Forbidden Sex, Forbidden Texts

Download or read book Forbidden Sex, Forbidden Texts written by Hoshang Merchant and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-11-29 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book argues that there is no monolithic homosexuality; there are only homosexualities, that is, there are as many reasons for being gay as there are gays. Some people are born gay, some have gayness thrust upon them, and some do, indeed, achieve to great gayness. Representation of homosexuality/homoeroticism, as it is understood today, is thus a western import. The act and public/social discourses on same-sex love are still illegal; it is, according to many, against the Indian ‘tradition’; and a sense of ‘history’ is seriously problematic when we dig out for a past tradition of homoerotic love and desire. Hoshang Merchant, through an examination of texts, films, poetry, attempts to analyse and crack the codes of sexual (mis)conduct in contemporary India, giving short histories of the fate of several gay writers and explaining the difficulties of ‘coming out’.