Re: [Marxism] Review: When Skateboards Will be Free

[David Thorstad <binesi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here's an anecdote I'd like to throw into the mix:

When I was branch organizer of the SWP in Minneapolis in the late 1960s, 
there was a group of foreign students who met with SWP support, though 
independently (for their protection as nonresidents), about once a week, 
to discuss Marxism and issues relating to their countries of origin. 
Mahmoud was one of those. Another one, from South India, has remained to 
this day a close friend of mine. Others were from Chile and countries I 
don't recall.
    In the early seventies, before I had quit the SWP and was working 
for /Intercontinental Press/, the party's international journal, Mahmoud 
asked to borrow my copy of Mary Renault's /The Persian Boy/. When he 
returned it, he told me: "Everybody in Iran is involved in such 
relationships" (i.e., pederastic relationships). After Ahmedinijad told 
the world a year or so ago that homosexuality does not exist in Iran, I 
thought back on this incident. Perhaps it was only a matter of 
terminology? But then, U.S. and European gay groups began to denounce 
Iran for persecution of homosexuals, yet not one of them ever mentioned 
that pederasty (love between men and boys) is a historic feature of 
Persian society (and others--e.g., the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, U.S. 
allies about whom the bourgeois press expunges any mention of this 
un-p.c. behavior, anathematized by both the ruling class and the 
toadying gay/lez movement).
David

Louis Proyect wrote:
> (Swans - May 4, 2009) When Skateboards Will Be Free is a memoir by 
> Saïd Sayrafiezadeh about growing up with parents who were devoted 
> members of the Socialist Workers Party. The mother is Martha Harris, a 
> Jew who finally leaves the party at the end of the book.



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