Re: Homosexuality: male & female
Yousuf Khan (ykhan@achilles.net)
Sat, 14 Sep 1996 18:07:07 GMT
On 12 Sep 1996 08:11:42 -0500, eighner@io.com (Lars Eighner) wrote:
>In our last episode <5184d0$bj1@hermes.achilles.net>,
>Broadcast on sci.anthropology
>The lovely and talented ykhan@achilles.net (Yousuf Khan) wrote:
>>On 10 Sep 1996 12:34:14 -0500, eighner@io.com (Lars Eighner) wrote:
>>
>>
>>One of the wierdest stories I've heard about justifying bisexuality is
>>based on this positional argument. If a man enters another man, then the
>>man doing the entry (the aggressor in other words) is still considered a
>>completely straight guy, but the guy who was being entered is considered a
>>pansy. The justification here is that the aggressor "is just being a man"
>>by letting his penis enter any old hole, but the man that allowed that
>>penis to enter him is a pansy for letting anything enter him. This is the
>>justification used by some Pakistani and Indian men from working class
>>backgrounds.
>>
>>These are all ways to avoid being labled homosexual or bisexual. They are
>>excuses in other words.
>This attitude is a very wide-spread pattern, and in many cases
>I doubt it is an invented excuse to avoid identification
>of the one partner as homosexual -- although it does serve as
>such an excuse when an excuse is thought necessary.
>I think it has everything to with concepts of masculinity and
>the status of women. It is not that the act is homosexual
>that is the perceived problem, but that one of the parties
>accepts a role perceived as womanly. I think you will find
>these sorts of correlates if you look at many such cultures:
> 1. rigid gender roles,
> 2. exceptionally low status of women
> 3. lesbianism generally tolerated or ignored
Yes, but doesn't it just go to show how far off people are in their
definitions of what is homosexual and what is heterosexual behaviour?
You can quiz such guys if they were hetero or homo, and they would all say
without question that they were hetero, despite their obvious homosexual
actions.
But if you say that it's a common excuse and wide-spread, then it does seem
to me that it's a way of acknowledging homosexuality even within a very
closed-in and traditionalist society. In a traditionalist society there
should be no tolerance of homosexuality whatsoever, yet they are willing to
make such excuses to keep the peace within their society, because they know
it exists and they can't do anything about it. As for this "not being an
invented excuse", I don't buy that: at some point in the past, somebody
(maybe even several people independently) must've invented it, and it
became dogma after it passed from mouth-to-mouth. If you repeat a lie often
enough, then it becomes a truth.
Yousuf Khan
--
Yousuf J. Khan
ykhan@achilles.net
Ottawa, Ont, Canada
Nation's capital
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