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Saturday, October 30, 2010

The Problem with Labels

This is Charisse.
In the article, Re-orienting Desire – The Gay International and the Arab World, Joseph Massad makes an interesting argument about the harm that the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) do in their quest to “defend the rights of ‘gays and lesbians’ all over the world and to advocate on their behalf.
While I originally found this article to be laden with quotes that were not necessarily supplemented with the author’s own words, I came to see the points that Massad was trying to make. He tackles an argument that I have long been interested in and that is the exclusion that comes with definitions. The Gay International, Massad’s term for the ILGA and IGLHRC, claims that it wants to help gay and lesbian people, but Massad points out that it only attempts to help those that fall into the proper category of gay and lesbian.
Reading this article reminded me of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the idea of classification. The Western world seems to have a need for putting things into boxes. The only way to discuss something is to label it and those things that do not fit into the labels are simply not allowed to exist. The spread of Western culture is playing an interesting role in the definition of sexuality in Arab and Muslim countries.
The Gay International demands that “their rights as ‘homosexuals’ be granted where they are denied and be respected where they are violated” and the Middle East seems to be a great place to fight for these demands. However, Massad points out that the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” were only invented recently (372). He also notes that the term “sexual-deviance” has also been adopted (372). This recent adoption of such term makes it easier to lump people into a category. It makes it easier for the Gay International to point out exactly who is oppressed and make claims about how to end the oppression. The problem with this is that there are some males that sleep with other males (and women that sleep with other women though they are not identified in this article) that do not identify as homosexual persons.
GLAS, the Gay and Lesbian Arabic Society, says that it is the relationship, between two people of the same sex, that goes beyond sex that brings out the label of homosexual. It is this group of people, those engaging in homosexual sex without “love” that GLAS hopes to represent. My question is why must we label everything?  Perhaps it is harder to get behind a cause that simply allows people to explore their sexual desires without consequence. Perhaps there is no catch phrase for that kind of movement.
How long will we continue to seek labels to lump people together, to make attacking groups easier? Why can’t we go with a slogan like, “I accept all.”?
At the beginning of the article, Massad cites Rex Wockner, who asks some interesting questions about same-sex practices of Arab and Iranian men. Unable to understand how these men could engage in same sex practices as well as different sex practices, Wockner asks “‘Are these ‘straight’ men really ‘gays’ who are overdue for liberation? Or are humans by nature bisexual, with Arab and Moslem men better tuned into reality than Westerners?’” (364). This question is the perfect example of the danger of labels. Why is it that there are only three categories, heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual?
Perhaps, instead of advocating for the rights of gays and lesbians, someone should propose the abolishment of classification. Much like the caste system is inescapable, so is the world of sexual labels. This is a cause worth rallying for. Who is willing to take up the torch?

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