Other Writings

This page contains other writings by me that relate to the issues and themes in “Male to Male.” These writings consist of:

A set of three Book Reviews by me of other people’s books.
and

A presentation that was originally made by me at the
August, 2005 American Psychological Association Convention
in Washington. D.C. It is entitled: “Abu Ghraib: Psychological and Cross-Cultural Issues in Sexuality, Individual Conscience, and Torture.”
Book Reviews: Each of these books has something interesting to say about the relationship between an individual’s sexual feelings and the culture in which he lives. That relationship is a major theme in both “Male to Male” as well as “Sexuality and the Devil.” The full reviews follow the three  paragraphs just below that will give you an idea of what each of these books is about.
“Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships” by William Benemann takes a close look at male to male feeling during a period of our own early history as a nation and long before the concept of sexual “identity” as we know it had come into being, at a time when the love  depicted in “Brokeback Mountain” would not have had to come to a tragic end.  (This review appeared in PsycCritiques, the online book review journal of the American Psychological Association in September, 2006.)
“Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800” by Khaled El-Rouayher looks at same-sex feeling in a different part of the world and in an even earlier period of history. The primary—and idealized—form of male to male love in the period surveyed in this book resembled the form that the Greeks of 5th century B.C. Athens also idealized: a relationship between an adult man and a youth in his teens. (This review appeared in PsycCritiques in July, 2006.)
“Gay Cuban Nation” by Emilio Bejel looks at the way male to male feeling between men has been written about in Cuban literature and the relation of male same-sex feeling to how Cubans have thought about their national history and identity. We see in Cuban literature and culture the intense fascination with male to male sexual feeling that runs like a thread throughout the Latin American culture area. My review focuses on the contradictions and meanings that underlie this fascination.  (This review appeared in Archives of Sexual Behavior in October, 2003.)

A presentation that was originally made by me at the August, 2005 American Psychological Association Convention in Washington. D.C. It is entitled: “Abu Ghraib: Psychological and Cross-Cultural Issues in Sexuality, Individual Conscience, and Torture.”