From the Columbia Spectator
By OMAR SARWAR
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2007
During his speech on Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad parried many of our direct questions concerning his denial of the Holocaust, his desire to destroy the state of Israel, and his government’s pursuit of nuclear technology. However, he spoke clearly, if rather inaccurately, about the issue of homosexuality: “In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon.” His remarks evoked laughter in the audience. But our amusement pointed to a lack of reflection on whether such a response is underpinned by certain cultural assumptions with which we in the West have yet to fully grapple.
Of course, it is plainly untrue that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Though part of a minority, some Iranians view themselves as queer, have advanced the cause of gay rights, and have consequently had to endure the persecution of their government. The Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) is one manifestation of the efforts of queer Iranians to promote social justice under the banner of international human and gay rights. What we seem to have neglected are the historical significance and cultural specificity of our use of the terms “homosexual” and “queer” in describing same-sex desire and practice. What does it mean to posit that homosexuality has persisted throughout human history? With respect to Iran, do all or most Iranians who experience same-sex desire consider themselves “gay?” Does a history of sexuality in Persia reveal a “gay” identity as we understand it in modern times, one which is at once defended in the name of privacy and publicly expressed through a variety of symbols, images, and accouterments? Our own Professor Joseph Massad would reply in the negative. In his recent book, Desiring Arabs, Massad argues that civilizational worth and sexual desire have been closely interconnected in Orientalist thought, that the category of the “homosexual” is part of the culturally specific vocabulary of international gay rights organizations (the “Gay International”), and that nationalist and Islamist Arab intellectuals have assimilated distinctly European conceptions of the human since the nineteenth century.
Although Massad concentrates on the interface between Europe and the Arab world, his remains a broad commentary on the manner in which a particular penetrative Western discourse has interlaced sexuality, gay rights, human rights, Orientalist convictions, and social Darwinism in confronting the question of same-sex desire and practice in the non-Western world. He avers that “it is the very discourse of the Gay International, which both produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist.” For Massad, this discourse is oppressive because it brands those who pursue same-sex practices but resist universalist terminology as “homophobic” and because it rigidifies a heterosexual-homosexual binary, a potent tool for state repression.
I mention Massad’s work to underscore the possibility that many Iranians (and many non-Westerners in general) might conceive of sexuality in non-identitarian, non-universalist terms. These conceptions may take a range of forms, some of which betoken a dialectic between religious revivalism and Western norms, particularly in the context of the history of the modern Middle East. A denial of “homosexuality,” then, may indicate not an irrational refusal to accept the fact of same-sex desire and practice but rather a repudiation of a homogenizing albeit culturally distinct discourse on sexuality. I am not suggesting that Ahmadinejad’s curt answer to the question of the persecution of homosexuals evinces such complex considerations. And I personally do not endorse punishing or killing people for their sexual desires and practices irrespective of the historicity and multiplicity of the language employed to articulate these things. Nonetheless, President Ahmadinejad is not the sole representative or arbiter of the aspirations of the Iranian people, with whom we must engage in constructive dialogue on questions of sexuality. It will not suffice to presuppose that Iranians already conduct their sexuality in identitarian, universalist language or that, if they do not, they can somehow be benevolently (or peremptorily) taught how to do so. It is only by maintaining open lines of communication with the Iranians (and other peoples) that we can begin to understand what we share as human beings and what differentiates us. This will be the least we can do if we claim to be more tolerant and compassionate than the present Iranian government.
The author is a history Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
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