Faggotstan
by Mickey Weems
In current American slang, “Afghanistan” has been securely linked to “faggot.”
Just take a look at the Internet. There are multiple variations on the verbal faggotization of Afghanistan: Faggotstan. A Faggot Stan. Faggot Stan. Faggot/Stan. Afaghistan. It is not uncommon to find them in US military (unofficially) and hip-hop (blatantly) vocabularies.
One reason for that is the pronunciation of “Afghanistan,” easily changed into a schoolyard taunt. Another reason has to do with Afghan custom.
Women are secluded from men and are discouraged from showing their bodies or even their faces in public, invisible as sexual beings until marriage. Men spend most of their lives in the company of other men, visible, independent, and active in the streets. The poor (and Afghanistan has many poor) do what they must to survive. Put these three situations together and you get Faggotstan because men find it infinitely easier to have sex with other men. In fact, homo-sex is preferable because women are seen as unclean and fit only for producing babies, a sentiment that is reinforced every time a woman dares show her beauty in public, only to be scolded, beaten, or disfigured.
A beautiful man is the only form of walking, talking human sexiness that is readily available to the public eye.
The men of Afghanistan do not mind being admired for their beauty, and readily show affection to each other. Men sometimes wear eyeliner, often they hold hands, put their arms around each other, kiss, and dance together. Officially, they do these things without fear of recrimination because nobody is a faggot, Unofficially, men flirt, proposition each other, and rent poor teenage boy-men who make themselves available so they can bring something home to their destitute families. Or get a decent meal. Or a rifle. Or if they are lucky, a motorbike.
Such is the situation that American forces encountered when they arrived in Afghanistan after we were attacked on 9/11. Our soldiers reported being welcomed, then cruised, then asked straight out (so to speak) if they wanted to do the horizontal tango. They encountered what appeared to be an entire country of men with former senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig’s mindset: it’s only faggish if somebody else is doing it. Now, how about that backrub?
Stroke My Beard
In addition, there are some interesting ways in which the extremes of Muslim Fundamentalism encourage homosexual behavior. The Afghan city of Kandahar, renowned as a center for Muslim religious devotion, has another reputation. Locals say that birds fly over Kandahar with one wing over their assholes.
As if to prove the point that misogyny and homophobia so easily translate into the homoerotic, the insistence that men grow beards also allows for a rather provocative form of affection that, from the perspective of my filthy mind, is something akin to masturbation. Afghan men will stroke each other’s facial shrubbery as a sign of intimacy, or as sign of flattery, or if in need of a favor.
One wonders if some of the fanatic insistence on every man having a beard, a manly appendage hanging from the chin, is a bit of spicy perversion, that a dude with a full luxurious beard is actually a hot stud flagrantly flaunting his visibly accessible and eminently strokable face-penis.
Man-Love Thursdays
In order to deal with the sexual theater of the absurd that is Afghanistan’s all-male meat market, American soldiers use the term “Man-Love Thursdays” to sum up the situation. This phrase is based on the observation that Thursday evening is an especially busy night for M2M hook-up, due to the holiness of Friday as a day of prayer. It became a joke among service personnel: “Are Scott and Jack wrestling again? Must be Man-Love Thursday!”
The real kicker here is that there has been man-love between US soldiers and Afghans. There always is. And some of our boys have fallen in love with beautiful men who cruise the streets of Kandahar and Kabul. Some of our girls will no doubt do the same with some of Afghanistan’s beautiful women.
But such a situation could possibly have deadly consequences for the Afghan involved. When Afghan men fall in love, there are any number of ways they can discreetly carry on, and no doubt much goes unsaid about women who encounter each other in their sexually-segregated society. But with a US soldier? What will happen to the Afghan once that soldier is sent home?
War Brides
Here is the real quandary: as Gays become accepted in the US military, the issue of “war brides” in the form of men who fall in love with men and women who fall in love with women must sooner or later be addressed. Since we will be in Afghanistan for perhaps the next 10 years, we should be thinking about it now.
On the one hand, our LGBTQ soldiers deserve the right to fall in love and protect those with whom they love. On the other hand, if we talk about such things openly, we could end up causing the death of those same loved ones if we rupture Afghan rules of the closet.
It is important that our military starts addressing this problem, and consider mechanisms for a closeted means to bring those Afghans who our soldiers love safely to our shores. Perhaps we could authorize a category of “close friends” who are allowed into the USA under these circumstances.
Rather than ridiculing Afghans for rampant man-on-man sex, the US military would do well to capitalize on it as a means for winning hearts and minds.
These same lovers of our soldiers are potentially the best ambassadors of the American Way. It is under Taliban rule that homosexual men were crushed to death, all the while the Taliban leadership had its own set of beautiful men and boys behind closed doors. If done properly, loving relationships between American and Afghan men could forge strong tribal bonds that resonate with Afghan folklife, and favorably distinguish us from our enemies.
The difference between Faggotstan and Hotmenistan (and Hotgirlistan) is only in the eye of the beholder. We should explore the potential of the latter as a tactical means of forming lasting alliances.
