Moreover, gender as a binary has now become a template for categories of modern sexuality. Our contemporary binary of gender translates any fractures of masculinity into effeminization. Nineteenth-century Iranian culture, however, and perhaps before and beyond, had other ways of naming a young adolescent male and an adult man desiring to be objects of desire for adult men that were not equated with effeminacy.
I think in this paragraph, the author contrasts the modern Western interpretation of gender and sexuality, where any variation from traditional masculinity is often viewed as feminization, with nineteenth-century Iranian culture. In that context, the relationships between adult men and young adolescent males were understood differently and not automatically framed as varied in the way contemporary gender norms might dictate. This suggests that the categories of masculinity and femininity, as well as heterosexuality and homosexuality, did not operate along the same lines in that cultural setting.