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.