In the week of visibility for lesbians, we celebrate the Syrian lesbians who face every day the patriarchal system that practices all forms of oppression, intimidation, and erasure towards them based on their gender identity and sexual orientation.Zeina is a Syrian lesbian girl who shares her experience with us and with you on the International Day of Lesbian Visibility and how she resisted all the societal norms imposed on her.During my teenage years, I started feeling emotions towards women, but I didn't know what that meant because I knew nothing about it and I didn't know that it was possible for a person to have different sexual inclinations. I was raised in a society that believed the norm was for a man and a woman to get married.This prevented me from understanding my feelings, and whenever those thoughts came up, I tried not to think about them and I would tell myself that these feelings I was experiencing were not true, and that I should be with a man because I saw my cousin's daughter and my cousin's son in relationships, and that was the prevailing norm at that time.And if I were to express what I feel, it would be a cause for me to face numerous violations, as these are matters they never accept and are considered deviant in society.When I entered university, I left my small town and had the opportunity to be part of my own community, and I was able to become financially and socially independent from my family.What helped me was the supportive environment of my friends, who told me that it was my right to discover myself and that I had the right to do so. I didn't even know that it was my right in the first place.When I started exploring, I felt like this was the place I wanted to be.I hope that within our family and the first environment we create, it will be the one that embraces us, and in the future, we will have overcome those ideologies that control us.

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