Week 5 Day 2

 Cultural norms, regional or religious practices, and even terminology do not exist in a vacuum; all are created and shaped by people, meaning all are susceptible to the effects of, among other social forces, patriarchies. To take these things as unchanging, uninfluenced standards would be to overlook nuance and, in the end, the truth. In “Re Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World,” Joseph Massad looks at the projection of Western notions of homosexuality and Western interpretations of the Arab world, detailing how these misguided understandings have led to a deep divide between Western imagination and truth. Similarly, in “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” Abu Lughod describes the dangers of oversimplifying historical influences on modern cultural icons with respect to the Western panic around “the veil” in Afghanistan, though she enters this dangerous territory occasionally when discussing the “meaning” of Muslim women’s clothing choices. Overall, though, both pieces are concerned with the problems that arise when history, imperialism, colonialism, and myriad other -isms are ignored in favor of an ahistorical, neat narrative. 

Massad tackles “the Gay International,” which he describes as “missionary tasks, the discourse that produces them, and the organizations that represent them,” with the tasks in question being helping those discriminated against due to their sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status (Massad 362). The Gay International functions as a general term for the way the notion that homosexuality is one thing - the Western kind - or that homosexuality in its present Western understanding even exists everywhere in the world has permeated LGBT+ discourse and has made itself the primary channel for Western individuals to “help” those not in the West. In critiquing one book about Muslim sexuality, Massad writes, “time is not part of the analysis when the topic is the Arab and Muslim world,” and goes on to say, “even careful scholars of Islam and those who seek to challenge stereotypes of Islam and Arabs commit errors of ahistoricism” (Massad 367). Massad notes how, by homogenizing a culture or set of regional beliefs over long periods of time, an accurate picture of modern practice is obscured. The Gay International’s “incitement to discourse” is an extension of ahistoricization and gross homogenization, as “in a world where no one questions the identification of gayness, gay epistemology and ontology can institute themselves safely. The Gay International’s fight is therefore not an epistemological one but rather a simple political struggle where the world is divided between the supporters and opponents of gay rights” (Massad 374). The language and terminology that is used in discussion can have an overwhelming impact on the parameters of the discussion itself, and the Gay International ensures that the term “gay” and its attached meanings exist in a vacuum, allowing its very use to set the terms for discourse immediately. With the modern Western understanding of homosexuality being the standard for all discussion on global LGBTQ+ issues, said discussion is predicated on an implicit acceptance of this understanding as the only and the true conception. 

Abu Lughod has similar critiques of rhetoric and generalization in “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”. She writes, “we need to be suspicious when neat cultural icons are plastered over messier historical and political narratives,” referencing the how the veiled, oppressed Muslim woman has become the standardized image plastered on feminist-ified pro-war messaging. This constitutes the core of her paper, which does not really answer the question posed in the title, but rather spends its time developing the idea that the Western “concern” for Muslim women is simply hawkish ideology that also covers up a history of violence perpetrated by the West, all masked in efforts for “women’s empowerment”. However, when Lughod moves to explain the meaning of the veil both historically and contemporarily, she obscures any real interrogation of the veil as an oppressive concept. Though her explanation is by no means exhaustive, she writes, “the burqa, like some other forms of ‘cover’ has, in many settings, marked the symbolic separation of men’s and women’s spheres, as part of the general association of women with family and home, not with public spaces where strangers mingled,” never questioning where these “general associations” arose from or whether or not they are good for women (Lughod 785). She goes on to say, “veiling itself must not be confused with, or made to stand for, lack of agency,” yet she never explains this assertion outside of examples of women making “choices”, though the conditions under which these supposed choices are made are not examined (Lughod 786). The idea and practice of veiling is made as ahistorical and unquestioned as the “neat cultural icons” Lughod warns against. 

Lughod’s later statement that “projects of saving other women depend on and reinforce a sense of superiority by Westerners” insists that concern for women’s liberation with regard to Islam is necessarily tied to an assumption of superiority and an acceptance of the Western status quo. This is similar, though not the same, as the assertion that feminists are looking for “equality” to men, despite the fact that to be equal to men in brutality, rape, harassment, and destruction would level the planet, and instead many feminists look for a way forward that neither accepts men’s societal positions as the standard to look up to nor accepts the position women are in now. Feminists may also critique “the veil” and imperialism, criticize the treatment of women in Afghanistan and in the United States, look for a new way forward without “the patronizing quality of the rhetoric of saving women” (Lughod 789).