Week 7 Blog Post

Our readings this week focus on the appellation given in Arabic countries to sexual behaviors, acts and desires. Murray’s “The Will Not to Know” and Najmabadi’s “Early Qajar” complicate the western binary definition of homosexuality and heterosexuality, and our conceptions of beauty or gender.

Stephen Murray explores the conception of same-sex relationships in modern Arab states. The authors first argue that the binary opposition between heterosexuality and homosexuality is a very western conception of sexual behaviors and that homophobia in Arab countries is the product of Western Christianity. Murray then explains “Arabic conception” (this term should be taken with cautiousness as Murray reminds us himself that this conception has evolved through time and can differ from country to country) on homosexuality. Homosexuality is not banned as such in these countries as long as it doesn’t disturb the family structure and that silence on these behaviors is respected (“Having been sodomized damages someone’s reputation only if the behavior becomes know. If one starts to like being sodomized, the behavior is almost certain to become know” 18). The author then exposes the many different appellations used to make sense of same-sex sexual behaviors. These terms reveal the complexity of this conception of sexuality: not based on the gender of the people concerned but on the hierarchical position they have in the sexual intercourse (The Arabic languages contains a huge vocabulary of gay erotic terminology, with dozens of words just to describe types of male prostitutes” 29) but “there is no word meaning homosexual”, 29. The arab semantic of sexual behaviors rather distinguish the active/ passive than the homosexual/ heterosexual.

In “Early Qajar”, Afasaneh Najmabadi studies different conception of beauties, sexual preferences and desires. What the author underlines in her text is how appellations in Iran are not constructed in a binary gendered opposition but in continuity, on a scale between femininity and masculinity. For example, khanith is described as “an intermediate on a continuum between very feminine women and very masculine men” (17). Najmabadi then explains the Iranian conception of sexual preferences and behaviors. She argues that the fixed and exclusive sexual identity – that being labeled as homosexual or heterosexual- is the product of the West, which doesn’t mean that sexual desires are not noticed and taken into account in Iran. The author finally stresses the importance of controlling “public visibility”, especially concerning amrads, echoing Murray’s analysis on the importance of the boundary between the private and the public.

The two authors allow the reader to distance himself from the western characterization of sexual identity. These are seen as steady and based on the main distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality. However, this construction of the sexual identity doesn’t  encompass the complex view of Arab countries on sexual preferences, desire, honor and marital culture.