[Foundation-l] Concern for the safety of Wikimanians in Alexandria

[daniwo59 at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/6/2008 8:10:05 AM Eastern Standard Time,  
innocentkiller at gmail.com writes:

By  "flaunting their sexuality," I was referring to being openly
gay with a  partner, holding hands, sharing a room, that kind
of thing. I guess  "flaunting" was a bad choice of words, "publicly
displaying" would probably  be closer to my point.



A quick comment here: I think that in a conservative society people would  
expect men to share a room with men and women to share a room with women. That  
would not be raising any eyebrows. 
 
As for two men holding hands in public, one of the first things I noticed  in 
my first exposure to Middle Eastern culture is that it is actually quite  
common for two men to walk down the street hand in hand. This is no more a sign  
of their sexuality than two men kissing each other on the cheek when meeting 
in  some parts of Europe or the Middle East. 
 
Anecdotally, in the 1980s my friends and I used to love watching the  
Jordanian English news at 10 pm every night. The opening line was always "His  
Majesty the King today ..." which was often followed by our having  a betting pool 
over how many people he would kiss.
 
D 



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