Mateen's horrifying attack on Pulse nightclub was initially thought to be a homophobic attack rooted in extremist Islamic ideology.
But now his ex-wife, a former police academy classmate and clubbers have stepped forward to say they think Mateen was gay and had been visiting Pulse since 2013.
Investigators think he could have traveled to Pulse - which was a two hour drive from his home in Fort Pierce in Southern Florida - so he wouldn't have been seen.
It's also been revealed that Mateen used gay dating apps Grindr and Jack'd to chat to men online and was friends with draq queens at the club.
Signs that Mateen could have been gay emerged as far back as 2006 when he asked a male classmate out on a date.
At the time Mateen was said to be going to gay clubs and chatting up men.
Mateen's first wife, Sitora Yusufiy, 27, whom he met online in 2009 and married soon after, told Daily News his family think he murdered the 49 because he was in turmoil about who he really was - not because he was an Islamic extremist...
[Some say he was a regular at Pulse]
Daily Mail.
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| The Sun. |
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The 'all homophobes are secretly gay' is a well-worn trope - but, despite several high-profile cases involving right-wing politicians and evangelical preachers, is rarely true.
It also serves to absolve heterosexuals from any blame for their homophobia.
Please bare in mind that just because someone says something - here, a woman spurned - it doesn't mean that it's true.
Though the evidence here seems rather compelling.
If it is true, this is still about homophobia, as Omar was a victim of it, too.
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| Turned this round quick, Dave. Guardian. |
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"The 'all homophobes are secretly gay' is a well-worn trope - but, despite many high-profile cases, is rarely true."
ReplyDeleteI agree. That doesn't mean it wasn't peculiarly satisfying when the Scottish Cardinal, Keith O'Brien, was brought down after priests complained about his predatory behaviour.
And as I think back to my fearful and closeted teenage self, I can readily see how a sort of shuddering recoil from what you are can spill over into damage to others.
Rachel Maddow interviewed a former Muslim radical who said that he could not admit his homosexuality even to himself until after he had left radicalism and had started to recover from the religious brainwashing. I think it is possible that the violent homophobia of SOME Muslim radicals is driven by the insufferable psychological limbo in which closeted gay and bi men find themselves in (sub)cultures that are extremely homophobic. To raise such a possibility is not to make excuses for extremism or violent behaviour, or to deny the existence of cultural and structural homophobia. It is simply an attempt to understand how an already unstable individual could be pushed over the edge by an internal conflict with himself, and how external cultural circumstances, like religious homophobia and heteronormative masculinity, may have contributed to that conflict.
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