Music Video

Hey everyone. I'm just doing some research for my final paper, and I'm going through some music videos that I thought might be relevant--and I came across a couple that I thought might be of interest to everyone.

There's... a lot of things going on in this. Much of them I'm not sure quite what to make of. The end is a bit clearer to me--but I was just curious if anyone else had any thoughts on it they'd want to share?

Blog Post Week 8

If last week’s assignment The Will Not To Know proves far too general/essentializing in its treatment of “Islamic homosexualities” across times and countries, this week’s reading provides more fine-grained studies of how individual states negotiated biopolitics during given historical periods. Joseph Suad’s work in particular interested me because of his search for “empirical foundations for comparative and theoretical endeavors” (176) in spite of the failings of works like the Murray and Roscoe. The “big point” that Suad makes is the different manifestation of biopolitics in Lebanon and Iraq, as part of a struggle between “primordial,” family-based politics (visible especially in Lebanon) and nationalist, unifying politics (as typical of Ba’thist Iraq). Suad makes the compelling point that Iraq deployed many more programs for interpolating nationalist subjectivity in Iraqi women than Lebanon managed in its confessionalist politics. However, I do wonder if Suad risks reducing politics here to a struggle between localist/patronage networks and centralized, national sentiment and bureaucracy. In the same way that depicting, for instance, European history as a straight, progressive line from feudal states to constitutionalist nation-states, I think a critical reading should look for the peculiarities of “primordial” politics in Lebanon and Iraq alongside this “nationalist vs. primordialist” dichotomy. In addition, I thought the absence of discussion about the Lebanese civil war or the Iraq-Iran war noteworthy. Finally, I can’t help mentioning how surreal it is to read about Iraq (and, to a lesser extent, Lebanon) before the wars that have occurred recently, which, I imagine, has changed these countries in big ways.

            I found Amar’s article on securitization very stimulating too, above all because of the vocabulary that he brings together there to talk about the nexus of biopolitics, nationalism, media studies, and postcolonial themes. Starting from a sketch of the Western media’s reception of Tahrir Square and the Egyptian Revolution, Amar describes the state of “hypervisibility,” the state of attention and regulation of colonized bodies, in Egypt, where the intervention of Western media and NGOs (quasi-private imperialism instead of the 19^th c.’s state-centered imperialism) puts pressure on the Orientalized “Arab street.” Western attempts to enforce progressive gender politics in that context taps into a delicate political balance between the Mubarak regime’s thugs and his opponents; the media’s take on the street, inevitably one site of pushback against the state, shames lower-class men seen as reactionary and sexually predatory, and whose hypervisibility pushes them to accede to accede to classist narratives of respectability. Amar, aware of the space documented by Mahmood for agentive adherence to these norms, demonstrates again the co-production (along Stoler’s lines) of race, gender, class, and sexuality in modern Egypt. The article, then, has definitely changed how I think about these topics by giving me a more critical vocabulary with which to talk about them. In addition, I found Amar’s article very pertinent to how we today must think our role as consumers of media in general, which serves in many cases to dismiss difficult ethical or representational difficulties. The Kony 2012  campaign provides a similar example of the media’s capacity for “hypervisibility” and the securitization of parahumans, even if its deficiencies have been intensely discussed, and its somewhat-tangential relation to Gender, Islam, and Sexuality. Kony and the LRA still provide excellent targets as People Who Are Not White Americans and whose problems might be fixed if only enough Westerners circulate their benevolence on Facebook. The problem, then, becomes one of pushing back against media that seeks to cut off and solve intractable issues of communication and representation. 

Week 8 Memo Group: Tarik and Natalie

“Vatan, the Beloved; Vatan, the Mother” revolves around the relationship of the citizens to their nation, and the gendered conception of this relationship. Iranian nationalism was conveyed through an idea of vatan, and in order for that idea to have power, vatan had to be characteristically “unmanly,” an embodiment of femininity. Invariably, “[vatan] is occasioned through a relationship with (un)manliness”; the idea of vatan itself requires a male figure as its complement (108). Patriotism revolved around providing for and protecting the motherland. In some circumstances, women associated themselves with this idea of the nation as a mother in order to exercise a kind of maternal authority; their expectations of their male counterparts dictated the due respect a citizen would give their motherland.

The word vatan generally means homeland, but it takes on a different meaning depending on its historical and social context. The homeland is meant to be cared for and protected. In Iran, the citizen’s relationship to the homeland was constructed on a basic male-female binary, resembling and symbolized by various relationships between a man and woman. This nature of this relationship would change depending on what aims the political elite were trying to achieve, alternating between the relationship between man and mother, and man and lover. Most often this relationship took the shape of a mother-son dynamic, which allowed for the citizens to imagine themselves as brothers. “Anticonstitutionalist monarch Muhammad Ali Shah was frequently addressed...as the father of Iranians...he referred to Iran as our dear Vatan,...his kind mother” (118-9). Other people’s reference to him as the father of the nation demonstrates that nationalism is gendered; the homeland is the female, in this case, the mother, and its citizens and ruler are the father. In circumstances in which vatan was portrayed as a lover, it created a love triangle “in which the love of the two men for a single female figure produces a patriotic bond between” (108). We remain skeptical about this perspective, because this complicates the fraternal relationship among citizens in ways that the image of a maternal homeland does not; in a case where two men love the same female figure, it seems as if this love would provoke a sense of competition between the men. Related to the idea of vatan, it seems this perspective may actually be detrimental to national cohesion, damaging the fraternal unity between citizens belonging to one nation.

The next three readings by Deniz Kandiyoti, Suad Joseph, and Maxine Molyneux discuss how conceptions of women’s role in politics changed depending on the goals of governing bodies.
The Kandiyoti reading discussed the political role of women in Turkey (and the Ottoman Empire). In many ways, women were the vehicles for larger political missions. Male reformers during the Tanzimat Era often cited the plight of women as archaic and anachronistic Islamic Ottoman principles, which prevented the progress of the nation. During the rise of the Young Turks and World War 1, women achieved more liberties in that they were expected and encouraged to enter the workforce to both create a new Muslim Turkish middle class and to make up for the lack of men in the workforce during wartime. Through entering the workforce, women in a sense gained political legitimacy; by fulfilling patriotic duties, they thus felt entitled to greater political participation. At the same time, women were made to represent Islam in the state, which was in a period of steady decline. Different ideologies represented women according to their various views about saving the Empire. 
For Islamists, the abandonment of Islamic principles was responsible for the decline of the Empire. Islam should remain “uncontaminated” by Western culture and discourse in order for the state to flourish. Since women were symbolic of Islam, women’s issues concerning certain personal practices became politicized. As representatives of Islam, women had to remain untainted by Western ideologies; veiling took on much more than a personal meaning in creating modesty, but also represented the preservation of an Islamic national ideology. Westernists on the other hand looked to the West as an example for Turkish nationalism; this nationalism was based on a secular rationality that contrasted Islam. Islam was considered a hindrance to modernity, symbolized by “the debased condition of women...one of the major symptoms of Ottoman backwardness” (33). Turkists on the other hand evoked a sense of pre-Islamic Turkish pride. In creating a Turkish nationality separate from Islam, Turkists looked back to pre-Islamic Turkish culture as a way to promote this Turkish identity. Since gender equality was a significant characteristic to the pre-Islamic Turkish people, the status of women was significant to the construction of a Turkish identity. Turkists emphasized the importance of gender equality as central to their identity as a distinct nation. The role of women was further contested under Mustafa Kemal, who  promoted the image of the “new woman,” who represented a break with the past, especially a break with Islam. Kemal was against Islam as a component of the state (Islam was incompatible with his notions of progress), and thus used the emancipation of women as a symbol of his separation with Turkey’s Islamic past. Interestingly in all of these stages of women’s political status, women remained relatively passive. 
Therefore “feminism” was a state-sponsored and controlled ideology, in that the state created it and defined its role and parameters, but additionally it was created by a male-dominated state. Women were also “harnessed” by the masculine state to sanction and reproduce different notions of Turkish statehood. Feminism expanded the rights and elevated the status of women in Turkey, however did so only to promote various state ideologies.

Joseph’s reading (while it may not have been his intention) follows a counterintuitive arc. He sets out to prove that 1960’s-70’s Iraq created more opertunities for its female citizens than did Lebanon during the same historical period. Placing the strategies of political elites in Iraq and Lebanon against one another, he attempts to explicate their strategies for state-building vis-a-vis family religion and women. Iraq, whose ruling class he describes as a “homogenous”, would, in the minds of most people, breed politically/socially prohibitive environment for women. Most of us who are educated in the western tradition view the one party state with contempt; concentrated power lends itself to abuse by the wielder and scorn on the part of those subject to it. Joseph reveals, however, that the political and industrial consolidation that characterized mid-20th century Iraq created great opportunities for women. Determined to create active and responsible citizens, women were encouraged to pursue a the education that the state freely offered and to join the workforce that so desperately needed to be strengthened by an increase in laborers. The General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW), illustrates the kind of visibility and ostensible equality that women enjoyed under the Ba’th. Women were “extended the same rights [as men] in the workplace...including areas of pay, position, training, advancement, retirement, compensation and medical care” (185)  - all under the Ba’th. Lebanese women on the other hand who belonged to a minimalist state which granted considerable autonomy to the private sector experienced (perhaps counterintuitively for many) greater restrictions. Due to the fact that power was disaggregated among many political elites, these sectarian leaders deployed and maintained their influence by regulating, most prohibitively, institutions of marraige, inheritance, divorce, child custody etc (191). Women were better of submitting to the regulations were designed to retain connection given the weakness/absence of strong state institutions; “it was prudent for individuals and families to be allied in a face-to-face personal relationship with a za’im [political leader] (192).” Politically liberal Lebanon, more than Iraq, illustrated a state in which women were subject to the entrapment that one would intuatively associate with a one-party state like Iraq.

Molyneux’s chapter emphasized the expansion of state control in personal legal matters as part of revolution, to transform society and politics under centralized rule. In colonized Yemen, women experienced little political freedom, though in the PDRY, women were seen as producers and educators of future generations who were responsible for constructing and defending the new society. The state therefore had an incentive to promote women’s rights and equality, since they brought up new generations. In this context, previously personal matters, such as family rights and status became highly politicized. The Family Law in Yemen was introduced in 1971 in order to establish a new family relationship. It redefined the husband’s role by reducing his authority as well as his “breadwinning” obligations, both of which were to be shared equally with women. In Yemen, legal reform that was meant to extend the authority of the state in order to introduce societal change became a vehicle for the transformation of women’s position in society and politics. Other forms of authority, such as Islam, tribal or family, or gender authority, were considered second to the authority of the state in order to “construct less private, traditional identities” (265). The expansion of women’s rights in Yemen followed less a societal push for increased rights and liberalization, but the socialist state’s need to reorganize social relations to promote national unity.

“Turning the Gendered Politics of the Security State Inside Out?” discusses how securitization creates hypervisible parahuman subjects that become targeted by politics, which then naturalizes and justifies enforcement regimes that attempt to eliminate the threat of these subjects. Additionally, security doctrines transnationally impose these parahuman subjects where they did not necessarily exist before. During 1990’s protests, the Egyptian government sent out baltagiya, plain-clothes thugs, who blended in with the protesters but wreaked havoc in order to delegitimize the protests, which had an unintended effect of backing the Orientalist stereotypes of savage Arabs. When women entered the protests, however, this image fell apart. Instead, “the state responded by shifting its aims from using demonized masculinity in order to delegitimize political opposition to using state-imposed sexual aggression in order to undermine class respectability” (465). Sexual harassment of women was meant to taint the image of the respectable, pious woman, damaging the integrity of their participation in the uprisings. Paul Amar argues that NGOs create victims in need of their rescue, “reviving colonial practices of social control in the guise of emancipatory civil society action” (467). These NGOs however incorrectly interpret the meaning and and reasons for the sexual harassment that women face during protests; instead of pointing the finger at the security state as the perpetrators of this harassment as a means to debase women as legitimate protesters, NGOs often blame certain social constructs. “Concern shifted from the police and security state as the agent of sexual harassment and sexualized torture to a national problematization of the libidinal perversion of working class boys,” creating a social problem in Egyptian society that needed to be fixed (470). This discourse naturalized the image of a hypersexual, parahuman Arab male, and actually pushed for greater state involvement in order to protect women from these men. Amar emphasizes the role of El-Nadeem, an Egyptian women’s organization meant to rehabilitate women affected by state sponsored sexual harassment. Rather than attempting to “rehabilitate the respectability and piety of the harassed protesters,” El-Nadeem focused on challenging the state security apparatus as the cause of the harassment. They also treated prostitutes in the same manner as middle-class women, giving them equal rights and access to legal aid, thereby toppling the respectability politics of the security state.

Quotations:

1) “In Sufi tradition the only earthly love for a woman that is not seen as conflicting with love of God is the Sufi’s love for his mother. Being devoted to and caring for one’s mother is viewed as a service to God. Nationalist transcription of vatan as mother fully benefited from this connection to Sufi love as well. Here the male patriot did not face a test of choice. Perhaps this also accounts for the eventual dominance of vatan-as-mother over vatan-as-beloved in patriotic discourse” (Najmabadi, 112-13)

2) “Conversations in critical race theory concerned with the logic of hypervisibility focus on processes whereby racialized, sexualized subjects, or the marked bodies of subordinate classes, become intensely visible as objects of state, police, and media gazes and as targets of fear and desire” (Amar 461).

Discussion Questions:

1) What effect does the Egyptian security state’s sexual harassment of women have on notions of the homeland depicted as a feminine body (the motherland) that needs to be protected, as explored in the Najmabadi reading? Is the discourse of the feminine nation damaged or delegitimized in the face of state-sponsored attacks against the female subjects of the state?

2) What are the potential risks/gains of correlating nationhood with maternity or, more broadly, womanhood? Are the risks/gains mitigated when the nation is likened to a man? Does the characterization of a group and the appropriation of their image in the service of nation-building ultimately do damage to the characterized group?

3) Can the gains in female equality and rights under state reform, as in Turkey, Iraq, and Yemen, be seen as feminist advancements since they were granted by a male-dominated state system in order to achieve political goals? Or is this rather seen as further male domination (women cannot have equality or more liberal rights unless men approve and implement them)?

Week 8 Blog Post

The readings for this week explore the concepts of gender, sexuality, and Islam within the broader context of the nation and the state. In Iran, nationalist groups positioned the nation as either the mother or the “beloved,” and, in doing so, fostered a specific kind of national identity that further defined the gender roles of men and women in Iranian society. Kandiyoti’s piece on women in Turkey examines the emergence of a discourse on the emancipation of women, beginning in the Tanzimat reforms of the late Ottoman Empire and continuing through the revolutionary policies of Kemalism. Joseph provides two case studies (Iraq and Lebanon) of how political elites sought to position women and families in the broader state system in order to reproduce or further support the power of the state. Molyneux explores the unique political situation in Yemen and examines how the legal system was utilized by governing elites to recharacterize familial relations and the position of women in Yemeni society. Finally, Amar’s piece turns our attention to Egypt as he examines gender, sexuality, and the feminist project in the context of police brutality and the security apparatus in the time period leading up to and contemporary to the Egyptian revolution.

I found Najmabadi’s piece on “vatan” particularly informative and especially enjoyed her discussion of how nationalism and patriotism contributed to the “binarization” of gender and the “heteronormalization” of sexuality in Iran (Najmabadi 97). One thing that I wish had been unpacked a bit more in this article, however, was the relationship between Islam and nationalism. Najmabadi demonstrates quite elegantly how the conception of Iran was slowly dissociated from the idea of Islam (Najmabadi 103), ultimately allowing the construction of an idea of “vatan” to “supercede,” or at least “incorporate,” a love for or loyalty to Islam (Najmabadi 113). However, I found this analysis to somewhat contradict what we encountered in our viewing and discussion of Persepolis, and in particular the scenes discussing the motivations for young men to become “martyrs” and go to war against Iraq. In such scenes, the young men appear to be driven more by a hope of a better afterlife, an afterlife that is promised to them through the teachings and doctrines of Islam, than by any particular attachment to the nation of Iran; in order of importance, then, love for (or at least a belief in) Islam appears to trump love for (or a belief in) the homeland. I would offer two potential qualifications for this apparent contradiction. First, the war between Iraq and Iran was not entirely contemporary to the time period which I believe Najmabadi is discussing; Najmabadi’s analysis, at times, significantly predates the Iran-Iraq war. Thus, changes in the relationship between "vatan" and Islam might have occurred during the period after the formation of this “vatan” identity but before the outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq. Second, and in my opinion more interestingly, the young men engaging in these actions in Persepolis tended to be from among the lower classes of Iranian society, whereas this discourse on nationalism would, I expect, be taking place more among the upper tiers of the Iranian political elites. Those seeking to define “vatan” and foster a specific type of patriotic sentiment that subordinates a “love for Islam” to a love for Iran,” then, may not be speaking for the entirety, or even perhaps the majority, of Iranians.

I also wanted to offer a few comments on “Elite Strategies: Iraq and Lebanon,” as this was, for me at least, simultaneously the most interesting yet also the most problematic of the texts we read for this week. Joseph notes that Iraq was ruled by a “homogenous ruling elite” (Joseph 177) and contrasts this homogeneity with the fact that Iraq itself is an incredibly diverse country (Joseph 178). Yet following this brief discussion of diversity, Joseph begins to create categories that overlook these differences that were just outlined. For example, consider the following claim: “Women have been important to the Ba’th agenda for state construction for two key reasons” (Joseph 179). Which “women?” I might consider buying into an argument for “Arab women” (as a category) being important to the Ba’th agenda for state construction, as Joseph does an excellent job of discussing the Ba’th party’s attempts at moving towards secularization and how such movement forced it to negotiate with both the Arab Sunni and Arab Shi’a religious establishments (Joseph 184). Even then, however, I would have difficulty in fully believing this categorization, since the Sunni-Shi’a divide in Iraq was certainly apparent under Saddam (though not as apparent as it would become under the Americans), and I would even consider hypothesizing that the Sunni and Shi’a women were treated slightly differently by the Sunni Ba’th party (though, again, that would only be a guess). However, my bigger problem is the complete absence of a discussion of non-Arab women. “Arab women” represent approximately 75% of the female population in Iraq, as “25% of the population is non-Arab” (Joseph 178). To give an easy example of this, there is an enormous Kurdish population in the north of Iraq that does not identify as Arab. Thus, when Joseph quotes a Director General of the Ba’th party as saying “Ethnicity and religion do not matter here, we are all part of the Arab nation” (Joseph 180, italics mine), I feel that this statement needs to be considered in the context of an Iraq that, while certainly majority Arab, is not homogeneously Arab. Were Kurdish women invited to take part in these state-sponsored projects that not-so-subtly promoted the Ba’th party and, consequently, the Ba’th platform of Arab nationalism? If invited, did these women choose to participate? Examining how Ba’th leaders approached non-Arab groups in the project of building an Arab state, I feel, would provide an interesting comparison to how they approached certain segments of the Arab population, allowing us to understand more completely both the broader Ba’th project of Arab nationalism and also how gender, sexuality, and Islam were incorporated into such a project.

Persepolis

Dear all,

I know you did not get a chance to finish Persepolis, so here it is if you'd like to watch the last 20 minutes or so. From what you have told me, it sounds like you had to stop around 1.12.

A Jihad for Love (by Parvez Sharma)

Dear all,

Given that we only have one session left to talk about this week's readings, I decided that showing excerpts from A Jihad for Love in class will take away too much time away from discussion. Instead, I am posting two clips below. Please watch the first one starting at (minute) 3.24 until the end, and the second one from the beginning until (minute) 3.52, and we will talk about it tomorrow in class.

Evren

Week 7 - Blog Post

This week’s first two readings seek to trouble what may be comfortable conceptualizations of sexuality – what Murray refers to as the sexual dyad of homo/heterosexual ways of being. The remaining readings, particularly Massad’s, focus on the occasion of sexual dualisms introduction to Arab society and its adoption by it.

Murray’s The Will Not to Know reveals the complexity of what most western-trained scholars would blanket under the term homosexuality. In order to appreciate the nuanced nature of these relationships Murray explains that we must understand that the hierarchies of gender and age that are crucial to the formation of these relationships (Murray, 32).  In his discussion of “Role Labels”, he suggests that the western scholar’s vocabulary is too impoverished to give accurate expression to the same sex relationships in Arab society, or name the people who participate in them. While we have a single word, homosexual, which casts participants in male-male sexual relationships in a single mold, “the Arabic language contains a huge vocabulary of gay erotic terminology, with dozens of words just to describe types of male prostitutes” (Murray, 28-9). Essential to Murray’s discussion, however, are not only the hierarchical relationships that governed and complicated these encounters, but the discretion that characterized them (Murray, 314). It was this covertness, this imperative to keep “acted-upon desires from challenging public norms” that I found particularly interesting, when examined alongside the work of Joseph Massad; Najmabadi eludes to these norms when she gives expression to the temptation of “cultural nativists” to render homosexuality external to the Arab world by (al)locating it in “the West” (Najmabadi, 19).

The politics of respectability, described by Massad, that surround sexuality in much of the Arab world provided an interesting lens through which to view the carrying out of same-sex relationships. As Europe began to assert its cultural superiority and its role as the barer of the banner of Enlightenment, Arab intellectuals and scholars began to unearth evidence that would challenge the Orientalist claims that placed Arabs low on the “civilizaional scale” (Massad, 5); Massad contends that the boundary between cultural refinement and sexual refinement (if one insists on such a boundary) is permeable. “Victorian notions of appropriate and shameful sexual behavior and its civilizational dimensions would rank high in the thinking of these Arab intellectuals” in light of the barbarism and primitiveness with which “degenerate” sexualities came to be associated (Massad, 15).

Framing many of the actions of the Arab political and intellectual classes as being beset by the task of “catching up with Europe”, Massad challenges us to think of sexual practices in the Arab world (in all of their vernacular expressions) as informed, in part, by the varied notions of modernity expressed through the ages.

It seemed at the conclusion of my reading that the intellectual and political elite occupy a space between, unique cultural practices and escapism that accords with notions of civilization and cultural propriety.

Week 7 Blog Post

Our readings this week focus on the appellation given in Arabic countries to sexual behaviors, acts and desires. Murray’s “The Will Not to Know” and Najmabadi’s “Early Qajar” complicate the western binary definition of homosexuality and heterosexuality, and our conceptions of beauty or gender.

Stephen Murray explores the conception of same-sex relationships in modern Arab states. The authors first argue that the binary opposition between heterosexuality and homosexuality is a very western conception of sexual behaviors and that homophobia in Arab countries is the product of Western Christianity. Murray then explains “Arabic conception” (this term should be taken with cautiousness as Murray reminds us himself that this conception has evolved through time and can differ from country to country) on homosexuality. Homosexuality is not banned as such in these countries as long as it doesn’t disturb the family structure and that silence on these behaviors is respected (“Having been sodomized damages someone’s reputation only if the behavior becomes know. If one starts to like being sodomized, the behavior is almost certain to become know” 18). The author then exposes the many different appellations used to make sense of same-sex sexual behaviors. These terms reveal the complexity of this conception of sexuality: not based on the gender of the people concerned but on the hierarchical position they have in the sexual intercourse (The Arabic languages contains a huge vocabulary of gay erotic terminology, with dozens of words just to describe types of male prostitutes” 29) but “there is no word meaning homosexual”, 29. The arab semantic of sexual behaviors rather distinguish the active/ passive than the homosexual/ heterosexual.

In “Early Qajar”, Afasaneh Najmabadi studies different conception of beauties, sexual preferences and desires. What the author underlines in her text is how appellations in Iran are not constructed in a binary gendered opposition but in continuity, on a scale between femininity and masculinity. For example, khanith is described as “an intermediate on a continuum between very feminine women and very masculine men” (17). Najmabadi then explains the Iranian conception of sexual preferences and behaviors. She argues that the fixed and exclusive sexual identity – that being labeled as homosexual or heterosexual- is the product of the West, which doesn’t mean that sexual desires are not noticed and taken into account in Iran. The author finally stresses the importance of controlling “public visibility”, especially concerning amrads, echoing Murray’s analysis on the importance of the boundary between the private and the public.

The two authors allow the reader to distance himself from the western characterization of sexual identity. These are seen as steady and based on the main distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality. However, this construction of the sexual identity doesn’t  encompass the complex view of Arab countries on sexual preferences, desire, honor and marital culture.

Week 7 Blog Post

Hey everyone, here is my post for week 7:

One of Foucault’s boldest statements was to declare that the homosexual identity type was a modern invention of 19^th century Europe, and that prior acts of homosexuality were defined as just that: acts. It is a commonly accepted proposal that such conceptions of the homosexual identity are not applicable to periods prior to the modern era, and homosexual practices that were observed prior to the conception of a homosexual identity did not constitute anything more than a temporary sexual practice. Both Murray and Najmabadi seek to complicate this understanding of pre-modern homosexual identity. Murray takes a look at the lexicon of different Islamic cultures in an attempt to locate ways of defining homosexual identities that are different from the modern conception of homosexuality, yet still constitute an identity over an act. He focuses specifically, then, on explaining the invisibility of these identities and roles. “Usually in Arab and other Islamic societies, everyone successfully avoids public recognition (let alone discussion!) of deviation from normative standards—sexual or other,” which can be thought of as “the will to not know,” (Murray, 15). Najmabadi uses both Foucault and Murray as inspiration and explores Persian sexualities and identities through conceptions of beauty and love. Both authors work to complicate the notion that homosexual identities are a purely modern phenomenon, but also acknowledge that the modern idea of gay and lesbian are not applicable to these time periods.

                Stephen Murray begins by using a comparison between the “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” homosexuals policy of the US military to that of the public sphere in what he refers to as the Mediterranean/Islamic status quo. He outlines the main difference as the lack of a push for respect toward discrete homosexual behavior in the Mediterranean/Islamic status quo. He at first acknowledges the idea that homosexual identities may not have existed prior to the modern era in the form of homosexual acts—however he quickly moves to contest that notion by going into detail about the many different ways that homosexual roles were lexically defined. “Whether or not egalitarian/”gay” homosexuality existed as a covert category earlier and/or elsewhere, terms for homosexual types have long been lexicalized in a range of Islamic societies,” (Murray, 35). Murray launches in to a long list of different words that denote not just acts, but kinds of people that pursue both relationships and acts. While these roles do not line up with modern notions of homosexual identity, Murray seeks to complicate the polarized discourse that would contend that no sort of homosexual identity could have existed in the Mediterranean/Islamic sphere. While there doesn’t appear to be a singular, united definition of homosexuality in the western sense of egalitarian or equal desire, to synthesize his main point would be that homosexual identities do exist in that sphere—however, certain norms prevent the public mobilization of these identities. In other words, the will to not know dominates the public knowledge of these private homosexual relations.

                Afasaneh Najmabadi in “Early Qadjar” expands on Murray’s work in “The Will Not to Know” by looking at conceptions of beauty in Persia and how they reflect identities of sexuality. An interesting note to point out in depictions of beauty would be the androgynous nature of adjectives used to describe male and female beauty, in which the same adjectives are used for both male and female representations (Najmabadi, 11). Another piece to note would be the description of khanith, which “can be read as an intermediate on a continuum between very feminine women and very masculine men,” and were often seen as the object of desire in homosexual roles (Najmabadi, 17). This discussion progresses into a similar point as Murray’s which approaches modern conceptions of the homosexual type as an identity that should not be mapped onto earlier socio-historical periods. But, she contests that “by locating same-sex identification in modern Euro-America, one renders homosexuality external to other places, an alien concept for formation of desire in these other cultures,” (Najmabadi, 19). I believe it is problematic to approach homosexuality as an identity purely belonging to the West because it creates another hierarchy that posits Islamic conceptions of homosexual identity as inferior to the Euro-American notion. Najmabadi continues by concluding that even if a fixed notion of a homosexual identity didn’t exist in this time period, it would be a mistake to think that there were no identifications based on non-standard desire types, which complicates the fixed notion of modern homosexual identity.

                In conclusion, I believe these two authors work well in tandem to elucidate the ways in which homosexual or non-standard sexual identities were formed in the Mediterranean/Islamic sphere. “In the case of Iran and much of the Islamic world, sexual practices were generally not considered fixed into life-long patterns of sexual orientation,” therefor such fixed terminology as the Euro-American homosexual were not necessitated (Najmabadi, 20). It is important to contest the notion that there were no pre-modern conceptions of non-hetero identity, because to accept that could reinforce the east-west hierarchy set in place by colonialism. The notion that there were only homosexual acts, without a homosexual identity plays into the stereotype of the overly sexualized Middle Eastern man that cannot control desire—while at the same time completely ignoring the wealth of lexical and literary evidence of such identity formation. 

Week Seven Memo (Gabe, Hina, Megan)

This week’s readings started delving into the history of sexuallity in relation to Islam, with a strong focus on homosexuality and how it became defined

In Murray’s “The Will Not to Know,” he explores many different words that were used to help make sense of homosexual acts and homoeroticism in pre-modern societies. He concludes that homosexual roles are still held within binaries, commonly in the passive/active or one taking pleasure/one providing pleasure. He sees the terminology of “gay” as a Western contextualization of homosexual acts that have always been present in history, verified by the broad usage of vocabulary (bardash, ubnah, etc.). In conclusion, being gay was not something constructed within this history. Instead, there was an understanding of men seeking pleasure and finding it normally by anally penetrating younger boys that exhibited qualities of femininity. These acts were rarely prosecuted because they were not explicitly talked about.

Najmabadi examines the notions of beauty as they related to gender in this time and area of the world. The often passive subjects that Murray describes as part of the lover/beloved binary are distinguished by Najmabadi by their facial hair. While a full beard was a sign of adult manhood and the arguable inability to be dominated, the first signs of a beard or beardlessness made a young man an object of desire. Najmabadi also explores the separate domains of sexual practice and sexual orientation in pre-modern Islamic societies. Sexual relations between adult men and adolescents were not “issues to be highlighted,” and were sometimes attributed to relations of economics, education and alliance.

In “Introduction” of Desiring Arabs, Massad explores ideas of colonialism and hegemonic sexual Western forces that redefined culture and civilization by destroying Oriental subjectivities. The concept of turath, or heritage, is referenced as it relates to a turathist/contemporary binary. Turath was “heritage” that was redefined through the lens of colonialism as it began to redefine sexual acts as sexuality. The representation of these sexual acts and desires came to be tied to the civilizational worth of the Arab world.

El-Rouayheb navigates through the essentialist and constructionist theories regarding homosexuality in modern periods and in the early Ottoman period. Essentialists feel that the concept of homosexuality has been around much longer than the term. Constructionists argue that the concept of homosexuaity is modern and that in pre-modern Arab cultures, sexuality was determined by the active and passive roles in sexual relations, not by the gender of each partner. El-Rouayheb’s work coincides with lots of ideas that Murray brings up, such as homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic culture lacking a concept of homosexualiy altogether, moreso operating under a set of concepts (ubnah, liwat) along with the Western defining of homosexuality being what ultimately created homophobia. Both writers begin questioning how gayness and homosexual acts have found their meaning in today’s culture.

In Ze’evi’s “Dream Interpretation,” the author considers various theories of dream interpretation and how they pertain to cultural and sexual unconscious in the Ottoman era. In considering dreams as a look into a person’s inner psyche, the symbolic meanings of the dream may not directly linked to the culture, place or time that person is living in. The five headings exemplify this, which proliferated behaviors into different categories that had different levels of consequences. Some were ordained, some were forbidden and others were seen as neither inherently moral or immoral. Ultimately, the science of dream interpretation became less prominent; however, it remains significant in examining at how modern society treats some sexual acts as normal or deviant.

Worthwhile quotations
“‘On the one hand, there is a desire to define one’s ethnic and cultural uniqueness against the pressures of the majority culture and on the other hand an equally strong, if not stronger, urge to abandon that uniqueness in order to conform to the hegemonic pressures of the [white] liberal humanistic culture.’” - Abdul R. JanMohamed, as quoted in Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 by Khaled El-Rouayheb


“...The trans-Islamic native domain is that ‘sexuality’ is distinguished not between ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ but between taking pleasure and submitting to someone (being used for pleasure)” (Murray, 41).

“Every man in Iran is involved in male-to-male sex sex, because premarital [heterosexual] sex and sex outside marriage are not a sin, but are also very difficult [to find]/  But being gay and having a gay identity is a Western phenomenon.  Iranian men act in a very cliche[d] male/female role.  One is either the active or the passive partner, but all men are involved in male sex.” - Mansour, a Tehran native from Murray’s “Will Not to Know,” pg. 18.

“Premodern Islamic literature considered gender irrelevant to love and beauty.  Alternatively, male beauty and male homoeroticism were considered superior sentiments” (Najmabadi, 17) in “Early Qajar.”

“In the case of Iran and much of the Islamic world, sexual practices were generally not considered fixed into lifelong patterns of sexual orientation” (Najmabadi, 20).


Discussion Questions

1. In Murray’s “The Will Not to Know,” he discusses the many different terms in history used to define sexual acts. How does this parallel to today’s culture and how the meanings of words relating to sexuality are not always explicit? What are some examples of words and sexual acts that have a more fluid definition?

2. Ze’evi ends “Dream Interpretation” noting the “heteronormalization of love” and how “several sexual choices, especially same-sex intercourse and pederasty, came to be seen as a deviation from a norm.” How has popular culture portrayed this alleged hegemonic force? Has pop culture today begun to break this heteronormalization of love and where do you think it will go next?

3. “Unfortunately the literary sources of the period give almost no information on female attitudes to love and sex” (El-Rouayheb, 10).

“Premodern Islamic literature considered gender irrelevant to love and beauty.  Alternatively, male beauty and male homoeroticism were considered superior sentiments” (Najmabadi, 17) in “Early Qajar.”

What does these quotes and observations relate about the hegemony of masculine sexuality in pre-modern Islamic society?

Protest Masculinity?

Hey guys, below is the interview I had in mind of Kanye West at Today Show the other day when I brought him up. Take a look, and let's think together about where race, masculinity, and "civilization" might be intersecting here...

Week 5 blog

This week’s readings focus on masculinity in the Arab world, using Egypt as the key example. Jacob’s chapter “Geneology” explores effendi, the idea of masculinity stemming from nationalism, and the story of Mustafa Kamil as a new ideal for Egyptian men. The term effendi was known as the “English equivalent of gentleman” and connoted a “rise above historical obscurity and the faceless mass of ordinary subjects” (45-46) until British colonial rule. In England in Egypt, Alfred Milner characterized the colonial effendi as having a “general air of dinginess and servility” (46). He suggested that the restructuring of Egyptian masculinity would come from erasing qualities such as what he referred to as the “Oriental combination of servility to those above, and arrogance to those beneath them” (48).  

            Indeed, Jacobs brings up colonialism as major contributing factor to the apparent failings of Egyptian masculinity. Farid wrote, a great man is a “nationalist who inspires others to become nationalists,” adding that “the ability to win hearts and minds over to the nationalist cause made for a great man.” (51). It’s interesting that he made that connection between the two characteristics and countered the tradition connection of a “conqueror” or “warrior” with manliness. The writer contrasts two writers on this topic. Charles François Marie in L’Egypte et Les Egyptiens tries to support the continuation of British influence based on the assumption that the Egyptians lacked national feeling and therefore manliness from “centuries of submission to foreign conquerors” (59). It’s an interesting although offensive argument that tries to tie Egyptian men’s manliness directly to the country’s history of colonial rule and makes a case for continuing this rule in order to “change” the men back. Qasim Amin’s Les Egyptiens, although a critique of Marie’s work, still “implicitly places the blame for any deficit in contemporary Egyptian masculinity squarely on the shoulders of the British occupiers” (60).  In addition, Amin writes from a European standpoint and romanticizes the Egyptian peasant man as being simple, hardworking and uncomplaining.

            Mustafa Kamil was touted as the new ideal for Egyptian masculinity. He was described poetically as being a “powerful phoenix rising from the ashes of a once majestic culture to reclaim for it its lost glory, honor, and freedom” (53). Jacobs outlines a few virtues that a “great man” is supposed to possess which include a powerful will, power of oration, and a clear and effective use of language” (52). Indeed, Farid writes that “the loudness and clarity of [Kamil’s] voice were key elements of his greatness,” especially the fact that it was “employed in both Egypt and Europe” (53)

Inhorn’s article on “Male Infertility and Stigma in Egypt and Lebanon” argues that male infertility is linked with issues relating to sexuality and therefore stigmatizes infertile males as unable to prove their “virility, paternity, and manhood” (163). Although treatment is available and can be effective, Inhorn adds that “the very technologies designed to overcome [infertility] add additional layers of stigma and cultural complexity” (163). For example, some men were worried that a child would be stigmatized if its “test tube origins” were found out. In addition, some thought that the procedure was sinful because of potential mixing of donor gametes (175).

Inhorn’s studies, which took place in Egypt and Lebanon, focused on infertility rates in IVF centers. Inhorn was worried about getting accurate information about men’s infertility. “Men in the Middle East (and beyond may deem paternity an important achievement and a major source of their masculine identity” (169). She touched on the shame that many men experience, citing the example of Ali who blamed a quickly treated sexually transmitted infection for his infertility instead of a bad smoking habit (168).

The study tries to make a case for differences between how Egyptian and Lebanese men in perceive infertility. She writes that an Egyptian man would feel “ana mish raagil – “I am not a man” – if others were to know that he was the cause of a given infertility problem” (170). In contrast, she found that the Lebanese men in her study did not equate infertility with a lack of manliness. However, Inhorn acknowledges that this finding could have been due to a high nonresponse rate and the fact that “those who did agree to participate were probably the ones who felt least diminished by their infertility” (172). I believe that the relatively high nonresponse rate could have easily led to a non-representative sample of Lebanon’s population, and that therefore Inhorn’s conclusion may be erroneous.

Week 5 Blog

The readings for this week primarily discuss the concept of “masculinity” and how such an identity is created and reinforced in specific areas within the larger Arab world. The chapter from Jacob traces the story of Mustafa Kamil, “the exemplar of a new, confident, young Egypt” (Jacob 49), linking social class, education, and nationalism (among other things) to the creation of Egyptian masculinity. Kamil’s biographers described the “great man” as a strong-willed, independent, courageous, truthful, knowledgeable man of integrity; additionally, masculinity was closely associated with the ability to “protect and provide for others” (Jacob 56). Jacob draws many connections between masculinity and social class, claiming that the Egyptian feminist Qasim Amin’s analysis that placed “the educated effendi and the physically strong fallah in one orbit was necessary to recuperate an embattled Egyptian masculinity” (Jacob 60). The linkage of the effendi, or the “gentlemen,” to the strength and physique of the fallah, or peasant, allows the new construction of Egyptian effendi masculinity to draw a certain degree of authenticity from an “indigenous, precolonial past” (Jacob 61).

One of the most interesting things I found in this article was how tightly gender and nationalism were linked; “nationalism became a prerequisite for manhood and vice versa... masculinity was perceived as being present, merely waiting for someone ‘to exploit and make admired by the entire world’” (Jacob 62-63). Jacob frames this linkage in a such a way to suggest that the idea of Egyptian masculinity was directly tied to the colonial encounter, and that the two are virtually inseparable. This phenomenon was to remain in Egypt for decades to come. I studied the Arab-Israeli conflict in the context of the Cold War, and in two of the major wars that pitted Egypt against Israel (the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War; please pardon my use of the Western names for these conflicts), Egyptian rhetoric was heavily laced with questions of masculinity and, during the Yom Kippur War, of regaining the masculine honor that had been lost during Israel's route of the Egyptians during the Six Day War. I would wonder if this phenomenon, of linking masculinity to the colonial encounter, was a product of the specific colonial project in Egypt, or if this can be seen in other areas of the Arab world that have had repeated encounters with the West. One possible nation to study to address this question might be Syria, which has also shared a great deal with Egypt in terms of repeated conflicts both with colonialism and with the Israeli state.

Inhorn’s work focused on male infertility in Egypt and Lebanon and how such infertility contributed to or contrasted with traditional cultural conceptions of masculinity. Her studies do suggest that many men view their inability to naturally father children as an “emasculating condition” (Inhorn 176). Interestingly, treatment options designed to assist infertile men sometimes serve to add to the already existent social stigma, creating an additional “technological stigma” (Inhorn 175) that draws upon and amplifies preexisting cultural assumptions concerning the “morally questionable” (Inhorn 175) scientific procedures. I found of particular interest the relationship Inhorn touched upon between social class, religion, and the accessibility of treatment options. One of the main problems I had with Inhorn’s methodology was that, as she admitted, “those who did agree to participate [in the study] were probably the ones who felt least diminished by their infertility, for reasons of education, supportive wives and family members, and idiosyncrasies of personality and resilience” (172). In other words, Inhorn suggests that male infertility is so stigmatizing that most refuse to speak of it, and those who do agree only do so because they have other qualifications. Therefore, I would argue that other variables, such as social class or socioeconomic status, may have contributed to Inhorn’s findings more substantially than she allows for, producing a sample that might not be as representative as she leads us to believe when she makes claims such as that she found that, in Lebanon, “this conspiracy of silence surrounding male infertility was not as readily apparent [as in Egypt]” (171). I don’t have a better suggestion for how to gather this data, and Inhorn has clearly done a thorough job in how she has gone about this process, but I would still hesitate to draw broader generalizations and conclusions for an entire population when there are clearly variables at play that are difficult, if not impossible, to control for.

Week 5 Blog Post

Our readings this week focused on what masculinity looks like in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt. In Jacob's text on genealogy, the author explores how masculinity relates to social class. The author traces the effendi, an Egyptian class that, in its later years, was comprised of men in "modern professions and upper-level students". Lord Milner writes of the necessary treatment of the effendiyya in terms of colonialism in his piece "England in Egypt". 

"Treat the Effendi like a man; let him understand that you expect from him obedience, but not servility, that a reasonable objection properly urged will not be resented, and that, if he does his duty, his rights are secure --  and you will be able to get plenty of good work out of him." (47)

This quote effectively demonstrates the paradox of masculinity in this context. Men are expected to be strong but not subordinate. They have to be obedient to make a living, but dominant to have a respectable life as a man. The idea of masculinity seems to be at war with other cultural standards. In considering Cromer's thoughts on Egyptian masculinity, it seems that the Egyptian ideal of masculinity is based on a man being able to rule both himself and others. This concept ties into Inhorn's commentary on infertility as it pertains to Egypt and Lebanon. 

Inhorn's piece "Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies: Male Infertility and Stigma and Egypt and Lebanon" focuses on the importance of male fertility and the impact of male infertility in Egypt and Lebanon. The idea of masculinity seems to be significantly shaped by paternity. However, infertility has much higher rates in these areas than in the West, which Inhorn claims is a product of   genetics, culture and environment. Inhorn makes an interesting point in saying that many men don't own up to their infertility, letting their wives instead be faulted for not producing children. If, as Cromer points out, men must be able to rule themselves and others in order to be masculine, infertility becomes an obstacle to masculinity. If men cannot biologically "rule" their own bodies, they theoretically could maintain some of their masculinity by ruling over their wives and letting the blame fall on them. 

Week 5 Blog Post

The readings for this week concerned two different ideas of masculinity in the Arab world, with a focus on Egypt.

Marcia Inhorn's article “Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies: Male Infertility and Stigma in Egypt and Lebanon” discusses the prevalence and impact of male infertility in both Egypt and Lebanon, where for men paternity is “an important achievement and a major source of their masculine identity” (169). Inhorn outlines many reasons for why the prevalence of male infertility is higher in the Middle East than in the West, such as genetic, environmental, and cultural (habitual) reasons. Because biological maleness is described in one's ability to produce sperm and father offspring, infertility “may come as a striking blow to men's social identities, with far-reaching implications for the construction of masculinity” (169). Middle Eastern men derive their own masculine identities through their role as the patriarch in the family, and if they are unable to fill that role, their maleness is called into question. Infertility becomes a stigma, and no one wants to reveal such a condition for fear of social consequences. Furthermore, often men hide their infertility, which places inherent blame for the lack of children on their wives. This article does not discuss the feminine side of this, but I wonder what implications this has for women. As men are defined as men by their ability to impregnate women, women are biologically defined by their ability to bear offspring. Female infertility, whether real or imagined to cover for a husband's medical conditions, may also have consequences for women, who might similarly have feelings of inadequacy and a lack of womanhood. My question is which gender stigma is more “embarrassing” or “shameful”: a man who cannot fulfill his “role” as a man or a woman who cannot fulfill her “role” as a woman?

This article also discusses the future of infertile couples, as new reproductive technologies have become available. Inhorn points out ICSI as a valid method of fertilization in religious terms, as Islam forbids third-party donation of sperm, eggs, embryos, or surrogate uteruses (174). The procedure, however, has led to other problems, such as the questionability of the purity of the semen sample (fear of contamination of the sperm with gametes from other men) and the incompatibility of newfound male fertility with the natural process of female infertility coming with age, which has lead to men seeking younger wives to bear their children. She also notes that ICSI is relatively expensive and “accessed only by elites in more Middle Eastern countries” (174). I also wonder if class and wealth may play a role in notions of masculinity, as wealthier families can more easily have access to reproductive technologies that may allow otherwise infertile men to assume their roles as patriarchs and define themselves as men.

The “Genealogy” chapter in Wilson Chacko Jacob's book does demonstrate a relationship between class and masculinity, among other factors. This chapter follows the development of the effendi (gentlemanly) class in Egypt to become the paragon of both nationalism and masculinity in the colonial period. The idea of the “great man” of Egypt was one who had several virtues, one of them being able to cohere Egyptians within a national identity through leadership and oration skills. This meant that a great man must be well-educated and middle-class. Additionally, the great man must be a leader, which has been aligned with the idea of paternity. The idea of masculinity was largely based on the ability to protect and provide for others (and entrusted to do so—wakil); in this case, the great man would protect and provide for the nation in a patriarchal manner.

At the same time colonizers were attempting to undermine the Egyptian's masculinity to justify their presence; if the Egyptians were not masculine, they were unable to protect and provide for themselves, thus a colonial presence would be necessary and welcome. This lack of masculinity, however, may be attributed to the colonial presence itself. As Qasim Amin argued “a people with a nation to defend fought more ferociously and were more willing to die than a people ruled by foreigners,” which placed the blame “for any deficit in contemporary Egyptian masculinity squarely on the shoulders of the British occupiers” (60). I read this as the British occupation and rule appropriated native Egyptians' ability to provide for and protect themselves, robbing them of Egyptian men's role as men, thus rendering them emasculated. I find this important in relation to Marcia Inhorn's article, which describes male identity in terms of patriarchal power which entails “the explicit production of offspring, who they love and nurture, but also dominate and control” (170). The British occupation took away not only Egyptians' ability to “love and nurture” (protect and provide for) their country, but also their ability to “dominate and control” (govern) it. In this context, the new conception of the effendi defined intimately tied together masculinity and nationalism, whereby masculinity was defined in terms of race and class, but also nationalism (“I also cannot accept that patriotic sentiment is something a man should be rewarded for having, since he would not be a man without it.” -Kamil), and nationalism was politically defined in terms of race and class and masculinity (62).