Friday, November 21, 2008

How does the Western society impose its classfications on non-Western societies

The Western classification of humans beings, especially males into 'masculine heterosexual males' on one hand and everything else into 'queer' as LGBT, denotes the power structure in control in the West. Because, western identities are not based on facts or nature, but in almost every human aspect the divisions are made to suit the ruling class or trait in power, with the powerful trait always distinguished from the rest. Thus in the case of race, only pure 'white' is white, while even a slight mix of 'color' becomes 'black', even when its indistinguishable from white. There are no browns in this arrangement either.

But the problem when imposing this social division based on power politics on other cultures is that in other cultures divisions are still primarily based on nature of people, and the power structure prominent in the West is not yet powerful in non-westernized societies. One important difference is that in the West men's spaces have been totally destroyed/ heterosexualized and this has led to masculine male sexual desire/ need for men become vulnerable and disempowered, as masculine gendered males are no longer able to claim it... and so the trait is thrown in the 'queer' circle. The concept of 'homosexuality' comes especially handy in this.

Now, as long as the men's spaces are strong in the non-westernized societies, they are able to withstand this imposition of western classification, by changing the meaning and context of 'homosexuality' and 'gay'. Thus they both mean effeminate males (third sex) that have receptive sex with men.

However, when the Western society through its economic and technological power and the ongoing process of 'globalization' manages to westernize and thus heterosexualize these traditional societies, men's spaces are destroyed here too, and they become vulnerable, and when they are unable to protect men's sexual desire for men from being snatched from these heterosexualised spaces and pushed into 'queer' spaces, the western concepts are then able to be transplanted in these societies, with their immunity now totally compromised.

This is not good news for men (who are now labelled by gays as 'straights).

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