Posts Written by

By freethinkr • 17 years ago

Contested Masculinities: Outcry Over the Story of Gay Love

A controversial new book in Azerbaijan, Artush and Zaur: A Legend of Love tells the story of same-sex love between an Armenian and an Azerbaijani against the backdrop of the emerging conflict over Nagorno Karabakh. From this blog entry on the book, we learn what the author says here about his book. The author, arguing that Azeris and Armenians share ‘similar kitchen, music and mentality’, says “Armenians are closer to us than, say, Georgians” due to the influence of the Persian culture. The novel ‘exposes the absurdity of all wars in the South Caucasus a la Kusturica.’ The author ‘believes he has the full right to do so as he lost his older brother during the Karabakh war in 1994.’

War and gender go hand in hand, and this book, actually a lash-out against the many taboos regarding the war and both sides of the conflict, challenges the gendered nature of all conflicts by weaving the plot around the romance between the two male central characters. Just launched, the book has not actually received a wider readership, but it has caused a stir as nationalists on both sides fervently discuss “Who f**ked who?” Apparently this question worried them more than even the fact of the main characters being gay. They are ‘ kind of ready to ‘forgive’ and ‘forget’ the gay part of the story, as long as ‘their guy’ is ‘the man’ meaning he is ‘doing the enemy’ ...
By freethinkr • 17 years ago

The Narrative of the Masculine Hero in Slumdog Millionaire and Kung Fu Panda

Hero narratives are an important part of our story telling. A concern of these hero narratives is to establish definitions of masculinity according to cultural ideals, which might change and require a redefinitions of masculinity as well. This piece is an attempt to apply this perspective to two movies of 2008: ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ [Sd M] and ‘Kung Fu Panda’ [KFP].

It’s important to identify the mythical structure in the plots of both the movies which serves to build the hero narrative. Once the hero and the struggle have been identified, both movies establish the hero as the winner through leaps of logic that are more characteristic of myth than fiction. While this might be apparent in KFP, where the Panda ‘figures ...

Hero narratives are an important part of our story telling. A concern of these hero narratives is to establish definitions of masculinity according to cultural ideals, which might change and require a redefinitions of masculinity as well. ...
By freethinkr • 17 years ago

Marriage and Family: Understanding Radical Views and Realities

In my last post, I spoke about marriage and family – how these are are oppressive social arrangements that are perhaps best adapted for patriarchal nuclear families, how many of us, especially the underprivileged, labor under the expectations that come with ‘family values’, and how obsession with giving your children the best and leaving them a hefty inheritance makes family units selfish. I proposed that, as the ecological imperative on reducing human population also becomes more pressing, perhaps we need to do away with reproduction, getting over whatever biological/psychological impulses there are for making babies. What I perhaps failed to emphasize was that I was proposing a structural and cultural change to reduce the obsession with reproduction, and not ...

In my last post, I spoke about marriage and family – how these are are oppressive social arrangements that are perhaps best adapted for patriarchal nuclear families, how many of us, especially the underprivileged, labor under the ...
By freethinkr • 17 years ago

Say No To…

Along with the emancipation of women, sexual liberation has become very much a part of politics around the world. To the conservatives, both these issues challenge ‘family values’.

But what if there were no families? What if we say no to reproduction?

My understanding of reproduction is that it is the basis of the institutions of marriage and family, and those two provide the moorings to the structure of gender and sexual oppression. Family is the social institution that ensures unpaid reproductive and domestic labour, and is concerned with initiating a new generation into the gendered (as I analyzed here) and classed social set-up. Not only that, families prevent money the flow of money from the rich to the ...

Along with the emancipation of women, sexual liberation has become very much a part of politics around the world. To the conservatives, both these issues challenge ‘family values’.

But what if there were no families? What if we ...