How could I not read this book? I just had to! Precisely because I feel that I have been pretty good these last years at desiring Arabs. But what a disappointment! In spite of an obvious knowledge of his field, I found myself in a strong disagreement with Massad's point of view particularly as it is expressed in the chapter, "Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World." Here, Massad analyzes the so-called "Gay International" movement in an effort to criticize Western gay activists and more generally international human rights agencies that purport to fight homophobia internationally. He argues that these activists operate without any understanding of non-western sexualities, and as such engage in a kind of cultural imperialism in their efforts. More specifically, he argues:

"By inciting discourse about homosexuals where none existed before, the Gay International is in fact heterosexualizing a world that is being forced to be fixed by a Western binary". (188)

Let me first raise some suspicion regarding Massad's assertion of a so-called "Gay International." I am reminded here of paranoid delusions of a very powerful communist movement in the USA during the McCarthy era. I'm not the first to argue this about Massad - as Joseph Scagliotti noted in his review of the book (titled "The Myth of the Gay International"):

In other words, sex was all cool and fluid in the ancient East, and guys used to be able to "penetrate" other guys and not have to worry about being called anything. Those were the good old days, when sex didn't have to have horrible Western identities. Everyone was straight, so life was easy and gay. Then along came the "Gay International" and ruined it all, compelling poor straight people or bisexuals in those countries who are practicing their same-sex expressions into a gay (or straight) identity, and bringing out the worst in governments that previously paid no attention but now are forced to call in the hangman for the lovers who choose the wrong side.

If the Gay International was as influential as Massad implies - able to organize thousands of activists with a multi-million dollar budget - then presumably it would have found some success in securing political exile for Arabic people who have fled their countries of origin because of homophobic persecution. This, of course, is not the case.

Moreover, in lumping "Western gay activists" into this category of the "Gay International," Massad is himself constructing a conception of "the West" as coherent and unproblematic. Yet we know that within the West there are spirited and highly contested debates over what should constitute a politics of (homo)sexual identity. Gay marriage, for instance, has been the site of considerable debate between those who think it is the end-all-be-all of "gay rights," while other, more radical perspectives view it is an assimilationist effort to gain access to a corrupt, sexist institution.
Thus, even if we take Massad to be correct in his critique of the Orient as the colonial production of a Western knowledge, he should also think that both the categories of "Western world" and "Arab World" need to be deconstructed: their coherence is a facade, their own identities are plural and often in opposition. So when Massad reproaches this mythological "Gay International" for imposing a western homosexual identity in the Arabic world, I wonder what kind of essential identity does he postulate for the Arab World, and why this cultural unity should not be challenged by marginal subcultures?

After all, if the existence of the Gay International is possible today, isn't it the consequence of some historical, aggressive, proud, and/or painful sexual liberation initiated by a bunch of queers many years ago? I understand that his kind of approach may be strategic - at least from a political point of view - in that it is clearly a response to racist and neo-colonial constructions of Arabic cultures. But how could Massad avoid the issue of questioning the cultural hegemony of one dominant identity over many subaltern identities struggling for survival and expression in the margins of the Arab World?

I am thinking here of Jarrod Hayes' argument in his recent book, Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb, in which he argues that North African writers (for instance Driss Chraibi, Rachid Boudjedra, Assia Djebar) succesfully deconstructed the idea of one, united, coherent identity for Arabic Nation. This national identity which, of course, is patriarcal and homophobic, is regularly challenged by arab artists who promote alternative identities and ways of live for the Arab world in which they live. On a more contemporary note, I wonder what would Massad make of Abdellah Taia, an openly gay Moroccan writer who fiercely advocates in the Moroccan media in favor of a political acceptance of homosexuality in Morocco. Is Taia a secret agent of the Gay International? Has he been brainwashed by western ideology?

Another source of disappointment, not to say anger, is the way Massad revisits the gay bashing that happened in Egypt on the Queen Boat. In the section "Defending Rights" of his third chapter, Massad offers his interpretation of the 2001 police raid against a gay party going on in a boat on the Nile in Egypt. In the end, 55 men were arrested and had to face, on top of a trial, the fury of the crowd. This police raid triggered a variety of reactions in Western news outlets, most of which tended to fault the police and sympathize with the Egyptian men who were arrested. This is what Massad writes:

"Clearly most Egyptian men who practice same-sex contact neither know English nor have the wherewithal to afford Internet access, much less know how to use it. This is important in that the police do not seek to, and cannot if they were so inclined, arrest men practicing same-sex contact but rather are pursuing those among them who identify as 'gay' on a personal level and who seek to use this identity as a group identification through social and public activities. The campaign of the Gay International misses this important distinction". (183)

Interesting distinction, indeed, between Egyptian men who do not identity as gay and Egyptian men who do identify as gay: Massad suggests we should not worry for the first group because their homosexual practices are an "authentic" cultural habit of the Arab world and are thus not subject to harassment. The latter group, however, appears to be interpreted by Massad as seeking persecution because of their provocative choice of adopting a "Western" conception of gay identity. Thus, their hassassment is not the result of any sexual deviance, per se, but rather the outcome of cultural transgression -- the product of "choosing" to import or impose in the Arab world some Western gay way of life.

Ok... Perhaps this is true. But what is so wrong with that? Is there any "purity" of the homosexual Arabic culture that cannot and should not be soiled by the métissage with other cultures? Massad does not seem to have any compassion for these marginal Arabic men who want to speak English, have access to the Internet and Western tourists, and -- worse yet! -- embrace a so-called "Western gay identity." Notice that Massad does not argue that police should not have arrested these men, he writes instead that their provocative behavior triggered their arrest and that the support given by the Gay International is the reason why Egyptian authorities decided to be extremely violent in their campaign against homosexuality. Thus, it seems that Massad understands the raid to be an unproblematic and logical reaction within the Arab context.

It is very sad, in the end, to feel that Massad, in the name of a political resistance against western hegemony, is not able to understand and support the internal logics of sexual resistance that happen within what he likes to think of as a united, coherent, Arab World. The documentary by Parvez Sharma entitled A Jihad for Love about the Islamic faith of Arabic homosexual people living in the Arab World is a relevant illustration of the plurality of interpretation of the Koran and of the plurality of lifestyles that result from these interpretations. Massad's distinction seems rather Manichean: there is not on one side a Arabic correct and discreet homosexuality, and on the other side an imported, neo colonial western homosexuality.

The title of my post, "Join the homosexual intifada!" is a reference and a tribute to a political porn movie by Bruce LaBruce, The Raspberry Reich, which provocatively articulates in how, in Western societies, extreme left revolutionary activists struggled to understand that to defeat the capitalist system, they had to promote a political Revolution that was also a sexual liberation. When in 1970 Jean Genet visited Palestinian activists in refugee camps, they knew he was openly gay but welcomed him with hospitality and gratitude for his political commitments. In an interview, Jean Genet went as far as saying that he was on the side of Palestinians because of his sexual fetishism for Arabic men. He was, against his own country, in favor of Algerian independence and his grave can be found, today, in a beautiful village in Morocco. What I have in mind, when I think of an expression like the "homosexual intifada", is the political and emotional connections that can happen between queers from both Western and Arab societies. Desiring Arabs, indeed!