“For the Gay International, transforming sexual practices into identities through the universalizing of gayness and gaining 'rights' for those who identify (or more precisely, are identified by the Gay International) with it becomes the mark of an ascending civilization, just as repressing those rights and restricting the circulation of gayness is a mark of backwardness and barbarism.”

—  Joseph Massad

Ibid.
Desiring Arabs

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For the Gay International, transforming sexual practices into identities through the universalizing of gayness and gain…" by Joseph Massad?
Joseph Massad photo
Joseph Massad83
Associate Professor of Arab Studies 1963

Related quotes

Joseph Massad photo

“It is not the same-sex sexual practices that are being repressed by the Egyptian police but rather the sociopolitical identification of these practices with the Western identity of gayness and the publicness that these gay-identified men seek.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
Desiring Arabs

Joseph Massad photo

“The advent of colonialism and western capital to the Arab world has transformed most aspects of daily living; however, it has failed to impose a European heterosexual regime on all Arab men, although its efforts were successful in the upper classes and among the increasingly westernised middle classes. It is among members of these richer segments of society that the Gay International has found native informants. Although members of these classes who engage in same-sex relations have more recently adopted a western identity (as part of the package of the adoption of everything western by the classes to which they belong), they remain a minuscule minority among those men who engage in same-sex relations and who do not identify as “gay” nor express a need for gay politics.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., pp. 172-3
Desiring Arabs

Joseph Massad photo

“The categories gay and lesbian are not universal at all and can only be universalized by the epistemic, ethical, and political violence unleashed on the rest of the world by the very international human rights advocates whose aim is to defend the very people their intervention is creating.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, in his book Desiring Arabs (2008).
Desiring Arabs

Miss Shangay Lily photo

“Now then, I hasten to repeat that these practices [S&M] are certainly not usual or universal among us, but rather are variants practiced by a minority that is not representative of all gay people, although they do make up an identifiable sector that I don't want to leave out (as do many politically correct gay people, who like to give the impression that gay men only sodomize each other on Versace cushions by candlelights to Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach's Suites for Cello.)”

Miss Shangay Lily (1963–2016) Spanish artivist and drag queen

Miss Shangay Lily, Mari, ¿me pasas el poppers?

Joseph Massad photo

“[T]he Gay International is destroying social and sexual configurations of desire in the interest of reproducing a world in its own image, one wherein its sexual categories and desires are safe from being questioned”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., p.189.
Desiring Arabs

“This struggle is not about sex. It is about privacy, individuality, and civil equality and the right of all Americans, not just gay and lesbian Americans, to be free.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Non-fiction, Created equal: Why gay rights matter to America (1994), p.4

Jeffrey Montgomery photo

““Gay panic” is insidious. It appeals to juries, who are allegedly made up of random members of the community. What defense lawyers know is that most people are repulsed by the idea of gay —especially gay male— sex. Those lawyers know that a claim of defense against an alleged gay sexual advance will win points with the jury of peers.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

Joseph Massad photo

“Like the major US- and European-based human rights organisations (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) and following the line taken up by white western women's organisations and publications, the Gay International was to reserve a special place for the Muslim countries in its discourse as well as its advocacy. The orientalist impulse … continues to guide all branches of the human rights community.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., p. 161.
Desiring Arabs

Hillary Clinton photo

“Gay rights are human rights.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Quoted in The Week, 10 December 2011, p. 10
Secretary of State (2009–2013)

“Some people are uncomfortable with gays, but your discomfort with my sexuality should not translate into me having less rights as an American.”

Daayiee Abdullah (1954) Homosexual Muslim activist

First Gay ‘Imam’ in USA Says ‘Quran Doesn’t Call for Punishment of Homosexuals’ http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/05/159043/first-gay-imam-in-usa-says-quran-doesnt-call-for-punishment-of-homosexuals/ (22 May 2015), Morocco World News.

Related topics