(sigh) I did not want to spend time doing this, but since I'm being accussed of lying, here's the evidence.
Trigger Warning: Seriously homophobic, racist and misogynistic language is used. I ordinarily would not use these words, but I think it's important to quote Burroughs' exact words. I am not making any of this up. These quotes are actually in the book Naked Lunch. There are many more examples I did not include. If you are emotionally effected by this kind of language you probably should skip this post.
HomophobiaBurroughs suggests someone can be 'made' homosexual by psychological tricks. We now know it is purely genetic, but this attitude reenforced the idea that it was a psychological disorder.
You can make a square heterosex citizen queer with this angle . . . that is, reinforce and second his rejection of normally latent homosexual trends -- at the same time depriving him of cunt and subjecting him to homosex stimulation.
Burroughs constantly falsely associates homosexuality with pedophilia. In this passage he portrays the anal rape of a young boy (in positive terms):
"Stand up and turn around," he orders in telepathic pictographs. He ties the boy's hands behind him with a red silk cord. "Tonight we make it all the way."
"No, no!" screams the boy.
"Yes. Yes."
He then goes on to describe a violent sexual encounter between two young Arab boys. A parenthetical remark makes it clear that the author (Burroughs) has experience with the cock of Arab boys. He is writing what he knows. (You still deny he's a pedophile?!?)
The other sighs deeply as Ali slides his cock in. The mouths grind together smearing blood. Sharp musty odor of penetrated rectum. Nimun drive in like a wedge, force jissom out the other cock in long hot spurts. (The author has observed that Arab cocks tend to be wide and wedge shaped.)
RacismBurroughs often refers to blacks using the N-word. While this was common in the 1950s, it was also clearly a word used by racists. He seems to relish in referring to the way the American South dealt with unwanted African Americans.
Back through Lake Charles and the dead slot-machine country, south end of Texas, nigger-killing sheriffs look us over and check the car papers.
They burned that ol' nigger over in Cunt Lick. Nigger had the aftosa and it left him stone blind. . . . So this white girl down from Texarkana screeches out:
"Roy, that ol' nigger is looking at me so nasty. Land's sake I feel just dirty all over."
"Now, Sweet Thing, don't you fret yourself. Me an' the boys will burn him."
"Do it slow, Honey Face. Do it slow. He's give me a sick headache."
So they burned the nigger
Here he goes so far as to suggest African Americans are a form of animal, like a cow.
And he plunged into an anecdote about a nigra got the hydrophobia from a cow.
"So my pappy says to me: 'Finish up your chores, son, and let's go see the mad nigger. . . .' They had that nigger chained to the bed, and he was bawling like a cow. . . . I soon got enough of that ol' nigger."
Here is a passage which is promotes a disgusting stereotype about Jews.
The clerk looked at the card suspiciously: "You don't look like a one feed mast-fed Razor Back to me. . . . What you think about the Jeeeeews . . . ?"
"Well, Mr. Anker, you know yourself all a Jew wants to do is doodle a Christian girl. . . . One of these days we'll cut the rest of it off."
Some of the worst passages are very Islamophobic. Here Burroughs suggests Mohammed (pbuh) did not even exist!
Mohammed? Are you kidding? He was dreamed up by the Mecca Chamber of Commerce. An Egyptian ad man on the skids from the sauce write the continuity.
Here he promotes conspiratorial thinking about Islam.
The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.
Then he slurs Arabs as ignorant.
Nice folks, these Arabs . . . Nice ignorant folk.
I wish I could be finished with this section already. It's so sickening. But there are two more examples I felt compelled to include.
This one is Islamophobic with a dash of racism against the Chinese on the side.
A funeral passes through the market. Black coffin -- Arabic inscriptions in filigreed silver -- carried by four pallbearers. Procession of mourners singing the funeral song . . . Clem and Jody fall in beside them carrying coffin, the corpse of a hog bursts out of it. . . . The hog is dressed in a djellaba, a keif pipe juts from its mouth, one hoof holds a packet of feelthy pictures, a mezuzzoth hangs about its neck. . . . Inscribed on the coffin: "This was the noblest Arab of them all."
They sing hideous parody of the funeral song in false Arabic. Jody can do a fake Chinese spiel that'll just kill you -- like a hysterical ventriloquist's dummy. In fact, he precipitated an anti-foreign riot in Shanghai that claimed 3,000 casualties.
"Stand up, Gertie, and show respect for the local gooks."
"I suppose one should."
And finally there is racism mixed with homophobia.
When arrested for sodomy in Indonesia, Clem said to the examining magistrate:
"'Tain't as if it was being queer. After all they's only Gooks."
They appeared in Liberia dressed in black Stetsons and red galluses:
"So I shoot that old nigger and he flop on his side one leg up in the air just akicking."
"Yeah, but you ever burn a nigger?"
Ugh.
MisogynyFinally we come to the misogyny. Misogynistic words are scattered throughout the text. I'll start with two short examples.
You cheap Factualist bitch!
Cunts, pricks, fence straddlers, tonight I give you -- that international-known impressario of blue movies and short-wave TV, the one, the only, The Great Shlahstubitch!
Here is a little "joke" combining misogyny with transphobia. Disgusting.
And now gentlemen -- I trust there are no transvestites present -- he he -- and you are all gentlemen by act of Congress it being only remain to establish you male humans, positively no Transitionals in either direction will be allowed in this decent hall.
These quotes combine misogynistic and homophobic slurs.
If your tits won't stop them bring up your cunts and confound these faggots.
Elegant fags and old cunts
Again, this passage can be seen as both homophobic and misogynistic. I include it here because it's clear that he's suggesting females are the "weaker" sex.
Fag Baboon dressed in little girl blue dress sings in resigned voice to tune of Alice Blue Gown: "I'm the weakest baboon of them all."
In this passage Burroughs describes the result of a father sending his son to a prostitute. At this point the misogyny turns quite violent.
"Well, son, did you get a piece of ass?"
"Yeah. This gash comes to the door, and I say I want a piece of ass and lay the double sawski on her. We go up to her trap, and she remove the dry goods. So I switch my blade and cut a big hunk off her ass, she raise a beef like I am reduce to pull off one shoe and beat her brains out. Then I hump her for kicks."
The following passage is an example that combines condemnation of matriarchy with misinformation about homosexuality. To top it off it ends with an Islamophobic slur.
Remember the Bismarck Achipelago. No overt homosexuality. A functioning police state needs no police. Homosexuality does not occur to anyone as conceivable behavior. . . . Homosexuality is a political crime in a matriarchy. No society tolerates overt rejection of its basic tenets. We aren't a matriarchy here, Insh'allah.
I apologize again for having to expose you to this vile language, but what Burroughs has written in his book Naked Lunch was unacceptable in 1959 and is unacceptable today. Fortunately we live in a somewhat more enlightened time and people who say the kinds of things he said are now largely rejected from polite society. I have no idea why the OP is trying to push this absolutely sick bigot and his writings onto the people of this forum.
