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krussek's review
4.0
While I wish Massad’s writing was a bit tighter, this is a groundbreaking book.
Reading about Western sexual epistemologies (and the Arab reaction to those epistemologies) from an Arab perspective is massively enlightening.
Admittedly, I’m very unfamiliar with Arabic so I had difficulty keeping the names of the authors and texts referenced straight. This’ll probably be due for a re read when I’ve become More Smart.
Reading about Western sexual epistemologies (and the Arab reaction to those epistemologies) from an Arab perspective is massively enlightening.
Admittedly, I’m very unfamiliar with Arabic so I had difficulty keeping the names of the authors and texts referenced straight. This’ll probably be due for a re read when I’ve become More Smart.
stevendedalus's review
3.0
An exhaustive, interesting overview of how homosexuality and sexual deviance have been treated by Arab writers. However, Massad always seems to elide confrontation.
He recognizes the colonial filter that has so influenced modern Arab depictions of gayness as a societal threat, and provides details over and over again. He also nods at the dangers of western imposition of LGBT culture on a different society that can view it as a parallel to colonial rule.
But his arguments for gayness being a historically acceptable part of underground Arabic culture as long as it didn't disrupt society feels like a very subtle distinction, and all the subsequent examples of Western paradigm-poisoned Islamist thought overwhelm his earlier points. It's all a very thin point that is sloppily made under the weight of picked referents.
It is a good starting point, but its broadness and spanning of eras makes it hard to sustain the exact argument of alternative homosexual lifestyles. It's an unformed foundation that a more pointed, honed book may work with.
The book works more as a compendium of modern Arabic-tinged homophobia than an argument for a different historical worldview.
He recognizes the colonial filter that has so influenced modern Arab depictions of gayness as a societal threat, and provides details over and over again. He also nods at the dangers of western imposition of LGBT culture on a different society that can view it as a parallel to colonial rule.
But his arguments for gayness being a historically acceptable part of underground Arabic culture as long as it didn't disrupt society feels like a very subtle distinction, and all the subsequent examples of Western paradigm-poisoned Islamist thought overwhelm his earlier points. It's all a very thin point that is sloppily made under the weight of picked referents.
It is a good starting point, but its broadness and spanning of eras makes it hard to sustain the exact argument of alternative homosexual lifestyles. It's an unformed foundation that a more pointed, honed book may work with.
The book works more as a compendium of modern Arabic-tinged homophobia than an argument for a different historical worldview.
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