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Launched by Tunisian journalist Naouel Bizid, Deep Confessions Podcast has become a distinctive platform for long-form conversations on mental health, social pressure, and personal experience in Tunisia’s rapidly changing media environment. Episodes typically run around an hour and bring together experts, public figures and “everyday people” to discuss anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction and social stigma, with the stated aim of fostering a more open and compassionate public conversation. The podcast is distributed on YouTube and social platforms, positioning itself explicitly as an alternative, taboo-free space in contrast to more conservative mainstream broadcasters. This positioning would set the stage for a major confrontation when Bizid chose to dedicate the 100th episode to a guest from one of Tunisia’s most marginalized communities.

A 100th Episode That Crossed a Social Taboo
For this landmark episode, aired 27 June 2025, Bizid invited trans woman and queer activist Khookha McQueer, a well-known online figure whose artistic performance and advocacy directly challenge gender and sexual norms in Tunisia. McQueer is a drag performer, writer and HIV activist who uses social media and artistic self-representation to destigmatize LGBTQ+ identities and sexually transmitted infections in a conservative religious context. Her visual presentation, combining masculine-coded features such as a beard with feminine-coded elements like makeup and wigs, has long been part of a deliberate artistic strategy to confront binary gender expectations and visibility politics in Tunisian public life. By inviting her, Bizid signaled a conscious decision to move beyond “soft” mental health topics into openly queer and gender-diverse experience, knowing these subjects remain largely absent from Tunisia’s mainstream media and public debate.

Online Backlash and Calls for Boycott
The controversy erupted even before the episode itself circulated widely. A promotional post featuring a photo of Bizid in conversation with McQueer on the Deep Confessions Podcast social media accounts attracted thousands of comments within hours, many of them hostile. Commenters framed the invitation as a deliberate provocation and accused Bizid of betraying Arab-Muslim values, acting “against religion,” and seeking attention by platforming what they described as a “degenerate” or “cursed” minority. Users called on followers to unsubscribe from Deep Confessions channels, boycott the podcast, and denounce a project they had previously appreciated for its mental health focus but now portrayed as morally corrupt and in “decline” because of queer inclusion. The reaction mirrored broader waves of online hate speech and incitement against LGBTQ+ communities in Tunisia, where influencers and religiously-framed discourse have repeatedly mobilised mass harassment campaigns on Instagram and other platforms.

Escalating Hate Speech and Personal Threats
As the comment threads grew, criticism quickly escalated from moral condemnation to direct harassment and threats targeting both Bizid and McQueer personally. Insults used dehumanising language and invoked religious rhetoric, reinforcing the idea that queer and trans people are outside the bounds of acceptable citizenship and undeserving of media visibility. For McQueer, the episode added to an already hostile environment: her activism has long exposed her to doxxing, intimidation and homophobic and transphobic attacks online, particularly when she speaks publicly about HIV, sexuality and non-binary identities. The Deep Confessions incident thus became not only a test of one podcast’s editorial choices, but another flashpoint in a wider struggle over whether digital platforms in Tunisia can host queer narratives without exposing both creators and guests to orchestrated campaigns of hate.

Freedom of Expression, Queer Visibility and Platform Risk
The Deep Confessions case illustrates how quickly attempts to broaden public discussion—from mental health into queer experience—can trigger organised backlash in a context where LGBTQ+ people lack legal protection and remain criminalised under Article 230 of the Tunisian Penal Code. For Bizid, the decision to host McQueer transformed a mental-health podcast into a de facto battlefield over the limits of acceptable speech, with potential consequences for audience reach, advertising and personal safety. For queer activists, the episode reaffirmed both the importance and the danger of visibility: appearing on such platforms can humanise and normalise marginalized experiences, but it also exposes guests to targeted harassment in an environment where hate speech online is rarely effectively addressed by either the state or social media companies. As Tunisia’s digital public sphere continues to polarise, the Deep Confessions 100th episode stands as an emblematic moment in which artistic performance, mental health discourse and queer rights collided in a single, hour-long conversation—and the reaction revealed how fragile those spaces remain.

References

Deep Confessions Podcast has spent years building a rare space in Tunisia for honest conversations about mental health, stigma and social pressure. For its 100th episode, host and journalist Naouel Bizid invited trans woman and queer activist Khookha McQueer – turning a milestone in long-form audio into an unexpected censorship and hate-speech stress test.

Even before the episode circulated widely, a single promotional image of Bizid and McQueer triggered a wave of online harassment, boycotts and moral panic. Commenters accused the podcast of betraying “Arab-Muslim values”, and demanded unsubscribes and advertiser pressure simply because a queer voice was given space to speak.

This case shows how quickly platforms that address mental health and social issues can become battlegrounds when they extend empathy and visibility to criminalised and marginalised communities. It raises urgent questions about the protection of digital creators, guests and audiences in Tunisia’s shrinking space for free expression and cultural rights.

#ArtisticFreedom #LGBTQ #QueerRights #Tunisia #FreedomOfExpression #DigitalRights #MentalHealth #Podcasting #MimetaMemos

Deep Confessions Podcast YouTube channel and show description.youtube youtube
Deep Confessions Podcast Facebook page and promotional materials.facebook
Khookha McQueer interview on activism, gender identity and HIV, TheBody.thebody
Academic and NGO material on Khookha McQueer’s social media activism.digitalcollections.sit
Coverage and NGO statements on online hate campaigns against LGBTQ+ people in Tunisia.newarab

Deep Confessions at 100: Tunisia’s Mental Health Podcast Meets a Queer Backlash

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