I disagree that PEN-l and Marxism show no interest in the topic of sexuality. To take just a couple of examples, when I posted on transsexuals in Iran, Egypt, etc., I received a response on PEN-l (from Mohammad Maljoo, an Iranian man) <http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2004w31/msg00123.htm> but not from LBO-talk and Marxism. A posting about Pim Fortuyn and Peter Tatchell received a number of responses from Marxism and one from PEN-l but none from LBO-talk: <http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2004w23/msg00030.htm>, <http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2004w23/msg00100.htm>, and <http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2004w23/thread.htm#00094>.
>Michael Dawson wrote:
>
>>Yoshie fancies herself our enlightener. She posted this because she thinks
>>she's delivering news to us.
>
>She could be. I don't know much about "modern" Islam. I only queried
>it because I wanted to hear what she found interesting about it -
>you know, some kind of value-added head- or footnote. Otherwise it
>looks like it came out of nowhere.
>
>Doug
Lots of postings here and elsewhere come without any head- or footnote: e.g., <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040927/022169.html>, <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040927/022103.html>, <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040913/020622.html>, etc. Is there anything about Mel Gibson and his praying fan, Viagra in China, and the Lolita fashion subculture that make it self-evident why those who posted about them found them interesting, unlike the story of an Afghan lesbian?
I'd think that just the fact that the essay in question was written by a young Afghan lesbian made it unusual, the first time such a topic was brought up on this list (and Marxism and PEN-l, for that matter), unlike Mel Gibson and Viagra! I highly doubt that anyone has been deluged by an outpouring of Afghan lesbian literary outputs outside the listservs. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>