraqi fathers and mothers need to educate themselves about homosexuality by depending on scientific facts, and they need to learn to accept differences and accept different points of view, because they will not be able to raise happy and open-minded generation if they are not able to accept their own kids as they are. Iraq needs mothers and fathers who give unconditional love to their kids and encourage them to be proud of themselves.

​The internet, magazines, newspapers, TV, and radio are all media means that aim to communicate with a specific audience. Iraq, like other countries around the world, uses these means to convey news to the Iraqi citizens..... Our question is, to what extent can we rely on the media and its news in a country like Iraq?
In one way or another, media affects our views as well as our opinion about our lives and the lives of others around us. Media, also, changes our level of acceptance or rejection of certain events that take place inside and outside the country. Plus, it constantly changes the angle in which we look at what is around us and perhaps sometimes makes us become extremists as we reject any differences that we notice.
Constant exposure to content that imposes negative opinions about a group of people often increases the likelihood of spreading hatred against them and this is exactly what the Iraqi media has been doing against the Iraqi LGBT+ community.
Imagine that the media can persuade women to use a specific face cream or men to choose a razor from a particular company by constantly sharing advertisements that either speak positively about a product of a particular company or speak negatively about a product of another company. The situation gets worse as we realize that media affects not only what we want to buy, but also things that have a greater impact on our lives and the lives of those around us, such as sexual orientation, religion, political tendencies and many more.
An important point to mention is that not all the information we get from the media is wrong but we have to be careful when choosing our source of information to avoid forming wrong opinions.
 
Does the Iraqi media address the subject of homosexuality and the LGBT+ community?
Iraqi media gives full space and freedom to anyone who wants to speak negatively about the LGBT+ community even without providing any supervision to determine whether the information being published is true in the first place.
We all can see that it’s easy in Iraq to spread rumors about the LGBT+ community but it is difficult to defend the community and to correct the wrong ideas that are already spread about it. While haters are free to say what they want to say about the LGBT+ community, those who want to defend and help the community end up being threatened, insulted, or even dead.
One of the ways in which the Iraqi media negatively affects the Iraqi LGBT+ community is by spreading misconceptions that have no scientific basis. One of the worst misconceptions against the LGBT+ community is that sexual orientation can be changed and controlled. In other words, a gay man who is attracted to men chooses to be like that, and if he had morals, he would have chosen to be attracted to women. For this reason, we see that many of the LGBT+ individuals are blamed and forced to change.
Other than that, the Iraqi media uses harsh and disrespectful words to refer to the LGBT+ community, which in turn makes it normal and acceptable to offend the members of the community. The Iraqi media visualizes the LGBT+ community in a negative way and spreads hate speech. Doing that does not only normalize violence and hatred against LGBT+ people but also teaches Iraqis that it is necessary to kill or violate any LGBT+ person.
In addition, the Iraqi media often associates sexual orientation and the LGBT+ community with topics of pedophilia or with prostitution and moral decay. Doing that creates an image in people's minds that LGBT+ people have sexual obsession and that all their relationships happen to fulfill their sexual needs but never based on love. That could be a reason why most mothers and fathers reject their LGBT+ daughters and sons and they go ahead to either kill them or force them to get married.
As we mentioned previously, frequent exposure to the news that carry a huge amount of hatred against the LGBT+ community in addition to the lack of freedom given to organizations and activists to raise awareness about sexual orientation leads to having generations that think of violence as a way to save the Iraqi morals and values.
Understanding what sexual orientation and gender identity mean as well as understanding the meaning of human rights and freedoms can contribute to reducing cases of violence, suicides, and forced marriage.
Iraqi parents, Iraqi schools, and Iraqi media may not support homosexuality or the freedom of choice but let’s keep in mind that the Internet makes it easier for us to educate ourselves and understand such topics in a scientific and correct way. Reading and spreading awareness by relying on trusted sources can make a huge positive impact on our Iraqi mentality.