the gay Syrian blogger hoax

I haven't been following the story the gay Syrian blogger all that closely, but my initial impressions were that it appealed to the very Western construct of identity politics. To make a stand in the name of one's right to have a particular identity held little interest for me. In Zimbabwe, issues of social justice are far more fundamental than those concerning identity per se. For instance, women don't fight for the right to be respected as "women" and to be given "choices" so much as they fight for the right not to be subjected to systematic violence. The two approaches might seem similar or almost the same, but in the first instance one is fighting for the validation of a concept, whereas in the second instance, one's fight is far more practical (and the nature of the fight is often pragmatic, rather than theoretical.)