Where the World Can’t See Us, We Still See Each Other

As the world celebrates Lesbian Visibility Week, I find myself grappling with an irony that is too heavy to ignore: I work on lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) issues, advocating, organizing, strategizing, but I cannot be visible. I cannot speak openly about who I am. I cannot name the country I live in, let alone the community I serve. My name may appear on reports, my work may impact policies, but my identity is pushed way behind layers of necessary silence.

This contradiction, being a lesbian human rights defender who cannot be publicly out, is one I carry with both pride and pain. My experience is not unique. Across the region, countless LBQ women do the same: leading, caring, resisting silently.

In North Africa, to be a lesbian is to live within invisibility, not by choice, but by survival. Criminalization, violence, and stigma build the walls of our closets. Here, visibility isn’t brave, it’s dangerous. We are forced to choose between safety and authenticity. We navigate our lives in whispers and coded language, building connections in private while the public narrative erases us.

It’s this quiet defiance that connects me to a moment I never witnessed but feel deeply tied to: the creation of the Lesbian Tent in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

Queer women were just beginning to get a foot in the door at the formal UN conference spaces, with South African lesbian Bev Ditsie making a historic speech on the UN floor. But hundreds of other women were backing her up from the parallel NGO Forum, moved by the Chinese authorities to a muddy outpost two hours by bus from the official venue. Undeterred, queer women activists organized a space in the designated NGO Forum area where lesbians could be together, speak freely, and say: we exist. They called it the “Lesbian Tent,” and it became a symbol of radical visibility. A space where women came out for the first time. Where stories were shared and global networks sparked. Where 60,000 signatures demanding recognition were packed into boxes and delivered with trembling hands and fierce hearts.
That tent may have been temporary, but what it represented, courage, solidarity, and truth, has never left us.

I imagine what it would have meant to walk into that tent, to hear my language spoken, to see women who looked like me. I imagine asking a question at the “ask a lesbian” table. I imagine being seen. And I wonder: if such a space had existed here, in my part of the world, would I still be invisible today?

In many ways, our own Lesbian Tent existed long before 1995, in hidden rooms and hushed gatherings. I think of Farduz Hussein, a woman from Egypt who, back in 1963, dared to organize a private meeting of lesbians in her community. It became a monthly ritual, then a movement: Hamd, a group of Arab lesbians who found sisterhood in secrecy. They cared for each other when no one else would. They protected each other from police, paid for one another’s medical treatment, and celebrated anniversaries on boats down the Nile. Their story, too, is part of our legacy, even if it never made the global headlines.

These women created their own kind of visibility: not the kind that asks to be seen by everyone, but the kind that insists we see each other.
This is what lesbian visibility looks like where I live. It is coded glances, quiet alliances, hidden group chats, love notes never sent. It is watching other movements celebrate openly while we remain in hiding. It is resilience disguised as discretion.
And yet, that Tent in Beijing changed everything. It legitimized the conversation. It planted seeds in spaces we never thought could grow. It told lesbians everywhere, including myself, decades later, that we belong to something bigger than ourselves. That even if we can’t show our faces, we are not alone.

Visibility may look different in North Africa. It may not be about rainbow flags or public pride events, but it is still about existence, about resilience, about lighting a candle for those who came before and passing it on to those who come next.
As I write this, I think of the young lesbian in a small town in North Africa who might stumble across this article. She might not be able to come out. She might not know others like her. But maybe she’ll read this and feel seen. Maybe she’ll realize that being invisible doesn’t mean being erased. That our stories are being told, even if quietly.

This Lesbian Visibility Week, I honor every LBQ woman who has ever felt forced into the shadows. I celebrate those who build community in secrecy, love in silence, and fight fiercely without being seen. We are here. We have always been here.