Aga Ahmed Hussain Week 4

Gayle S. Rubin in her article, Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality, shows us the harsh history of sexual liberation. She brings forth the reality of how for the longest times countries and their governments have suppressed sexual liberty. From discouraging masturbation to downright raiding homosexual safe spaces. She shows how gruesome and cruel the government was towards homosexuals; it had even become a sport for young straight men to vandalise property owned by homosexuals and beat homosexuals up. The law and state which was supposed to protect its citizens was their number one enemy. She tells us how the even though the gruesome procedures have been stopped the attitudes it produced persist. As a homosexual myself reading about the atrocities that homosexuals had to face not to long ago just reminded me why coming out of the closet is such a big deal. Come out to the world as homosexual is like announcing to the world that you a vulnerable and exploitable individual whose kind has been persecuted and prosecuted for centuries. Gayle also talks about punishing those men who sexualised young boys, she argues that their want is natural and shouldn’t have led to such hard punishments. This is something I couldn’t wrap my head around completely. I am all for consensual sex between two individuals but when do we know if an individual is mature enough to understand what they are getting themselves into? She even talks about sexual essentialism which means that sex is our most basic instinct which does not depend on society and other influences. There are other theorists who argue against this.