In “Out of the Closet: Representations of Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature,” Hanadi Al-Samman argues that “more attention must be given to the biological essence of sexual differentiation, to the body politics rather than gender politics, if the emergence of a recognized, outspoken Arab homosexual or lesbian identity is ever to be realized” in contemporary Arabic literature. While the emphasis on the body as a concrete, extra-linguistic reality is necessary as a counterweight to the normalizing thrust of social inscriptions, Al-Samman’s analysis overlooks the ways in which an essentialist approach to homosexuality can—and does—cater to the same homophobic impulse she attributes to “gender politics.” In this paper I will argue that the issue at stake in depictions of homosexuality in contemporary Arabic literature isn’t so much the dominance of a heteronormalizing constructivist approach over the more essentialist emphasis on the body, but rather an underlying investment in the definition of homosexuality as a means of containing its socially disruptive force—a project that is mobilized by the Arab absorption of sexuality as an especially significant category of identity through the colonial encounter with Western norms and the diffusion of these norms via globalization. Whether treating homosexuality as an innate, biological condition or a socially inculcated one, as a gender-transitive orientation or a gender-separatist one, as a local reality or a foreign import, contemporary Arab writers have consistently marked homosexuality as a minoritarian identity category that gains its significance in relation to a dominant, masculinist, heterosexual norm. While certain essentialist and constructivist elements have contributed in different ways to the dismantling of the heternormative stranglehold on sexuality, the net dominance of certain explanatory frameworks for homosexuality over others has meant that the ambiguity at the heart of gender and sexuality has been undermined in favor of epistemological closure and the policing function such closure entails. By examining a number of representative works that engage with homosexuality, and male homosexuality in particular—including Huda Barakat’s Hajar al-Dahik, Sa’d Allah Wannus’s Tuqus al-’Isharat wa al-Tahawwulat, and ‘Ala’ al-Aswani’s ‘Imarat Ya‘qubian—I will try to demonstrate that the need for epistemological closure on the question of homosexuality in contemporary Arabic literature comes in response to both “a crisis of Arab masculinity” and a crisis of cultural authenticity—both of which are framed by the repressive relations between Arab governments and their citizens and the continuing neo-colonial dominance of the West.