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Columbia Prof Confirms There Are No Gays in Iran
By Michael Weiss / October 1, 2007
 David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy:
[I]t may come as a surprise to Columbia faculty and students to learn that a current professor at Columbia has argued that there are no homosexuals in the entire Arab world, except for a few who have been brainwashed into believing they have a homosexual identity by an aggressive Western homosexual missionizing movement he calls "Gay International." The article is called, "Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World," and it appears in Volume 14, issue 2 of the journal Public Culture, and was elaborated upon in a book, Desiring Arabs, published by University of Chicago Press (UPDATE: BTW, I read the article, which is accessible through my GMU library account, but not the book). According to the author, "It is the very discourse of the Gay International which produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist" (emphasis added).
The author doesn't deny that same-sex sexual contact exists in Arab countries, but claims that the category of "homosexual" is purely a Western one exported to the Arab world by Western cultural imperialists. He suggests that by encouraging Arabs to adopt a Western homosexual identity, westernized Arab homosexuals have naturally provoked a counter-reaction against the importation of decadent Western culture into their societies. The article, to say, the least, is not at all sympathetic with the Western gay rights movements, and the author could easily write, replacing "Iran" with "the Arab world," "in the Arab world we don't have homosexuals like in your country." (See here for a good critique of the author's thesis.)
Oh, and the author/professor is Joseph Massad, whose name has come up in this blog many times before because of his "creative" scholarship, such as claiming that the movie "Exodus tells the story of the Zionist hijacking of a ship from Cyprus to Palestine by a Zionist Haganah commander." (As I've noted previously, this is analogous to saying that Schindler's List was a movie about Jews taking a working vacation in Poland.)
Goodness. Don't tell Lord Byron. Or Benjamin Disraeli. Or Michael Jackson.
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You’re mistaken; I’m neither right-wing nor am I supportive of Orthodox homophobia.
I’m saying there are naturally straight people and naturally gay people, and that it doesn’t matter that many Muslims in other countries don’t recognize this. I’m also saying the CDC’s valid and accurate reasons for referring to MSM are completely different from attempts by religious maniacs and their left-wing apologists to blend gay issues with Shariah law and Islamic beliefs.
Quote: "When the Left says something supporting Sharia law or any of its brutal commandments, then you’ll have a point."
Then I guess I have a point. Pick up the latest copy of Adbusters.
The fact that some lunatic fringe which represents 0.0001% of the population is nominally aligned with the Left does not mean "victory to Hizbollah" is even a minority sentiment among Liberals worth mention. They are just nuts. You will find a larger segment of people who believe we are covered in body-thetans.
@Jason -
 "Victory to Hizballah!", "We are HAMAS!" are slogans of the Far Left in the US. I have seen the representatives of the Radicals hold the posters.
We don’t have to wait to evolve, but it would be beneficial to extricate (intellectually) any support for Islamist (NOT Islamic) organizations from our backyard. Â
@IsaacCohen –
The Left is not interested in peace or truth or scientific advancement. MP Galloway cannot claim to genuinely call himself a pacifist and then meet with Bashar Assad. That movement is concerned exclusively with critically examining the constructs of modern Western civilization as represented by the USA and Western Europe (and other regions which operate using that model). To what end, I doubt anyone knows.
They are always searching for the most expedient methods of deconstruction no matter how vile the effects of the application of the methods. Before it was Marxism, Anarchism, Leninism, Stalinism etc….now its political Islam.
I don’t think that the members of this movement are actually trying to construct anything of their own. So I disagree with you on the point that they are laying a foundation for anything. They are engaging in what they perceive is a harmless intellectual exercise. The trouble is that, lacking the deconstructive approach because their intellects have formed in the very system they seek to examine, they feel compelled to adopt various odious ideas to provide that bit of objectivity.
We don’t have to wait to evolve until another even more backward group of people reach our level of human development. There’s no reason not to prod Orthodox Jews to accept legally-sanctioned gay relationships while hoping that the Muslims will stop stoning them.
When the Left says something supporting Sharia law or any of its brutal commandments, then you’ll have a point. Until then, you’re just coughing up right-wing fantasies and straw men.
There is a difference between sexual orientation and sexual practice. When many gays "come out," they’ve never even experimented with the same gender. They’re just admitting their orientation–which gender they’re predominantly attracted to. Also, some straight people engage in same-gender sex. The CDC refers to MSM (men who have sex with men) to acknowledge these facts. That’s it. There is no psuedo-philosophical, anti-Western reason for it.
I’ve wondered for years why left-wing idiots like Tony Kushner and the writers at Mother Jones and Adbusters are trying to make it sound like being gay is a choice along the lines of religion. I’ve wrestled with why they only seem to care about gay rights when gays are being oppressed by Christians and Orthodox Jews. I’m strarting to realize it’s because much of the Left is laying the groundwork for an Islamic future.
We’re about to trade one dominant religion’s backwards ideolology for another’s.
cant we all agree that the plight of gays in Iran is Abe Foxman’s fault?
Yes, but my point simply is that in this instance it really does not matter. Ahmadinejad's appearance should not necessarily have be an opportunity to discuss/debate the social and cultural definitions and impositions of sexuality (certainly valid and important discussions), in the face of violent repression of sexuality in Iran–an issue that I would say many people are grossly uneducated about. (I would also dare say that, perhaps, Iran isn't proof of the malleability of sexual designation, but rather of how gay culture isn't allowed to form in the face of intimidation and violence). In the statement released by the QA, a short paragraph condeming anti-gay violence preceded the one I quoted above. In my most humble of estimations, A.'s visit should have been just as significant an affront to the QA as it was to Jews/Baha'ii, etc…on campus.
"Funny, you would think that most relevant would be standing in
solidarity with those members of the GLBT community who are being
stoned and hung to death. Somehow, I seriously doubt that the theories
of sexuality put forth by historians like Berube and Chauncey
have made it into the academies in Tehran."
Their sole point, quite valid, is that we should not assume that the cultural context surrounding "Western" homosexuality is universal. By blindly applying label like "gay" and "lesbian" to people in the middle east, we don't achieve solidarity. Instead, we portray the advocacy in Iran as seeking the acceptance of the predominant "Western" culture surrounding homosexuality. This undermines the actual people practicing homosexuality in Iran by branding them pro-Western.
The CDC has similar justification for its use of the MSM designation. The CDC doesn't care if people identify as "gay" or "queer" or anything or nothing. They're in the disease control business; all they care about is the actual sexual act. Using "gay" in such a context would be inaccurate, especially among people who engage in homosexual activity but refuse to label themselves culturally distinct.
Not sure if you caught this, but here is the statement that the Columbia Queer Alliance released in response to A.'s appearance:
"We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely. Moreover, we would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as 'gay', 'lesbian', or 'homosexual' to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms 'same-sex practices' and 'same-sex desire' in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology. President Ahmadinejad's presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world."
Funny, you would think that most relevant would be standing in solidarity with those members of the GLBT community who are being stoned and hung to death. Somehow, I seriously doubt that the theories of sexuality put forth by historians like Berube and Chauncey have made it into the academies in Tehran. Maybe when the Columbia students take A. up on his offer for exchange they can take a copy of "Gay New York" with them.
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