Construct of Sexuality

Re-Orienting Desire: the Gay International and the Arab World
Joseph Massad, Public Culture 14, 2 (2002), pp. 361-385.

Universalization of "gay rights" as a global project that plays a similar role to missionary projects: "Organizations dominated by white Western males (the International Lesbian and Gay Association [ILGA] and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission [IGLHRC]) sprang up to defend the rights of 'gays and lesbians' all over the world and to advocate on their behalf." (p. 361)

Thesis:
"I argue that it is the discourse of the Gay International that both produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist, and represses same-sex desires and practices that refuse to be assimilated into its sexual epistemology." (p. 363)

( Reading Notes... )

"In undertaking this universalizing project, the Gay International ultimately makes itself feel better about a world it forces to share its identifications. Its missionary achievement, however, will be the creation not of a queer planet but rather a straight one." (p. 385)