Yoshie:
Turkey is a lot more capitalistic and Westernized than anywhere else in North Africa and West Asia. The more capitalistic and Westernized a society is, and the larger bourgeois and petit-bourgeois a society has, its sexual culture is closer to the Western model of thinking in terms of homo/bi/hetero sexual identities.
But Eastern Anatolia is the least developed part of Turkey, from a capitalist development standpoint. It is not only less Westernized, it is more like the Arab/Islamic societies that Massad writes about in his essay. It is not only a place where it is impossible to be openly gay; it is also impossible for a woman to assert her independence. Wife-beating is common, and all in the name of Muslim piety. I am not be well-read in queer studies, but I do have first-hand experience with at least one country that has a 98 percent Muslim population and that is ruled by an Islamic party. I don't need a postmodernist like Foucault to serve as an intermediary. I have seen it with my own eyes and it needs to be OVERTHROWN.
