Naming our sexualities

Bibliographic Data

ID7774374
AuthorsKatherine Pratt Ewing (0009-0000-8776-8597, University of Wisconsin, Madison [email protected], corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume2011
Issue59
Pages89-98
Publication date2011-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFocaal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0920-1297 • E-ISSN: 1558-5263
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/fcl.2011.590107
OpenAlexW2039416932
LanguageEN
Citations received5

Terms of a Western discourse of homosexuality shape conflicts surrounding sexual identity that are faced by many Muslims, especially those who live in diasporic communities. Many use essentialized categories to articulate their sexual orientations and express incommensurabilities between their sexuality and their identities as Muslims. This article argues that discursive constructions of the Muslim as traditional other to the secular sexual subject of a modern democracy generate an uninhabitable subject position that sharply dichotomizes sexual orientations and Muslim family/religious orientations, a dichotomization that is reinforced by well-publicized backlashes against open homosexuality in several Muslim countries. Yet observations made during ethnographic field research in Pakistan, as well as scholarly evidence from other Muslim countries, suggest that many Muslims are less troubled by sex and desire in all their possible forms than they are by the peculiar modern practice of naming our sexualities as the basis for secular public identities

Aesthetics · Art · Ethnography · Homosexuality · Human sexuality · Sexual identity · Sexual orientation · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Islamic Studies and History · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy

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