Iranian Masculinities

This unique study spotlights the role of masculinity in Iranian history, linking masculinity to social and political developments.

For years, Iranian academics, writers, and scholars have equated national development and progress with the reform of men’s sexual behavior. Modern intellectuals repudiated native sexuality in Iran, just as their European counterparts in France and Germany did, arguing that transforming male identity was essential to the recovery of the nation. DeSouza offers an alternate narrative of modern Iranian masculinity as an attempt to redraw social hierarchies among men. Moving beyond rigid portrayals of Islamic patriarchy and female oppression, she analyzes debates about manhood and maleness in early twentieth-century Iran, particularly around questions of race and sexuality. DeSouza presents the larger implications of Pahlavi hegemonic masculinity in creating racialized male subjects and “productive” sexualities. In addition, she explores a cross-pollination with Europe, identifying how the “East” shaped visions of European male identity.

This dissertation examines masculinities in relation to Pahlavi-era Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran, within diaspora, as well as the limitations of an ethno-cultural/gender study through ideologies of postidentification. "Performing Persianicity" functions as trope and designation throughout of constructed formulations and manifestations of masculinities, as well as anchoring reminder of performance as primary filter for the analyses undertaken. "Performing Persianicity" examines citings of masculinities in relation to Iranianisms from the 1970s to the current moment and the navigation of the phenomena under question moves neither chronologically, nor teleologically, but within the backdrop of a matrix under construction throughout the last 40 years. Chapter 1, "Persianicity Proxies for Maardahnehgee," defines Persianicity as a performative demarcation and effect of ideologies instituted by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Persianization of the subject, or identification as Persian, is argued as a production indebted to engagements with a set of qualities that would strive to make visible resonances marking this strain of masculinity. The turn from the ethnicized Iranian to the diasporic Persian is evidenced through the 1971 2,500th Anniversary Celebration of Iran, the work of comedian Maziar Jobrani, and the film House of Sand and Fog. In Chapter 2, "Mourning Masculinities," the diasporic masculinized subject is introduced within spaces of mourning and through a focus upon gendered subjectivity in relation to the ideologies of loss and trauma. The investigation is undertaken with focus upon Babak Shokrian's film America So Beautiful, using supplemental assistance from photographic archives of Los Angeles. "Sacrificial Masculinities in Crisis," Chapter 3, unveils tactical and strategic maneuvers wherein sacrificial masculinities are evacuated in the attempted production of a unique strain of Islamic masculinity unrealized prior to the Shah, or within diaspora. The space to secure Islamic masculinized identification is problematized in the face of modernity, and analyzed through the work of artist Sadegh Tirafkan, Asghar Farhadi's A Separation, and the situation of activist Majid Tavakoli. Chapter 4, "Performing Postidentifications," focuses upon borderline presences, wherein the subject is located neither within nor outside of the ethnic, the national, or those "real" behaviors that manufacture apparitions of consistent identification. The installation of the prefix "post" to the idea of identification is achieved through the interrogation of a subject who no longer identifies within borders, nor the ethnic paradigm, and traced through the work of artist Shahram Entekhabi and the personae of rock band Queen's Freddie Mercury.

Narrative and Violence explores philosophical and anthropological ideas surrounding the nature of social suffering, its relationship to social, historical and political contexts and the manner in which diasporic communities narrate their suffering. Against the setting of the adverse relationship between Iran and the West, it examines the ways in which suffering shapes identity and belonging in the Diaspora for Iranians living in the West. Based on rich empirical information drawn from the UK and Australia, this book investigates ways in which the lives of Iranians living in the Diaspora are affected by the understanding of Iran in terms of abjection, as that which is beyond or outside of The West. Exploring the emotions and feelings of pain and suffering, as they are rooted in and shape various categories of experience, propounds a view of suffering which is thoroughly grounded in culture, history and politics. Presenting a new theoretical and cultural understanding of experiences of suffering, violence, war and displacement, this book contributes to critical debates within sociology, geography, anthropology history and cultural and critical theory.

In this collection, a group of historians explores the role of masculinity in the modern history of politics and war. Building on three decades of research in women's and gender history, the book opens up new avenues in the history of masculinity. The essays by social, political and cultural historians therefore map masculinity's part in making revolution, waging war, building nations, and constructing welfare states. Although the masculinity of modern politics and war is now generally acknowledged, few studies have traced the emergence and development of politics and war as masculine domains in the way this book does. Covering the period from the American Revolution to the Second World War and ranging over five continents, the essays in this book bring to light the many "masculinities" that shaped--and were shaped by--political and military modernity.

Men in Middle Eastern societies are often viewed by the popular Western media only in the context of religious fundamentalism and the subjugation of women. This book shifts the discourse on gender, usually focused on women, to men in the Middle East, and to young men in Iranian society in particular.

This innovative book outlines the great complexity, variety and difference of male identities in Islamic societies. From the Taliban orphanages of Afghanistan to the cafés of Morocco, from the experience of couples at infertility clinics in Egypt to that of Iraqi conscripts, it shows how the masculine gender is constructed and negotiated in the Islamic Ummah. It goes far beyond the traditional notion that Islamic masculinities are inseparable from the control of women, and shows how the relationship between spirituality and masculinity is experienced quite differently from the prevailing Western norms. Drawing on sources ranging from modern Arabic literature to discussions of Muhammad‘s virility and Abraham‘s paternity, it portrays ways of being in the world that intertwine with non-Western conceptions of duty to the family, the state and the divine.

Middle Eastern Muslim men have been widely vilified as terrorists, religious zealots, and brutal oppressors of women. The New Arab Man challenges these stereotypes with the stories of ordinary Middle Eastern men as they struggle to overcome infertility and childlessness through assisted reproduction. Drawing on two decades of ethnographic research across the Middle East with hundreds of men from a variety of social and religious backgrounds, Marcia Inhorn shows how the new Arab man is self-consciously rethinking the patriarchal masculinity of his forefathers and unseating received wisdoms. This is especially true in childless Middle Eastern marriages where, contrary to popular belief, infertility is more common among men than women. Inhorn captures the marital, moral, and material commitments of couples undergoing assisted reproduction, revealing how new technologies are transforming their lives and religious sensibilities. And she looks at the changing manhood of husbands who undertake transnational "egg quests"--set against the backdrop of war and economic uncertainty--out of devotion to the infertile wives they love. Trenchant and emotionally gripping, The New Arab Man traces the emergence of new masculinities in the Middle East in the era of biotechnology.

Much has been written on how masculinity shapes international relations, but little feminist scholarship has focused on how international relations shape masculinity. Charlotte Hooper draws from feminist theory to provide an account of the relationship between masculinity and power. She explores how the theory and practice of international relations produces and sustains masculine identities and masculine rivalries. This volume asserts that international politics shapes multiple masculinities rather than one static masculinity, positing an interplay between a "hegemonic masculinity" (associated with elite, western male power) and other subordinated, feminized masculinities (typically associated with poor men, nonwestern men, men of color, and/or gay men). Employing feminist analyses to confront gender-biased stereotyping in various fields of international political theory—including academic scholarship, journals, and popular literature like The Economist—Hooper reconstructs the nexus of international relations and gender politics during this age of globalization.

Japanese men are becoming cool. The suit-and-tie salaryman remodels himself with beauty treatments and 'cool biz' fashion. Loyal company soldiers are reborn as cool, attentive fathers. Hip hop dance is as manly as martial arts. Could it even be cool for middle-aged men to idolize teenage girl popstars? This collection of studies from the University of Cambridge provides fascinating insights into the contemporary lives of Japanese men as it looks behind the image of 'Cool Japan.' (Series: Japanese Studies / Japanologie, Vol. 6) [Subject: Japanese Studies, Cultural Studies]