In his well-received Desiring Arabs (2007), Joseph A. Massad extends the argument made by his mentor, Edward Said, in Orientalism (1978) that documents how orientalist writing was dehumanising and racist – an analysis of colonial discourse that postcolonial theorists have extended far beyond the Arab world. But Massad also broadens Michel Foucault's history of sexuality to demonstrate how colonial systems helped (mis)shape internalised conceptions of sexuality throughout the postcolonial world. He presents a wide array of Arabic writing from the nineteenth century to show the changes in the understanding of sexual practice that were influenced by European values, and in the process criticises the West for what amounts to a system of bait-and-switch: imposing Victorian standards on what had been stereotyped by them as the licentious Orient, and then in our time amassing their cultural troops to condemn what they now view as a sexually backward postcolony that needs ‘civilising’ yet again. Rayyan Al-Shawaf summarises Massad's approach as follows (and one might reasonably substitute the word ‘African’ for ‘Arab’ in this description, as I will argue in what follows):

Many others who are interested in postcolonial theory as it intersects with gender analysis can appreciate Massad's sensitivities (see, for example, Hawley Postcolonial, Queer and Postcolonial and Queer Theories) without agreeing with his politics, particularly in the arena of LGBTQ futures in Africa.