How to explain homosexuality to people from less developed countries?

You're doomed. It's impossible. I've tried it.

 

I think that it might be helpful to provide all the evidence, as you have done. Maybe also mention that whether or not the person believes you, you know 100% how you feel in regards to your orientation and whether or not it is just about sex. My guess is that there are very few that would believe you, but it gives the person something to think about. We cannot force people to agree, but by providing a good argument, a person may someday put things together and come to the same conclusion.

 

I've tried it too. One guy from Cameroon. He said that if I prayed hard enough, I could become straight. So I asked him "could you become white if you prayed hard enough?". And he said "well, of course." :bang:

 

Give any religious nutcase some time. Maybe a handful of links, or just something which outlines how queer people feel and what being queer is. Sometimes it's not that hard to get across, though it may take a long time.

As long as you're not unduly patronising. :lol: Not understanding when the concept has been hidden/denied/lied about for your entire life, is quite normal and isn't really stupidity. It just depends on if you want to be the one who keeps pushing the message; you will end up infuriated after a few months if they still haven't understood it.

 

lmao


yeah op you're boned, it is too late to really impact the guy now, sorry. you'll just get more frustrated. huge cultural barrier compounded by a religious one.

 

Sorry to hear you stepped on a "biggot land mine", OP.

There are many of them in here and they raise in numbers each passing day.

Sad thing like most Muslims they don't even bother to read Quran, they just act on heresy. On worst situation they follow some cult leaders which I can't even relate. How can a person stop using their brain and accept some other guy's life style and words as their truth?

Luckily they are minority in here. I think it gets worse as you go south & east, starting with Turkey's SE regions. Tho' for Turks, family honor is most important thing so they are very tolerant to non family gay members. That family honor thing hurts both females and gay people very much.

 

Truthfully, people like that you can only do so much. You can explain it to them as well as you know how, show them blogs and links and articles and all that kind of stuff but you can't force them to understand if they don't.
There comes a time with people like that that you just have to cut your losses and back out of the conversation because no matter how hard you try they will not understand at that moment in time. Everyone is capable of understanding but for some you may not be there at the right time to help them understand or they may need to see or hear something specific so that they can finally start to understand things.
I don't think there's any more you can do with this guy or any others like him for now and you're fighting a losing battle if you try

 

You might be off to a better start if you didn't consider peoples whose cultures and traditions differ from your own as "less developed".

 

Although I thought the title had a risk of being insensitive, remember that Kosovo is actually very underdeveloped in comparison to most of Europe.

Places like Kosovo are riddled with problems such as terrible education on sexual issues, legally or merely culturally enforced media silence on queer people (or only negative portrayals), and if it's rural Kosovo, then maybe he really has never come across homosexuality before, As in it could literally be the first time he's come across an open discussion of it. Education is terrible, unemployment rife, and the standard of living lower than the rest of the Balkans for the most part, which isn't famed for luxurious living standards as a whole. It's not the most socially or geographically mobile country, either, so old ways die hard.

Kosovo is unquestionably underdeveloped, and the culture reflects the lack of access to the services which generally help queer issues and awareness of them, and doesn't have the economy that tends to allow those services to flourish.

---------- Post added 17th Jul 2014 at 09:32 PM ----------

Okay, I've looked it up. Homosexuality is legal and it's illegal to discriminate. But the most advanced laws in favour are protection from discrimination and the ability to do military service - it's still a bare minimum of rights, and I doubt that they've really ingrained themselves in society.

 

Hmm, I guess I'm lucky that in my experiences said individuals were not bigoted - they were just shocked and told me if they went back to their country and said that queer people exist, no one would believe them.


In fact, my experiences are that most international students, even from "underdeveloped countries" tend to be more kind and welcoming than US students...

 

Wow. I know you said that you didn't want to be offensive, but you soo were.
I could easily substitute Kosovo with Christian people... Because the fact that Christian parents can kick their kid out because God doesn't like gays is beyond me.

It's not about the country or religion. It's about the person.

 

Thank you for that full reply, I can't help but be flattered when someone takes the trouble to write five paragraphs to my sarcastic one liner. And you're right; my response was mainly to the title. I had am image of asking a complete stranger, "so tell me how does your primitive culture deal with the topic of homosexuality?".

You're right in other respects too, countries tend to adopt open and liberal values after they've got clean water, electricity and an education system.

My urge to be sarcastic runs away with me sometimes, I rely on the kindness of strangers to keep me in check. Good catch.

 

The way a country "is developed" has nothing to do with it. Look at the Bible belt in the U.S.
There are gays and lesbians in those countries you are talking about. And I am sure there are people who accept them.
You found one bigot person and made a generalization. You probably forgot that some EC members can be from Kosovo (not me, but I still find your way of thinking pretty haughty).

There are Muslims here at EC for sure. The fact that your friend doesn't understand some things and is not open minded doesn't mean the whole country or majority of people there are bigots as well. There are millions of Muslims in Germany too...

 

I think there are a few misconceptions there.

Your sexual behaviour is your business. You don't tell other people what they have to like to eat and nobody has the right to tell you what you like.
That should be the viewpoint.

Traditionally there have been gay and trans people in every culture and they were part of the community as go-betweens and intermediaries between the sexes before some authority said to stop this. Human nature was to just go underground, it still exists. Everywhere.

Some even say without this repression the rate would be as high as 30% as natural behaviour.

Now it was even found that in trans peoples brains, there are cells that exist only in brains of the other sex, so its literally a womans brain in a mans body and vice versa. This developed even in the womb.

And we know that repression leads more to conflicts than to a healthy way of living.

 

I thought the OP covered this by saying "nor do I believe all muslims or all people from the developing world share the same views, but I just don't know how else to phrase it." The title may have generalized, but it seems to have been unintentional and I certainly don't see where the OP said that all Muslims share these views.

 

This guy sounds like someone who was rather brought up on wrong knowledge and got used to this, rather than knowing the facts and choosing to be prejudiced about it.

All you can try to do is educate him, however wouldn't expect immediate results. He has probably spent his entire life thinking homosexuality was wrong and weird and can't simply change his lifelong viewpoints like that.

I'm not comparing homosexuality to pedophilia, but the concepts somewhat. It's like if suddenly in a random country, you were told pedophilia was common there, but you've spent your entire life thinking it is wrong. And you say, "but no one is here" (when of course in Middle East, there'd be an amount of open homosexuals you could count on one hand but a larger amount of open pedophiles in this country), but he says, "there would be, but they haven't "come out"". You see what I mean with come out and where I'm going with this.

Apologies if I don't make sense haha. Typing without looking back, so may mean complete jibble.

 

Don't bother trying to explain it to him, people who live in countries that homophobic and backward(sorry if that sounds racist) probably are so used to be lied too about homosexuality that the truth sounds ridiculous to them.