Re: [A-List] Khomeini on Sodomy

["Macdonald Stainsby" <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

> On 10/25/07, Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> The idea of sexual orientations is culturally and historically
> contingent.  The Japanese people enjoyed same-sex sex, especially
> between older men and younger men, and such same-sex sex was
> celebrated in premodern literature, in which no modern categories of
> homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals could be found.  That's all
> long before the rise of modern gay rights movements.  Homophobia in
> Japan was an import from the West, which came as a byproduct of
> psychiatry, psychology, and related sciences, which also propagated
> the idea of sexual orientations.
>

That is all well and good, because the idea that sexuality needs no labels
and definitions is that starting point. That starting point doesn't exist
in Iran.

You are absolutely perpetuating the very same problems as the whole
reactionary gamut of people who speak about homosexuality/bi-sexuality/etc
do-- you think fucking is what matters. I notice you have nothing to say
about the idea of the quadriplegic who is self-identified as gay.

Sex can often happen between two people of the same gender, while that
person has no "pull" towards people of the same (physical) gender based on
the emotional relationship that is a partnership.

All of your examples are about sex/penetration. My guess is that men who
would have relationships with men have the same percentage of sexual
dysfunction as others. Your casual hypothesis indicates to me not a desire
to save Iranians from "bourgeois gay rights movements" but to save
yourself from having to admit that not only does your hero have some
fucked up positions on the Holocaust, but also along the lines of people
who actually exist.

You are married, and my guess is (based only on a majoritarian view of
society) that you didn't marry the first man you fell in love with. Was
there ever a time when that bond you have was one you would extend to
other genders? If so, why (and/or vice versa)?

Saying that gay people do not exist, in the way you are spinning it, is
Ahmadinejad protecting queer people from the categorization of anti-human
prejudice. Nonsense. The example of Japan, for which I will take your word
for it, is one where *no homophobia existed*. Thus, categories did not
need to come about.

You can make the same points about race; it has been racism that created
artificial divides among people, not biology (and you know this). It is
also Anti-semitism which created the concept of the "Jewish Race", and not
a religion. But once it is done, you are not helping matters pretending it
doesn't exist. You can't just walk into New Orleans and say there is "no
such thing as race" (at least I wouldn't advise it). And when you even
hint at going along with this garbage in Iran, you are helping the
executors of real breathing people, who were probably in love (a reason to
risk getting caught).

> If the Iranian people want to have more sexual rights and freedoms,

You need to knock off your sex-fascination. It's not about sex, sex is the
physical act that represents how one is wired to love, lust and more
certain people. And around that, a culture has already evolved that
deserves to be seen by progressives as equal to Japanese culture. You are
simply arguing in the wrong century, and my guess is you do so because of
your strange affinity for the Iranian government.

> they can develop their own ideas by going back to their own past and
> inventing new models of sexual rights and freedoms based upon them,
> rather than importing the notions originally invented by bourgeois
> culture in the capitalist West.

It would appear that the executions of gay men and women that happen in
Iran happen because of the governments belief that this practice protects
them *from* the west, not the other way around.

Where is the anti-racist movement that denies the existence of racial
categories?

--
Macdonald Stainsby
Co-ordinator,
http://oilsandstruth.org
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moderated radical discussion list:
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In the contradiction lies the hope.
-Bertholt Brecht.