This just in

People in Iran have really long names.

Where would we be without Faux Noise, er, um, Fox News, to tell us these things?

I've spent much of the last several days glued to my monitor watching the extraordinary events in Iran unfold. I don't have any information or much insight to add to what's already being said, and Andrew Sullivan is doing extraordinary work on this.

The only thing that's striking about this is how it seems to have caught everyone in the West so thoroughly by surprise. Like the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this appears to Western eyes to have come out of nowhere, though in retrospect we'll tell ourselves there were signs there to be seen. And there probably were...but we weren't paying attention. We didn't notice them. We didn't take them seriously.

Of course, it would have been hard to predict that the election would be rigged that clumsily. A rigged election was more or less expected, but one that "no one in their right mind can believe" wasn't, and has proven to be the proverbial straw.

And so far, Obama has done exactly the right thing, by staying out of it, so neither side can accuse the other of being pawns or dupes of the Great Satan. This isn't about us; it's about them.

The more things change...

Checking the headlines real quick....

• Imus is back on the air.
• Larry Craig still isn't gay, despite 5 guys going on record as saying they had sex w/ him.
• Bush & Cheney Inc. lied about Iran's nukes.

In other words, nothing at all has changed. We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

But it's not that simple...

Andrew Sullivan discusses the Larry Craig case, showing his usual combination of incisive insight and stunning obtuseness.

At this point in their lives, to allow the possibility that Craig is indeed homosexual, that he has sustained, lived, internalized a fundamental lie for his entire life, and involved his wife and children in that lie, would be to destroy themselves. I am not going to exonerate the man from hypocrisy because it is impossible. But I do think his problem is far deeper.

Perhaps. Such a case could be made. But Sullivan hasn't made it.

He grew up in a different time, and a different place, where even the possibility of being gay was inconceivable.

Agreed.

I don't think he even thinks of himself as gay, or has any idea what being gay might actually mean.

He's getting onto thin ice here. Agreed, Craig probably doesn't think of himself as gay. But what does Sullivan mean by "being gay"? As an identity? As an essentialist reduction, something you either are or aren't, and if you have sex with men then you are? Apparently...

I think he thinks of his sexual orientation as a "lifestyle" (to use that hideous term Lauer kept referring to) that can be overcome the way one overcomes smoking or poor eating or sexual compulsion. And he constructed an identity in opposition to this "lifestyle" early, out of pain and defensiveness and terrible fear.

Sullivan is assuming an awful lot here. Specifically, that Craig is gay as Sullivan understands the term; that Craig is misinformed at best, deluded at worst, if he doesn't see himself that way; and that his denials are a defense against the intolerable fact of being a gay man.

Craig was seeking in that toilet stall a connection, a shard of intimacy, that the world would not give him, or that he could not give himself.

Or maybe he just wanted a blow job.

No one should have to live without that intimacy and dignity - no one. Living a life like that - a deeply lonely, compromised, painful interior existence - is a very sophisticated form of hell. No human can keep it up for ever. No human should have to keep it up for ever.

He is a hypocrite; and he made his choices. I am not going to dispute that. His voting record helped sustain the misery for others that he lived with himself. He is for ever responsible for that.

But he is also a victim. And to see such a victim's pain exposed brutally in a public restroom pains me. He needs help. So do millions of others.

Yes, agreed. The closet is nasty and toxic. BUT.

After seeing the SNL "Oh Really?" video and the claymation "I am not gay" vid (to the tune of YMCA, and it's scrolled off whatever blog I found it on, can't find the link, my bad), I'm just noticing a rampant assumption that I'm not sure is valid.

As Sullivan correctly notes, Craig grew up in a different time and place. And yes, it may be just as Sullivan describes it. But is that the only possibility?

There's a general assumption that Craig is gay, and is simply lying or in denial about it. That either you are gay or you're not, and that if you were seeking sex with men then you are and that's that.

It's not that simple, though. The current definition of gay as an identity, with a social role attached to it (some behaviors prescribed, others prohibited), as an exclusive orientation, is a 20th-century phenomenon. (Actually, late-19th century England and Germany, or so my friend Harry who's studied this much more thoroughly than I have, says.)

But it's not the only possibility.

It's not the understanding the Greeks had, for instance. They had fairly elaborate rules about who could do what with whom, based on social class, rank, and a few other things. Feudal Japan had a different set of rules. South Asia today has a different set. I came across an online collection of photos of young Taliban in Afghanistan that are just now making their way out of the country. Many of them are vaguely homoerotic, the men are clearly expressing affection for each other, yet I'm willing to wager that few if any of them define themselves as 'gay' in the Western sense. Even though they're having at least a little sex from time to time.

Is this what Craig's getting at with his denials? Doubtful. Just as I doubt Ahmedinejad was showing his familiarity with queer theory when he maintained that there are no gays in Iran.

But it's not just a simple "you either are or you aren't, and you are, so admit it and get out of the closet, queen." And Sullivan, of all people, should know better. It's also possible Craig looks at gay culture--metrosexual, style obsessed, politically liberal--and doesn't see himself in any of it. That when he says "I'm not gay" he's simply saying "I'm not part of that culture." And gay culture is very upper-middle-class, very white, very urban. (There are reasons for that, but this post is long enough already.) He sees gay culture and not only doesn't see himself in it, he doesn't see anything he'd want in it, so of course he rejects it. And because he's been hiding from it, his view of gay culture is probably biased--centered around the highly-visible extreme minority. (Senator, for whatever it's worth, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence don't speak for me, either.)

Identity is extremely complex. We know this. Why are we so obsessed with putting people into labeled pigeonholes?

I'm not about to go off onto queer theory--and don't get me started with what all is wrong with Foucault--but this is ridiculous.

Misplaced priorities

Sullivan takes a cheap shot at the left regarding the email sent out by the Columbia Queer Alliance about Ahmadinejad's visit.

Ever since Michel Foucault's repulsive embrace of the Iranian revolution, the pomo gay left has had a soft spot for Islamo-fascists.

I'm hardly a fan of Foucault; for the most part, he gets his facts wrong, then reasons poorly from them. And queer studies is hardly the Foucault-worshipping monolith Sullivan implies. Especially since the email he cites begins by refuting his thesis:

"We condemn the human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian government under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We admonish the policies that make same-sex practices punishable by torture and death, as well as those that restrict the freedoms and self-determination of women.

But the point isn't Sullivan's cheap shots, or illogic, of which this is only one example.

What is it that really has the CQA up in arms?

We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran....The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology. President Ahmadinejad's presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world."

That's right. What they're really upset about is that we're using the word "gay," when the current conception of gayness is pretty much a Western concept and so doesn't necessarily apply to people in Iran.

Which is fine, up to a point. The modern conception of "gay" as an identity, referring to a roughly peer-equal affectionate/sexual relationship with someone of the same gender to the exclusion of such relationships with the opposite gender, is a phenomenon of 19th/20th Century Europe. It's certainly not what the ancient Greeks believed; they had strict taboos regarding who could do what with whom, based mostly on class and relative social standing. Likewise with the Romans, who legitimized certain practices but in the context of establishing/demonstrating/enforcing power relationships. (Fone's Homophobia: A History is a useful source here.) Up until at least the 50's or so, men could identify as heterosexual and still carry out certain same-sex acts without threatening their heterosexual identity. As long as they 'acted male,' as it were, there wasn't an issue of being anything other than a heterosexual man.

After kicking this around with a friend of mine (Hi, Harry!) via some emails this afternoon, it finally fell into place what annoys me about the CQA's email. They're right that the term "gay" as we understand it may not be entirely accurate in describing those in Iran (though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say we have no possible basis for saying anything at all).

But why are we having this conversation now? People are being executed, and we're worried about what adjectives we're using in the newspaper? When the killings stop, I'll be willing to discuss the terminology question.

The phrasing of the letter comes too close for my comfort to the sort of facile moral equivalencing resulting in "Well, Stalin also accomplished a lot of good for Russia." There's an implied moral equivalency that simply isn't there. When there's 2 sentences denouncing public executions (with those executions having the obvious purpose of keeping others terrorized & silenced), followed by a long (and rather condescending) paragraph on how we need to use the academically-correct term, I start thinking someone's priorities are messed up.

People being killed is a more important question, and more important fact, than that the people being killed are being described with the wrong adjective in the media. If believing that marks me as a reactionary old technocrat, then I'll wear that label with pride.

Why are we afraid of these people?

Why do we act like such nervous Nellies, as if we think American democracy is so weak it can't afford to live up to its own values? So Ahmadinejad was allowed to speak, and lo and behold, the ramblings of a religionist dictator didn't cause the collapse of the American republic.

Yes, he's trying to play it for all the propaganda value he can. True, he's not interested in a real dialogue. But putting him up on stage helps expose him for the fraud he is. Keeping him out of the country just makes him a martyr, which is exactly what he wants. Instead, give him a platform and let him explain that homosexuals don't exist in his country and that the Holocaust is a theory, not fact. Expose him for the weak-minded fraud he is.

As usual, President Doofus can be counted on to miss the point:

"...[A]nd yet an institution in our country gives him a chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country. I’m not sure I’d have offered the same invitation.”

Of course you wouldn't have. You'd have let him play you like a cheap fiddle.