jan 12 blog post

It seemed obvious to me after this week's readings that the reason the Western world was able to be so ignorant of a burgeoning "homosexual" (for lack of a better term) population in the Middle East/Arab World. This is because, much similar to how homosexuality evolved in the West, any evidence of same-sex male love was found in poetry. Furthermore, poetry by nature is esoteric, often consisting of euphemistic similes and metaphors. The example that best comes to mind for me is the poetry of Walt Whitman, who by comparing his love affairs to descriptions of phallic plants was able to make sure his message only reached a certain audience. Another striking similarity between Western and Eastern culture is the alignment of young boys with women. During Shakespeare's time, it was common practice to cast boys who had not yet undergone puberty in the female roles. In both the East and the West, the unspoken formation of homosexual proclivities ironically allowed for the longevity of such a heavily patriarchal society.

There also seems to be a great degree of sensationalism in Western academia. Quite often, scholars base theories concerning the culture of the "Other" on categorical assumptions, and as aforementioned, in the absence of anything but a reductionist analysis. Roscoe and Murray pointed out that if Orientalist scholars HAD examined Arabian poetry, they probably would have formed the extremist conclusion that homosexuality was "rampant" among Arab culture, while the more accurate analysis is that it was far more prevalent in that part of the world, during that particular time in history.

However, in some way I feel like these scholars were better off not having read any of the poetry, because this allowed for the protection of certain communities and practices that most definitely would have been misinterpreted and perverted by an outside observer. Instead, prejudices took a more nuanced form. The Middle Eastern man was viewed as barbaric by nature, with the presence of facial hair being a visual marker of that. While in actuality, the social mores revolving around facial hair and its absence/presence were far more complex and had a deeper meaning than any scholar could have objectively understood during the 19th century.