It is not often a narrator of a TV documentary makes no attempt whatsoever to hide his disdain of the subject matter, but this is a very notable exception. It’s a profile of Afghan men who act as predators and recruit boys as young as 12 years old to dress up as girls and dance, before they have sex for money. In a culture where the ultra-strict rules insist that women are all but hidden from society, these hypocritical men defy both the law and any sense of morality, and have these boys, recruited from very poor families, act as female surrogates.
Homosexuality is a taboo topic in Afghanistan which is a socially and religiously extremely conservative country. It is considered un-Islamic and immoral, and gay men can be imprisoned by the state or killed by their family members in so-called honor killings.
In a very small way it reminds one of the sheer hypocrisy of all the US virulently anti-gay politicians who go out of their way to ensure that the LGBT community are denied any rights at all, only to later be exposed by the rent boy that they have been hiring for years.
Labels: 2017, Afghanistan, documentary, rent boys
