ledroit said:
The purpose of my trip at the time was to work with one of the major Saudi ministries organizing an international conference. I was also suprised at how often those guys joked about one of their team who had a huge dick. You can't hide those things very well under a thin cotton sheet. You could see it very easily when he walked into a breeze, or even coming down a hall. It definitely made me think about how Saudi men, in a culture that is so anti-gay on the surface, show their dicks so easily to other men, at least when they are clothed (or unclothed in hotel gyms and saunas).
Ganymede said:
For example, in the Islamic countries it's very common for close male friends to hold hands and to even kiss one another on the cheek. Try doing that in the US. You'll be called gay.
I guess, that is my problem with the term "homoeroticism"...or at least how it is used.
Is that "homoerotic" as in "This turns me on to look at this," or as in "The people who are doing it are turned on by doing it."? It seems the connotations that I see become more and more ambiguous to me.
In many other countries men show more affection to other men but not in a sexual way. They don't want each other in a sexual way and they don't have intercourse with each other. They may greet by pecks on the cheek and they hold hands. They hug. But the question I guess is "Are they turned on by this?"
If the two people are not turned on, it becomes not "homoerotic". Right? But then that makes it not "gay" at all.
homoeroticism
homoerotic
Just another example. In Japan, if you go to a hotel in a more rural area, you will find common baths. Everyone showers in front of everyone and then they all jump into a big hot tub naked. In the United States, yeah people would be like "OMG what a pervert! He's gay! He's showing his penis to other men!"
But over there? It's just natural. Nobody cared. But then also you don't have, like in the United States, the creepy men staring at your penis and saying "Oooh it's so thick, how big is it when it's hard."
In the Saudi example, I take that as a group of friends and I have a group of friends here where something like that may come out. It's definitely not the centerpiece of a conversation, but someone may say something related to the fact. Everyone laughs and then it's over.
Also with the guy on the plane. If they where clothes like that and it's hard to hide, then maybe he wasn't trying to show it off. Maybe he just got hard. They say males get hard a certain amount of times a day and it's not really up to our control all the time. He probably just adjusted himself so that it was more comfortable to him. You were just a "casualty" of the situation.
But then again, I dunno. I just think people look for homoeroticism in general situations way harder than the people who are in the situation. Then again, I've been told I look through the world through rose colored glasses or something to that extent. *shrugs*
I did note however, the rest of your message about the boys having sex with boys and men doing the same and the whole lifestyle vs casual encounters thing and blah blah. I can't speak for any of them. I guess you can't call them sexually repressed though, lol. :biggrin1:
