I assume Yoshie knows alot (and I can JSTOR just like she can, SFPL gives us access to that great archive of academic journals) about repressive cultural and sexual norms worldwide, so her post was more than puzzling, to give her the benefit of the doubt she never gives to others...or not...the basis of her political judgements can be so bizarre.
Someone has checked out right now the books on homosexuality in Arab societies and the book, "The Trouble With Islam, " by the Canadian left-liberal lesbian muslim that came out a few months ago is checked out, and the radical feminist anthologies on patriarchy ed. .by Robin Morgan are mis-shelved so, I can't my usual sources for y'all...but...
The 2 dozen gay men imprisoned in Egypt two yrs. ago for sodomy...the routine killing of homosexuals on the Werst Bank and Gaza that I posted about a few yrs. ago (David McReynolds sent it around to his credit)...the Taliban below that Scheer makes note of...hundreds of examples I'm sure could be found by visiting the website of the International Gay and Lesbian Assoc. http://www.ilga.org/
(Final coment, Yoshie, orientalism has not exactly been uncritiqued by historians and others on the Left, not lit critters. I have posted here URL for a Syrian marxist critique from a Routledge book on Edward Said. Also noted by many (and not just neo-con martin Kramer in , "Ivory Towers on Sand, " but by centrists abnd leftists is the complete absence of German writing, quite volumnious on Islam and Arabs from the 18th century on, In Said's volume.)
>From Robert Scheer in today's SF Chronicle at http://www.sfgate.com (and Remick beat me to posting the PJB column today that the op-ed pg. of the SF Chronicle had right below Scheer, that was acounterpoint...note that I posted the Krauthammer here a week ago that Buchanan replies to)
http://www.robertscheer.com/
>...Yes, human rights, for unless homosexuals are granted full civil rights, no other rights are secure. Hitler proved that by exterminating the "abnormal ones," whose pink triangles marked them for death, alongside the Jews. Homosexuals were a favored target of the Taliban goons in Afghanistan, who routinely crushed gays to death under a wall of stones. And they were once interned in camps in Fidel Castro's Cuba.
Sexual fascism – the violent denial of the fundamental right of human beings to define their essential nature in an open and accountable manner – is at the heart of totalitarianism, whether in an Islamic, a Christian or a Marxist context.
Yet, despite living in a democratic society, we are not immune to exploiting sex as a means of social control. U.S. sodomy laws – until last year's Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case – made gay sex between consenting adults illegal. At the same time, the U.S. prison system practically institutionalizes male-on-male rape as a form of punishment and intimidation.
And now comes the scandal of Abu Ghraib, which appears to go far beyond a few reservists on an S&M power trip.
Because of the severe psychological consequences of sexual humiliation for conservative Muslims, U.S. military jailers have been routinely stripping Arab prisoners and taking nude photos of them in camps and prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. According to Seymour Hersh in the May 24 New Yorker, this practice was not devised by deranged reservists at the bottom of the military hierarchy at Abu Ghraib but came from the top – from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"Rumsfeld and [Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen] Cambone … expanded the scope of [a top-secret intelligence-gathering program], bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation," reports Hersh, relying on insider intelligence sources. The Pentagon denies it authorized abuse but has admitted to having a policy of routinely allowing prisoners to be stripped naked and in other ways humiliated.
If the goal in Iraq was really to win hearts and minds to the American model of democracy, why would Rumsfeld impose such a shortsighted policy of torture? Was this ends-justify-the-means cynicism or just an act of desperation to save a tragically stupid war?
In the end, the irony is grim: The U.S. military bans openly gay soldiers but apparently does not effectively screen out heterosexual sadists. Meanwhile, at home the president tries desperately to make an election-year issue out of preventing free adults from civilly consecrating same-sex partnerships.
Michael Pugliese