Kettles and Pots

Some time ago, I was reading an article (on the New York Times) about how the Egyptian government, confronted with a number of issues comprising the next best thing to a civil war, wasted an outstanding amount of energies in trying to crack down on homosexuals  and lesbians.

More or less for the crime of existing and wanting a sexual-romantic life at their terms - as usual.

While I can agree, I really feel that it is a bit of a joke. 

Regulating sexual behaviours has ALWAYS and WILL always be among the main reasons for the very existence of ruling hierarchies in human societies.

After all, the best reproductive strategy for a male would be to kill the sons of others and shag the mothers as soon as they get  receptive again - something our "cousins" Chimpanzees, effectively, do.

While it can be "reasonable" for a single male, it is a waste of resources for any organized group - so, as soon as we started being a social animal, that had to go, as the tribes with less child killers were more fit to win in the constant struggles with neighbouring groups. 

The only thing that changes, between societies, is WHICH sexual behaviours are decried as "aberrant", and thus subjected to harassment and persecution by a given society.

An "excessive" example: once upon a time, the Athenians were disgusted by the Spartans - because these liked to make love to their women, and also liked for their women to be athletic and fit, mentally as well as physically. Oh, and they let the damn women out in the open, sometime in the nude.

The Athenians preferred to limit the interactions with their house-bound wives to the minimum required to produce offspring, and otherwise preferred the company of young males (for somewhat similar reasons, Japanese well-offs preferred the geishas, i.e. escorts, to their wives... as Tony Soprano once put, "that is the mouth that kisses my children").

Or, at least, so they professed.

Of course, as us "moderns" like to say that Ancient Athens is where democracy was born, every time these facts are reminded the provision is added that Spartans wanted their women fit for militaristic reasons - "they thought athletic women would have better sons".

Maybe... it doesn't really change that Athenians hid their women in gynaeceums while Spartan widows could speak as head of their family.  

In the last few decades our society has come to accept homosexuality as an orientation and identity - very grudgingly, and only because many queer people have been willing to fight tooth and nail, up to and including rioting and fighting police forces, to force our society to make a corner for them; and, by the way, it may as well be only temporary - but there are still other "alternative lifestyles" that it happily persecutes, out of the same kind of visceral hates and "required automatic disgusts".

Naming any of these "lifestyles" as anything else than aberrations and illnesses (worthy of having their carriers contained by means of violence, by the way, no matter if they never actually carried out their inclinations), is bad enough to be ostracized.

So, I won't name them; we all know which ones are.

And, if one has any doubt, it should be enough to read the entries of the patrioct act that forbid U.S. banks to trade with entities involved in drug trafficking and in some types of porns, because these "are used by terrorists as ways to gain financial support". 

When I read pieces like that one, I sometimes feel this sensation that us westerners are somewhat like pots calling kettles "black".

We decries other cultures for not sharing our values, exactly like said cultures do with us.

Not so enlightened as we like to portray, really.