The Middle East expert and academic Joseph Massad has repeatedly criticized Long as an example of what Massad calls the "Gay International," a complex of Western organizations, activists and academics that has embarked on a project "to universalize itself ... y inciting discourse about homosexuals where none existed before." Massad accuses the Gay International of actually worsening the situation for the people it claims to help, by aggressively imposing its identity categories of "homosexual" and "heterosexual" upon "a world that is being forced to be fixed by a Western binary." Massad contends that the Gay International's missionary activities have especially targeted the Arab and Muslim worlds, and Long has been a key agent, one who was "rewarded with employment at Human Rights Watch" and who "became an instant expert speaking on 'gays' in Arab countries on radio shows and at public lectures."