Reading Abu Ghraib photos as homophobia obscures the racialized torture of the prisoners

Evidence

Those who viewed the Abu Ghraib photos of Iraqi men forced to simulate having sex with each other as evidence of rampant homophobia (the photos show homosexuality as degradation) missed the bodies of the tortured Iraqis themselves. Paur insists that both gender (Iraqi men are being made to feel like women) and race (Iraqi bodies are the ones marked as degenerate) are effaced if we concentrate on sexuality as a discrete system. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 150

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how single-axis analysis fails — parallels the critique of single-factor explanations in economic/social systems work.