The paradoxes of masculinity: Some thoughts on segregated societies

Abstract

In this chapter, I discuss the concerns that led me to explore aspects of masculinity in Muslim societies, although these did not form an explicit component of my original research agenda. In the process of assembling material for quite a different project – namely a comparative analysis of women, Islam and the state (Kandiyoti 1991) – insights and hypotheses concerning the construction of masculine identities crept up surreptitiously and eventually called for attention with an insistence that could no longer be ignored. This focus on masculinity led me to revise and amend some of my earlier assumptions about the nature of patriarchy (Kandiyoti 1988a) and to question my reading of materials I had been using. A clarification of my intellectual trajectory is therefore in order as a means of situating my observations, which at this stage remain tentative and exploratory. Anyone working on questions of modernization and women’s emancipation in the Middle East must inevitably come across those ‘enlightened’, pro-feminist men who were often the first to denounce practices which they saw as debasing to women – enforced ignorance, seclusion, polygyny and repudiation (a husband’s unilateral right to divorce his wife). I considered their appearance as unproblematic since a whole panoply of explanations was available for their emergence: the effects of colonial expansion and exposure to the west (Ahmed 1992), the rise of new classes in this context (Cole 1981) and a more universal thrust towards modernity inherent in emergent nationalist projects (Jayawardena 1988). Nonetheless, I had misgivings about the deeper motivations of male reformers and wondered if they were being self-serving by manifestly bemoaning the subjection of women while in fact rebelling against their own lack of emancipation from communal and, in particular, paternal control (Kandiyoti 1988b). Yet how was I to explain instances where their tone was not merely rational and didactic, but strident or full of rage and disgust? Even in a relatively recent text, Mazhar Ul Haq Khan adopts an impassioned tone to talk about the ravages of the purdah family on the male psyche: The Purdah husband’s treatment of his wife or wives is authoritarian, in some cases actually harsh and sadistic. In fact, if polygamous, he can maintain peace among his wives only by the exercise of strict authority and command. The little children note the frightened flutter in the zenana at his appearance, which engenders the same emotions of fear, flight and general avoidance as they notice in their mother or mothers and other inmates of the zenana. This creates an emotional gulf between them and their father.

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