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).