Who Owns "Bacha Bazi" ? or Wikipedia as an Inadvertent Tool of Cultural Colonialism (original) (raw)

When setting out to curate the present collection of boys’ testimonials from Central Asia, it is essential to make sure that any local terminology is being used correctly. That is always the case with any cross-cultural enterprise, and even more so when exploring little-known, hidden, or marginalized phenomena such as the love between boys and men. What could be more fitting than to begin with the term “bacha bazi” itself, “the boy game,” the term that is most representative of this topic? Since this term has infiltrated international parlance, there are two aspects to this work, namely examining the meaning as understood by native users, and comparing it with the sense it has acquired in the West. It is only fair to the reader to insert a spoiler at this point: the two meanings have very little in common with each other. In order to get a sense of how the term “bacha bazi” is used in the land where bacha bazi is practiced, what better approach than to ask those who know best, the very boys involved in “the boy game?” Who could be better equipped to explain it, and more credible? These are the same boys who have contributed the testimonials in this project, only here they are not identified by their pseudonyms, but only by their present age and their country of origin. This is what they have to say about it.