After Khalid Abdel-Hadi was outed in the middle-eastern press for being gay, he became more determined than ever to provide representation for LGBTQ+ in the Arab world. “I remember crying in my hotel room in Lebanon when that story broke. It was my worst nightmare as an editor to be blocked in my own country,” Khalid Abdel-Hadi, the publisher of the Middle East’s leading LGBTQIA+ magazine, My Kali, recalls. The activist is speaking about an incident in 2007 where he, aged 16, was publicly outed by the Jordanian press. An extremist tabloid paper hijacked the first edition of the magazine, whose cover bore an image of himself, shirtless.