[lbo-talk] Clash of Sexual Civilizations (was Re: ahmadinejad)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 9/26/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 5:50 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 17:02 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:
> >
> >> is it possible that he, like the ancient Greeks that we're all
> >> supposed to admire so much, doesn't see homosexual people as existing
> >> as much as homosexual _behaviors_ that some engage in?
> >
> > This was exactly Yoshie's original point, if I understood
> > her correctly.
>
> Yeah that's her point, but how do we know that's where Ahmadinejad is
> coming from? It's certainly what his apologists are seizing on - some
> dude on Lou Proyect's list is making the same point. But Iran is not
> a backwater. Yoshie's scornful of the Westernized upper class that's
> adopted our model of sexual identity, but they're still harassed and
> oppressed - and it means that Iran doesn't entirely deserve the
> Orientalism-in-reverse defense.

You confuse adoption of discourse of sexual orientations with
affirmation of the homosexual identity.  I have watched several
documentaries about homosexuals and transsexuals in Iran, some made by
Western media, but among "the Westernized upper class that's adopted
our model of sexual identity," the norm is heterosexism,
Western-style.  The "Westernized upper class" in Iran, aside from a
homosexual minority within that minority, may have more anxious
attitudes about sexuality than other Iranians whose sexual
understanding is different than the norm in the West.  That is not a
surprise.  When discourse of sexual orientations first developed in
the capitalist West, it did so as a homophobic discourse.
-- 
Yoshie