Gay International: Helpful or Harmful?

This is Jamie.

            Massad argues that the very group that seeks to liberate Muslim and Arab homosexuals is actually producing a negative effect in creating an issue that encourages the differences in sexualities.  He believes that groups like the ILGA already assume that homosexuality is a universal category, which is not necessarily true.  The so-called liberators also assume instability in the desires of the people in these Middle Eastern countries, which they believe calls for help from the Westerners.  Leave it to Americans to stick their noses where they do not belong.

            It does not surprise me that Western scholars have misinterpreted Arab and Muslim worlds’ classification of sexualities.  Westernized thought has created words like homosexuality, hetereosexuality, or homophobia and brought them to Middle Eastern culture.  Therefore, groups like ILGA are going in there trying to solve an issue in which they basically created.  Massad provides various sources of proof of misinterpretations by Westerners of the Arab and Muslim world. 

             “By inciting discourse on homosexual and gay and lesbian rights and identities,  the very ontology of gayness is instituted in a discourse that could have only two reactions to the claims of universal gayness: support them or oppose them without ever questioning their epistemological underpinnings…The Gay International’s fight is therefore not an epistemological one but rather a simple political struggle where the world is divided between the supporters and opponents of gay rights” (Massad 374). Basically, in bringing the identification of gayness to the Middle East where it was not recognized before, the Gay International has proved to be unsuccessful in their liberation efforts. 

            This idea makes perfect sense because once a debatable topic is brought to people’s attention, it is human nature to decide which side to take.  Perhaps the Muslim and Arab world could have carried on just fine without the distinction between sexualities.  Most parts of the world do not have a word for “depression” and non-Americans do not seem to be complaining about that.  What a common American notion to continue to encourage the division of people rather than unification.  Americans have their own problems to fix and it’s about time they worry about themselves and leave everyone else alone.