The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: My Woody Allen moment... as an Assyrian

Re: My Woody Allen moment... as an Assyrian
Posted by Marcello (Guest) - Wednesday, August 28 2013, 16:18:37 (UTC)
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"My Persian friend, Dr. Ali told me that in Farsi there is not a word for "him" or "her", is that true? He said that he's been doing research and the majority (if not ALL) of the famous Persian poets were actually gay and they wrote their love poetry for other men."

- Jeff

Well, unlike your friend Dr. Ali, I'm not an expert on Persian language and poetry; but interestingly, I made the same observation. The story of Shems of Tabriz who inspired the poetry of Rumi (called Molana by Iranians) is quite similar to the relationship of Socrates (who like Shems, never wrote a word in his life) and Plato, who's writings were, as far as we know, inspired by this homoerotic relationship. Others argue that Shems was just an imaginary muse which fueled Molana's poetry. Who knows. I was watching a film on Pakistan called the MISCREANTS OF TALIWOOD, you can read about it here:

http://trustmovies.blogspot.com/2010/02/george-gittoes-miscreants-of-taliwood.html

"As the film moves on, it grows more complex. In a section titled Planet of the Men, Gittoes tackles a subject we hear about mostly via rumor, innuendo and the sleazier kind of Muslim-bashing: the almost complete segregation of the sexes resulting in a kind of enforced homosexuality that, even so, dares not speak its name. The filmmaker talks to several young men who tell of early sexual experiences; one of them is a call boy who plies his trade in a rickshaw, a "love shack on wheels," as Gittoes calls it. These homosexual highjinks ascend into the top echelons of the Taliban, making mosques the most dangerous place for boys to be. This enforced homosexuality brings up another "dangerous" question: Are these boys and young men "gay" if all they've known so far is homosexual behavior and thus consider it "normal." And what does this say about "normal" in Pakistan. Or for that matter, elsewhere around the globe. (In the Q&A that follows this review, Mr. Gittoes offers some additional insight.)


What about feminism? Could there be even the slightest trace of this in a culture that holds women down and back about as well as any in history? Oh, yes. We meet two actresses in particu-
lar: Kirin and NoNo, the former's story is haunting and sad, while the latter's is... hmmmm, different. She's a popular sin-
ger, comedian and dancer, who occasion-
ally makes a sex film, a scene from one of which is leaked via cell phone to much appreciation from her countrymen and considerably less from the Taliban. So NoNo goes into hiding.

You probably didn't know that midgets (or little people) are very big in Pakistani films. We meet two of them here (shown below), as well as a pro-Taliban political figure, Maulana Gul Naseeb, Senator of the MMA party, from whom hypocrisy fairly oozes. The funniest scene occurs as George must shoot his documentary and fiction films simultaneously, which confuses his crew something fierce. Which is which? They continually mix things up.


While George is filming, Benazir Bhutto is killed, and from this point on the film grows increasingly dark-unto-grizzly. A mosque is bombed (below) and, in an amphitheater, we watch as a 12-year-old boy beheads a prisoner of the Taliban, taking three minutes to do it while showing not a trace of compassion or humanity. Simple beheading of prisoners, which has been going on for awhile, is failing any longer to bring in the crowds. Something new must be provided: hence the use of children as executioners."


-- I recall reading something about the Romans definition of a "real man":

"While age per se was not an issue in Rome, what really mattered was who did
what to whom and the status of the parties to the event. Fone summed up the
situation thus:

For a real man, it was deemed appropriate to penetrate another anally or to
receive oral sex. Martial often contrasts the viro with the weak and
womanly cinaedus (the Greek kinaidos, Latinized), the effeminate male who
engages in passive homosexual behavior. It was considered disgraceful for
a citizen to engage in prostitution, to submit to anal penetration, or to
perform fellatio. To submit to anal penetration was tantamount to
relinquishing not only manhood but also the moral (if not the legal) right to
be a citizen of the Roman state. For an adult male to perform oral sex was
thought both reprehensible and impure, reprehensible because, like passive
anal intercourse, it indicated a willingness to submit to sexual mastery;
impure because making the mouth a receptacle like the anus or vagina
defiled both mouth and man.

http://bobhay.org/_downloads/_homo/NHH%2016%20Real%20Men%20and%20Mincing%20Queans%20-%20Homosexuality%20in%20Ancient%20Rome.pdf



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