Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Much has been made both in the gay and mainstream press regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks that in Iran there are no homosexuals. Routinely omitted by those mocking his assertion are the final words of his sentence: "...like in your country."

Taken literally, Mr. Ahmadinejad is no doubt absolutely right. Iranian circuit parties, rainbow hoopla, and bare-chested lesbian couples pushing baby strollers are not much in evidence, even in bustling Teheran. Homosexuality in Iran is, indeed, "not like" homosexuality in much of the West. Had Ahmadinejad gone on to note, "Persians, Arabs, and Islam all have their own unique traditions of same-sex love and eroticism dating back centuries, and we respect and honor those cultural contributions to modern Iran," he would been on firm historic ground, and marked himself a visionary. But, of course, it is easy to fear that he was simply proclaiming the same fundamentalist piety that we hear stateside from Pat Robertson, et al. (Mr. Ahmadinejad, here in the United States, we don't have any zealous mullahs seeking to impose theocratic rule -- at least, not like in your country....)

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oting that despots are often eager to vaunt the supposed moral purity of their regimes, Dawn was attuned to mentions of homosexuality (or the suppression thereof) in a recently-read tome about North Korea, Bradley K. Martin's Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader. It took until page 222 (of the paperback edition), but Dawn was finally rewarded with the tale of "Jerkoff Choe."

According to Martin, when Kim Jong-il, North Korea's current leader, was in university, he noted that friend Choe Yong-hae was "very shy" and did not date girls. He suggested that Choe might not be a "real male." How to settle the question? Why, get a bunch of buddies together after school, and force Choe to take his pants off and look at girls. When this left Choe limp, Kim Jong-il gave Choe another chance by having pals "massage" him; when this produced a boner, Kim Jong-il was satisfied, and Choe was pronounced a "capable" man. (With little to praise about North Korea, allow Dawn to voice pleasure that its leader evidently defines masculinity as the ability to tumesce upon same-sex genital manipulation.) While Choe was off the momentary hook, he was to go through the rest of life known as Yong-du, a phrase meaning "the head is moving toward the sky," slang for masturbation.

Dawn was also intrigued to read (page 225) that Kim Jong-il (a Hollywood movie-classics fan who wears platform shoes and Dame Edna glasses...) had an infatuation with a (male) Bulgarian volleyball star; Georgi Mitov reports having to pretend he was out in order to avoid Jong-il's frequent visits to his dorm room. (Was he looking to give Georgi his test for masculinity?)

And on page 521 comes a Ahmadinejad-esque observation from a former North Korean army officer: "Although it's not allowed, guys [in the military] fantasize and masturbate.... I never heard the word 'homosexual'until I came to South Korea, but I saw a lot of that in the military. The veterans would latch onto new, 17-year-old recruits. It's not like homosexuality in the West.... A young guy with soft skin may seem like a woman. Around half the soldiers were involved in that sort of thing."

Actually, it sounds exactly like (some) homosexuality in the West.