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Masculinities Journal_issue 3
ISSN 2148-3841 MASCULINITIES a journal of identity and culture Issue 3 February 2015 MASCULINITIES a journal of identity and culture Issue 3, February 2015 ISSN 2148-3841 CONTACT e-mail [email protected] Murat GOC English Language and Literature Dept. Faculty of Arts and Sciences Pamukkale University Denizli, Turkey Masculinities, A Journal of Identity and Culture, is a peer reviewed international academic journal published biannually by Initiative for Critical Studies of Masculinity. The journal is published online and can be accessed via http://masculinitiesjournal.org. The whole content of the journal is free for public use and the authors possess the rights of their articles and they are responsible for the content. The texts in this journal can’t be reproduced, stored, transmitted or quoted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of its author(s). To submit articles and reviews for future issues, please see the guidelines at the end of the journal. For further information and enquiries, please contact the editor(s). Typesetting Cover Design Cover Photo : Şenol Topçu : Murat Göç : Neşe Şahin . EDITORIAL BOARD Chief Editor Murat GÖÇ (Pamukkale University) Editorial Board Cimen Günay Erkol (Ozyegin University) Ozlem Duva Kaya (Dokuz Eylül University) Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu (University of Sussex) Selin Akyüz (University of Oxford) Review Editors Gülden Sayılan (ODTÜ) Beril Türkoğlu (ODTÜ) Assistant Editors Senol Topcu (Independent Researcher) Naz Hıdır (Ege University) Berfin Varışlı (Maltepe University) Atilla Barutçu (Bülent Ecevit University) Advisory Board Aksu Bora Hacettepe University Dilek Cindoğlu Mardin Artuklu Universitesi Alev Özkazanç Ankara University Eda Acara Queens University Alp Biricik Independent Researcher Emel BastürkAkca Kocaeli University Arda Arikan Akdeniz University Esma Durugönül Akdeniz University Aslıhan Doğan Topcu Mersin University Fatma Umut Beşpınar METU Ayse Erbora Okan University Feryal Cubukcu Dokuz Eylul University Ayse L. Kirtunc Professor Emerita Figen Uzar Özdemir Bülent Ecevit University Berrin Koyuncu Lorasdağı Hacettepe University Funda Şenol Cantek Ankara University Burcu Alkan Bahçeşehir University Gamze Toksoy Mimar Sinan Univerty Chris Haywood Newcastle University Güncel Önkal Maltepe Univerty Cirus Rinaldi University of Palermo Hande Eslen-Ziya Glasgow Caledonian University Cüneyt Çakırlar Nottingham Trent University- Bilgi University Hilal Onur-Ince Hacettepe Univerty Daphna Hacker Tel Aviv University Jonathan Allan Brandon University Joseph Vandello University of South Florida Orkun Kocabiyik Mugla University Maria Rashid SOAS Papatya Genca-Alkan Celal Bayar University Melek Goregenli Ege University Raewyn Connell University of Sydney Meryem Ayan Pamukkale University Sandra Slater College of Charleston Murat İri Istanbul University Selcuk Candansayar Gazi University Michael Kimmel SUNY Serpil Sancar Ankara University Nejat Ulusay Ankara University Simten Coşar Hacettepe University Nil Mutluer Nişantaşı University Şahinde Yavuz Karadeniz Technical University Nilgün Toker Ege University Seref Uluocak Onsekiz Mart University Content İçindekiler 3-8 Introduction Giriş Articles/Makaleler 10-34 Coming Out as Heterosexual: The Evangelical Subversion of 1990s Identity Politics and the Contemporary Quest for the Real Man - Heteroseksüelliğin İlanı: 1990’lar Kimlik Politikaları Tartışmalarının Evanjelikler Tarafından Tahribi ve Günümüzde Gerçek Erkek Arayışları Tamas Nagypal 35-54 The Othered Black Male: Images of Masculinity in African American Lesbian Erotic Fiction - Ötekileştirilen Siyahi Erkek: Afro-Amerikan Lezbiyen Erotik Kurgularda Erkeklik İmajı Gloria Gadsden 55-85 Threatened Masculinities: Men’s Experiences of Gender Equality in Rural Rwanda - Tehdit Edilmiş Erkeklikler: Ruanda Kırsalındaki Erkeklerin Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği Deneyimleri Mediatrice Kagaba 86-104 The Fragrance of a New Man? Masculinity and Fashion in Young Males’ Cologne Commercials - Yeni Erkeğin Kokusu mu? Genç Erkeklere Yönelik Kolonya Reklamlarında Erkeklik ve Moda Iván Ferrero Ruiz 105-128 Drags, Drugs and Dirt: Abjection and Masculinity in Marilyn Manson's Music Video (s)Aint - “Drag”ler, Uyuşturucular ve Kir: Marilyn Manson’un Müzik Videosu “(s)Aint’’de Bayağılık ve Erkeklik Nataša Pivec 129-155 “Ucundan Azıcık”la Atılan Sağlam Temel: Türkiye’de Sünnet Ritüeli ve Erkeklik İlişkisi - A Steady Basis with “the Loss of a Small Piece”: A Relationship between Male Circumcision and Hegemonic Masculinity in Turkey Atilla Barutçu 156-188 “Ceremonial Circumcision” as One of the Mechanisms Which Enables the Regeneration and Intergenerational Transmission of Manhood Culture in Turkey - Türkiye’de Erkeklik Kültürünü Yeniden Üreten ve Kuşaklar Arası Aktarımını Sağlayan Mekanizmalardan Biri Olarak “Törensel Sünnet” N. Gamze Toksoy-Ayşegül Taşıtman 189-212 “Militarizing Masculinities in Red Army Discourse and Subjectivity, 1942-1943” “Kızıl Ordu Söyleminde ve Öznelliğinde Militarist Erkeklikler, 1942-1943” Steven G. Jug 213-233 Gerçek Erkek Ayağa Kalkabilir mi Lütfen: Trans Erkeklerin Cinsiyetlendirilmiş Performansı Elijah C. Nealy Reviews/Kitap İncelemeleri 235-239 Erkek Millet, Asker Millet: Türkiye’de Militarizm, Milliyetçilik, Erkek(lik)ler Çimen Günay-Erkol 240-246 Eros and Tragedy: Jewish Male Fantasies and the Masculine Revolution of Zionism Aneta Stępień 247-249 British Pronoun Use, Prescription and Processing Feryal Cubukcu 250-252 Contributors to this Issue 253-259 Guidelines For Ozgecan Aslan and All Victims of Gender Violence On February 11, a 20 year old woman, Ozgecan Aslan, was reported missing in Mersin. Two days later, her body was found burnt by the bus driver with the help of his own father and his friend. This tragic, inhumane, and maddeningly routine murder isn’t the first and won’t be the last. Only within the last year, almost 300 women were murdered by men in Turkey according to the official reports besides thousands of incidents of rape, domestic violence, harrassment and constraint. It is no surprise that every day, and every day, we turn our deaf ears and blind eyes and muted tongues to those unreported incidents of violence not to mention hundreds of LGBT individuals who have been murdered, forced to commit suicide, and exposed to legal negligence. Why? No, it wasn’t that Turkey is an increasingly conservative country although Islamist newspapers and journalists immediately reacted that she died because of “secular freedom of sex” and “immoral Western values”. No, it wasn’t also that Turkey is a land of repressed sexuality although people in Turkey “proudly” raise the flag of being number one google searchers of child porn and rape porn. No, it wasn’t that women were socially isolated more than ever for the last couple of years despite that ministers of the government advised women to be career-wise by staying at home and raising their children (let alone that sickening warning that chaste women shouldn’t laugh in public). No, it wasn’t that women and LGBT individuals were politically suppressed and left without an option although the leader of “New Turkey” pointed his fingers at feminists and decreed that men and women can’t be equal (in a meeting organized by a pro-government women’s organization crazily applauded by women) and at LGBT people (the first case he took to the court as the president of Turkey was against a queer activist). And yes, it was because patriarchy and masculine violence have secured their throne in Turkey every passing year thanks to the smothering discourse created and promoted by high officers and politicians in Turkey although some hillariously hailed the president as the revolutionary who tore Masculinities Journal down the towers of hegemonic masculinity. And yes, it was because masculine violence is a virus and just like a virus, it seems insurmountable at first, eats up our joy and feeds upon our silence and fear and offsprings of violence need no explanation ofttimes. Yet, we know that it’s not only about Turkey and its deafening daily politics that encourages violence against diversity and plurality. Every year, around 2500 brides are being burnt in their kitchens in India so grooms don’t have to pay dowries. Just recently, Nigerian Boko Haram kidnapped more than 300 school girls in serial incidents of kidnapping since they thought girls should not go to schools and instead be married at earlier ages. Only a few of them were found raped and brutally beaten down. Human Rights Watch reported that Russian authorities “effectively legalized discrimination against LGBT people” according to CNN. Rape has been used as a systematic weapon of mass destruction against women for many years by Serbian, Rwandan, Chilean, and American soldiers. Mass media nestles down with the pornography of violence and victims of violence can’t be heard unless they come up with an “interesting news story” squeezed between two coming up nexts. Violence against women and LGBT people is on the rise globally and gendercide has never looked so frightening and inequality between genders so crushing. So, what do we want? We want no revenge for sure. We know that any form of violence is deliberately masculine and those who live by the sword die by the sword. We want to stop violence in any form no matter who exercises for what reason. We want to raise our voices, men and women and LGBT altogether, against gendered violence and negligence. We want to unite and strenghten our ties with our siblings so that noone can hurt anyone of us any longer. We want to maintain that we, as people of the Initiative of Critical Studies of Masculinities, are here to inspire, to protect and to fight against any form of gendered inequality and discrimination. Murat Goc, PhD On Behalf of the Editorial Board 2 Giriş Ursula Le Guin’in kısacık harika öyküsü Omelası Bırakıp Gidenler kusursuz bir mutluluk üzerine kurulmuş Omelas kasabasında geçer. Bu kasabada ne elem ne keder vardır, herkes ne çok zengin ne çok fakir, ne çok hasta ne çok sağlıklıdır. Kimse uyurken yarınına dair endişeler duymaz, bir önceki günü özlemle anımsamaz. Bu mükemmel toplumun mutluluğu ve huzuru tek bir koşula bağlıdır; bu kasabadaki evlerin birisinin bodrumunda bir ufak çocuk hapistir ve orada kalmak zorundadır. Bu güzel kasabanın insanlarının mutluluğu, unutmak ve yok saymak üzerine kuruludur. Ancak hatırlayanlar ve yok sayamayanlar da çıkar aradan ve Omelas’ı terk etmek zorunda kalırlar. Çok yıllardır ara ara mutluluğumuzun ve huzurumuzun teminatı olan cehalet uykumuzdan uyanıyoruz. Ya bir kadın öldürülüyor sokak ortasında, ya da bir başkasının bedeninde sigara söndürülüyor. Bir başkası tecavüze uğruyor, dövülüyor, alınıyor, satılıyor, ölüme sürükleniyor. Bu kadınlar o kadar çoğalıyor ki hayatımıza devam edebilmemiz, ancak unutmak ve görmezden gelmek ile mümkün olabiliyor. Bu kadınlar o kadar çoğalıyor ki sadece gündüzlerimizi, işyerlerimizi, sokakları, oturma odalarını değil, geceleri uykularımızı da işgal etmeye başlıyorlar. Artık görmezden gelemeyenlerimiz, huzurlu yaşamlarını terk etmek ve uzaklara giderek yeni yalanlarına sığınmak istiyorlar. Gidilecek yerlerimiz ve sığınacak yalanlarımızı tüketiyoruz ve bizi en çok bu endişelendiriyor. Özgecan’ın katli, neredeyse ona üzüldüğümüz için utanmamızı gerektirecek kadar içimizi acıtıyor. Utanıyoruz çünkü Özgecan, şimdiye kadar onca kadın tecavüze uğradığı, işkence gördüğü ve alenen öldürüldüğü için ve hiçbir şey yapılmadığı için ölüyor. Cehaletimiz ve gözümüzü kapatıp kulağımızı sağır edişimiz kadınların ölü bedenlerinde kendilerine karşılık buluyor. Ölümler rakamlara, rakamlar istatistiklere dönüşüyor, oklar ve grafikler şiddetin kıblesini gösteriyor, ölüm ne kadar -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 3-8 Masculinities Journal şiddetli olursa istatistiklere o kadar yansıyor. Bir kadının ölümü ne zaman trajik olur mesela, ne zaman kabul edilemez olur, ne zaman kanıksanır ve ussallaştırılır; televizyonun terazisinde tartılıyor, ölçülüyor, biçiliyor ve hükme bağlanıyor. Televizyon, devasa bir porno panayırı gibi, şiddetin bile görülmesi ve duyulması için pornografik olmasını şart koşuyor. Ama son bir kaç haftadır gördüklerimiz, ölüme, ölümlere, cinayete ve vahşete tepki verişimiz bizi biraz daha dehşete düşürüyor. İdamın geri getirilmesini isteyenlerin sesini, televizyonlardan yankılanan “önce adam ol!” nidaları bastırıyor. Hadım edilsinler diyenler bir tarafta, senin anana bacına aynı şeyi yapsalar iyi mi diyenler diğer tarafta herkes şiddetin sonuçları ile nasıl başa çıkacağımızı konuşuyor, öfkemizi, çaresizliğimizi ve incinmişliğimizi nasıl yatıştırabilir ve nasıl hayatımıza devam edebiliriz ve unutabiliriz, onun derdine düşüyoruz. Gazeteler televizyonlar üzerinden bir hafta geçmeden dosyayı ve haberleri diğer binlercesinin yanına kaldırıyor. Nasıl duracak peki? Ne zaman erkekler öldürerek sevmekten vazgeçecekler? Ne zaman bitecek erkeklerin bu alınganlıkları, incinmişlikleri, kırılan gururları, "bir an kendimi kaybetttim, erkekliğime laf etti, kendimi tutamadım, pişmanım hakim bey" leri? Erkeklerin hoş görülemez, iyi halden indirilemez, ve uzlaşılamaz şiddetinin kaynağı nedir? Neden, bir erkek, başka bir erkeği, başka bir kadını, ya da LGBTİ'yi, cezalandırma hakkını kendisinde görür? Bu soruların binlerce cevabı var ve ne yazık ki bu sorular yeni sorular değil. Demek ki bu cevapların hiçbirisi, tek başına açıklamaya, sorunu çözmeye, içimize su serpmeye ve geleceğe umutla bakmaya yönelik çareler sunmuyor bize. Belki, bu yüzden, var olan cevaplar yerine, başka cevaplar aramak, soruna biraz "yamuk bakmak", hep cevabın olduğunu düşündüğümüz yere tekrar bir salim kafa ile bakmak gerekiyor. Belki, mesela, bu şiddetin erkek şiddeti değil, eril şiddet olduğunu düşünmek gerekiyor. Erkekliğin tek başına, aynı kadınlık gibi, biyolojik bir mutlakiyet içermediğini, erkek bedenine sahip olmanın kimseyi tek başına tahakkümcü, zorba ve şiddet dolu kılmadığını, erkek 4 Masculinities Journal doğulmadığını ancak erkek olunduğunu düşünerek başlamak gerekiyor. Bir kurum olarak erkekliğin, erilliğin ve patriarkinin üzerinde yükseldiğini ve sadece kadınlarla olan ilişkilerinde değil, diğer erkeklerle ve kendilerine göre "daha az" erkek olanlarla ilişkilerinde de hegemonik bir tahakküm inşa ettiğini ve sürdürdüğünü göz önüne almak gerekiyor belki. Bir tahakküm kurumu olarak erkekliğin ve erilliğin, bizatihi kendisinin krizler ve şiddet üzerine kurulduğu, ancak kriz alanları ve şiddet üreterek ayakta kalabildiğini, kendini dönüştürdüğünü, aç bir canavar gibi hiç doymadığını ve daha fazla kriz ve daha fazla şiddet için aşerdiğini de hesaba katmak gerekiyor. Erilliğin, daha bebek doğmadan önce alınan mavi yatak takımları, süslü bebek başlıkları, dedesinin ismi ile bebeği taçlandırma planları ile başladığını, sünnetle, oyuncaklarla, kreşte asker elbisesi giydirilmiş müsamere kahramanlıkları ile, okulda, sokakta, askerde, işyerinde, stadyumda ve yatakta her dakika sınandığını hatırlamak gerekiyor. Yaşamın devamının erkek iktidarını sürdürmesine bağlı olduğu, erkek olmanın milli bir vazife, dini bir emir, bir şeref ve onur meselesi olduğu ve erkekliğine halel geleceğine ölmesinin (ve/veya öldürmesinin) yeğ olduğu hatırlatılarak pekiştirildiğini akılda tutmak gerekiyor. Aslında bu mülahazalar, bugün ortaya çıkmış da değil. Bir mücadele ve varoluş mücadelesi olarak feminizmin acı ve kan dolu tarihi, erkeklik kurumuna, erilliğe ve patriarkiye karşı eleştirel bir tavır geliştiren, erkekliği ve erilliğin mutlak iktidarını reddeden ve ona karşı mücadele eden, kadın, erkek, LGBTİ ya da kendini her nasıl tanımlıyorsa öyle olmak isteyen her bireyin kendini var etme ve var olma mücadelesine destek verenlere örnek oldu. Türkiye dışında neredeyse 40 yıldır, Türkiye'de de 20 yıldan fazla süredir, kadın, erkek ve LGBTİ bireyler, hep birlikte ve yan yana, erkeklik kurumunun dönüştürülebilir, eril tahakkümün alaşağı edilebilir, erkek bedeninin ve kimliğinin yeniden tanımlanabilir olduğuna dair "iyi niyetli" bir umudu içlerinde taşıdılar ve bunun için mücadele ettiler. Elbette feminist mücadelenin kuramsal ve pratik birikiminin yanında, feminizmi ve toplumsal cinsiyet kimlikleri bağlamında eşitlik isteyen ve ayrımcılık karşıtı mücadeleyi desteklediği, zenginleştirdiği ve yeni çözümler sunduğu da yadsınamaz. Erkekler, aynı 5 Masculinities Journal kadınlar ve LGBTİ'ler gibi, kendilerine öğretilen erkeklik rollerini tartışmak, eril tahakkümün içselleştirilmiş kodlarını çözmek ve "başka bir erkekliğin" mümkün olduğunu önce kendilerine göstermek zorundalar ve bunun için de büyük ölçüde feministlerin açtığı yoldan ve deneyimlerinden faydalanmaya ihtiyaçları var. Ama beri yandan da, her kimlik yapısının öncelikle söylemsel düzlemde var olduğunu da akılda tutarak, bu söylemsel yapıyı alt edecek pratikleri de hayata geçirmek durumundalar. Bu sebeple, ne yapılacaksa bir an önce yapılmalı ve sonuna kadar sürdürülmeli ki, erilliğin görünür görünmez tüm hallerinden arınılabilsin, iktidarın kendisi ile hesaplaşılabilsin ve patriarkinin Babil kuleleri tekrar yükselmemecesine yerle bir edilebilsin. Peki ne yapmalı? Erkeklere, erilliğe, ataerkiye dair ne yapmalı ki artık erkekliğin kitabı hiç yazılmasın? Bunu söylemek, hele bugünlerde, hiç uygun olmayacak ama öncelikle sabırlı olmak gerekiyor. Erkekliğin iktidarı bir günde kurulmadı, bir yasa ile bir günde değişmesini ummak, toplumsal yapının, dinin, militarizmin, kapitalizmin kurucu öğesini bir günde ortadan kaldırmak, içimize yerleşmiş hükmetme, sömürme ve yok etme arzusunu bir günde yok saymak gerçekçi bir hedef değil. Ama bu patriarkinin tahakkümünün hiç alt edilemeyeceği anlamına da gelmiyor; sadece uzun süreceğini ve aynı yolları tekrar tekrar kat etmek gerekeceğini bilmek gerekiyor. Erilliğin yapısökümü, her erkeğin, kadının ve LGBTİ’nin kendi içindeki iktidar ile hesaplaşması ile başlayabilir ancak. Her toplumsal grubun kendi iktidarını ve kendi şiddetini ürettiğini ve bu iktidar ve şiddetin ancak erillik ile ilişkilenerek var olabileceğini ve önce her türlü iktidardan ve iktidarı ayakta tutan sembolik ve fiziksel şiddetten bir adım uzaklaşarak mümkün olabileceğini düşünerek başlayabilir. Eriliğin bir kurum olarak eleştirisi, önce dil ile savaşmamızı, uzlaşmamızı ve dili yeniden kurmamızı zorunlu kılar (feministler de böyle başlamamış mıydı, bir kadın dili ve bir kadın eleştirisi (gynocriticism) kurmak kadına ait bir kültürel alanı, ve böylelikle de bir ideolojik mücadele alanını belirlemenin ön koşulu değil miydi?). Sadece bayan demek yerine kadın demekle de çözülebilecek basit bir mesele değil bu, belki bir adım ama orada bitmiyor. Misojiniyi hayata bakışının temeline yerleştirmiş ve 6 Masculinities Journal yaratılış zırhı ile sorgulanamaz kılmışlar bir yana, kendini solda tanımlayan ve modernliğin öncüsü olduğunu ileri süren bir parti her hafta uzun rakibini “delikanlı olmaya” “mert olmaya” davet etmese mesela, bu bir başlangıç olabilir. Seçim sürecinde, “er meydanına” çıktığında, rakibini eleştirip “Ey vatandaş evine ekmek götürecek parayı bulabil diye, karının karşısında boynu bükük kalma diye bize oy ver” nidalarıyla oy isterken, muhatabının erkek olduğu öncülüyle hareket etmediği bir siyasi söylem başlangıç olabilir. Tarihi, kişisel ve kolektif tarihimizi kurgularken, kahramanlardan, şehitlerden ve kutsallaştırmanın dilinden uzak durabilsek, bu bir başlangıç olabilir. Hadım ve idam gibi cezaların, bir dereceye kadar, fallus merkezli kültürü yeniden üretebileceğini de düşünmek bir başlangıç olabilir. Okulda,sokakta ve evde erkek olmayı yücelten ve “erkek olmamayı” bir ayıp, yenilgi ve eksiklik sayan her türlü söylemle azimli ve kararlı bir mücadele için ufak da olsa bir adım atmak, bir başlangıç olabilir. Ancak sadece söylemsel düzlemde üretilecek bir muhalefet burjuva vicdanlarını rahatlatacak politik doğruculuktan başka bir şey üretmeyecektir. Sürekli ve yaygın bir pratikle beslenmeyen her talep, bir süre sonra çözümsüzlüğün kendisine dönüşür; tepkisellikle ve şiddet ile sınırlı her çözüm önerisi kaçınılmaz olarak hayalkırıklığı ve öğrenilmiş çaresizlikle sonlanır. Bu sebeple, her ne kadar “beyhude” ve “önemsiz” görünse de, her çaba çok değerli ve önemli. 1970’li yıllardan başlayarak profeminist erkekler ve erkeklik ve erillik ile sorunu olanlar birlikte yanyana mücadele ediyorlar. Menengage ve White Ribbon gibi oluşumlar, dünyanın dört bir yanında sabırlı ve alçakgönüllü çalışmalarının karşılığını alıyorlar. Türkiye’de Erkek Muhabbeti, Biz Erkek Değiliz ve Ataerkiye Karşı Erkekler gibi cesur ama yalnız hareketler, düzenledikleri atölyelerle, eylemlerle ve bilinçlendirme ve farkındalık yaratmayı amaçlayan metinler ile ulaşabildikleri her yerde, erkeğin iktidarı ve şiddeti ile hesaplaşmasına öncülük ediyorlar. Çoğunluğunu farklı disiplinlerden bir grup akademisyenin ve aktivistin oluşturduğu Eleştirel Erkeklik İncelemeleri İnisiyatifi, ulusal ve uluslararası toplantılar düzenliyor, bir akademik dergi yayınlıyor ve geçmişi neredeyse 20 yılı bulan tekil çalışmaları bir araya toplamak ve 7 Masculinities Journal yaygınlaştırmak için çaba gösteriyor. Bu bağlamda, nasıl sınıf mücadelesi sadece işçilerin, ırkçılığa karşı mücadele sadece siyahların, etnik ayrımcılığa karşı mücadele sadece azınlık mensuplarının meselesi değilse ve olamazsa, toplumsal cinsiyet temelli eşitsizlik, ayrımcılık ve şiddetin de, sadece kadınların meselesi değildir. Bu çabaların sürdürülmesi ve sonuçlarının kalıcı olabilmesi için, patriarkiye karşı mücadelede kadın, erkek ve LGBTİ her bireyin üzerine düşen sorumluluğu yerine getirmesi ve birbirine destek olması gerektiğini düşünüyoruz. Biz, Eleştirel Erkeklik İncelemeleri İnisiyatifi üyeleri olarak eril ideolojinin görünen ve görünmeyen halleri ile olan mücadelemizde kadın, erkek ve LGBTİ dostlarımızın da desteğiyle ilerlemeye, dönüştürmeye ve mücadele etmeye devam edeceğiz. Eril şiddetin mağdurlarını unutarak değil aklımızda ve içimizde taşıyarak yeni mağdurların yaratılmaması için Omelas’ı, barış ve eşitlik umudu ile kurduğumuz cennetlerimizi, terk etmeyeceğiz. Çimen Günay-Erkol, Selin Akyüz, Murat Göç Masculinities Journal Editör Kurulu adına 8 ARTICLES Coming Out as Heterosexual: The Evangelical Subversion of 1990s Identity Politics and the Contemporary Quest for the Real Man Tamas Nagypal York University Abstract: This paper argues that the sexual discourses of contemporary Evangelicals in the US represent a move beyond the liberal democratic politics struggling for equal rights for different sexual identity groups. By openly standing by a heteronormative and male dominated form of social organization, Evangelicals aim to overthrow the current symbolic order based on a hidden heterosexual bias. I describe this move as the psychotic coming out as heterosexual, organized around the idea of a new man, the impossible norm of a real masculinity defined negatively which can be seen as a return to the Freudian primal father. I suggest that this new male figure escapes the logic of the FoucauldianButlerian understanding of power by standing in the short circuit of its functioning, thus getting a hold of a sinister agency beyond identity politics. Key words: Evangelical Christianity, queer theory, liberal democracy, real man, psychoanalysis, sexuality -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 10-34 Masculinities Journal Heteroseksüelliğin İlanı: 1990’lar Kimlik Politikaları Tartışmalarının Evanjelikler Tarafından Tahribi ve Günümüzde Gerçek Erkek Arayışları Tamas Nagypal York Üniversitesi Özet: Bu makale, ABD’de günümüz Evanjeliklerinde cinsellik söylemlerinin, farklı cinsel kimlik gruplarının eşit haklar mücadelesini yürüten liberal demokratik politikaların bir adım sonrasına geçtiği savını tartışmaktadır. Apaçık bir şekilde heteronormative ve erkek egemen bir toplumsal örgütlenme örneği olan Evanjelikler üstü örtük heteroseksüel tarafgirliği üzerine kurulmuş bir sembolik düzeni alt etmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu değişimi, Freudyen atababa imgesine bir dönüş olarak görülebilecek ve olumsuz bir anlamda tanımlanmış bir gerçek erilliğin imkansız bir normu olarak yeni erkek fikri etrafında inşa edilmiş psikotik bir heteroseksüellik ifşası olarak tanımlıyorum. Bu yeni erkek figürünün Foucauldcu ve Butlercı iktidar anlayışı çerçevesinden çıktığını ve işlevselliğinin sınırlı dairesinde kalarak, bir kimlik politikası oluşturmanın ötesinde, netameli bir aracılığı yerine getirdiğini öne sürüyorum. Anahtar kelimeler: Evanjelik Hıristiyanlık, kuir kuramı, liberal demokrasi, gerçek erkek, psikoanaliz, cinsellik 11 Masculinities Journal Introduction W hen American liberals think of Evangelicals and sex, they usually think of repression. They should think again, Dagmar Herzog suggests in her 2008 book Sex in Crisis where she identifies a surprising shift in the American Christian Right’s discourses on sex, a turn away from prohibition towards what she calls “Christian pornography”, the flaunting of the transgressive and even downright obscene aspects of one’s heterosexuality. In this paper, while agreeing with Herzog’s description of this move, I present it from a different, psychoanalytic perspective. I revisit pre-9/11 queer theory’s critique of the heteronormative bias in liberal identity politics suggesting that something may have been lost in its contemporary, ostensibly more radical version that focuses on the attack of homonormativity and the repressiveness of the social symbolic order as such (Puar; Edelman). My emphasis is on the way in which Evangelicals, just like radical queers, also undermine today’s liberal democratic consensus that officially provides sexual equality for all; they do this not by secretly enjoying its latent heteronormative bias but by bringing it out to the open so that it actually threatens the functioning of the reigning symbolic order already bent in their favor. I call this procedure heterosexual coming out which I examine in its fundamental asymmetry to similar performances involving sexual minorities which, I claim, still rely on universal symbolic institutions smoothly functioning in the background. Using Judith Butler’s critique of gender identity as a starting point, I develop the concept of the heterosexual coming out as the blind spot of Butler’s and Ernesto Laclau’s politics of non-identity, arguing that such Evangelical performances are ultimately non-identitarian themselves as they are situated beyond universals, beyond the symbolic order, trying to resurrect the Freudian father of the primal horde in a new postidentitarian figure of the real man. I draw on Slavoj Žižek’s psychoanalytic theory of the inherent transgression to understand the challenge they pose both to liberal identity politics and to a ButlerianLaclauian critique of it. As the illustration of heteronormative coming 12 Masculinities Journal outs I present a series of rituals from different places of the contemporary American Evangelical Christian right that are connected not by a coherent ideology but by a common media strategy of attacking the traditional Oedipal father’s authority for being ineffective in the late capitalist society of the spectacle. From Homosexual Coming Out to the Politics of Non-identity W hen liberals think of a “coming out”, they usually think of it as a procedure concerning homosexuals. Furthermore, the idea of some kind of isolated space, that of the closet is evoked where the person can come out from to the light of the public arena supposedly shared by all of us. Through this process, the liberal fable tells us, even those who don’t share the sexual orientation of the majority can become fully fledged members of society by representing themselves, since, after all, we are all different and for that reason we all need to show to others who we really are to get recognized. It is the blind optimism of this doxa that Judith Butler already criticized in her Imitation and Gender Insubordination when she warned about the possible traps of gay and lesbian coming outs and their assumption of a fixed identity. She showed how every assertion of “this is what I am”, every disclosure of the “I” can work only through a radical exclusion, by concealing and repressing something through which process the “I” can gain clear boundaries. Coming out, she argued, in fact reproduces the closet as it relies on the space of being “in” that supports the triumphant being “out” (16). This, of course, is an argument about the impossibility of fully assuming any identity. What makes the case of gay and lesbian coming outs more complicated, however, is the fact that homosexuality as an identity category has a history in modern liberal democracies of designating the unnatural opposite of the heterosexual norm. Or, as Butler put it in Bodies That Matter, heterosexual gender identity is formed through the disavowal of the same sex desire (235). For this reason, a gay or lesbian coming out involves the avowal of a prior 13 Masculinities Journal disavowal, leaving intact the ideological framework that designates gay or lesbian merely as a bad copy of its original: heteronormativity (“Imitation” 17). Someone with a gay or lesbian identity constituted this way will count only as a secondary citizen in the supposedly equal public space. Butler’s argument is also a good illustration of what in Ernesto Laclau’s terms can be called the double inscription of heterosexuality operating in the symbolic space of liberal democracy. It works both as a hegemonic universal (based on the exclusion of other sexualities) and as one of the particular identities in a series of apparent equivalences defined against this universal background. Crucially, it works as the norm, as the hidden background creating the illusion of equality between different sexualities only insofar as it remains hidden in its normative function. What remains invisible is how the contingent element of heterosexual identity effectively posits itself as the necessary guarantee of the very field that accepts multiple sexualities. Today’s sexually tolerant yet fundamentally heteronormative liberal democratic space is therefore only the latest manifestation of what Laclau calls universality based on the logic of incarnation where a particular element directly stands in for the universal. Such an idea goes back to the European universalism of the 19th century, where, he argues, “there was no way to distinguish between European particularism and the universal functions it was supposed to incarnate, given that European universalism had constructed its identity through the cancellation of the logic of incarnation and, as a result, of the universalization of its own particularism.” (Laclau 86). For this reason, Butler, instead of the coming out, proposed the deconstruction of the hidden binary operating within the heteronormative universal. She argued that rather than silently accepting that homosexuality is just a copy, the task is to demonstrate how the seemingly original heterosexuality is already an imitation. What heterosexuals imitate, she claimed, is “a phantasmatic ideal of a heterosexual identity, one that is produced by the imitation as its effect” (“Imitation” 21). Since the construction of a fixed identity that would fully reach this ideal (a complete overlap between universal and 14 Masculinities Journal particular) always fails, the attempt has to be repeated again and again through a performance that, while sustaining the ideal, also exposes its vulnerability. On the positive side, it is precisely because “[all] gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original” (“Imitation” 21) that a different kind of community is possible, one based on the universal nonidentity of its subjects. Or to use again Laclau’s formulation: “[this] universal is part of my identity insofar as I am penetrated by a constitutive lack—that is, insofar as my differential identity has failed in its process of constitution. The universal emerges out of the particular not as some principle underlying and explaining it, but as an incomplete horizon suturing a dislocated particular identity.” (89). This doesn’t mean, however, that Laclau and Butler’s version of democracy would work without exclusions. For them, there is neither a subject, nor a social field without a set of exclusions already at work; without them, Butler argues, we would get an unlivable fullness of psychosis, a language without effective universals. Real equality always remains an unreachable ideal in this model. What we can do is to prevent any particular to fix the meaning of the universal, to become naturalized; we can make sure “that the hegemonic configuration is always open to contestation and change” (Butler, Laclau, and Žižek 5-9). To summarize, Butler argued against homosexual coming out because for her it remains stuck within the identity politics that sustains the liberal democratic political system which she sees “as an attempt to fix the meaning of equality within definite parameters”, among them the identity of heterosexuality (Butler, Laclau, and Žižek 8). Her underlying assumption was that the original sin of politics as well as its worst possible degeneration is to yield to the temptation of a fixed identity, that is, the naturalization of a particular as the universal norm. She reproached both heterosexual and homosexual identity politics for the same reason, for leaving the hidden normative universal untouched in the background. What about, however, heterosexual gender performances that do not rely on such a hidden naturalization of a universal; ones that posit themselves neither for, nor against, but beyond the symbolic ideal of heterosexuality which they believe to be 15 Masculinities Journal ineffective? What about heterosexual performances that are so distrustful of the symbolic efficiency of heteronormative institutions that they rather take matters into their own hands and, paradoxically, defend their particular heterosexuality even against the symbolic order that is biased in their favor? I will refer to these cases as heterosexual coming outs, which, I claim, remain in the blind spots of Butler’s theory, as well as of contemporary queer theory that focuses on the critique of homonormativity. Coming Out As Heterosexual as a Challenge to the Politics of Non-Identity W here, then, should we locate heterosexual coming outs? In their Deconstructing Heterosexuality, Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson aimed to do this by pointing at a fundamental asymmetry between lesbian and heterosexual feminists in terms of their sexual identity. While lesbian feminists usually proudly embrace their lesbian identity, their heterosexual colleagues, they suggested, tend to deny that their sexual orientation has anything to do with their feminist politics. They prefer to think of their sexuality as fluid, one that is open to possible same-sex relationships even if they have lived all their life as heterosexuals. The authors criticized this attitude by arguing that such a “lack of reflexiveness is the privilege of power” (Kitzinger and Wilkinson 149). They found putting lesbian and heterosexual feminists into a single category problematic since the latter could neutralize the struggle of the homosexuals claiming their oppressed identity. Therefore, they suggested, to regain this political potential, heterosexual feminists should distinguish themselves by “coming out” themselves. The problem is that the authors didn’t really deal with any actual ritual of coming out as heterosexual that would be comparable to its homosexual version described by Butler; instead they only used the term metaphorically. Their primary example was that of “brave” heterosexual feminists who are decent enough to admit they are privileged (150). One can hardly call this coming out as it is performed more out of guilt than pride. The other 16 Masculinities Journal example involved a feminine man who in all his life was considered gay until he decided to come out of the closet to himself, that is, not in public (145). Thus the question remains: are there analogous practices to the homosexual coming out of the closet among heterosexuals, ones that involve a comparable dimension of pride performed in public? And if so, how does their politics relate to that of their homosexual counterparts? To delineate what I understand by coming out as heterosexual, I turn to Slavoj Žižek’s critique of Butler’s theory of the heteronormative universal created through the disavowal of homosexuality. According to Žižek, what universality underprivileged excludes Other is whose not primarily status is the reduced, constrained, and so on, but its own permanent founding gesture – a set of unwritten, unacknowledged practices which, while publicly disavowed, are nonetheless the ultimate support of the existing power edifice. The public power edifice is haunted also by its own disavowed particular obscene underside, by the particular practices which break its own public rule – in short, by its ‘inherent transgression’. (Butler, Laclau, and Žižek 217). What Žižek draws attention to is that, paradoxically, a hegemonic universal doesn’t simply exclude its competing particularities trying to elevate themselves to the place of universality but also itself as particular. In psychoanalytic terms we are dealing here with the gap between official symbolic (written) law and its supporting superego double of unwritten rituals, such as obscene misogynistic army chants, or the practice of married man visiting brothels where the heteronormative public law is suspended and transgressed precisely through an excessive performance of heterosexuality. According to Žižek, such a gap is necessary for any symbolic order to function, which means that besides the subject’s attempt to construct her symbolic identity by accepting the normative interpellation we can also talk about the ideological practice of imaginary disidentification, involving the subject’s 17 Masculinities Journal false illusion that she has escaped, tricked the call of the law that aimed to capture, identify her (Butler, Laclau, and Žižek 103). The question then becomes whether it is possible to avow this disavowal, to come out being proud of the very obscene rituals that the authority of the social doesn’t allow us to express openly, while relying on them working in the background? It seems impossible as long as we move within the framework of the symbolic order in the Lacanian sense which is built on the structural necessity of such a gap between real and symbolic, a gap which is established upon a human being’s entry into the common language, by giving up an imagined fullness of real enjoyment through the process of Oedipalization, or as Lacan puts it, symbolic castration (Lacan 575-585). In such a traditional social order, the public presentation of disavowed obscene practices of enjoyment can break the smooth functioning of the symbolic, making power—imagined as the manifestation of the Oedipal father—embarrassed, so to speak. This is how one can explain the initial effectivity of a movement like Queer Nation in the early 90s. Their slogans such as “I praise God with my erection” (qtd. in Berlant and Freeman 205) could be subversive precisely because they touched upon the obscene rituals within heteronormative religious practices, or, to put it bluntly, they exposed the fact that Christians themselves already had been praising God with their erections (as in the well-known cases of institutionally constructed pedophilia in the Catholic Church) which made their calling homosexuality obscene hypocritical. Such a critical procedure is very much in line with the Laclauian-Butlerian politics of non-identity; it reveals the disavowed particular dimension that supports the universal claims of the ruling symbolic while proposing a different, more constructivist relation to the very same universality. However, as Dagmar Herzog suggests looking at contemporary American Evangelical discourses on sex, during the last couple of decades another form of power has been emerging that seems to be immune to such shaming attempts as it situates itself beyond the traditional symbolic order. 18 Masculinities Journal Evangelical Sex: Towards the Real Man C ontrary to the common belief of liberals, one cannot really say that Evangelicals are anti-sex, at least not since the mid-70s, Herzog points out by citing from sexual instruction manuals of the era. Sex for the Evangelical Christian Right, of course, is to be confined within the boundaries of heterosexual marriage, that is, homosexuality, premarital sex or abortion is to be categorically eliminated. On the other hand, when it comes to the married couple, sex can be pleasurable, passionate, and orgasmic as it is all in harmony with God’s great plan. Accordingly, religious handbooks of the 70s and 80s develop a language that Herzog calls Christian pornography, full of explicit descriptions of vaginal juices and fingering techniques. Even so, what is important to note is that up until about 15-20 years ago, the underlying assumption of this ideology was that “evangelical men naturally cherish their wives” (Herzog 31). According to Herzog, in the late 90s Evangelical sexual discourses turn increasingly paranoid about the inner and outer enemy endangering their carefully planned out design for godly sex. To battle sexual temptation, they launch a full blown attack on masturbation and fantasy, as they are now identified as the main causes that destroy marriages by breaking the organic emotional bond that connects the couple and substituting an intrusive, artificial prosthesis for it (Herzog 34). This way heterosexual married sex is not simply offered as a joyous practice like in the 70s and 80s. It is now emerging as the only real sex one can have in a world where sex is in a state of crisis, where its true value is in danger. The historical context is important here; Herzog identifies two phenomena in the late 90s the fear of which can lead to such conclusion: internet porn and the invention of Viagra, both radically dehumanizing our understanding of sexuality. First, the physical act itself is perceived more and more in purely mechanical terms: Viagra disassociates sexual arousal for men from any relationship to their partner. Second, the wide availability of pornographic images promotes masturbation from a shameful and repressed act into a commonly 19 Masculinities Journal acknowledged practice, threatening to overdetermine the whole field of sexuality. As a conservative observer notes, “a husband who uses porn is ‘masturbating inside [his wife’s] body while he is having sex with the women on the screen”’ (Dr. Mary Ann Layden qtd. in Herzog 21). This way the site of eroticism becomes more and more openly the domain of fantasy, while the actual other person in the relationship is reduced to a stage prop. From a Lacanian perspective, this move only reveals something about human sexuality that has always been part of it. As Žižek puts it, the sexual act is “a kind of ‘masturbation with a real (instead of only imagined) partner’ […] The whole point of Lacan's insistence on the ‘impossibility of sexual relationship’ is that this, precisely, is what the ‘actual’ sexual act is; man's partner is never a woman in the real kernel of her being, but woman qua a, reduced to the fantasy-object” (Tarrying 42). For Žižek, the crucial distinction lies here between imaginary reality and symbolic fiction. While the former involves an attempted closure, presenting a full image, the latter’s proper function is to remain open, to always maintain a minimal distance towards reality. For instance, heterosexual marriage works as a symbolic institution precisely and only as long as it remains open what kind of imaginary fantasy fills out the void of the symbolic, what husbands fantasize about when they make love to their wives or the other way round. Through this inherent void, gap, the symbolic evokes the dimension of the real, what resists symbolization, the never attainable object-cause of desire that Lacan calls objet a, which in this case is embodied by the fantasmatic partner. Precisely because every imaginary representation is lacking in some way, never fully being it, that it is possible to have multiple fantasies supporting the institution of marriage. Even if its hegemonic universal is heteronormative, monogamous etc., in the spirit of liberal democracy when a man has sex with his wife, he can fantasize about whoever he wants to, let it be man or woman, human or animal, adult or a child, the symbolic functioning of the institution will be upheld. That is, until we keep a distance between symbolic and imaginary, fiction and reality (Metastases 76). By contrast, for the Evangelical Right, the 20 Masculinities Journal opening up of this gap signals a crisis of the sexual relationship which has to be countered through evoking the specter of real sex in which a husband has intercourse as well as sex with his wife (she is the one who he is supposed to fantasize about during sex). This means that Evangelicals want to avow precisely those primordially repressed obscene practices, hidden heterosexual particularities that support the heteronormative universals of their institutions only insofar as they remain hidden. For this reason, their coming out, their attempt to create the explicit rules for heterosexual sex that could help married couples fantasize during intercourse is itself symptomatic of what Žižek calls the contemporary crisis of symbolic efficiency (Ticklish Subject 322-334), the lack of effectivity of and belief in symbolic institutions (such as marriage, family, nation, etc.). This paranoid regulation of fantasy “saturates the void that keeps open the space for symbolic fiction,” makes objet a fall into reality by fixing it to a particular object, and as a consequence our symbolic universe becomes “de-realized”, ineffective. The psychoanalytic name for such a state is psychosis, in which the subject makes desperate attempts to “evict objet a from reality by force and thus gain access to reality” once again (Metastases 77). In less abstract terms this is what happens when the war on fantasy is executed through confessional practices, aiming to purify the subject from unwanted imaginary stains. Herzog, identifying in a Foucauldian manner the productive aspects of apparently repressive apparatuses of power, notes how the new Evangelicals obsessively admit their attraction to the things they supposed to hate, using a tactics that effectively makes them impervious to “the traditional liberal strategy of muckraking exposé of conservative hypocrisy. For there’s nothing anymore to expose. The sins have all long been confessed.” (Herzog 40). For instance, she cites a case from Arterburn and Stoeker’s self-help book Every Man’s Battle: Weapons for the War Against Sexual Temptation, where a man recounts in lucid detail how he couldn’t help but masturbate to the sight of his sister-in-law laying on her stomach in front the TV with the lines of her panties and her upper thigh clearly visible. The same technique is applied to the process of coming to terms with a 21 Masculinities Journal sinful, (hetero)sexually promiscuous past, involving making a teenage girlfriend pregnant then aborting the baby, having multiple sexual partners simultaneously or having sex with prostitutes. There are more bizarre cases as well, like a husband’s account of his extramarital affair with a 15 year old girl where the bragging tone of the confession taps into the realm of sexual taboos as opposed to simple moral prohibitions (Herzog 34-40). I will return to the complications this latter poses in the section on abstinence. The crucial point not to miss here, as Herzog stresses, is that the impossibly pure sex Evangelicals set out to reach in fact refers to the sexual purity of the husband. This is why, she argues, the apparent feminist streak of these religious sexual discourses should not deceive us. True, God now allows married couples to explore the domains of oral and even anal sex, to use sex toys, masturbate together, etc. It is even all right for the woman to come first during intercourse (Herzog 43). But next to this move towards the equality of sexes in bed, there is a significant clause that colors its emancipatory potential a little darker: the general advice for wives to be sexually available for their husbands all the time. As Herzog shows with regards to the wife’s sexual duties towards their husbands in these practices, her role is to prop up the myth of men’s limitless sexual potential. According to this narrative it is always men who want to have sex more and they have to have sex all the time based on the “scientific fact” that their sperm has to be released at least once in every seventy-two-hour cycle (Herzog 53). Thus, Herzog concludes, the project Evangelicals are working on together is not the new couple but the new man, the real man, a wild man, every woman’s dream as well as God’s will. This is the point where the classical Oedipalized heterosexual bourgeois masculinity is also left behind as castrated, feminized and passive: Herzog shows, citing from Robert Bly’s Iron John, that when the time comes, the Evangelicals’ real heterosexual masculinity has to be saved also from itself, from its tamed, domesticated image presented by the Church. The new, overpotent man wants to have it all. God wants him to have it all (Herzog 50-57). 22 Masculinities Journal It is easy to distinguish in this new male ideal the specter of the Freudian myth of the non-castrated father, leader of the primal horde who not only has all the women as his property but has the unlimited sexual potential to have them all the time. According to Freud’s narrative, this obscene figure had to be killed in order for civilization to be born through the son’s access to their father’s women. The name of the dead father then functions as the symbolic law in the hand of the newly founded patriarchal brotherhood. One possible interpretation of Evangelical discourses on sex is to see them as an attempt to resurrect this primal father figure of real manhood as it existed before the institution of symbolic authority to save heterosexuality at the moment of a universal crisis of symbolic efficiency. The Seed of the Primal Father: The Quiverfull Movement A nother realization of the new non-castrated father ideal among Evangelicals is put forward in the Quiverfull movement which dates back to the 80s and offers its new traditionalist message of restoring the patriarchal family unit with a more overtly antifeminist edge than sex manuals. The main organizing principle of the group is their anti-contraception stance, but they present it as a positive program to follow God’s will by having a limitless number of children. The ideological fantasy supporting their goals places the families in the front line of a war they are waging against “what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women’s liberation: contraception, women’s careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order.” (Joyce 12). That is to say, they are building an army for God in which, as they put it, children are the arrows for the battle. Not surprisingly this idea comes from a literal (“psychotic”) reading of a Biblical passage: “As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath a quiver full. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.” (King James Version, Psalm 127.3-5). 23 Masculinities Journal Feminist critiques warn about women’s return to the “cult of domesticity” as the main purpose of their lives becomes now to serve their husband in producing children for the good cause (Dixon 39). This means not just availability for sex at all times but the acceptance of tenets like “my body is not my own”, as one of the founding texts of the movement puts it. It is also important to see that most Quiverfull families are working class. As The Nation’s Katryn Joyce notes, for these “poor women, the feminist fight for job equality won no career path but rather the pink collar labor as a housekeeper, a waitress, a clerk” (Joyce 11). What they encountered was another one of the categories doubly inscribed within the liberal democratic consensus, the fact that the liberal notion of female equality privileges not only heterosexual but also (white) middle class women. The Quiverfull movement thus can be seen as an attempt to overcome this lack of privilege in the form of an antifeminist backlash turned proactive by becoming more normative than those bourgeois liberals ever dared to be. By evoking the ideal of the overpotent primordial father, these Evangelicals ultimately uncover the hidden heteronormative hierarchies of the liberal democratic consensus, creating an affirmative relation to them, accepting them as natural, as God’s will, thus exposing, although inadvertently, the contradictions of the liberal ideology. This is why, much like those Evangelicals confessing their impure fantasies in public, they can be seen as performing a heterosexual coming out, avowing the disavowed obscene dimension of the heteronormative liberal consensus. They are like Queer Nation without the irony, that is, without the underlying assumption that some symbolic institution (such as the nation) still works in the background to get the joke. Performing Abstinence for Daddy A long with Evangelicals’ discourses on marital sex and reproduction, there is an obvious shift in their treatment of abstinence as well in the late 90s. While abstinence pledges among such religious youth were not uncommon during the 80s and the 24 Masculinities Journal 90s, they worked more along the lines of what Foucault called an incitement to discourse (Foucault 17-36), that is, by preserving technical virginity they opened up the way towards a non-penetrative eroticism such as mutual masturbation or oral sex. By the new millennium, however, the world purity started to take up a different, more literal meaning, closing the gap between ideal and practice. In this shift, the movement’s apparent gender neutral balance toppled, the focus on young women became obvious. Much like the Quiverfull wives, abstinence girls started to talk about their body not really belonging to them (belonging instead to God, of course) as well as about the necessary sacrifice they have to make for their future married sex life to be perfect (Herzog 98). Combined with the conviction that God has already chosen the ideal man for the young virgins, it is not hard to see the new abstinence movement as a supplement of the new cult of real masculinity. To elucidate this even more, I will look at the so called purity balls, a social ritual among Evangelicals popular since the late 90s. Symptomatically, they even made a Glamour Magazine headline: “It’s like a wedding but with a twist: Young women exchange rings, take vows and enjoy a first dance… with their dads. ‘Purity balls’ are the next big thing in the save-it-till-marriage movement. Smart or scary?” (Baumgardner). On the one hand, to be a purity girl appears as only one among many fashionable and commodified subcultural trends, as playful slogans on Tshirts and pieces of underwear suggest: “Abstinence Ave. Exit When Married” or “No Trespassing On This Property. My Father Is Watching.” (Glanton). On the other hand it’s hard to ignore the obscene references to incest and underage sexuality so overtly present in these rituals. The purity ball guidelines describe the participants as “just old enough… [to] have begun menstruating” making a reference to the well-known folk wisdom about a young girl’s readiness for reproductive sex which directly contradicts the ideology of abstinence. Also, the girls are supposed to wear sexy black dresses in which they look more like the girlfriends of their fathers, who in turn are encouraged to tell their 25 Masculinities Journal daughters how beautiful they are. Not to mention that the most popular song the couples dance to is titled “I’ll Always Be Your Baby.” (Glanton) This is not to say that purity balls consciously work to promote father-daughter incest. But it is also not enough to write off the phenomenon as just another instance of the Foucauldian productive side of power where the performance of abstinence in front of the panoptic gaze of paternal authority could open up pleasurable sites of resistance elsewhere. This, no doubt, happens as well, however I would like to emphasize that when Foucault talks about the “perpetual incitement to incest in the bourgeois family” of the 19 th century, he stresses that this was possible by eliminating actual incest widely spread especially among lower classes. “On the one hand, the father was elevated into an object of compulsory love, but on the other hand, if he was a loved one, he was at the same time a fallen one in the eyes of the law.” (Foucault 130). In psychoanalytic terms, incestuous desire can emerge only as a supplement to the castrated father of the symbolic law, in whose eyes the real, primordial father becomes a fallen one. When the gap that made the symbolic possible is eliminated, incestuous fantasies collapse into symbolic rituals, they create a new obscene spectacle of the law organized around the enjoyment of the returning primal father, the new man who comes out of his closet as excessively heterosexual. Challenging the Symbolic Father: Letterman vs. Palin T o illustrate the antagonism between the traditional symbolic law of repression and the returning primordial father of the late capitalist spectacle who has nothing to hide, I will present an analysis of the media feud that happened between David Letterman and Sarah Palin in the summer of 2009. The conflict started when Letterman, host of the popular late night talk show in the US, told a rather tasteless joke about (the Evangelical Christian) Sarah Palin’s daughter on the June 10 episode of his program. Here is what he said: “Sarah Palin went to the Yankee game yesterday. There was one awkward moment during the seventh inning stretch: her daughter was knocked up by Alex 26 Masculinities Journal Rodriguez.” (MangoVisionHD). As it’s well known, Sarah Palin’s 17 year old daughter did in fact get pregnant the year before, which was an event that created a controversy of its own thanks to Palin’s abstinence only sex education campaign and the way Bristol helped in its promotion by serving as the bad example. As for Letterman’s joke, complications started to appear when it became public that it was in fact not the (at the time already) 18 year old Bristol but Sarah Palin’s other daughter, the 14 year old Willow who attended the game with her mother. Palin issued a statement, accusing Letterman of joking about the statutory rape of minors and how with this kind of talk he contributes to the sexual exploitation of underage girls by older men, an outrage that happens in an “atrociously high rate” in America (MangoVisionHD). The fact that these accusations apparently made David Letterman very uncomfortable is a sign that he, at the time, occupied the place of symbolic authority the smooth functioning of which needs the disavowal not only of rape and sexual abuse but the knowledge of underage sexuality all together. The next day he spent 8 minutes trying to discursively reestablish the boundary of acceptable sexual activity at the age of 18, and as a “gentleman”, he also admitted the low quality of his joke concerning Bristol Palin: “Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was ok for her 14 year old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” (MangoVisionHD). It is crucial to distinguish on the one hand Letterman’s liberal yet male chauvinist gender performance involving a series of sexist jokes about Sarah Palin herself that he had been telling since she entered the political arena (such as describing her as a “slutty flight attendant” in the same June 10 monologue), and on the other this incident that actually broke the chain of his performances by uncovering the disavowed underside of his respectable persona that was there all along. Palin didn’t accept Letterman’s answer, and came up with another statement attacking him more directly as one of the nation’s dirty old men abusing young girls. Responding to Letterman’s inviting her and Willow to the show, she wrote: “The Palins have no intention of providing a rating’s boost to Letterman’s show… Plus it would be wise to 27 Masculinities Journal keep Willow away from David Letterman.” The paradox is that although this was obviously a cheap political ploy on her part to exploit a situation that happened by chance, she nonetheless was on the right track subverting a male dominated symbolic normativity. She was, however, on the right track for the wrong reasons. When she was asked to explain the last part of her latest statement on the Today Show (“Do you suggest that David Letterman can’t be trusted around your 14 year old girl?”), she came up with a perplexing answer: “Maybe he couldn’t be trusted because Willow’s had enough of these type of comments and maybe Willow would want to uhh ‘react’ to him in a way that maybe would catch him off guard” (Speakmymind02). After watching Letterman being uncomfortable for 8 minutes by the mere thought of teenage sexuality, one can imagine what kind of “reaction” Palin talks about that would embarrass him even more. It might seem, again, that not counting her insistence of calling her daughter’s showing of her sexuality a reaction, Palin actually makes a valid feminist point by insisting on the agency of her daughter. But it seems more plausible to read this Freudian slip as Palin’s reproach to Letterman for not being man enough, unlike those real men in Evangelical discourses, the ones who aren’t squeamish when it comes to fucking teenage girls. This is the only way Palin’s accusations make sense at the libidinal level, serving as a footnote to her dubious political performances of self-objectification.1 Her act is subversive of liberal morals and privileges, yes, but this subversion is in service of a sexual counterrevolution aiming at the restoration of the Freudian primal father. As for Letterman, on Jun 18, he did the “right thing” that can be expected from a male figure of traditional symbolic authority: he apologized to the Palins by taking full responsibility for the public perception of his joke regardless of his original intentions (Sarah Palin For President 2012). In psychoanalytic terms, this move is called See for example her complaints about a “sexist” Newsweek cover featuring her in a fitness costume. Much like in the case of her daughter, her renunciation of sexism turns into its opposite, sending one of her well known obscene winks to the audience (BangTheNews). 1 28 Masculinities Journal identification with the symptom; with the return of the repressed enjoyment of his respectable gender performance materialized in an obscene joke the effects of which he had no control over. It is crucial to see that through this act, the “normal” order of things was (at least temporarily) restored, the disavowed content got excluded again, that is, Palin and her daughters could go back to where they belong in a patriarchal symbolic order: to the private sphere of their family. It would be too much of a speculation to say that Palin resigning from the governorship for no apparent reason a couple of weeks later had anything to do with the Letterman-affair, but as the subsequent Late Show jokes suggest, the connection was made at least in fantasy (ANTI_S_COOP). It is worth mentioning here that Letterman and the symbolic order’s victory over Palin was a pyrrhic one. A few months later he was unambigously exposed as an obscene father figure when his sexual affairs with a series of much younger interns were revealed, showing all too clearly that his old fashioned liberal morals and his insistence on the separation of private and public are outdated in the contemporary society of the spectacle where, as Guy Debord once put it, “that which appears is good, that which is good appears” (12). This means that while a Butlerian critique of phallic gender identification is very effective against David Letterman performing the role of Oedipal authority, Sarah Palin’s lack of concern for a coherent identity and symbolic dignity needs a different set of critical apparatus, one that differentiates her gender performance from the non-identity Butler or Laclau talks about. It can be understood as serving the postsymbolic ideal of the “real man” which is not an identity that the subject tries to reach through its imitation but a performance that renounces, negates all existing, “castrated” forms of masculinity. It is such an ideal that appears in discourses of the Evangelical Christian Right, the ideal of the Freudian primordial father who has all the women and has unlimited sexual potential. Thus while technically siding with Butler’s project of the subversion of normative gender identities, Palin’s activities point towards a much more sinister form of male domination. 29 Masculinities Journal Curing Homosexuality by Coming Out as Heterosexual B efore concluding, let’s go back to the initial question about the relation between homosexual and heterosexual coming outs. How did the shift in Evangelical discourses on sex towards practices of coming out in the late 90s change their relation to homosexuality? Can the Christian Right’s attacks on homosexuals be interpreted along the lines of their spectacular renunciation of heterosexual transgressions mentioned in the previous sections? According to Herzog, until the mid-90s, dominant conservative discourses in the US treated homosexuality as the unnatural binary opposite of the heterosexual norm. Based on this perception, anti-gay activism did everything to associate homosexuals with sex criminals, child molesters, and perverts. The stake was the mobilization of the Christian Right around a pro-family, anti-gay agenda, as Pat Buchanan’s 1992 campaign slogan “Family Rights Forever/Gay Rights Never” proclaimed (qtd. in Herzog 62). In Judith Butler’s terms, homosexuals were treated here as abjects, foreign bodies of otherness that had to be expulsed from the social like excrement from the human body so that normalized subjects could reach their discrete boundaries (Gender Trouble 169). This relation changes in the mid-90s when as new strategy the Evangelical Religious Right starts to emphasize the curability of the homosexual condition. Gays and lesbians now are not criminals anymore but victims—usually of some kind of abuse—and most crucially, as Herzog points out, they are “insecure heterosexual wannabes”. This way Evangelical ideology places them alongside other never pure enough heterosexuals, offering them the psychotic identification with the heterosexual abject to reach “gender wholeness” (Herzog 80), that is, the possibility of coming out as heterosexual. In this light, the ritual of coming out itself has to be reevaluated as the practices of Evangelicals lay bare the deadlocks of liberal identity politics. Perhaps one could say that because of this, contrary to the claims of contemporary queer critics if homonormativity (Puar; Edelman), coming out as homosexual (or as a 30 Masculinities Journal member of any other sexual minority) gains an additional importance. What if the true political significance of these acts lies not in the avowal of particular minority identities formerly excluded from the reigning heteronormative site of universality? What if homosexual coming outs instead involve a truly radical disidentification, a withdrawal not so much from public, purely formal texture of the symbolic order as Butler’s queer politics would like to have it (Bodies that Matter 4) but from the very obscene rituals supporting it, effectively coloring it heteronormative. For this reason, coming out in a progressive sense is a disidentification from a disidentification, the negation of a negation. This framework also sheds a new light on the question of the closet. The problem with being in the closet is the false conviction that it’s the best defense against the oppressive public space out there biased against homosexuals and other minorities. By contrast, as I have suggested, heterosexual coming outs are oppressive in a different way, effectively eliminating such an idea of the public in favor of private enjoyment that saturates the former field of universality. In this sense Evangelicals share the distrust of closeted gays and lesbians about symbolic institutions; the difference is that unlike minorities, they can thrive even more effectively in a post-symbolic space. Conclusion I n sum, my thesis is that the sexual discourses of contemporary Evangelicals in the US represent a move beyond the liberal democratic politics struggling for equal rights for different sexual identity groups. By openly supporting a heteronormative and male dominated form of social organization, Evangelicals aim to overthrow the current symbolic order based on a hidden heterosexual bias. I described this move as the psychotic coming out as heterosexual, organized around the idea of a new man, the impossible norm of a real masculinity defined negatively which can be seen as a return to the Freudian primal father. I suggested that this new male figure escapes the logic of the Laclauian-Butlerian understanding of power by standing in 31 Masculinities Journal the short circuit of its functioning, thus getting a hold of a sinister agency beyond identity politics without being radically democratic. This also means that the strategic shift of queer theory after 9/11 away from the Butler’s Laclauean reformist politics of non-identity (or ironic identity politics) towards a more radical anti-state anarchism may end up fighting the wrong enemy. While American liberal democracy with its hidden heterosexist bias was certainly the obstacle for queer politics in the 90s, today we have a new form of anti-liberal (and ultimately antistate libertarian) heteronormative power apparatus emerging against which queers may have to mobilize the universal symbolic framework still present in the remainders of the liberal state, rather than throwing it out with the bathwater of normativity. Works Cited ANTI_S_COOP. “Letterman on Sarah Palin Resignation.” Online video clip. YouTube, 7 Jul 2009. Web. 19 Feb. 2015. BangTheNews. “Sarah Palin Calls Newsweek Cover, Letterman Joke ‘Unnecessary’.” Online video clip. YouTube, 18 Nov. 2009. Web. 19 Feb. 2015 Baumgardner, Jennifer. “Would You Pledge Your Virginity to Your Father?” Glamour Magazine 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2015. Berlant, Lauren, and Elizabeth Freeman. The Queen of America Goes To Washington City. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Print. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge, 1993. Print. Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories/Gay Theories. Ed. Diana Fuss. New York: Routledge. 1991. 13-31. Print. Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau, and Reinaldo Laddaga. “The Uses of Equality.” Diacritics 27.1 (1997): 3-12. Print. 32 Masculinities Journal Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau, and Žižek, Slavoj. Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Discourses on the Left. New York: Verso, 2000. Print. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red, 1970. Print. Dixon, Kate. “Multiply & Conquer.” Bitch Magazine 37 (2007): 34-39. Print. Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Print. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. Vol. 2. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Print. Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. Trans. A.A. Brill. London: Routledge and Sons, 1919. Print. Glanton, Dahleen. “At Purity Dances, Virgin Belles Ring.” Chicago Tribune 2 Dec. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2015. Herzog, Dagmar. Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Print. Joyce, Katryn. “The Quiverfull Conviction.” The Nation, 27 Nov 2006: 1118. Print. King James Version Bible. Bible Gateway. Web. 19. Feb. 2015. Kitzinger, Celia, and Sue Wilkinson. “Deconstructing Hetero-sexuality: A Feminist Social-constructionist Perspective.” Practicing Feminism: Identity, Difference, Power. Ed. Nickie Charles and Felicia HughesFreeland. New York: Routledge, 1996. 135-154. Print. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. Print. Laclau, Ernesto. “Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity.” October 61.3 (1992): 83-90. Print. 33 Masculinities Journal MangoVisionHD. “David Letterman Sarah Palin Joke issues June 10th 2009.” Online video clip. YouTube, 11 Jun. 2009. Web. 19 Feb. 2015. Puar, Jasbir. K. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Print. Sarah Palin For President 2012. “DAVID LETTERMAN APOLOGY TO SARAH PALIN AFTER N.O.W. PUTS HIM ON MEDIA WALL OF SHAME.” Online video clip. YouTube, 16 Jun. 2009. Web. 19 Feb 2015. Speakmymind02. “Sarah Palin "Letterman Comment About Statutory Rape Of My 14 Year Old.” Online video clip. YouTube, 12 Jun 2009. Web. 19 Feb. 2015. Žižek, Slavoj. The Metastases of Enjoyment. New York: Verso, 2005. Print. Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. New York: Verso, 1989. Print. Žižek, Slavoj. Tarrying with the Negative. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Print. Žižek, Slavoj. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology. New York: Verso, 2000. Print. 34 The Othered Black Male: Images of Masculinity in African American Lesbian Erotic Fiction Gloria Gadsden New Mexico Highlands University Abstract : Constructions, reconstructions and deconstructions of African American males abound. In particular, discussions pertaining to their hyper-sexuality, unemployment, criminal inclinations and proclivity for violence have been discussed at great length. Additionally, researchers have explored ways in which African American men have contributed to notions of black womanhood in America. From the mammy to the jezebel, black men have had a voice regarding the images and roles of black women. Missing are considerations addressing African American women’s attempts to define, or redefine, their male counterparts. This paper explores notions of black masculinity as constructed by one specific category of black women, African American lesbian authors. In their contemporary, internet fiction, some traditional (and stereotypical) images of black masculinity are embraced while others are ignored. Intersectionality, hegemonic masculinity and other perspectives pertaining to gendered socialization are considered in an attempt to explain these constructions of black masculinity. Key Words : African American masculinity, Erotic fiction, -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 35-54 Masculinities Journal Ötekileştirilen Siyahi Erkek: Afro-Amerikan Lezbiyen Erotik Kurgularda Erkeklik İmajı Gloria Gadsden New Mexico Highlands Üniversitesi Özet : Afro-Amerikan erkeğin inşası, yeniden inşası ve yapı sökümüne dair argumanlar oldukça fazladır. Özellikle, hiperseksüelite, işsizlik, suça ve şiddete yatkınlıklarına dair tartışmalar uzun süredir devam etmektedir. Bununla beraber, araştırmacılar Afro-Amerikan erkeklerin Amerika’da siyahi kadınlık kavramlarına katkı yaptığı yolları araştırmaktalar. Siyahi erkekler, anne imajından kötü kadın imajına, siyahi kadınların rolleri ve imajlarına dair söz sahibi olmuşlardır. Fakat burada eksik olan şey, Afro-Amerikan kadınların erkek muadillerini tanımlama, veya yeniden tanımlamasına yönelik düşüncelerdir. Bu çalışma, siyahi kadınlığın bir kategorisi olan Afro-Amerikan lezbiyen yazarların inşa ettiği siyahi erkeklik kavramını araştırmaktadır. Bu yazarların modern dünyasında, internet kurgularında, siyahi erkeklerin bazı geleneksel (ve sterotipik) imajları ön plana çıkarılırken, diğerleri görmezden gelinmektedir. Bu çalışmada siyahi erkekliğin farklı inşalarını anlamak amacıyla kesişimsellik, hegemonik erkeklik ve cinsiyetlendirilmiş sosyalizasyona dair diğer perspektifler ele alınmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Afro-Amerikan erkeklik, erotik kurgu, Afro-Amerikan kadınlık 36 Masculinities Journal Introduction “ If you show an image…enough to a group or person, then after a while that group or person will associate even implicit representations of that image” (Jackson 54). For this reason, Holmberg suggests studying media representations is absolutely essential because they potentially allow for a better understanding of broader cultural and social forces. Scholars have spent an inordinate amount of time examining how less powerful groups, based on race, gender, class, and/or sexual orientation, are represented in media. More specifically, studies abound about the harsh, abrasive ways in which African American men are constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed in popular culture.i Black men have been, and continue to be, pathologized, portrayed as savages, predators, Uncle Toms, buffoons, pimps, absent fathers and, for the most part, hypermasculine, homophobic, criminally inclined, sex-starved, shiftless, unemployed, unruly stray dogs governed by street culture (Anderson 177, Collins 2004: 186-87, Dines 287, hooks 1992: 91, Jackson 4-5, Quinn 118, Rose 1994: 173, West 26-27). Some scholars have also recognized a feminization of black males in public spaces that has persisted since slavery (Neal 93). For example, the NFL draft, like the slave auction, has become an important site where African American male bodies are deemed legitimate objects of a more powerful male gaze (Oates 74). Researchers have suggested that these representations of black males provide opportunities to continually subordinate them, keeping black males “in check” in various ways (hooks 1992: 91). There have also been serious considerations of the representations of black women, and black femininity, in media. Seen through a similar lens, which typically allows for examinations of powerful groups’ depictions of powerless members of society, much of this research has explored how women are defined and confined by a variety of stereotypical images, including the asexual mammy, the hypersexual jezebel or whore, the Hottentot Venus, the welfare mother/queen, and the ball-busting bitch (Collins 1990: 116, hooks 37 Masculinities Journal 1992: 61, Magubane 824, Mayall and Russell 289, Rose 1994: 103-104). Scholars have also discussed the manner upon which black women, and men for that matter, have resisted these depictions. But much of the focus has been on ‘defining’ images and the various ways in which black women are governed by them. Some academicians, like bell hooks, Tricia Rose and Cornel West, have considered the role of black men in helping to create and/or reinforce defining images of black women (and black femininity) in popular culture, especially in music. Black males seem to have contributed, in numerous ways, to the perpetuation of misogynistic and crude images of black women. However, few scholars have addressed efforts on the part of black women to define black men, or notions of black masculinity, in public spaces. This paper is an attempt to begin this research by examining the ways in which black women construct notions of black masculinity in contemporary internet erotic fiction. Methodology T he sample of erotic fiction drawn for this textual analysis was randomly selected from a free website titled Kuma. According to McNay, textual analyses seek to consider the ways in which power and knowledge operate at a micro-social level to produce images whose representations can then be examined (McNay 76). More importantly, textual analyses provide tools to better understand how language used in public spaces are potential sites for political struggle and social (re)construction. Kuma first appeared in 1998 (www.kuma2.net) and according to the webmaster, the site is “for…black lesbians, especially those who are closeted or do not live near a major metropolitan area [and] the stories and poetry affirm that [black lesbians] are not alone or an unnatural aberration.” This site was updated monthly until 2009. In its heyday, the site received approximately 1,170 unique visits and 17,830 hits per day (http://kuma2.net/aboutkuma.htm). 38 Masculinities Journal The site “contain[s] over 1600 pieces of erotica [and] the literature archive is the largest online collection of black lesbian writing” (http://kuma2.net/aboutkuma.htm). Authors were not paid for their work and all stories were filtered through the webmaster. No changes were made to accepted stories. Personal communication with the webmaster over the course of two years revealed that stories including any type of excessive violence (e.g., murder) were typically rejected. Other themes (e.g., suicide) were also prohibited by the webmaster. A random sample of 100 stories (approximately 20% of the stories on the website) was selected from the Kuma website for the purpose of this study. An effort was then made to contact every author from the sample drawn. While most of the stories provided some way to reach the author, some stories did not. Other contact information was outdated or invalid. As a result, the researcher was able to contact 64% of the authors. These authors were emailed a brief survey inquiring about their age, race, biological sex, educational background, and sexual orientation.ii There was a response rate of 65%. Each story written by a woman-born, self-identified lesbian was then coded, using an identical coding instrument, for the presence of at least one “masculine” character (typically referred to as a “stud” in the stories iii) and the exhibition of “masculine characteristics.”iv It is important to note that black lesbians are a unique subset of black women, multiply positioned and, in and of themselves, governed by varying ideologies, identities, social systems, and inequalities (Collins 1990: 231, Moore 7). However, together, these positions can potentially create a framework for understanding and articulating black women’s construction of others (Moore 7). More specifically, these differing realities provide a place to begin the exploration of an othered group’s constructions of black masculinity. 39 Masculinities Journal Findings T he methodological process resulted in the selection of 44 stories written by 25 self-identified lesbian African-American women.v The average age of the authors was 32. All of the authors were born in the United States and approximately half resided in the Southern region of the country. An overwhelming majority of the authors (81%) had completed at least “some college.” Most of the stories selected for this sample (68%) included at least one “masculinized character.”vi These characters were often referred to as “studs.” Obvious indicators that these characters adhered to masculine gender cues included, the use of masculinized or androgynous names (e.g., Dre, Shy, Tay, Te), adjectives used to describe these particular characters (e.g., stud, dyke, daddy, papi, hersband, studsband, boi), the type of clothing favored by these characters (e.g., jeans, hoodies, tee shirts, boxers, ‘wife-beaters’), the large vehicles driven by these characters (e.g., Cadillac Escalades, Dodge Durangos, Hummers), the type of jobs occupied (e.g., electrician, drug dealer, rapper), hairstyle (e.g., shaved head, cornrows) and numerous references to their physical bodies as “muscular.” vii These characters also engaged in various, stereotypically ‘masculine’ behaviors (e.g., opening doors for more feminine characters, displaying a certain cockiness when attempting to win the affection of more feminine characters, demonstrating confidence that they would succeed at a particular task). Finally, 50% of the ‘studs’ were perceived to be strong (e.g., able to lift/carry femmes, referred to as “strong” by more feminine characters) and 73% were unwilling or unable to express their emotions. With respect to sexuality, most of the more masculine characters (58%) initiated sexual activity. However, this was not necessarily a clear indicator of masculinity in these stories considering 42% of the more masculine characters did not initiate sexual activity. Other, more obvious, indicators of a traditional male gender script included studs that were ‘aggressive’ sexually, desired to have a more feminine character beneath them during sex (i.e., missionary position) and had a 40 Masculinities Journal remarkable ability to please femmes in bed. As indicated by the number of orgasms and an amazing familiarity with the G-spot, the vast majority of the more masculinized characters (81%) were able to satisfy femmes sexually. A final indicator that these characters tended to follow more masculine notions of gender related to penetration. When penetration was included in a story, the vast majority of the studs (86%) were penetrators, not penetrated. RESULTS Public Displays of Black Masculinity T he stories rendered public displays of ‘doing gender’ an essential part of the masculinity script.viii Important signifiers were linked to gender identity and manifested in various ways. An excellent example is the use of particular names. Most of the masculinized characters insisted on shortened versions of their formal, sometimes more feminine, names. For example, in the story titled Blind Love, Andrea identified herself to a potential love interest as “Dre”: “And who am I calling?" I asked…She took my hand, lifting it to her lips. After the gentle kiss that I could feel all the way to my toes, she winked at me. "Dre. Don't take too long to call me” (Glitter). And in Sweet Hellos and Goodbyes, the stud introduced herself as Jacs, a shortened version of Jacqueline (Jai). Other aspects of black masculinity deemed important by these female authors included posturing in public spaces (e.g., hanging with male friends, playing basketball), clothing style, gait, cars, language style and the use of drugs/alcohol (used by 57% of the more masculinized characters). Public displays of one’s gender, and notions of self-identity, were not the only ways in which characters exhibited masculinity. The recognition of gendered displays by others was also important. Studs 41 Masculinities Journal were sometimes clearly identified as such by outsiders who helped to uphold their status. In Can You Stand The Rain, when attempting to explain why she was socializing with another woman, Tay stated “its (sic) always a group. My niggas and [the] chicks just chillin and shit” (Lil AJ). In this statement, Tay clearly indicated she was part of a larger, masculine group that identified her as one of ‘them.’ And in One Mic, after Pandora informs her best friend that her love interest is moving in, he says, “damn, finally a woman in the house. That’s gonna be some shit,” humorously acknowledging he did not classify Pandora as a typical ‘woman’ (Alexandria). Another critical aspect of masculinity reflected in the stories was the ability to treat more feminine characters like a ‘lady.’ Studs asked more feminine characters out on dates, held doors open for them, kissed the hands of more feminine characters, offered them a seat, and swept them off their feet in various ways. For example, in Collision Unleashed, Orion, the more masculinized character, gallantly carried Tisha’s damaged bicycle and then opened her beer for her once they arrived at Orion’s apartment (Cashazznjuice). And in One Mic, Pandora admitted “my priorities were clear…all I wanted to do was protect my woman the best way I could” (Alexandria). These indicators of masculinity appeared in 38% of the coded stories, suggesting that these female authors believed notions of chivalry, as it pertained to black masculinity, was not dead. In this sample, black masculinity was defined by public displays that included strength, confidence, and chivalry. Additionally, 62% of the more masculinized characters were gainfully employed or had some type of sustainable income. Most of the more masculinized characters could “take care of themselves” with respect to violence and were willing to protect more feminine characters when necessary. For the most part, black female authors sanctioned these more traditional, hegemonic notions of masculine behavior. 42 Masculinities Journal Private Behaviors and Black Masculinity W hile public demonstrations of traditional masculinity cues were deemed important, there was a shift in the script when examining private behaviors. In particular, studs in these stories needed to be comfortable enough with their masculinity to allow more feminine characters to initiate sexual activity behind closed doors. This trend was evident in 42% of the stories coded. More feminine characters in these stories were enthusiastic actors in the bedroom, not simple objects of affection. For example, in Sex by Felicia 101, Rashida (identified as a stud), does not discourage the femme character from assuming the role of sexual aggressor: I (femme character) slowly slid away from her, getting to my knees, facing Rashida. We both stared at each other for a moment, before I just grabbed her by the head, pulling her face to mine. As soon as our lips met, I could feel her shudder. It was such a strange experience for me, because normally I am so passive with studs, but something about Rashida just made me want to literally take over and turn her ass out. And that is exactly what I was doing. (Glitter; parenthesis added) More masculine characters in these stories allowed femmes to assume a more dominant role sexually, at least initially, and there was little evidence that this variation in traditional behaviors emasculated said characters. In other words, more masculinized characters were still able to “do gender” appropriately after such encounters. In fact, many of the relationships that began with an aggressively sexual femme blossomed into long term, monogamous relationships in these narratives. In most of the stories coded, it was also obvious that more feminine characters wanted to partake in sexual activity. This fact was coupled with the practice of more masculinized characters carefully soliciting consent from potential partners. For example, in 43 Masculinities Journal Discriminated, Keirstin, the more masculine character, actually paused during a sexual encounter to ask for consent: Although I knew I had to have her I wanted to be sure that this what she truly wanted. As I removed my lips from the sweetness of her mouth I [asked]. "Are you sure this is what you want?" (Taneigha) In I Always Get What I Want, after pushing her partner onto the bed, Terez, a stud, asked, “can I have you” and waited for her femme partner to answer (Infamous Trece). And in Live 2 Dream, the more masculinized character hesitated until her partner clearly consented, saying “take it, it's yours” (EroticBrat). Perhaps allowing more feminine characters to assume control, at least initially, and scripting undisguised petitions for consent, allowed black female authors to address concerns about sexual assault not easily addressed otherwise. Although the topic of rape was blaringly absent from the vast majority of the stories coded (97%), possibly because the webmaster rejected ‘violent’ stories, overtly discussing consent, and allowing femmes to lead the way sexually, suggested that these black female authors were concerned enough about sexual violence that they creatively circumvented the webmaster’s restrictions. Instead of focusing on acts that would render the more feminine characters victims, they empowered these characters in a way that eliminated the need for sexual violence while consistently protecting notions of black masculinity. Hypersexuality and Black Masculinity H owever, allowing femmes to assume a more aggressive role was limited to the first sexual act between a more masculine character and a more feminine character. Adhering to a more traditional gender script, authors portrayed more masculinized characters as particularly interested in sex, barely able to control their sexual desire, always prepared for sex and experienced in the bedroom. 44 Masculinities Journal Most of the studs, 81%, eagerly accepted sexual invitations, were able to bring their sexual partners to orgasm multiple times and/or were able to easily locate the traditionally elusive G-spot. For example, in A Good Story And An Even Better Plot, a masculinized tutor, referred to as a “dyke,” simply could not resist having sex with two more feminine tutees in a public bathroom, “I am so naive...I can see that [my seduction] is a plot! But I just go along with it” (Northcoastgirl). In Distant Lover, the more feminine character declared about her more masculine sexual partner, “no one could touch me like she touched me” (Lil AJ). Monica, in The Balcony and the Fireplace, invited her “hersband” out onto the balcony for an impromptu sexual tryst (Mohanni). Her sexual partner just happened to come prepared with “Purple Passion,” a sex toy Monica fondly referred to as her “baby’s dick.” And the femme in the story titled Sunshine declared, “that’s it baby, you do remember. Ooh, that’s my spot!” (InsatiableK). And moments later “her body tensed…as she screamed, ‘It’s yours Te, and I’m yours!’” (InsatiableK). These few examples were representative of the stories in general, clearly indicating that black masculinized characters should be interested in sex, were habitually prepared to engage in sex and were able to sexually satisfy more feminine characters consistently. Very much like stereotypes about black men more broadly in American society, these masculinized characters were sexually uninhibited, sported large “dicks” and seemed to have an innate ability to drive more feminine characters, “nuts…[making her] beg and scream for it” (Jai). Emotional Repression and Black Masculinity S imilar to broader masculinity scripts in the United States, characters demonstrating notions of black masculinity rarely expressed emotion. Seventy-three percent of the stories included more masculinized characters that had difficulty expressing, or refused to express, their feelings. In the remaining 27% of the stories, more 45 Masculinities Journal masculinized characters were willing to articulate their emotions only if their relationship was at risk. For example, in One Helluva Night, Janelle, the more masculinized character, revealed her true feelings only after she was accused of cheating and her more feminine love interest was threatening to end the relationship: Listen to me damn it…You know I love you and I would never ever cheat on you. I love you too much for that. You are my life and my everything. No woman on this earth is worth losing you. No pussy is worth not having you in my life for the rest of my life…(Blaaze). In Blind Love, Dre declared the following to her lover only to prevent her from leaving: You wanna hear me say it, Astoria? That I want you in my life? That I need you in my life? That as soon as I first lay eyes on you in that car, I saw how beautiful you were. And not just because you're attractive, but the person that you are. Baby, you got this way about you that just hypnotizes me. The way you look at me is like catching me in this web, and all I want to do is just hold you, be with you, and take care of you. I can't force you to be with me, but I want you to. I've never wanted someone in my life like this before, and I do. And it's you (Glitter). And in Distant Lover, Shy shared the following in an effort to win her love interest back, “Tyla I've been thinking about you so much [since] we broke up. I've wanted to get in contact with you so many times to say I was sorry and that I made a huge mistake. My whole life has been so empty [since] I left and...I...I miss you" (Lil AJ). Stereotypes suggesting that males were calm, detached, resistant to sharing their emotions and/or unable to express their feelings went unchallenged by these black female authors. More masculinized characters were expected to be strong and emotionally withdrawn. 46 Masculinities Journal Maintaining a traditional image of masculinity at all costs seemed important with the exception of a last minute, heroic effort to repair a failing relationship. Discussion/Conclusion K uma is a free internet website. Black women, although not exclusively, control the site, publish on the site and visit the site. The website attempted to provide a safe space for black women, particularly black lesbians, nationally and internationally. This study examined gendered and racialized images constructed by a sample of the self-identified black lesbians found in this public space. With respect to these images, most notable is a strict adherence to Rich’s notions of compulsory heterosexuality. Although these black lesbian authors could have (re)created and (re)defined relationships in a variety of ways, most of them embraced the ideals of heterosexuality, represented by aforementioned ‘stud’ and ‘femme’ characters. As noted by Moore, black lesbians, possibly influenced significantly by their upbringing, seemed committed to navigating intersecting identities and social locations in ways that allowed them to retain racial group commitments. In this instance, they appeared to have embraced traditional ways of defining black masculinity, instead of providing alternatives. These choices potentially reflected the importance of African American socialization processes. There was also a willingness on the part of these African American female authors to embrace hegemonic definitions of black masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity, in this instance, refers to masculinity as governed and/or defined by those with power (Rose 1994: 15-16). As discussed previously, studies of media depictions have revealed a preponderance of negative images with respect to black masculinity. The depictions discussed in this study reflected these real world attitudes and understandings of black masculinity. Simultaneously, they appeared to suggest an allegiance with black males 47 Masculinities Journal that black women may have felt obligated to uphold, refusing to seriously challenge aspects of their masculinity as black men continually struggle to redefine public images in more positive ways. For example, one of the negative images often affiliated with black masculinity is aggressive posturing, or the ‘Cool Pose.’ The Cool Pose is an attempt on behalf of black males to present a controlled, composed self-image which includes notions of respect, controlled violence and indifference to problems, pain, and frustration (Majors and Billson 8). This image is a protective shield used, theoretically, to empower powerless black males (Anderson 163, Majors and Billson 8). Stories selected for examination in this study appeared to recognize the importance of, and to some extent protect, the presentation of the Cool Pose. Characteristics affiliated with the Cool Pose were clearly delineated, including earning respect, demonstrations of strength, a willingness to protect the ‘fairer’ sex, control of one’s emotions, contextualized violent behavior, minor violations of the law, and the use of alcohol/marijuana. When constructing masculinized characters, these black female authors were apparently reluctant to dismantle this aspect of black masculinity, an aspect that has been redefined as potentially empowering for black males. Another relatively negative image often linked to black masculinity that failed to be challenged by these authors was the stereotype of the ‘black buck,’ an image of hyper, uncontrolled sexuality used to potentially control black men in various ways (hooks 1981: 52). Kuma’s authors perpetuated this image by scripting black masculinized characters that were always ‘ready’ for sex, barely capable of restraining their sexual needs, willing and able to please a femme, and had a desire to penetrate more feminine characters with their “girl dicks.” The black buck was, therefore, another aspect of black masculinity these female authors seemed unwilling to deconstruct. Overall, the maintenance of these negative images provided a lens through which one could consider the importance of race, as opposed to sexual orientation for example, when interpreting black women’s 48 Masculinities Journal constructions of black masculinity. Race appeared to govern understandings of how gender, sexuality, social class, and other axes of power shaped the lives of black men according to these black female authors and, more importantly, allowed for the eroticization of a hegemonic perspective, embodied from a female standpoint, which appeared critical to the prevention of black women’s possibility of claiming true agency (Collins 1990: 207, Jackson 69). Conversely, Kuma’s authors did not vilify black masculinized characters when they failed to occupy more traditional social positions (e.g., primary breadwinner). While black men have often been depicted as “lazy” and “shiftless,” these authors refused to reinforce these negative images, instead constructing black masculinized characters as chivalrous, kind, considerate, and concerned about more feminized characters as well as willing to protect them. Black masculinized characters in these stories were interested in committing to long term relationships and practicing monogamy. And, when absolutely necessary, they expressed emotion and declared love. So, black female authors embraced some of the time-honored, hegemonic images of black masculinity, but they rendered others relatively invisible, potentially contributing to efforts to (re)define black masculinity in more positive ways. In conclusion, more masculinized characters, as defined by this sample of black female authors, were encouraged to embrace some of the traditional images historically imposed on black males. However, these characters were able to render less important other stereotypical, controlling images. One could argue that this particular sample of black women compelled black masculinized characters to walk a fine line. On one side, the population was bound by compulsory heterosexuality and hegemony, a reflection of their existence in the United States. On the other, the characters were able to negotiate and renegotiate aspects of black masculinity in limited ways, challenging traditional scripts. Ultimately, it appeared these black female authors scripted characters that attempted to create a balanced existence between 49 Masculinities Journal controlling hyper-masculine images (e.g., the Cool Pose) and images traditionally affiliated with notions of femininity (e.g., expressing emotions, committing to long-term relationships). These authors encouraged their more masculine characters to struggle continually to be “black” and traditionally “male,” reflecting the realities of their historical and racialized roles in the United States, while simultaneously rising to newly established expectations of black masculinity, redefining and challenging previously limiting notions. Overall, these black female authors did not write as if in an idealized fantasy world that was completely governed by sexual orientation and ignorant of race. Instead, their social upbringing, their race, and possibly their sexual orientation, resulted in a complex (re)categorization of black masculinity that reflected an allegiance with, and an understanding of, their black male counterparts while simultaneously reflecting a type of semi-autonomy that allowed them to help (re)define this targeted and controlled population. Works Cited Alexandria, D. “One Mic.” Kuma2.net, 2005. Web. http://www.kuma2.net/lit/onemicpt20705.htm. Anderson, Elijah. Street Wise: Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community. Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Print. Blaaze. “One Helluva Night.” Kuma2.net, 2004. Web. www.kuma2.net/lit/onehelluvanight0904.htm. Cashazznjuice. “Collision Unleashed.” Kuma2.net, 2003. Web. http://www.kuma2.net/oldlit/collisionunleashed1203.htm. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. ---. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1993. Print. 50 Masculinities Journal Dines, Gail. “The White Man’s Burden: Gonzo Pornography and the Construction of Black Masculinity.” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 18.1 (2006). 283-297. Print. EroticBrat. “Live 2 Dream.” Kuma2.net, 1998-2000. Web. http://www.kuma2.net/oldlit/live2d.htm. Glitter. “Blind Love.” Kuma2.net, 2002. Web. http://www.kuma2.net/oldlit/blindlovepart102.htm. ---. “Sex by Felicia 101.” Kuma2.net, 2002. Web. http://www.kuma2.net/oldlit/sexbyfelicia10103.htm. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday, 1959. Print. Holmberg, Carol. Sexuality and Popular Culture: Foundations of Popular Culture. California: Sage, 1998. Print. hooks, bell. We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. ---. Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print. ---. 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Web. http://www.kuma2.net/oldlit/cystr103.htm. ---. “Distant Lover.” Kuma2.net, I2001. Web. http://www.kuma2.net/oldlit/distantlover.htm. Magubane, Zine. “Which Bodies Matter? Feminism, Poststructuralism, Race and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the ‘Hottentot Venus’.” Gender and Society 15.6 (2001). 816-834. Print. Majors, Richard and Janet Mancini Billson. Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America. New York: Touchstone, 1993. Print. Mayall, Alice and Diana E. H. Russell. “Racism in Pornography.” Making Violence Sexy: Feminist Views on Pornography. Ed. Diana E. H. Russell. New York: Teachers College Press, 1993. 167-178. Print. McNay, Lois. Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992. Print. Mohanni. “The Balcony and the Fireplace.” Kuma2.net, 2002. Web. http://www.kuma2.net/oldlit/thebalcony203.htm. Moore, Mignon R. Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships and Motherhood Among Black Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Print. Neal, Mark A. Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Print. Northcoastgirl. “A Good Story And An Even Better Plot.” Kuma2.net, 2003. Web. http://www.kuma2.net/oldlit/agoodstory03.htm. 52 Masculinities Journal Oates, Thomas P. “The Erotic Gaze in the NFL Draft.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 4.1 (2007). 74-90. Print. Pompper, Donnalynn. “Masculinities, the Metrosexual and Media Images: Across Dimensions of Age and Ethnicity.” Sex Roles, 63 (2010). 682-696. Print. Quinn, Eithne. “‘Who’s the Mack?’:The Performativity and Politics of the Pimp Figure in Gangsta Rap.” Journal of American Studies, 324.1 (2000). 115-136. Print. Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs, 5.4 (1980). 631-660. Print. Rios, Victor. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Print. Rose, Tricia. The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters. New York: Perseus, 2008. Print. ---. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Print. Taneigha. “Discriminated.” Kuma2.net, 2003. Web. http://www.kuma2.net/oldlit/discriminated03.htm. Wallace, Maurice O. Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775-1995. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2002. Print. Ward, Elijah G. “Homophobia, Hypermasculinity and the U.S. Black Church.” Culture, Health and Sexuality, 7 (2005). 493-504. Print. West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. “Doing Gender.” Gender and Society, 1.2 (1987). 125-151. Print. West, Cornel. Race Matters. Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1993. Print. 53 Masculinities Journal i African American and black will be used interchangeably in this essay. iiThe most important category, for the purposes of this study, was “biological sex” because the author wanted to examine the ways in which black women, raised as females in the United States, constructed notions of masculinity. Therefore, the stories of any author failing to classify as “biological female” were rejected. iiiThe terms “stud” and “femme” were used by numerous authors in the sample and will be used in this paper to capture notions of masculinity and femininity. ivA mixed-age focus group helped to generate a list of American masculine characteristics used for this study. vWhile sexual orientation certainly has an impact on one’s understanding/construction of masculinity, for the purposes of this paper the role of sexual orientation was de-emphasized (but not entirely ignored). The author, instead, opted to explore how this group of female authors, generally socialized as girls and women in American society, more broadly constructed notions of black masculinity. vi This term was created by the author to describe the characters in these lesbian stories that more closely adhered to broadly set expectations of masculinity. Based on these stories, it was clear that characters did not have to be biologically male to “do” masculinity. Additionally, lesbian relationships did not preclude the existence of masculinity scripts. viiAgain, while these characters were created by lesbians to be ‘masculine’ lesbians, this fact does not preclude an examination of masculine characteristics in and of themselves. viiiThe term “scripting” is used to highlight the process by which individuals assign meaning to others “in an effort to structure their observations and reflections concerning difference” (Jackson 74). 54 Threatened Masculinities: Men’s Experiences of Gender Equality in Rural Rwanda Mediatrice Kagaba University of Gothenburg Abstract : This article analyses how rural Rwandan men experience gender equality laws and policies in their everyday lives. Traditional Rwandan society had a patriarchal social structure that resulted in men’s dominance and women’s subordination. A new constitution, adopted after the 1994 Tutsi genocide, recognizes the importance of gender equality and includes specific legal provisions to ensure women’s equal protection under the law. Working from focus group discussions in Kamonyi District, I explore men’s experiences of shifting power relations in Rwanda. Men have two main stories to tell in this regard: they appreciate the right of inheritance that women have acquired, as it increases the family assets, and new employment opportunities for women that offer men relief from the burden of providing for the family. Yet they also believe that men’s interests have been neglected in new laws, leading to problems in the family and community. The process of repositioning their masculinities today produces new forms of household conflict. Key words: Rwanda, Gender equality, Masculinity, Men -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 55-85 Masculinities Journal Tehdit Edilmiş Erkeklikler: Ruanda Kırsalındaki Erkeklerin Toplumsal Cinsiyet Eşitliği Deneyimleri Mediatrice Kagaba Gothenburg Üniversitesi Özet : Bu çalışma, kırsalda yaşayan Ruanda erkeklerinin toplumsal cinsiyet eşitliği kanun ve siyasalarını gündelik hayatlarında nasıl deneyimlediklerini analiz etmektedir. Geleneksel Ruanda toplumunun, erkek egemeliği ve kadının ikincil konumda oluşu ile neticelenmiş ataerkil bir sosyal yapısı vardır. 1994 Tutsi soykırımından sonra uygulamaya konulmuş olan yeni anayasa, toplumsal cinsiyet eşitliğinin önemini tanırken kadının korunmasını kanun kapsamına alan özel yasal koşulları da içeriyordu. Erkeklerin Ruanda’da değişen güç dinamikleri ile olan deneyimlerini Kamonyi bölgesinde yapılmış olan odak grup tartışmalarından hareketle analiz ettim. Erkeklerin bu bağlamda anlattıkları iki temel hikaye ortaya çıktı: ailenin mülkiyetini arttırdığı için kadının veraset hakkını elde etmesini ve erkeğin ailenin temel geçim merkezi olma yükünü hafiflettiği için kadının yeni iş imkanlarına kavuşmuş olmasını takdir ediyorlar. Buna rağmen, yeni çıkarılan kanunlarda erkeğin çıkarlarının göz ardı edildiğini ve bunun da aile ve toplum içinde sorunlara yol açabileceğini de düşünüyorlar. Erkekliklerini yeniden konumlama süreci bugün yeni ev içi anlaşmazlıkları üretme tehlikesini de beraberinde getiriyor. Anahtar kelimeler: Ruanda, Toplumsal cinsiyet eşitliği, Erkeklik, Erkek 56 Masculinities Journal E ven though gender equality has attained high importance in the global political agenda (Squires 1) in Rwanda, it is a new concept that emerged after the 1994 genocide. In the period before the genocide, men dominated much of the social, economic and political domain (Longman134), and gender inequality was a respected social norm (Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion 8). The 1992 Family Code established men (husband, father, elder son) as the head of the household, the decision maker, the owner of the family assets, the breadwinner and the family protector. Women and girls were caretakers at home, responsible for childcare and domestic work of cooking, cleaning, fetching firewood and water and caring for the sick or elderly relatives (Adekunle 16). Women were expected to defer to men in decision-making and were discouraged from speaking in public and expressing their needs in the presence of men (Patra and Ansoms 1114). Men were to talk and think for women. A woman who dared to challenge men in public was considered insolent (Uwineza and Pearson 12). In brief, women were treated as minors who were not permitted to engage in economic transactions, control financial resources in the homes or own or inherit land (Carlson and Shirley 3). When a male head of the household died, property was passed to male heirs or to a man’s brother rather than to the widow (Uwineza and Pearson 9). These gender imbalances left women vulnerable to various forms of household violence. The 2003 Constitution marked the turning point for the country’s gender equality. Rwanda established policies and programs aimed to increase the role of women in social-economic reconstruction thus overturning the country’s long history of gender inequality. There had been attempts to enact gender-sensitive laws earlier, such as the 1999 Law on Inheritance and Marital Property Rights that establishes gender equality in land inheritance and ownership within formal marriage. But the new constitution accelerated the process, resulting in the land policy of 2004 and Organic Land Law of 2005, both of which contain provisions for gender equality in land rights. Also, a 2009 Gender-Based Violence Law gives a woman the right to report gender abuses whether these 57 Masculinities Journal occur in the household or outside the home. The same law sets out the definitions of gender-based violence and introduces penalties. Existing studies and reports portray Rwanda as a unique example in the Eastern African region of gender equality underpinned by a strong legal framework and progressive policy (Delay, Weeks Dore and Umuhoza; FAO 48; McAuslan 116-119). Research on women’s experiences of the new laws shows that woman’s empowerment programs and gender sensitive laws positively affect women marriages as well as gender relations in their communities (Petra and Ansoms 1112, Longman134; Hategekimana 237; FAO 48; Sentama, 86). However, very little is known about men’s experiences of the new laws on gender equality in Rwanda. Multiple studies have shown that violence against women is increasing after the new equality laws and that the perpetrator of such violence is often a husband/partner (RWAMREC 11-18; Carson and Randell 10; GMO, 11 MIGEPROF, 10; NISR, 13). We also know that gender violence occurs mainly in ‘family domains or homes’ in rural communities (Rwanda Gender Monitoring Office 25). Studies on failed masculinity suggest that when a man is unable to fulfil his traditional roles in a dominant masculinity construction, a man feels threatened and lives under frustration and can use violence to attest his manhood (Cambell, 619; Connell 1812; Levant, 223, Sweetman, 5;Porter 488). Therefore, because masculinities change and are part of gender relations, listening to individual men about their lived experiences, can serve as analytical and political tool in making sense of gender relations, and can help understand the process of how men and women engage (Connell, 71; Haywood, 577). Men’s narratives are essential to understanding how the new gender relations are constructed and how the shifting nature of power relations within the new legal framework affects gendered lives (Ferguson, 119). It becomes critical because gender is not all about women; it is about both men and women and produces knowledge about gender relations (Marks, 5). With the promotion of women’s rights and gender equality in Rwanda, several studies focus on women’s experiences. Men’s experiences are rarely discussed in the current Rwandan discourse on gender equality. Against 58 Masculinities Journal this backdrop, it is important to focus attention on rural men and their experiences of gender equality. Masculinities and Gender Relations M asculinities are configurations of practice generated in particular situations (Connell81, Campbell 534, Connell 81). They are not fixed or embedded in the body or personalities of individuals. Rather, masculinities are socially and historically constructed (Connell and Messerschmidt 836, Connell 1803, Porter 487) and achieved in front of others who evaluate and assess gender performances (Barker and Ricardo 4-5). Under a patriarchal society, the social construction of masculinities are mainly associated with a deeprooted power of men over women where men are seen as the head of the family, the breadwinner, the decision maker and the family protector (Slegh and Richters 6, Freedman and Jacobson, 6; Connell, 1813; Lwambo, 50, Levant 223). A real man earns his position of authority through protecting and providing for the family (Lwambo 52). For being a man –is some level of financial independence, employment or income (Barker and Ricardo 55). If a man does not comply with what is socially expected from him, society rapidly informs him that he has ‘failed to be a man’ (Porter 488). In other word, the inability to man up and become the successful breadwinners, family head and leaders of wider society which stereotypes of masculinity power and success demand of him, he experiences threats and lives under pressure of not meeting the social standards of being a man (Porter 497; Sweetman 4-5). In most cases lack of access to income earning opportunity and larger scale of poverty become a source of insecurity for men; they feel that they cannot live up to their traditional roles of provider and breadwinner. Their authority comes under threat and as does their identity and self esteem (Silberschmidt, 195; Levant, 222; Freedman and Jacobson, 11; Slegh and Richters 137; Connell, 1812-1813; Campbell 619; Hamber 82). The situation thus puts social and economic pressure on men who have grown up with the expectation of being breadwinners 59 Masculinities Journal (Connell, 1813). This failure cues the man to feel frustrated, humiliated, emasculated and displaced in his family as well as his community, and it is known that he often turns to drink and other women for consolation; or some resort to the use of violence (Campbell, 621). Not only do lack of employment and poverty challenge men’s masculinity as breadwinners, but when a woman becomes more economically empowered, some men also react negatively and violently (Narayan 197;Thornhill 79; Lwambo, 50-55, Sweetman 5; Silberschmidt 196). Similarly, the inability to protect one’s family from attacks or armed conflict is also a source of shame and emasculation for male household heads (Freedman and Jacobson 6). The feeling of being unable to protect their families also leads men to become violent (Freedman and Jacobson 11; Baaz and Stern 505). The men’s roles and identities become confused and contradictory, and many men express feelings of helplessness, inadequacy, and lack of self-esteem (Silberschmidt 195). Briefly, the changed gender situation initiates serious challenges to traditional masculine identity and can result in a masculinity crisis, which involves the collapse of the basic pattern by which men have traditionally fulfilled their masculine role as the good provider role (Levant 222). Gender humiliation thus becomes a key factor in prolonging aggression and violent actions to reassert masculinity (Lambon 50). The process of asserting masculinity then influences subsequent gender attitudes and behaviours (World Bank 4, Barker and Ricardo 26). In short, masculinities are affected by historical and cultural changes. Moreover, gender relations also change dramatically throughout life, which leads to changing configurations of power relations as well as men and women's roles (Connell 89; Jackson 93; Connell 73). In addition, socially constructed behaviours vary across local contexts and interact with socio-cultural factors of class, race, poverty, ethnicity and age (Connell 77). In general, the roles of men and women in any particular society are based on perceptions that are shaped in the context of that society. In the new Rwanda, however, gender relations tell us very little about how new roles are experienced, 60 Masculinities Journal especially in the home. Most researchers inform us about what women and men do, in general, but not how their interactions and relationships are built and changed. One way to understand these interactions, as Carolyn Nordstrom argues, is to learn from individual experiences (Nordstrom 6). The daily experiences can serve as the basis for talking about what is happening in a community and establishing knowledge that can help planners and activists rethink the appropriate strategies (Nordstrom 6). The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore and analyse men’s experiences from the country that is internationally recognized as a model for promoting women’s rights and equality of rights and opportunities between men and women. It addresses the following main question: how do men living in rural areas of Rwanda experience the new gender equality practices in daily household life? I am also concerned to learn whether the new laws and policies are actually producing gender equality. How do men and women interact now and how are their behaviours changing in the household? The study is premised on the idea that if empowerment is applied only to women in Rwanda, men will continue to be seen as a problem and women as victims who require assistance. It is vital to talk to men about how new gender relations are being built or resisted and whether there are new tensions emerging at a variety of levels. As Michael Kimmel (22) explains, any effort to further gender equality that does not include men as well as women’s lives is doomed to failure because gender is both men and women’s issue. Interviewing Men in Rwanda T he study uses a standard interview methodology for gathering experiences on gender equality in 2014 from men in four villages in Kamonyi District, a rural area of Rwanda. A single case study methodology was appropriate because the emphasis was on gaining indepth understanding of men’s experiences with gender equality practices in the new Rwanda. Kamonyi District is ranked by the 61 Masculinities Journal Government of Rwanda as the best performing rural district in the country with respect to four pillars of development - justice, social welfare, good governance and economic development1 -and the strongest in incorporating activities that advance rural gender equality. Although the study results are not intended to be representative, the conclusions drawn here could help formulate assumptions regarding the experiences of men in other rural areas of the country, where problems are likely to be more acute than they are in the best district. Within Kamonyi District, four villages were selected as sites of interviews with men, and within each village, the interviews were organized around two focus groups, one with young married men aged 25-45, and the second with older married men aged 46 or older. The questions asked were the same to all groups. A total of 28 discussion groups were conducted and 122 men participated in the study. Contemporary laws provide land ownership rights only to women within a legal marriage, and so legally married men were selected2. This ensured that men could discuss the full range of rights for women if the desired. The decision to separate men into two different generations arose during the pilot phase of the research, when younger men were reluctant to express themselves in the presence of the older generation. The groups of men shared generational and marital status characteristics, but were not homogeneous. Both groups consisted of men involved in agricultural work, small-scale sellers of goods in the open market and casual workers on construction and water irrigation sites -the main work activities of men in Kamonyi District. Overall, the focus group approach worked well providing space and time for men to discuss their experiences with gender equality laws/policies. Similarities and differences in experiences came up and wider ranges of issues were discussed than would have been possible using individual interviews or questionnaires (Bryman 349). This research is part of a larger project on experiences of gender equality in Rwanda that entails interviews with rural men and women and also gender agencies of government. During the interviewing 62 Masculinities Journal process, I lived in the communities and went out with people in Kamonyi District on several occasions. At the beginning of the discussion with men they asked me if I was going to broadcast on radio what they told me. I said, ‘No, I will not’ and asked why? One man said, ‘These days many people from Kigali [the capital city of Rwanda] come to this community and ask women questions about their lives but no one has asked us any question about our lives as you are asking.’ Another man continued ‘Ubu abagore nibo bagezweho’ (during these days, all topics focus on women). Men’s complaints gave me an understanding that men very much wanted to share their experiences but have not been given such opportunity. As a young single woman, I found that some men were reluctant to discuss their personal experiences, especially in their sexual relations, with me. One man said ‘Ntabwo urashaka nushaka uzabibona, abagore bahinduka nk’ibicu’(you are not married, when you get married you will see, women change like the sky). As I experienced it, this created a sort of power relation between men and me, especially during the discussion groups for men in the older generation. Some men perceived me as a young person who should not hear about marital conflicts related to sex. Some men spoke about their stories using general examples, as if their experiences were happening to someone else in the community; yet they way they spoke indicated that they were speaking from personal-or at least close experience. Other men offered deep details and examples of their experiences in the new Rwanda, on the assumption that I was unaware of what married people were thinking. In some cases, my position as a single young woman actually gave me an opportunity to learn more about what goes on in the homes –perhaps more than maybe a married woman would have heard. Moreover, as an educated female who works with the University of Rwanda and was born and raised in an urban area, people living in Kamonyi District often saw me as a knowledgeable person. During the two months of fieldwork, some men wanted to talk to me about on-going individual family problems, and some erroneously believed that I would have solutions to their complaints or offer advice. I interpret this 63 Masculinities Journal confiding behaviour as a sign of trust by the villagers; however, it could also have created some expectations on their part that I could not fully meet. Using a few open-ended questions to elicit participants’ stories, I found men loquacious on the topic of gender equality, one talking after the other, supplementing each other’s views. They gave their own testimonies as well as examples of their neighbours and the larger Rwandan community. On the whole, the time I spent listening closely to men speak of gender equality helped me to identify several themes in their narratives and these appear in the next section. Men Narrate Gender Equality F ive themes emerged from the discussions about gender equality experiences: (1) economic benefits for the household; (2) changes in traditional family practices; (3) women working outside the household; (4) problems of infidelity and abandonment; and (5) the man as a victim. Economic Benefits for the Household P articipants recognized that gender equality laws have created clear economic benefits for the household. One benefit is that men can now share the family financial burden with women. One man explained this as follows: Life is getting better in my home. Before [gender] equality came I was working alone. Everyone in the family was looking at me. Today, both my wife and I work and earn money. We have two incomes and the stress of providing food for the home by myself is gone (Age 44). 64 Masculinities Journal Historically, paid work was mostly done by men. The Rwandan Family Code pronounced the man head of household thereby giving men the primary responsibility of supporting the family, a responsibility that became heavier when children enlarged the household. Today, some of the men interviewed appear to be pleased with the new labour law of 2009 for giving women rights and opportunities to work for cash and thereby contribute to family survival. Many of the men said they were happy to be relieved of this burden by sharing family financial support with their wives: A woman was supposed to stay home, clean the house, cook for the husband and children, fetch water and do agricultural labour near the house. She was not allowed to sit or speak where men were gathered. It was culturally prohibited. Today, with [gender] equality laws, we sit with women and they give their views, we eat together and we socialize. A woman goes out and works for cash as a man does (Group discussion 3). Though women had their own work at home they were not earning cash. Men tended to consider women’s sphere of work in the household as far less important than theirs. The earnings women bring home are what are appreciated. As men explained, this appreciation is due to the fact that men feel relieved from their traditional duties of securing food for the family. For some of the men, life as a couple is no longer a relationship of dependence of a woman on a man. It is metamorphosed into more of a win-win situation, with men’s traditional burden eased and women’s assignment of work only in the household lifted. Earning outside income also gives women a stake in family decision-making around managing family assets. Life today is better. We are not supposed to shoulder the family burden alone. In the past, the household was for men but now it is for both the wife and husband. One can look for sweet potatoes while another one is looking for 65 Masculinities Journal vegetables to make dinner, which was not the case before [gender] equality [laws] came (Group discussion 7). Many narrators express the idea that as women earn money and contribute to family betterment, they acquire new status in the household. In fact, the household becomes a unit for both husband and wife and, as their interactions become easier, new dynamics take hold at the core of the households, and communication and collaboration improve. Indeed, the narrators perceive equality as building interdependence between wife and husband. However, this experience cannot be taken for granted because, as many men explain, if a woman is not contributing to the family she does not gain entry to the ‘core’aspects of the new relationship. To be honest, if a woman does not bring anything home how can you really plan together? About what? When she also brings money,we can sit and bring what both of us have earned and then plan for it. We are not lying if she brings something home, it even add something good in our relationship. It reduces conflict because you plan together and accounts for each other. Otherwise, everyone does his or her own thing (Group discussion 8). It appears that the earnings a woman brings home create happiness in the house and mitigate the spousal conflict. Although such claim seem obvious, later sections indicate that the picture is far more complex. Men also recognize another benefit of the equality laws concerning inheritance: the plot of land that women can now bring to the family. In the past, a man owned all assets in the household. Today because of equality women also own assets. For example I have a plot inherited from my parents and my wife has one from her parents. This means that our family assets are from both sides and our say has the same magnitude when it comes to any decision related to management of our 66 Masculinities Journal belongings. Before equality came a woman had no right to decisions about assets at home. What could she say if she did not bring anything? (Age 56). The narrator reports that equality law encourages women as well to bring assets to the family. In fact, land in Rwanda is one of the primary livelihood assets of rural citizens. It is more than a source of food production. According to the Rwandan culture, land is a set of relations, a sense of belonging and a symbolic relationship between people mediated by symbolic and material value (Shearer 23). Getting land from wife’s side, according to men, not only increases the family possessions but also indirectly adds social recognition to the man’s position in the community. On the other hand, men claim that the law has diminished their traditional rights to make land decisions in the home. The 2005 Organic Law Determining the Use and the Management of Land gives legally married women equal ownership rights to the family land with men. If a man sells a plot of land without his wife’s agreement, the wife has the right to inform the local leaders or the police. Before the law passed, men disposed of family land as they pleased. Today if a man does not negotiate or communicate, he can be in trouble, as men said: As a man we could even give a friend a plot of land without informing a wife. We only tell them, ‘Do not cultivate the particular land we gave it to a friend. As a woman she could not say anything. Today we cannot do that without her agreement since we will need her approval, as it is a family asset. The problem is that women are not cooperative, it feels bad when you tell her –let sell a plot of land and she refuses, as a man you feel devalued. If you even try to do it without her agreement, and she calls the police, men can be in trouble. These days we (men) are very careful. 67 Masculinities Journal Women are the ones guiding us (discussion group 13). Reading such statements, it seems men are again pleased about some aspects of the inheritance laws and also concerned about its effects on their historic rights as men. The men say it is good that women bring a plot of land from their inheritance that increases the possessions of the family; yet that new right diminishes men’s decision-making power. But now, men and women must negotiate decisions concerning family land, and this requires even greater degrees of communication in their relationship (Giddens in Ferguson126). The men express that they experience the change of decisional power as disempowering –a loss of one element of their masculinity. To recover this loss, men can use violence against the ones over whom they do have power within household (Sweetman 5-6). A real man should be able to make a decision on his own. Imagine if you are gathering with your peers and there is a decision to be made, and you tell them -Let me go and ask my wife. It is so shameful. You lose your integrity with your peers. You cannot even be considered as a wise man in the community (Group discussion, 24). You even become a subject of jokes in the community. Whenever you pass, other men will be talking between them- look at him; he is no longer a man. He asked! Don’t you think it is a problem? (Age 44) Equality laws are bringing good things but we men are losing value indeed; not only in our families but in the community as well. Equality is taking away our culture. The problem is that in the future, we will find ourselves without a culture (Group discussion, 20). 68 Masculinities Journal It seems that the men are more concerned about their social position in the community than anything that positive gender equality may provide. They worry that their peers will see a subjected man, not a real man able to make his own decisions. He experiences fear of not meeting the right social standard for a man, the only standard he has lived with in the past. And the culture does little or nothing to support the idea that a man should actually negotiate with his wife before making a decision that involves the family property. Men appear to be worried about losing a culture of authority over land and over women. They appear to be living with the fear of not meeting the social expectations of men, and the fear of not knowing what the future will bring. The positive aspects of gender equality seem to disappear into their anger about culture and masculine privilege. Though women are contributing to the household income and possessions, men tend to put more emphasis on their feelings of losing influence. Below, we explore what men do to challenge and cope with these experiences of fear and ambivalence. Changes in Traditional Family Roles M any of the men interviewed described the intervention of the police and local authorities into family privacy as causing more problems. Women now have the right to report violent husbands to the police, something the men see as misuse and abuse of women’s rights. Before the 2009 gender-based violence law was endorsed, spousal conflicts and fights were handled by family elders, who listened to arguments on both sides and tried to reconcile husbands and wives. Today, most cases of what is called conjugal abuse are brought to local leaders or to the police. Men view this new practice as undermining family roles and further devaluing men: Some men nowadays are seen as irrelevant or motionless pylons in family. The power of a respected man is no more a reality.“Abagore babahaye intebe aho kuyicaraho 69 Masculinities Journal bayihagararaho”. Women have been given a chair and instead of sitting on it they stood on it. Some women are nowadays very aggressive, as they know that the laws overprotect them. No woman wants family intervention in case of conflict with her husband. They call the police (Group discussion, 13). In Rwandan tradition, both wife and children should respect a man in the household, for a man is the provider, the protector and the household head; his privilege is connected to responsibility. A ‘real man’ earns his position of authority through protecting and providing for the family (Lwambo 52). He therefore expects respect and admiration. With the new gender-based violence law, men can experience loss of respect in the house, which is tied to the fact that women no longer must submit to them. They narrate further that equality gives women rights but women misuse and abuse those rights by rejecting all traditional obligations. Traditionally, women were not allowed to reveal what was happening inside the household. Where sexual violence occurred, it was treated as a private matter and subject to a culture of silence: women were not allowed to speak out about their experiences (Uwineza and Pearson13). If they spoke, they would be considered arrogant or disrespectful (MIGEPROF 8). Today with gender-based violence law, women speak out, to the extent, men say, of revealing family matters by calling the police. Men narrated this new fact of life in Rwanda as though the police were invading men’s privacy and taking over their family role. Listening to men, it would seem that women are reporting their husbands to police in great numbers. National statistics show that only 28 per cent of cases are reported to police. Most men are not living this particular experience of being caught by the police; instead they are living with the fear of police intervention into their lives. A survey conducted by the Rwandan Men’s Resource Centre shows that in most cases across the country, the police only learn about gender-based violence when the victim is badly injured and requires medical care (RWAMREC 26). What really seems to worry the men is their loss of 70 Masculinities Journal autonomy. Their options are now restricted more and they chafe under the controls. Their anxiety of getting in trouble with the police is perhaps due to the fact that the gender-based violence law stipulates clearly that any act that results in physical, psychological, sexual and economic harm should be reported to police; and men and women are mobilized by state gender agencies to file reports with the police on these matters (Rwandan Gender Based Violence Law, 3). The men feel diminished and live with confusion and frustration, which is manifested as exaggerated fear that their wives will go to the police. These days the role of the family is taken over by the police. Any minor misunderstanding between you and your wife is reported to the police. This was not the case before. In the past the larger family had the responsibility and role of mediator in cases of conflict in the household. Today things have changed. The police manage most of the families. Do you think the police are resolving problems in families? No. Instead, they create them. Let me ask you, if a woman is taking you to jail at the police station, you spend days or weeks there and then you are back to your family, do you think you will speak to that woman again? When you come back you come with other strategies (Discussion group 26). Household conflicts were traditionally resolved in a family council headed by a chief of the extended family (always male). If a man was found responsible, though this was rare, he was fined by the family council. Today, the national police take the mediation role; however, the men interviewed view the police more as troublemakers than mediators. The man is punished in public now, whereas before he was punished by paying fine and it was all kept in the family. Now, family privacy has disappeared and everything can be public. The woman who once kept family secrets is now enabled by the state to put the man’s mistakes on view. To some men, this public policy interference in the private 71 Masculinities Journal household causes problems. In the past, men believed in elders and senior clansmen as the only wise and competent people to turn to in any case of conflict with their wives. Scrutiny by the police humiliates some men, who feel their household powers have been seized. There is a saying in Rwanda that ‘Amafuti y’umugabo nibwo buryo bwe (man’s mistakes are his capability). A woman speaking out about her husband’s mistake loses her dignity as a woman, according to men. Respondents said that when a man is jailed at the police station, he becomes angry with his wife, and when he gets home he adopts new strategies of controlling her. In most cases men describe acting quiet in the house as an alternative strategy, so the police will not intervene. He does not beat the wife or harm her physically; instead he uses silence. The participants explained this in their own words: Can she call the police if we did not fight? yahamagara police se ntarwanye nawe? Men justified their use of silence in the homes as a strategy that helps them to carry on. Silence disciplines wife and gives husband a passive-aggressive form of power and authority. As a consequence, psychological abuses in the household continue. And, silence may indicate a new way of undermining gender policies and laws without openly challenging them (Kronsell in Parpart 6). Silence is a reflection of what is excluded from daily exchange (Smyth 583). The state’s claim to enforce gender equality by monitoring men’s behaviour in their homes has spawned men’s new practice of privately resisting without saying a word. Women Working Outside the Household M en explained that they appreciate the earnings women bring home but at the same time those earnings become a source of conjugal conflicts: When the woman knows that she generates income, she wants to know how much you were paid and how much you spend on a daily basis. 72 Masculinities Journal Some women think that economic and financial capabilities involve added value in terms of respect. They are no longer obeying or respecting their husbands. In the past a woman was the heart of the family but today they are becoming crazy because they have money, and as a man you have to keep quiet. Otherwise she will call the police. There is no space at all; there is no margin for maneuver. For the sake of peace you keep quiet, what can you do? She has her own money and she has the police toll free number (Group discussion 11). Now that women bring income home, some men think that women disobey them and do not perform their traditional roles. Though men seem to be narrating their stories as if all women earn money and therefore became disrespectful to their husband, the integrated Household Living Conditions Survey contradicts the men’s claims. The survey shows that women in Kamonyi District are more occupied with small-scale farming (83 per cent are farmers) than males and are actually less involved in types of employment that provide high income, like independent non- farm (business) or waged non-farm. Agriculture is the main industry taking up 78 per cent for the population aged 16 and above, followed by Trade 7 per cent and Construction 4.2 per cent (Rwanda National Institute of Statistics 29-52). Women engaged in agriculture do not earn income at the end of the day unless they do casual labour, most of which is in government projects for road construction and water irrigation (Kagaba forth coming 7). The survey thus refutes men’s stories depicting women with cash in hand controlling their husbands. It is more likely that men fear the possibility that women will no longer depend on them. This creates anxieties that turn up in their views on gender equality. In the past before equality arrived, wives were nice people but today they are just crazy because they have money. 73 Masculinities Journal Have you seen a woman who enters the house after six in the evening? Have you seen a woman going to bars? What can you say? Can you beat her? The state has made women crazy. I as a man I do not have any say. I cannot touch her. We (men) keep quiet. It is now time for women. Women do not know any more that they are women (group discussion 19). The narrators above are telling us that when women get money they change their behaviours, which becomes problematic to men. It seems that men blame the state for giving women rights, as it has caused women to behave differently and ‘forget’ that they are ‘women’. Some men believe that the state is giving more importance to women now than men: ‘Abagabo ntamategeko aturengera tugira. Leta irikuduteza abagore.’ men do not have laws that protect them; the state has devalued us by focusing more on women. Before the gender law, the family was clearly structured in such a way that men and women’s social spaces were differentiated (i.e. the kitchen for women and bars for men). Today men see the presence of women in bars and pubs as a violation of culture. The narrators’ experiences may indicate concern that women are now exposed to different realities by interacting and sharing opportunities that may exist outside home. Infidelity and Abandonment S everal narrators named infidelity and abandonment as another potential consequence of equality in relationships. One participant explains these concerns as follows: When a woman gets money she becomes unfaithful to the husband. We have seen so many cases here in our community. For example, at P´s house there is a bar and they show movies in the evenings and weekends, my wife is working at the construction site as a helper, she goes in the morning; I do not know whom she spends the day with. In 74 Masculinities Journal the evening from the site she goes with her colleagues in a bar, I cannot say anything because I did not give her the money. She has her own. She comes home in the night if I try to ask something in bed she refuses saying she is tired. Two to three times saying she is tired. I looked for another woman (Age 48). This man expresses the view that as a result of women’s autonomy, women no longer feel compelled to have sex with the husband as traditionally expected; men had expectations and the women were to fulfil them. But women are no longer as submissive as before, so some men find ways of restoring their manhood by looking for another wife. Traditionally, polygamy was socially accepted and not linked to household conflicts as it is today. Although a newly formed family becomes a refugee for man, it creates problems for the separated wife, who has to carry the abandoned family responsibilities. At the same time, men’s narratives reveal the fear that women socialize now with different people and could be getting into intimate relationships with other men: In our days uburaya (infidelity between couples) is increasing. Now that women have money they go out with other men. If you try to ask her where she was, she says she has the right to share a beer with her colleagues at work. She is no longer responsible at home (Group discussion, 25). According to men’s perceptions, equality laws interfere with marital fidelity. Women’s interaction with other men at the workplace and in bars, according to men interviewed, creates a form of infidelity in which women have access to multiple partners. This situation is totally opposite to Rwandan traditional culture, which recognized an instrumental sexuality whereby the woman is expected to procreate and sexually satisfy the husband. Now that gender-based violence allows women to refuse to engage in sex with their spouses, many men of the district are of the view that this refusal confirms their partners’ 75 Masculinities Journal infidelity. This puts men in a situation of uncertainty because they do not know the outcome of their wives’ interactions outside home. The Man as Victim S ome men feel lost in the new Rwanda with its emphasis on gender equality. They explain that they are unable to fulfil their traditional gender roles, making them feel disempowered in their community. They are also ashamed and emasculated when women occasionally beat them. The men are reluctant to contact the police for fear that they will be seen as weak or defenceless, which is again contrary to the social expectation of being a man in Rwanda. There is a saying in Rwanda that a man never screams or cries. His tears never come out but rather flow towards the stomach. Umugabo ntataka. Amarira y’umugabo atemba ajya mu nda. One-man in a focus group seemed to concur with this view: I cannot go to the police station crying that my wife has beaten me as women do. You look stupid in the eyes of your wife, children and the community at large. So, instead of looking ridiculous to everyone, it is better to keep quiet (Age 29). No man will bring his complaints to the police and tell them that his wife beats him. The police will laugh and make jokes about him (Age 53). Men feel loosing their manhood if they report their abuses. The Rwandan Gender Monitoring Office also reports that men do not report household violence against them because they want to keep their reputation. To be respected, a real man keeps his victimhood a total secrecy: if you report abuse, abandi bagabo baguca amazi. This is a popular term that means somebody is useless. Men who try to report abuse are mocked and ridiculed; they are embarrassed and feel a loss of their manhood. This is in line with Porter’s suggestion that not meeting local standards of manhood can cause feelings of shame, humiliation, frustration and loss of 76 Masculinities Journal dignity (Porter 488-497). These feelings and beliefs position men interviewed as existentially threatened people: When you are in open conflict with your wife you are surrounded by a wall of troubles. Your wife makes sure that your children hate and do not trust you. She alerts local authorities so as to ensure that you will never dare take any repressive action. You are on your knees; you are no longer the genuine chief of your family. You live under fear that she may call the police at anytime (Group discussion, 16). Many narrators appear to be saying that as a result of gender equality laws and women’s changing practices, a man perceives himself as a victim. In cases of family conflict, the woman not only alerts local leaders, she also turns the children against him. In this respect, men then lose their authority and prerogatives as the head of the family. They feel incapable of fulfilling their family status and obligations and also humiliated by their peers: When you are obedient and submissive to your wife, you are no longer a true man leading your family. You look ridiculous in the eyes of your peers. You cannot even give any idea in the community between other men as everyone will question the soundness and usefulness of an idea of a subjected man commonly branded ikizibahu (housecoat). You cannot feel comfortable when in public. Ubaumezenk’uwapfuyeahagaze (you feel like a dead standing person) (group discussion, 23). Narrators further indicate the danger of respecting and obeying the wife. According to men, if they are nice to their wife, they attract social disapproval and are called ikizibaho 3. If they are not nice to the wife, 77 Masculinities Journal they live with the fear that the police will punish them. The man is puzzled. Besides being silent in their homes, men describe leaving home as another way to cope with the new challenges. Weakened from inside and outside the home, one-way strategy is to run away from the family. Some men justify this by arguing that the state has caused women to disrespect men, and those who do not want to be disrespected leave their homes. In extreme cases, men told stories of some men who have killed their spouses: In these days spousal death is common. In the past, there were no such cases. Have you heard any man killed by the wife or wife killed by the husband? These days it is becoming a fashion. If you think we are lying to you, listen to the news in almost all radio stations; all the time there are announces of a man or a woman killed by his or her partner. Why do you think it is happening? He asked! It is due to these equality laws (Age 56). Before equality comes, we were living well. Women were nice people, now they are becoming foolish because laws overprotect them. They do whatever they want because they know the law is on their side (group discussion, 2). These men’s experiences reflect a growing problem in Rwanda. The Rwandan national police report shows that in 2009 and 2010, the number of murder cases related to domestic violence doubled. According to the report, 38 women were killed by their husbands in 2009 and the figure rose to 83 in 2010. These statistics may indicate the confusion and controversy around the situation of gender equality in Rwanda today. This situation reflects a genuine challenge that need to be addressed by policy makers: new laws regulating gender-related modern practices seem to be creating problems for men that can result in new problems for families. 78 Masculinities Journal Concluding Thoughts T he aim of this research was to listen closely to the voices of Rwandan men and understand their stories about everyday experiences of gender equality practices in light of the new legislation. I learned that men had two types of stories to tell. On the one hand, men believe that gender equality laws have enabled women to contribute both materially and financially to their families. On the other hand, the same laws have negatively affected the relationship of spouses. Men perceive a loss of power and control over their partners and a loss of authority to invasive police powers over areas of traditional family privacy. Women enjoy outside resources and socialize now in ways that may result in infidelity. Family abandonment by men becomes a mechanism of regaining some perceived losses of power and prerogatives. Men in the district of this study express relief from the burden of being sole breadwinner for the family and appreciate the inheritance law that gives women the right to land from their families of origin. Both new practices increase family assets and lift the man’s socio-economic position in the community. However, men had another story to tell, which emerged as the more dominant story: in the new Rwanda, men are not well catered for by the gender equality legal provisions, and this has a negative effect on social relations in the family and the community. At the end of the fieldwork, I realized that men across the four villages studied in Kamonyi District think their status is being ruined by the new gender equality promoted by the Government. Their stories reflect fear of punishment by the local leaders or the police if they commit violence against their female partners. Gone is entitlement to beat their wives and forced sex with them. Gone, therefore, are the old warnings and punishments for women who do not fulfil their culturally determined roles in a proper way. Men experience fear and the anticipation of being disciplined without recourse to assistance. Their overarching experience is extreme humiliation, which 79 Masculinities Journal encourages them to exaggerate the empirical extent of problems such as women reporting men to police or turning up in bars after work. The narratives paint a picture of a man who does not know which path to take. This uncertainty thus creates a new rural masculinity in Rwandan society that resides in imaginary and nostalgic scenarios and in fears and worries. Previous studies have shown that men in Rwanda are becoming more violent in the household as they resist gender equality practices (Carlson and Randell 10; RWAMREC 16; Slegh and Richters; 131-139). However, the narratives from interviewed men here indicate that men are mostly confused and do not know what to do and how to behave in their homes and community. This state of confusion causes dilemmas for them: collaborating with their wives will lead to loss of recognition by peers, and not collaborating can lead to the abuse of gender sensitive laws which is punishable. Arguably, the men are experiencing a masculinity crisis. However, this crisis cannot be interpreted as persistent over time or a flaw in gender equality policy and laws; rather it indicates a transitional period of confusion that suggests the need to develop strategies for gender equality that can reconcile conflicts between tradition and equality practices. Reading from men’s narratives, it appears that it is still difficult to achieve gender equality in the family. However, it is possible in rural families to do so if men’s concerns receive recognition as legitimate experiences. There is significant fear among men of not meeting their usual masculinity requirements as well as fear of not knowing what the future of equality will bring to men, and worries about what women can now do outside the home. If planners of gender equality do not take these experiences seriously, the usual binary of men as perpetrators of violence in the home and women as victims will remain or could even worsen. Gender equality laws and policies thus will operate in vain until men’s expressed pain, complaints and worries are heard and addressed. 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Print. 1(See Districts Performance Evaluation Report 2011-2012) 2Under the Constitution, only civil monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is recognized. For instance the rights to land property are protected only for legally married women in Rwanda. So it is for children when it comes to inheritance. Other family properties beside land are conditional to the matrimonial regime and to whether marriage is registered or not. (Rwandan constitution Art.26). 3Ikizibaho is a traditional long dress that women use to wear around the house. 85 The Fragrance of a New Man? Masculinity and Fashion in Young Males’ Cologne Commercials Iván Ferrero Ruiz University of Connecticut Abstract: The consolidation of the masculine market within the fashion world has given rise to an increasing objectification of the male figure. In such context, men’s cologne commercials portray a youthful, handsome man who embraces masculinity from a highly fashioned perspective. The style of these ads is imbued with a sense of artifice, illusion and mirage that nonetheless blends in with the man-model whose beauty and confidence become an attainable goal for consumers. Here, the alluring rhetoric of advertising comes into play, equating the possession of a fragrance with such attributes. Drawing on Lipovetsky (1987), I address the connection between fashion and advertising, focusing on the particularities of the perfume market. Subsequently, I examine commercials from some of the current top selling fragrances for young males: Paco Rabanne, Armani and Chanel. My analysis is two-fold: first, I focus on the conscious background artifice; second, I examine gender portrayal and expectations. My goal is to visualize current patterns in masculinity and show how these commercials enhance beauty and individualization. Such qualities are captured in models that frame a type of man who combines the current penchant for style and fashion with the traditional masculine attributes of power and control. Key words: masculinity, advertising, cologne, fashion. -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 86-104 Masculinities Journal Yeni Erkeğin Kokusu mu? Genç Erkeklere Yönelik Kolonya reklamlarında erkeklik ve moda Iván Ferrero Ruiz Connecticut Üniversitesi Özet: Erkeklere yönelik piyasanın moda dünyası ile birleşimi erkek figürün nesneleştirilmesinde artışa yol açtı. Bu bağlamda, erkek kolonyası reklamları erkekliği moda perspektifinden kucaklayan genç ve yakışıklı bir erkek portresi çizmektedir. Bu reklamların tarzı, güzelliği ve güveni tüketiciler için erişilebilir bir hedef haline gelen erkek-model ile birleşen bir kandırmaca, illüzyon ve yanılsama hissi ile aşılanmaktadır. Burada, kokuya sahip olmayı bu niteliklerle eşitleyen reklamcılığın cazip retoriği devreye girmektedir. Bu çalışma kapsamında Lipovetsky (1987)’den yararlanarak ve parfüm piyasasının özelliklerine odaklanarak moda ve reklam arasındaki ilişkiyi sorgulayacak; akabinde ise, şu sıralar en çok satılan, Paco Rabanne, Armani ve Chanel gibi genç erkek kokularından birkaçının reklamlarını inceleyeceğim. Gerçekleştireceğim analiz iki katmanlı olacaktır: İlk olarak arka plandaki bilinçli kandırmacaya odaklanacak; ikinci olarak da cinsiyet betimlenmesini ve buna ilişkin beklentileri inceleyeceğim. Amacım erkeklikteki güncel örüntüleri görselleştirmek ve bu reklamların güzelliği ve bireyselleşmeyi nasıl arttırdığını göstermek olacaktır. Bu özellikler, stile ve modaya yönelik güncel eğilimi ve geleneksel erkek özellikleri olan iktidar ve kontrolü birleştiren bir erkek tipini çerçeveleyen modellerde bulunmaktadır. Anahtar kelimeler: erkeklik, reklamcılık, kolonya, moda. 87 Masculinities Journal T he consolidation of the masculine market within the fashion world, including beauty and style merchandise, has led to an increasing objectification of the male figure that can be perceived in the advertising campaigns of the male fragrance industry. Men’s cologne commercials portray a youthful, handsome man who embraces masculinity from a highly fashioned perspective. In my research, I addressed four masculine fragrance commercials from some of the current top ten selling scents for young men. These advertising videos are imbued with artifice, illusion and dream-like situations which, as part of the game of fashion, make consumers detach from the story and focus on the model, a man whose beauty and confident demeanor become an attainable goal for consumers. At this point, the alluring rhetoric of advertising comes into play, equating the possession of a fragrance with such attributes. In such framework, I intend to visualize current patterns in masculinity and gender expectations. Drawing on Lipovetsky (1987), I examined the connection between fashion and advertising, focusing on the particularities of the perfume market. Subsequently, I analyzed the videos from two perspectives: background/setting and gender. In them, the stylish, seductive young male is accompanied by a woman who has succumbed to him, in an intensely erotic, magic atmosphere. I will conclude that these commercials enhance beauty and individualization, captured in male figures that frame a type of man who combines the current penchant for style and fashion with the traditional masculine attributes of power and control. The commercials under analysis are Invictus (2013) and One Million Intense (2012) by Paco Rabanne, Bleu de Chanel (2010) by Chanel and Armani Code Ice (2014) by Giorgio Armani. Besides the market success of these colognes in countries such as the US, Spain, Germany or France (Kafkaesqueblog, Perfurmative), these ads reflect the same gender characteristics, in spite of their stylistic and contextual differences. They construct identity by relying on traditional views of masculinity, such as control, dominance, power and individualism, while also presenting a fashionable, modern man at the surface level. 88 Masculinities Journal The advertisements display a common mis-en-scène that juxtaposes present and past and amalgamates unrelated locations. Here is where fashion’s beautiful artifice and advertising’s crafty rhetoric blend in to present a combination of realistic and dream-like scenarios that create an illusory atmosphere. But artificiality is precisely the defining characteristic of fragrance commercials that makes them compelling and memorable. From a gender perspective, I will describe the portrayal of male figures from two outlooks: the objectified body and the man’s social role. All these males are youthful, beautiful and seductive. They move in an intensely erotic ambiance where they display self-awareness and a strong sense of fashion. For the past decades, fashion has proved to be no longer a female activity; the men starring these commercials follow current fashion dictates for individualism and distinction, each of them displaying their own style. On the other hand, their demeanor is the same for all four cases: the commercials present a man who is active and takes over control. Conversely, women are shown as passive, highly sexualized subjects that have been seduced by the man. In spite of each commercial’s attempt to portray different versions of contemporary men, they all rely on the same old gender division. Fashion and (Cologne) Advertising I n The Empire of Fashion (1987), Gilles Lipovetsky accounts for the expansion of fashion and its influence in social behavior. Fashion is sheer seduction and beauty, but its shallowness and artificiality is seen as an upside, since it puts distance between humans and their interactions with the world. Such detachment, according to Lipovetsky, fosters individualism and the ability to choose, thus making the world more democratic. In chapter 5 (pp. 156-173), the author explains how advertising has acquired the characteristics of fashion: “advertising is communication structured like fashion, more and more under the sway of the spectacular, personalized appearance, pure seduction” (158). With seduction as the driving force, advertising becomes a conscious artifice. Ads are superficial, and mere beauty is their goal. The rational and 89 Masculinities Journal logical gives way to the fantastic, the spectacular, because that is how seduction succeeds, in a “frivolous” way (156). Advertising and fashion are thus bound to blend with one another because they are structured through rhetoric. As Phillips and McQuarrie put it (2008), rhetoric focuses on how; it does not necessarily seek “unadorned truth” (7), but ways of persuading. It is, therefore, tied to seduction: what matters is not the message, but how it is presented, hence the importance of stylistic choices. Aesthetics is “primordial in the work of advertising” (Lipovetsky 159). In this context, fragrance commercials are the quintessential example where all these characteristics meet. No other ad “celebrates artifice” in such a compelling way, presenting fantastic or dreamlike situations. Even if they take place in real locations, there is always an odd, playful combination of time and place that makes them unnatural, pure pastiche. Moreover, they always incorporate magic and mystery, as if encouraging viewers not to take them seriously. The illusory situations of cologne commercials do not invite to closeness and identification, but to distancing. For Lipovetsky, this is how fashioned advertising works: “it has no subjective resonance, it elicits no emotional involvement” (161). And yet, fragrance commercials resonate with a large part of the population. Many of them have become widely popular, with their models acquiring notable fame and admiration. Additionally, perfumes and colognes make up a large part of the firms revenue, and they connect haute couture with the pret à porter, casual, more accessible fashion. Colognes are affordable for almost everyone, but very few consumers can purchase a designer’s dress. With such economic potential, fashion houses meticulously imbue perfume and cologne advertising with the illusion of their high fashion sophistication, in order to save face down at the world of the average consumer. Even if the consumer does not just get fooled by the commercial, advertising is vital for fragrances. The buyer will most likely test a cologne before purchasing it, but when she enters the perfume store, with its numerous fragrance samples, what makes her choose a sample is 90 Masculinities Journal advertising imagery: “images give us a sense that we know places, times and peoples that we have never experienced” (Schroeder 278). Whether she liked it or not, it is stuck in her head, and the more striking, odd and artificial it was, the better she will remember it. In “Narrative and Persuasion in Fashion Advertising” (2010), McQuarrie and Phillips argue the importance of the “grotesque” for effective advertising. Ads containing negative values will trigger an “intense experience” (380) from the part of the consumer. Although at different levels, the commercials analyzed contain grotesque attributes. Their uncanny elements can be unpleasant, due to the excessive power they confer on the male characters, making them presumptuous, conceited and overbearing. Along these same lines, the dominance of men over women in the commercials can also be seen as grotesque. McQuarrie and Phillips posit two important persuasive factors for consumer engagement, called “transportation” and “immersion”, which “work by intensifying brand experience rather than boosting brand evaluation” (368). Transportation refers to the consumer “experiencing” the story presented by the ad, an unlikely option for these cologne commercials, due to the excessive artifice they deploy and viewers’ presumed distant attitude. However, “immersion” explains consumers’ potential engagement with the dream-like, illusory cologne commercials. The authors describe this mode of engagement as “creative, innovative and evocative” (387), similar to an art piece in a museum. Observers do not intend to identify with it, but to pay attention to its aesthetics and overall configuration. This factor can therefore explain the resonance of cologne commercials among watchers, even if the ad itself does not spark empathy or identification. Finally, an essential issue to account for the nature of fragrance advertising is the need to overcome the limitations of scent. According to Zelman (1992), the sense of smell lacks linguistic resources and it is hard to describe it “separately from its source” (110). In the absence of discursive symbols, advertisers choose to rely on “sexuality, wealth [and] rugged individualism” (112), which, combined with “mystery” (114), act as the filler for the empty slot of the indescribable scent. All four men in 91 Masculinities Journal the commercials embrace wealth and individualism, in an erotic atmosphere with sexual tension arising between male and female characters. The eroticism is enhanced by the mysterious ambiance of the narrative, with ambiguous conversations and unclear background stories. Much is left unseen and unsaid, but it is hinted by the gaze and the conversations. Several cues lead to sex and sexuality, and that is why gender roles and the representation of masculinity are of paramount importance in the commercials. The Commercials T he promotional videos belong to renowned fashion houses with a long trajectory in the haute couture world. I have examined two commercials from Paco Rabanne, Invictus and One Million Intense, due to their influence and sales. The ads have an overwhelming presence in the media, and the advertised fragrances have obtained excellent sales: Invictus is currently the top fragrance in France and Spain (Kafkaesqueblog, Perfurmative), and One Million heads the US market (Top Ten for Everything). Additionally, these videos are worth comparing due to their different setting but same clear-cut exhibition of male power and female sexual subordination. In Invictus, all attention is drawn to a shirtless man (former rugby player Nick Youngquest) who walks across a crowded stadium at night, surrounded by Greek-looking deities. The model is carrying a sports cup (which is also the cologne’s bottle) and he destroys anything or anyone trying to get in his way, in a display of herculean strength. When he gets to the fitting room, naked nymph-like women are waiting for him, causing him to naughtily grin at the camera, as if he were seeking the viewer’s mutual understanding. One Million Intense, on the other hand, takes place in a bunker where a man (the model Mat Gordon) with magic powers sets up an encounter with a woman. Every time he snaps his fingers, he obtains something he wants, gradually changing the setting and undressing the woman. In the end, her skin turns gold, like the fragrance, and she ends up embracing him. He therefore possesses her like he can possess the bottle. 92 Masculinities Journal Giorgio Armani and Chanel opt for a more classic and classier man. Armani Code Ice (2014) features Hollywood star Chris Pine, who adopts different identities at the same time to show a woman passing by that she will not be able to escape him: he is a bartender, a customer, a businessperson and a trend-setter. Eventually, he waits for her in a car and they both drive off together after he says “I thought I’d lost you”. When the voice-over announces the fragrance, the message “Armani Code: unforgettable” is displayed. Meanwhile, in Bleu de Chanel (2010), the French actor and model Gaspard Ulliel plays a photographer who has several flashbacks while he is giving a press conference. The person prompting such memories is a girl seating among the other journalists. The flashbacks provide a background story, in which he was a photographer and she was first, his model, and then his lover. Back at the present, he goes through a meltdown and unexpectedly leaves the room after claiming “I’m not the man I’m expected to be anymore”, cueing the fragrance’s motto: “be unexpected”. As he makes his way out, the walls fall down, as if his energy had torn them down. All four narratives are set in an uncanny atmosphere that is the cause, or consequence, of the man’s magic powers, who is a youthful, good-looking male in his late twenties or early thirties. He displays confidence, authority and initiative, in contrast with his female counterparts, who are passive individuals charmed by him. This same trend is also present in recent videos by other fashion houses. In Only the Brave (2014), by Diesel, an athletic man runs through a futuristic city. The place is full of obstacles he has to elude, while a woman eyes him and exchanges a deep, intimate gaze with him. Eventually, he makes it to the top of a building overlooking the city and stares into the horizon while a voice-over states “take over tomorrow”. In Dior Homme (2013), Hollywood star Robert Pattinson exchanges sexual and other encounters with a woman he has seduced and now follows him wherever he goes as if she were his little puppet. All images are in black and white, providing a vintage style, except for the end, in which the golden hues of sunset match his beige and black attire, which also resembles the fragrance. 93 Masculinities Journal The Artifice of Time And Place I n “Fashion and Popular Culture”, Wilson (2003) addresses the concept of nostalgia as a mechanism deployed by fashion, which seeks the “appropriation of the past” (172). In my study, I argue that fashion also utilizes places in order to evoke alternative worlds, so that consumers can impersonate not just an artificial epoch, but also a physical space. Indeed, the defining characteristic of fragrance commercials is time and place playfulness, superimposing the present with previous eras and combining different spaces in the same scenario. They constitute a key motif that makes the commercials eye-catching and thrilling. Such is the amalgamation of historical periods and geographic locations that time and place cannot be analyzed separately. The lack of a present or past is a key component in One Million Intense, where the absence of outside references draws the attention exclusively to the man, the woman and their sensuous encounter at an isolated bunker. Meanwhile, the other three commercials share a nostalgic drive for a classy past that connects with the present. Invictus is the video with the most marked temporal and spatial contrasts, blending classic mythology with contemporary music (the song Power by the rapper Kanye West) and fashion shows with sports games. The sports theme connects the athletic spirit of Old Greece with a present-day stadium, but the world of fashion modeling also intervenes, as the man seems to catwalk on an arena that resembles a fashion show. At some point, it is worth wondering whether Nick Youngquest is an athlete, a model, a deity, or all of them at once. In “Behind the scenes with Chris Pine”, the video director of Armani Code Ice, Andrew Dominik, expressed his desire to include an “Italian setting”, resulting in the combination of Italian architecture with the skyline of Los Angeles, and thus fusing the classic and the modern. Another optimal example is the video’s tune, a remix of Rossini’s Barber of Seville by DJ Brian Burrows that fuses opera and electronic music. Additionally, Chris Pine’s multiple roles are a modern impersonation of 94 Masculinities Journal the main character in Rossini’s piece, who disguises himself in order to seduce a woman. Finally, Scorsese’s Bleu de Chanel mixes the present of the press conference with the 1960-1970’s aesthetics of the flashbacks. The song “She said Yeah” (1965) by The Rolling Stones, and the women’s hairstyle and clothes are the main cues that enable the time travel. Regarding space, two other locations appear besides the press conference room: New York’s subway and a bourgeois home reminiscing of the 19th century. In the last sequence, Gaspard Ulliel hastily leaves the room while the thin walls fall down, revealing the actual movie studio and accentuating the artificiality of the whole scenario. In spite of such remarkable references to the past and alternative spaces, something remains in the present and sparks the connection with the young people these commercials try to persuade: the men themselves. Their overall style and demeanor do not mirror the past; instead, they reflect a trendy person who lives in the present and presents himself as a role model of current masculine beauty. This clash of the ultimate, good-looking model that belongs with fashion magazines with other worlds and periods heightens the purposeful artifice of cologne commercials. All these men have supernatural powers that help them take over the people and space around them: “in advertising contexts […] men create a sense of identity by extending out from their body to control objects and other people” (McKinnon 91). This mysterious magic is part of the fictional world involving cologne commercials, which makes them derisible and even subject to mockery. But this ostensive display of fantasy is perfectly balanced with an element consumers can relate to: the body. The models showcase a fashionable, beautiful and youthful body whose perfection becomes a desirable goal. The Man: His Body T he 19th century brought about a significant change in the habits and attitudes of men and women towards clothing and cosmetics. Men “were excluded from the glitter of artifice” in what was 95 Masculinities Journal coined as “the great male renunciation” (Fluegel 1930, Lipovetsky 1987, Entwistle 200). The reason for this shift can be found in the rise of bourgeois society, in which men were expected to be “useful” (Entwistle 154). As a consequence, the luxury and pomposity associated with fashion was reserved just for women. In such context, the suit became the masculine garment par excellence, linked to “respectability and the desire to be business-like or professional” (Entwistle 173). Neglected from the sphere of fashion, ignored by the gaze, men in suits were the representation of a de-sexualized body (Entwistle 174). The 1980s, however, were a major breakthrough in terms of men and fashion: clothing, style and beauty were no longer exclusively for women. As opposed to the aforementioned “renunciation”, the male figure also became the target of fashion advertising, thus reflecting a “narcissistic preoccupation with his appearance” (Entwistle 146). Since the early 19 th century and up to the late 1900s males were outside the fashion spectrum; their relation to dress and appearance was supposed to be purely practical. But from the 1980s, the access of males to the fashion realm and their presence in ads and magazines brought about the eroticization and objectification of male bodies. It was the advent of the “new man” (Triggs 1992; Entwistle 2000). In the Invictus commercial, overt eroticism is shown in the model’s tattooed, muscled torso. The gaze is inevitably drawn to his halfnaked body, and his demeanor also indicates that he wants to be the center of attention and the object of desire. The other three commercials show men in suits. These garments, contrary to the old-style idea of desexualization, contribute to eroticism: “clothing […] is a crucial feature in the production of masculinity and femininity” (Entwistle 143). The suit has a dual goal: it showcases the traditional, respectable man while also making him desired, bridging the classic with the more youthful and rebel spirit. All three men wear the suit in a non-traditional way: unbuttoned shirt and no tie. The dressed body shows signs of undressing, inviting the viewer to imagine the man’s naked body and picture the sexual encounter with the woman who is so enthralled by him. Even though the body is only overtly exposed in the Invictus 96 Masculinities Journal commercial, the different garments the other models wear and the frequent glimpses to their chests are a sign of their muscular, slender figures: “physical power is denoted by the muscular tones of the male body […] viewed as both aesthetically and sexually pleasing although the latter is not readily accessible” (Triggs 28). Moreover, the commercials show pervasive beauty and youth, a symbol for the “hedonistic, juvenile mass culture” (Lipovetsky 99) elicited by modern fashion. The men always look impeccable no matter what they do or how they feel. Nick Youngquest (Invictus) is carrying a large, bulky trophy, showing no exhaustion whatsoever. One Million’s Mat Gordon is swiftly moving around, but his look is always spotless. Giorgio Armani’s Chris Pine adopts multiple roles in the commercial, but his face stays the same, and he looks neat in all occasions. Chanel’s Gaspard Ulliel is put under pressure, but no sweat or awkward frowning affect his handsome face. The force of beauty makes it transcend the human and transport the models to the divine. Besides the magic powers that all four protagonists have in common, it is worth noting the influence of classic Greek aesthetics and topics in the Paco Rabanne commercials. Triggs claims that Greek corporeal culture and naked representations were a “cult for wholeness and physical beauty” (28) that went beyond the material, thus placing desire out of reach and transforming the human into the divine. In Invictus, the man is surrounded by gods and goddesses, and the women waiting for him at the fitting room replicate the nymphs and priestesses. In One Million, the man turns the woman’s naked body into gold, thus mirroring the myth of king Midas. But the objectified, seductive male body finds its most clear-cut expression in the cologne bottle. Back in 1994, Murphy already pointed at the ingenuity that sellers put into the package. A striking, artistic bottle was also necessary to try and overcome the growing competition among brands. The advertisers of these four fragrances seek to transport the model’s youthfulness and flawless beauty to the bottle; their attributes are conveyed by the container. Invictus’ bottle is the trophy the model carries; One Million’s is a tall, narrow bottle that resembles the 97 Masculinities Journal model’s slender body; Armani’s is dark and elegant, like the man’s clothes; Bleu de Chanel’s squared shape matches the model sitting with his arms stretched and his blazer on. Additionally, the bottle’s color matches the predominant hues in the commercial: grey, gold, black/grey and dark blue, respectively. The Man: His Role T he men in the commercials are highly fashioned. Their style is crucial for their seductive power, and they are all objectified and perused by the sexualized gaze. However, this new man does not go beyond the aesthetic. In terms of demeanor and attitude, the models communicate the traditional role of masculinity, defined as control and power. Their supernatural abilities empower them and endow them with confidence and self-assertion. They have complete control over the situations, and they spark an intimidating, yet enchanting feeling. Moreover, the models display ostensive wealth and success, visible in their clothes but also in their relation to spaces and objects. Invictus is an admired celebrity; One Million appears in a luxury bunker resembling a Swiss bank; Armani Code drives an expensive sports car; Bleu de Chanel inhabits a bourgeois house. Three out of the four men are smothered by paparazzi, and all of them dominate the moves and feelings of women. They exert control, but they are not controlled by others. This visual manifestation of strength and affluence is the symbol of the confidence they irradiate, which ultimately sustains the “myth of masculine independence” (McKinnon 89). They do not have family ties; instead, they search for the woman they want, conscious of their success. McKinnon (2003) defines the 1970s as a period of “stereotypical” gender portrayal. The concepts that, according to the author, 1970s advertising communicates about men are “intelligence”, “independence” (88) and “authority/dominance” (90), and all of them correspond with the men in the studied cologne commercials. Conversely, he advocates a shift in the perception of men during the 1990s, more lenient with the 98 Masculinities Journal aforementioned eroticism and objectification. McKinnon claims that in more recent decades men have been deployed by advertising in ways that in the past would only correspond to women, due to the dynamism of gender as a construct (93). However, he argues that a certain type of advertising sticks to very traditional views of masculinity: car and beer commercials. After examining the characteristics attributed to men in these advertisements, I found them to be analogous to my four case studies: free, individualistic men surrounded by women who “admire and respond sexually to masculinity” (98). Cologne commercials can then be grouped with alcohol and vehicles, which coincidentally are present in the analyzed videos (One Million prepares a drink while his woman gets naked, and the Armani Code commercial features the sports car). These four men therefore embody the traditional notion of masculinity as powerful, independent and authoritarian, while also portraying an intense sensuality and voyeuristic desire that masculinity has been immersed in since the 1980s and 1990s: “male representations have changed in the last few decades, but male dominance remains” (Schroeder and Zwick 45). The image of the lone man who makes advances was labeled as a “hero shot” by Schroeder and Zwick, who argue that the lack of evidence for the heterosexuality of these individuals might easily allow for a gay reading. To safeguard this much cherished masculinity, these commercials ensure that their men have an active role that justifies their (sexual) scrutiny. One of Paco Rabanne’s men is a rugby player, and the other might easily be conceived as some tycoon or entrepreneur; Chris Pine adopts multiple personalities including white collar jobs and bartending; and Gaspard Ulliel plays a photographer. Additionally, they compensate their being eyed by the viewer with doing something: walking, setting up a date, driving, giving a press conference and so forth. In this sense, Holt and Thompson (2004) account for the existence of a “man-of-action hero” in American consumer culture, who is the middle ground between the traditional “bread-winner” (the hard-working, responsible father) and the “rebel” (the amoral, independent cowboy): 99 Masculinities Journal Man of action: must be adventurous, exciting, potent, and untamed, while also contributing to the greater social good. He must be perpetually youthful, dynamic, and iconoclastic, while at the same time fulfill the duties of a mature patriarch. He must continually defy the social status quo, while he enjoys a considerable degree of status and respect. He must be an unreconstructed risk taker, be dangerous, and yet be utterly indispensable to the integrity and functioning of the social order (429). The men from Rabanne, Dior and Chanel fit into these characteristics, showing a sassy, sometimes unorthodox behavior. But despite their recklessness, arrogance and self-absorption, they are very much respected and admired, partly thanks to the alluring voice-overs and the fascination and devotion shown by female characters. Furthermore, these men are not evil or cruel, like the cowboy, but mischievous rascals with a mysterious aura that intensifies their attractiveness. On the other side of the spectrum we find women. Unlike the active, daring and powerful man, females adopt a submissive role that obliterates their personality. Their only active intervention (if there is any) is to facilitate the sexual encounter with the man: “the male embodies the active subject, the business-like, self-assured decision maker, while the female occupies the passive object, the observed sexual/sensual body, eroticized and inactive” (Schroeder and Zwick 34). Naked, nymph-like women lie on a bench at the fitting room waiting for their Invictus; meanwhile, a girl is undressed and turned into a (literal) piece of gold for One Million, looking like the actual fragrance. The female lover of the Chanel man is just a passive model of his camera lens and his own eyes. Finally, Chris Pine is said to be “a businessman, a trend-setter, a bartender and a client”, while the woman is just described as “the beautiful woman” in one of the promotional videos for the Armani commercial. This description sums up the limited female roles: they are just beautiful objects, princesses who have been enchanted by the powerful magician. Completely seduced by him, the woman just follows her man. 100 Masculinities Journal In Gender Advertisements (1979), Irving Goffman accounted for the role of men and women in advertising. Thirty five years later, many of his examples still prevail in the cologne ads. Goffman explains that men usually take the executive role (32), but he also provides more specific details. For instance, women “are pictured on floors and beds more than are men” (41). In the cologne advertisements, women appear motionless, sitting on benches (Invictus), armchairs (One Million), car seats (Dior) or chairs and floors (Chanel). In contrast, if the men are portrayed sitting down, they do not remain still, like the women. Goffman also contends that women tend to be “unoriented” (57), and on many occasions “drifting from the physical scene around them” (64). In the commercials, the woman is never mentally present: while she is not with the man, she is thinking of him; while he interacts and plays with the watcher, she is oblivious to the voyeuristic eye and remains focused on him. Therefore, a clear-cut gender demarcation is very much alive in these commercials. She is what he is not: “as an engine of consumption, advertising plays a strong role in promulgating dualistic gender roles and prescribing sexual identities” (Schroeder and Zwick 21). Despite the modern aesthetic that presents a groomed, fashioned man, there is still an old, classic message. Conclusion T he 1980’s and 1990’s shift towards male objectification is a consolidated trend today, with the unstoppable incorporation of men to the fashion world in which beauty, youthfulness and individualism prevail, as it has been shown in the four cologne commercials under analysis. And yet the meticulous, stylish and cuttingedge physique of the male protagonists goes hand-in-hand with traditional views on gender, in accord with Goffman’s study of gender advertising during the 1970s: a subordinate woman and an affluent, successful male who exerts the executive role. This gender division (present not only in the studied commercials, but also in brands such as Diesel and Dior), reveals a pattern in male cologne advertising. On the 101 Masculinities Journal other hand, the reinforcement of conventional masculinity may be an attempt on the part of the sellers to respond to the traditional assumption that fragrances are something feminine. To reach out to male population, fashion houses need to emphasize masculine attributes. These men’s bodies are the target of the gaze and their attire and aspect are the result of a meticulous selection. But the potential vulnerability of a male figure that is under scrutiny is balanced out with conventional masculine features: from physical, tangible elements (suits, cars, sports) to demeanor and attitude (power, self-assurance, control, wealth). It is therefore feasible to think that we are not completely over the “great male renunciation”, and that men’s engagement with fashion and style still needs to be justified. However, this is just a possibility, and not an assertion, due to the particular characteristics of advertising. These commercials incorporate sufficient artifice for consumers to ignore the content and just pay attention to the form. McQuarrie and Phillips’ research demonstrates that the grotesque is an effective tool that “forms a duality with the pretty” (379) and fosters seduction. The “pretty” is consumers’ ultimate goal, and advertisers deploy all the persuasive and engaging means at their disposal to cater to it. Society is immersed in the quest for beauty, and the grotesque can be acceptable so long as it serves the purpose of perpetuating youthfulness and attractiveness. For this reason, I cannot venture to claim that men still cling to the idea of dominance and power over women just because the commercials picture it that way, since advertising portrays a fantasy of which consumers are usually well aware. Therefore, future research needs to shift from advertising to an analysis of consumer behavior and motivations when purchasing fragrances. That way, we will be able to verify the actual influence of this type of advertising in society, and also confirm if a new kind of masculinity has emerged, or if the age-old macho has simply put on a new, fashionable disguise. 102 Masculinities Journal Works Cited Chanel. “Bleu de Chanel”. YouTube. Web. 07 Dec. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG-nnDlnWrA Diesel. "Only the Brave". YouTube. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZWZzl0C0Ko Dior. "Dior Homme Parfum - Official Directors Cut" YouTube. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTbG1hG2AFA Entwistle, Joan. The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2000. Print. Giorgio Armani. "Armani Code: The Film Featuring Chris Pine" YouTube. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZFr7Qz9dAc ---. “Armani Code Ice: Werbung”. Youtube. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8W3WzpCU0Y ---"Armani Code Ice". YouTube. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTdBZIGaFTE Goffman, Irving. Gender Advertisements. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979. Print. Holt, Douglas B., and Thompson, Craig J. "Man‐of‐Action Heroes: The Pursuit of Heroic Masculinity in Everyday Consumption." Journal of Consumer Research 31.2 (2004): 425. Print. Lipovetsky, Gilles. The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy. Tran. Catherine Porter. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987. Print. New French Thought . MacKinnon, Kenneth. "Masculinity in Advertising." Representing Men: Maleness and Masculinity in the Media. London: Arnold, 2003. 87. Print. McQuarrie, Edward F., and Barbara J. Phillips. "Narrative and Persuasion in Fashion Advertising." Journal of Consumer Research 37, 2010. Print. 103 Masculinities Journal ---. "Advertising Rhetoric: An Introduction." Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric. Ed. McQuarrie, Edward F. & Phillips, Barbara J. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2008. Print. Murphy, Ian. “Perfume Bottles Make a Fashion Statement”. Marketing News. Dec 5, 1994. Paco Rabanne. "One Million Intense". YouTube. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoOO3HdwAs0 ---. "Invictus" YouTube. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8lxGGx0R04 Schroeder, Jonathan E. "Visual Analysis of Images in Brand Culture." Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric. Eds. Edward F. McQuarrie and Barbara J. Phillips. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2008. Print. "The Global Fragrance Industry: World Markets, Popular Fragrances & Sales Figures." Web log post. Kafkaesque. Kafkaesque, 20 Feb. 2014. Web. 19 Feb. 2015. "Top 10 Most Popular Perfumes for Men 2014." Top 10 For Everything. N.p., 16 Dec. 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2015. "Top 10 Perfumes De Hombre Más Vendidos En España." Web log post. 10 Perfumes De Hombre Más Vendidos En 2014 En España. Perfurmative, 11 Sept. 2014. Web. 19 Feb. 2015 Triggs, Teal. "Framing Masculinity." Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader. Ed. Ash, Juliet & Wilson, Elizabeth. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. 25. Print. Wilson, Elizabeth. “Fashion and Popular Culture”. Adorned in Dreams. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003. 155-178. Print. Zelman, Tom. "Language and Perfume: A Study of Symbol-Formation." Advertising and Popular Culture: Studies in Variety and Versatility. Ed. Sammy R. Danna. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University, 1992. 109. Print. 104 Drags, Drugs and Dirt: Abjection and Masculinity in Marilyn Manson's music video (s)Aint Nataša Pivec Independent Researcher Abstract: Music videos as a medium of popular cultural discourses have become more widespread and acknowledged by the public because of the music industry's emphasis on visual aspect of music and the rise of new media (internet, social media) that are more or less visual-oriented. The article examines the presence of various types of abjection in the video (s)Aint by the artist Marilyn Manson, positioned as liminal or threatening to the construction of hegemonic masculinity and its elements: body, heterosexuality and agency. It also highlights the lacking representation of women in the video and the privileging principle of heteronormativity that also creates hegemonic and subordinate forms of heterosexuality (BDSM culture). Key words: rock music, hegemonic masculinity, abject. -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 105-128 Masculinities Journal “Drag”ler, Uyuşturucular ve Kir: Marilyn Manson’un Müzik Videosu “(s)Aint’’de Iğrenti ve Erkeklik Nataša Pivec Bağımsız Araştırmacı Özet Popüler kültür söyleminin bir aracı olan müzik videoları, müzik endüstrisinin müziğin görsel yanı üzerindeki etkisi ve hemen hemen görsel odaklı olan yeni medyanın ortaya çıkışı (internet, sosyal medya) sayesinde daha yaygın hale gelmiş ve ve herkes tarafından kabul görmeye başlamıştır. Bu makale, sanatçı Marylin Manson’un (s) Aint adlı videosunda yer alan ve bir eşikte olma hali olarak, veya hegemonik erkekliğin ve onun öğelerinin; beden, heteroseksüellik ve erkeksi failliğin inşasına yönelik bir tehdit olarak konumlanan çeşitli bayağılık biçimlerini ele almaktadır. Aynı zamanda söz konusu videoda kadın temsilinin eksikliğine ve heteroseksüelliğin hegemonik ve madun formlarını (BDSM kültürü) yaratan heteronormativenin ayrıcalıklı kılınmasına dikkati çekmektedir. Anahtar sözcükler: rock müzik, hegemonik erkeklik, igrenç. 106 Masculinities Journal Introduction I n a discourse of popularity as a world wide recognition, rock music is a popular musici genre, Marilyn Manson (MM)ii, a rock celebrity, and music videos as audio-visual texts also share a certain level of popularity due to their widely circulation via mass media, social media and internet (e.g. YouTube). Rock music as a type of popular music is inclined to direct or indirect celebration of masculinity (Frith 234; Cohen 28) that can be seen in the use of instruments – guitar as a phallic symbol, lyrics about themes, related to masculinity – male omnisexual gratification for example, visual style performance – cocksure maleness and in the construction of women as sexual objects, groupies or passive consumers. The aim of the article is to examine a possibility for deconstruction of hegemonic masculinity (e.g. male body, heterosexuality, heteronormativity, agency) via specific cultural forms of shock rock as a particular rock genre and music video as its medium. For the analysis of the chosen music video and its embedment in broader cultural context, various theoretical concepts will be employed, such as Mary Douglas' dirt and Julia Kristeva's abjection that can function as a tactic to challenge R.W. Connell's hegemonic masculinity. Dirt – Abjection – Body T he definition of dirt according to anthropologist Mary Douglas is that it is "a matter out of place [which] implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order" (35). Deriving from this definition, the acknowledgement of something or somebody as dirt or dirty, also constitutes the relation between dominant (proper, clean) and subordinate (improper, dirty), where dirt permanently threatens to pollute or forcefully appropriate the position of the dominant group. Douglas explains that "where there is dirt, there is system [because] dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and 107 Masculinities Journal classification of matter" (35), so the existence of dirt depends on the context and is therefore a relative category. Despite its symbolic and linguistic construction, dirt functions on a material level; the direct or physical experience of dirt means that dirt is disgusting, repulsive, repugnant. The development of concepts of dirt and cleanliness in Western industrialised societies was aligned with the rise of science of hygiene or "germ theory" and its hierarchical framework of hygienic or unhygienic. Yet the perception of dirt is always guided by an emotional (or moral) and physical rationale (Campkin et al. 2) and because ideas of dirt are very pervasive, they dictate what is normal and force an ordering of people down the axis of gender, skin colour, ethnicity, citizenship, class, dis/ability, sexual orientation and identity. Julia Kristeva (125) understands dirt (waste or bodily decay/death) as one of the categories of abjection, together with sexual difference and food or bodily incorporation; all three of them serve for the preservation of life and constitute the proper social body to conform to the cultural expectations of the physical body. As Elizabeth Grosz puts it, "the abject is what of the body falls away from it while remaining irreducible to the subject/object and inside/outside oppositions" (192). But with the concept of abject, Kristeva embraces everything that is within prevalent Western discourse construed as Other: unthinkable, preoedipal, semiotic or psychotic and for these reasons, something or somebody that is simultaneously appealing and appalling. Kristeva's concept of abjection can highlight relationships between marginalized or Othered people and their spatial or material contexts (e.g. body odour, living spaces, lifestyle habits, cleaning practices, gender performances, language usage etc.) that constructs them as Othered (Campkin et al. 5). Filth, as Cohen puts it, “represents a cultural location at which the human body, social hierarchy, psychological subjectivity and material objects converge” (viii). To return to the body, in dichotomous opposition between mind and body, the lattter is always considered as Other and this has remained 108 Masculinities Journal correlated with an opposition between male and female, with the female regarded as enmeshed in her bodily existence. Other enmeshments into corporeality were also attributed to (1) colonised or non-white bodies, (2) lower classes, (3) mentally impaired and (4) non-heterosexual subjects (e.g. male homosexuality) because they deviate from the standard of hegemonic masculinity (Connell 72) and are regarded as Other bodies. Besides its Otherness, the body is also leaky in a literal sense and it is a woman who is perceived as lacking in bodily self-containment due to her multiple bodily orifices (Grosz 203). Bodily fluids and secretions are inscribing women's corporeality in a mode of an uncontrolled seepage. Leakiness of the body is a sign of a lack of self-control or control in general, which could be translated into an assumption that the body controls the woman and diminishes her subjectivity (mind, ratio). But as Douglas (115) explains it, all borderline positions or bodily orifices are a site for pollution or contamination and as such serves as an opportunity to deconstruct the ideal and unobtainable illusion of the non-leaky ("perfect") bodies (i.e. male body). The male body has remained, as Grosz (198) argues, phenomenologically unanalysed and that is the sole reason for its position as non-leaky. Non-leaky male corporeality is a part of the hegemonic masculinity, a prevalent ideal of masculinity, most honoured and most wanted, also associated with the following characteristics: physical power (height, weight, muscle mass), virility, wealth or capital (economic, social, cultural, symbolic), emotional self-control with accentuated civil aggression, competitiveness, rationality, instrumentality and emphasized heterosexuality (Connell 76-81). This configurative principle of social reality, which is not permanent, but conditionally chosen from cultural repertoire of masculine behaviours, excludes anyone, who does not at some historical moment or cultural context belong to that model and is consequently subjected to the process of Othering. The principal Othering is directed towards femininity and male homosexuality because hegemonic masculinity as a 109 Masculinities Journal dominant postulate strives to differentiate and distance itself from these Othered ("dirty") categories. The sexual component of hegemonic masculinity consists of heterosexuality because sexuality as a historical and social organization of the erotic (Weeks 17) is, despite of the existence of non-middleclass (i.e. working class), non-white and non-heterosexual sexualities, in its historical core a postulate of middle-class, white and male heterosexuality, where the main dichotomous divide is between heterosexuality and (male) homosexuality. Modern concept of male homosexuality has been constituted as abnormal or Other and as such has been perpetually reaffirming heterosexuality as norm/al. The normalisation of assumed heterosexuality, compulsory heterosexuality (Rich 633) or heteronormativity (Warner 14) strategically erases any sign of effeminacy in male sexuality (e.g. passivity, receptive anal pleasure) by establishing a heterosexual/homosexual hierarchy, but also creates hierarchies among heterosexualities, resulting in hegemonic and subordinate forms of heterosexuality (Seidman in Ingraham 40), such as intergenerational sexuality, BDSM, sexual choices based on class, ethnical and racial diversities (Sedgwick in Angelides 170). All those subordinate sexualities can be characterised as sexual dirt, an idea that will be further discussed. Marilyn Manson as Other(ed) A s already briefly mentioned, the construction of Other represents someone who is different or uneven to us, a dichotomous opposite and therefore a bearer of negative traits because they represent the deviance from anything that is central, safe, normal and conventional (Pickering 204). Here are some informations about Marilyn Manson (MM) and his work that could define him as Other(ed) according to the popular music standards. MM is the frontman and band founder of an American rock band by the same name, formed in late 1980's that are mostly known for 110 Masculinities Journal their shock value lyrics, videos and performances. The appearance and artistic agency of MM are deliberately designed to offend contemporary social sensibilities of the American culture (Bostic et al. 54). To begin with, his portmanteau name is constituted from names of two American cultural icons – Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. The former functions as a historically and world wide acknowledged symbol for femininity and sexuality while the latter has become an American cultural symbol for serial killing. The merging of two incompatible symbols together (sexuality and death) can also be defined as cultural dirt. As it is common in a shock rock traditioniii, his appearance and stage performance are the combination of elements that create discomfort: androgynous black clothing, ghoulish appearance and heavy make-up (white foundation, black eyeliner, lipstick, contact lenses), stage props (blood, fire, chainsaws, animals, cages), stage attitude (antireligious with acts of Bible burning, anti-moral by nude selfexposure, Chapman 336) and rageful and provocative lyrics and videos. Naming of his albums also depict his assertive stance against conservative American culture: Portrait of an American Family (1994), Smells Like Children (1995), Antichrist Superstar (1996), Mechanical Animals (1998), Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) (2000), The Golden Age of Grotesque (2003), Eat Me, Drink Me (2007), The High End of Low (2009) and Born Villain (2012). The visual aspect of his music (album covers, videos) are inspired with the art of grotesque and abject that serves as an expression of his artistic nonconformity to an average taste of normalcy, particularly present in the popular music industry and broader Western culture. All those elements are part of his stage or media persona (a fantasied alter ego, Bostic et al. 54) that has positioned him as a different type of Other, as an Antihero. The cultural trope of Antihero that is most appealing to youngsters and most appalling to their parents and adults, can also be regarded as a generational abject or an unbridgeable disparity between their world views. His self-proclamation of being an Antihero led in a right-wing conservative notion, which is an influential 111 Masculinities Journal political opinion maker in the American society, to the media demonization of his stage persona. He is therefore considered as a "body without a (Christian) soul", something that is easily translated into, what would Kristeva called it, a corpse or absolute abject (126). That conception of him is deliberately magnified by his appearance, which resembles the corpse or non-human entity – white foundation for face make-up, black wardrobe, tall and sleek posture. Due to his complex Antihero pop status, he can be labelled as a pop abjection or dirt so does the chosen video (s)Aint because it was banned due to the inappropriate content. At this point there are two positions of abjection – MM's rock status and banned music video and as it was previously outlined, the idea of abject or dirt functions as a disorder or challenge to the system, in this case to the system of hegemonic masculinity. Music Video as a Representational Medium M usic video as a crossover video form between advertising commercial and film has, as any other cultural text, polysemious nature and can be used as a subversive reading against the dominant culture of representations or meanings (Shuker 167). Every text is already an interpretation of a specific discourse or discoursive formations because nothing exists in a social or cultural vacuum; music video as a chosen medium therefore to some extent naturalises and generates specific interpretations of a social reality – social meanings, identities, power distribution, which supports existing social structures and hierarchy. According to Prince (Gabor 282), a film can occupy a stance of an ideological support (i.e. the film supports and promotes the dominant ideology), ideological critique (i.e. the film offers a critical view of the established values) or ideological incoherence (i.e. the film offers an ideological mix to produce an ambiguous product that would attract as many members of the targeted audience as possible while offending as few as possible). Due to some similarities between film and music video, we can assume that a music video is a political text 112 Masculinities Journal and therefore a bearer of a certain ideological stance. In a case of music video (s)Aint, it is the combination of critique and incoherence that brands it as ambivalent because of the ontological nature of music video and the specific content of it. Dirt as a Tactic of Gender Subversion in (s)Aint F or the forthcoming analysis to be as intelligible as possible, here's a quick description of the music video and its visual signifiers, important for this case study: mood of the video, the narrative structure, the degree of realism or fantasy of the settings in the video, theme of the video, the importance of performance, modes of sexuality and the prevalent symbols in the video (Shuker 168-169). The mood of the video is dark, murky, almost like a delirium or nightmare and could be categorised as an on-edge-of-the-consciousness episode of a drug deprived and hallucinating person, so the narrative of the video is non-linear and incoherent (e.g. switching back and forth from one scene to another, camera angles are crooked). The setting in the video is realistic, a hotel room or perhaps a drug addict's living space, where the activities and mental states, linked with a drug abuse are the central theme. The main protagonist and performer is MM, who is more or less passive (i.e. laying on the bed or in the bath tub, cutting himself on the chest with a razor blade, crammed on the couch while waiting for the drug dealer to come). Due to the scenes of nudity, drug use and self-harm, the video was banned by the label and could only be purchased on DVD or directly from MM's website at its time of release in 2003. Now it is easily available on his YouTube channel. The scenes of nudity include a dreamlike sex acts with a drag queen, MM's masturbation while the drag queen, wearing a white wedding dress, presumably exposes their genitalia to MM, an image of a woman in bondage (there's a glimpse of cunnilingus and shaved labia majora) and a homoerotic threesome petting with the drag queen, the drug dealer and MM. Beside the general 113 Masculinities Journal murkiness of the video there is also an ongoing presence of the colour red (MM's red fingernails, red lipstick on people's mouth, blood from his chest wounds or nose, red book cover of the Holy Bible) and material filth (piles of decaying food leftovers, blood crusts on MM's face). It is the presence of dirt or abject in this particular video that can be loosely divided and categorised into: (1) directorial, (2) spatial, (3) bodily, (4) psychosomatic, (5) social, (6) gender and (7) sexual and function as a subversive tactic towards the system of hegemonic masculinity. While these categories of dirt frequently overlap, the article presents a separate discussion of these elements to create a clearer understanding of them. The first type of dirt, named as directorial dirt, is linked with the person who directed the video and that is Asia Argento, the daughter of the Italian filmmaker Dario Argento, known for his horror genre giallo, which significantly influenced modern horror movies. Horror movies are, according to Barbara Creed (10), an illustration of the abjection, constituted from the body (corpses, mutilated bodies, bodily wastes), border (human – nonhuman, man – woman, proper body – abject body) and construction of maternal figure as threatening. The chosen director of the video is therefore connected with the concept of abject through father's creativity and kinship ties. The spatial dirt is depended on the the location of the video which is a murky hotel room, filled with material dirt (e.g. food leftovers, unclean rooms) and darkness. The hotel room is not despite all the comfort it has a place that could be called a home because it is anonymous, neutral, transitional, borderless and uncertain. Home, on contrary, is personal, permanent, certain and with boundaries. It embodies safety (physical, emotional, material), individuation (home as an extension of a person's body), privacy (control over one's self, things and information) and preservation (construction and reconstruction of one's self (Young 151-154) and is constructed as an opposite to the uncertainties and dangers of the street, foreign territories, others or even from oneself. 114 Masculinities Journal The protagonist in the video, placed into a hotel room, is unsafe (i.e. lack of self-agency, passive stance to life, acts of self-harming: cutting, drug abuse) and does not control his body, space and people around him (hotel room as a borderless space, open to anyone). Home represents the affinity between the material house and the body, which in this case does not exist, because there is no home or normally functioning body. This could be read reciprocally: a body is dysfunctional because there is no home or there is no home because the body does not function. Home can also be viewed as a substitute womb (Young 124), but the dark hotel room is just a distorted or abject version of the safe space. The bodily dirt is embedded in a forementioned premise about body as being entity of dirt despite the societal processes of civility and discipline of the body. But it is the female body that is prone to be defined as dirty, so an illusion of a proper or unleaky body is something only men can obtain. The body of MM in this video is deliberately dirty; it is bloody due to the self-harm and drug use, covered with vomit and inactive. This deliberate body stance can be read as a tactic of feminisation, grotesqueness and genderfuck or perhaps, as Kristeva would put it, a fantasied return to preoedipal or semiotic phase (86). The idea of a grotesque body originates from notes by Rabelais (Burkitt 45) and his informal discourse of carnival, markets and people. Carnival imaginary is limitless, open and subversive to a formal language and modes of the human conduct. Representations of the grotesque body (i.e. improper or disproportional body shapes) are focused on lower parts of the body (bowels, buttocks, anus, genitalia) or body cavities (mouth, ears, nose, navel, penis) and are intentionally uninhibited – visible, exposed, emphasised (Burkitt 47). A man's body is grotesque, when it is feminised (Creed 57) and MM's grotesqueness lies in a notion of genderfuck or feminisation of his male (although slender and non-muscular) body; he is wearing make-up, caries himself as emotionally shattered (e.g. anxiety, self-harm), his passivity is visible in his constant waiting and occupying small amounts of space around him (e.g. squeezing himself into a bathtub, kneeling by 115 Masculinities Journal the toilet). The last acitivity is something that is culturally imposed to women's bodies. Grotesque bodies are connected with the concept of a carnival, so his grotesqueness can be read as an opening (to be uninhibited or uncivilized) of the (male) body. By wearing makeup and being passively emotional, he is acting carnivalesque or genderfucking with the normal, civilized and self-disciplined male body. On the other hand, every body is at some point of life course open, uninhibited or uncivilized. It is the gender undifferentiated infant phase or as Kristeva (90-101) called it, a semiotic state that is characterised with socially allowed infant's wallowing in his/her own bodily wastes (excrement, vomit, saliva) and by being indecent, fleshy, ambiguous, chaotic, emotional, instinctual and subjected to maternal authority. On that terms can MM's bodily behaviours and expressions be also read as an attempt of a comeback to the childlike phase, for example blood crusts on his face can be a metaphor for remains of the child's attempt to eat food, adult bloody nose for a child's nose full of phlegm, his unsexualised naked body for a childlike image of the human body, his passive demeanour as a subjection to maternal authority, dirty hotel room as a sign of impossible comeback to the mother's womb. MM's representations of himself as a grotesque or childlike body (the semiotic) do challenge the corporeal component of gender order of the hegemonic masculinity – the perfect male body that is, as Grosz puts it, "sealed-up and impermeable" (201). Another level of challenging the sealed-up and impermeable male mind is connected with so called psychosomatic dirt, the dysfunctional position between body and mind, manifested as mental health issues (e.g. eating disorders, panic attacks, phobias). To further the concept of MM's mind as also being a part of psychosomatic genderfuck, he is engaging in activity of self-cutting. Self-cutting is a part of self-harming body practices and it is a gendered, white, classist and ageist activity; most of the self-mutilators are white, middle-class girls or young women of above average intelligence who initially began mutilating themselves in middle to late adolescence (Hewitt 55). Self-harm is, as Hewitt writes, "an attempt to reintegrate the self from fragmented state of 116 Masculinities Journal depersonalisation and gain attention from a social milieu from which individual feels alienated" (55). The main purpose of self-harm is to create connectedness with others and to intensify the awareness of body limits and boundaries and to overcome them, together with the space of alienation between self or the body and others or environment. Self-cutting as a deliberate bodily superficial self-injury uses instead of words the body to communicate with others and to express the inexpressible. But self-mutilation is a solitary activity, private and impulsive. A person wants to be heard yet silences herself/himself, therefore cutting can be defined as an abject activity between speech and silence. It also revolves around body and blood as an abject substance and retains itself on the border between the person's body and inanimate surroundings. This behaviour provides the participants the internal sense of self-control as a compensation for the lack of control of their external circumstances that are for women mostly linked with the desire and need to fit into the tight cultural modules of emphasized femininity (mother – wife – homemaker). Cutting can be understood as women's carving themselves into those moduls or as a protest against those constructions of femininity, so once again, the activity possesses the liminal or abject trait with political undertones. MM's self-cutting in the video with razor blade on his chest is another method to contest the notion of perfect male body and behaviours related to it. Blood is a symbol of life and energy and can be interpreted as (1) a resistance against an imposed masculinity, which denies any option for emotional and mental weakness or corporeal openness for men, (2) a testimony that body can never be proper or clean, (3) a proclamation of the priority of the body over subjectivity, (4) a further genderfuck of MM's body – blood as a woman's signifier for menstruation and childbirth, prevalent red colour in the video (red lipstick, red fingernails, red book cover of the Holy Bible) and (5) a way to cohere the drug addict's self with other parts of self, due to his role of a drug addict in the video. 117 Masculinities Journal The latter (the drug addiction) is part of the notion that there are individuals or social groups, considered and treated as social dirt. Goffman (170) calls them social deviants, although in his conception the social deviancy is more of an act of self-agency or choice than ascribed position due to the lack of favourable economic, social, racial, gender and sexual conditions. The drug addict in this video is a social deviant as Goffman defines it; an individual "[…] who act irregularly and somewhat rebelliously in connexion with our basic institutions — the amity, the agegrade system, the stereotyped role-division between the sexes, legitimate full-time employment involving maintenance of a single governmentally ratified personal identity, and segregation by class and race" (170). As already mentioned in the description of the video, is MM in a role of a drug addict, waiting for his drug dealer to come, but is meanwhile falling into nightmarish delirium. The male drug addict is a representation of an economic, gender and body failures. The economic facet is shown in his unacceptance of capitalistic work ethics (i.e. rational instrumentality, discipline of the body and the mind, compartment of working and leisure time), the gender aspect in his abandonment of the masculine agency (i.e. passivity, uninvolvement in the controlling of space around him, lack of selfdiscipline, narcissism, self-appointed leisure time) and body failure is evident in his lack of hygienical customs and new openings of the male body via drug consumption. The heroin injections through veins and cocaine inhalations through nose are not so common modes of the opening of the (male) body; the injection pierces skin or the outer covering of human body and nose rarely functions as input body part. Drug consumption can be interpreted as a food abjection; it is appealing (the sense of being high and bodiless) and appalling (the addiction, the decay of the body, sickness) consumption, that creates a different type of dependence for a person to survive. MM's addiction delirium can also be identified as a liminal or abject state of mind, a state 118 Masculinities Journal that is neither awaken or asleep. Another signifier of MM's Antihero status ("body without a soul") is evident in his act of cocaine inhalation; the powder is distributed and then inhaled on the red cover of the Holy Bible, something that can be read as a blasphemy or antireligious act. The next one is the concept of gender dirt that has been gradually developed through other types of dirt: bodily, social and psychosomatic. It is apparent by now that in this music video, MM is constantly undoing gender (i.e. hegemonic masculinity) by being passive, body-centric, antiinstrumental, socially deviant and engaging in feminine activity of selfharm. The focus so far has been mostly on MM, but for this analysis, representations of other people and their contexts in a video narrative are also needed and important. One of them is a drag queen and following our discourse of abjection and Newton's writing that "[a drag] is a double inversion that says, appearance is an illusion, […] my outside appearance is feminine, but my body is masculine, yet my inside essence is feminine," (Butler 137), a drag queen can easily be subjected to Othering. The representation of a drag queen is not pathologised, ridiculed, demonised or similarly Othered due to their gender expression, but they are submitted to the same socio-economic Othering as MM and other male participants (i.e. drug dealer). It is the power dynamics between the drag queen and MM that defines the drag queen's position as an equal or even dominant to MM. The sexual relationship is embedded in a narrative of dirt and power. The drag queen is dressed in a filthy wedding dress, their posture is dominant and masculine, attitude authoritarian. MM, on the contrary, is mostly nude, appears physically weak and submissive to them. The dress is a key power signifier and MM can be read as an unfit bridegroom – sick, passive, addicted and unable to fulfill one of the key social roles of hegemonic masculinity – to be someone's man or husband. The last type in the classification of dirt is sexual dirt with already discussed sexual relationship between the drag queen and MM, which is one of three sexual relations, occurring in the video. The sexual dirt 119 Masculinities Journal challenges a hierarchical system of sexual value or sex hierarchy (although Rubin employs the syntagm "sex hierarchy", it will be understood as "sexual hierarchy"), where the top erotic position occupies marital, monogamous and reproductive heterosexuality (Rubin 151). Sex hierarchy changes discoursively and materially, so some of the practices and identities, previously stigmatised, were gradually depathologised, decriminalised and therefore relatively normalised (e.g. masturbation, interracial relations, homosexuality). But some are still positioned lower in (bondage/discipline, the hierarchy: trans* domination/submission, people, BDSM sadomasochism, fetishism) members, sex workers, promiscuous people, polyamorous and intergenerational relations (e.g. older woman – younger man). All those currently low-placed sexualities are depended on the concept of heteronormativity, homosexual/heterosexual which dichotomy, besides also establishes creating a hierarchies among heterosexualities (e.g. BDSM heterosexual sex vs. conventional heterosexual sex) and causes constructions of sexual dirt. In the video (s)Aint are representations of three types of sexual dirt: relationship between the drag queen and MM, homoerotic threesome and an image of a woman in bondage. The relationship between the drag queen and MM is sexual, but not power equal; MM is the submissive one, a passive, incoherent subject. There are scenes of sex between them, masturbation, hand sex, yet the identity of the drag queen is ambiguous; in some scenes there is a man, in others a woman which could be a visual confirmation of the forementioned definition by Newton what the drag queen is. The homoerotic threesome formed from the drag queen, the drug dealer and MM includes a brief mouth caressing of the upper body (face, neck) and those representations of sexual behaviour, identities and corporeality do challenge paradigm of male heterosexuality, but it is the homosocial setting of the video that is problematic. There is only one image of a woman in bondage (i.e. placed into a BDSM context). In the recent years, mainstream culture had been pervaded with one dominant and monolithic representation of BDSM subculture and that is the one of a woman in bondageiv. But not any woman, a woman 120 Masculinities Journal who is young, beautiful, thin and white with shaved pubic area. This is the encountering of the social abjections in a form of ageism, lookism, thin and white privilege, body image and the cultural undesirability of body hair. The consensual bondage (for any gender) as a state of being restrained with rope, handcuffs, gags, blindfolds or scarves within erotic context is just one segment of the BDSM culturev, but the main component are the ongoing consent (i.e. usage of safe words at any moment, regardless of expectations or interpretations on the part of either party, the act can and will end, which allows them more negotiating space for receiving pleasure) and safe environments (clubs, parties, home). The woman in bondage (young, white, beautiful, thin and without any pubic hair) in the video is placed into an unsafe environment (hotel room as a transitional public space) and unknown context (a lingering image of her, without beginning or end) which insinuates the lack or dismissal of an ongoing consent, a key factor for BDSM. She is exposed as a sexual object without any agency for a male gaze only, something that is alligned with the mysognistic notion of the female body as an object (to be looked at, examined, objectified) and an abject (to be disciplined or a site for fantasy and fetishisation, to be shown as a spectacle). Another dimension of her sexual objectification can be traced down to a feminist-vegetarian theory by Carol A. Adams. She argues that (1) women and animals in patriarchal societies are constructed as meat, (2) meat-eating as a dietary activity is a signifier and amplifier of hegemonic masculinity and (3) on the grounds of gender and species inequalities, both are consumed or annihilated by society; animals as inanimate objects with no power (a piece of food) and women as an animate objectified subjects with minor power (Adams 103). Those are crucials point where video fails in an attempt to challenge the standard of hegemonic masculinity despite the presence of various abjections that do so. The video narrative, constructed as a liminal and dreamlike episode and MM's position as a genderfuck 121 Masculinities Journal Antihero do not, for example, include male fantasies of men in bondage, sexual practice of pegging, male submissiveness to women or deconstruction of conventional beauty standards, emphasised femininity and female sexuality. Lyrics of the Othered (s)Aint T he music video also consists of song lyrics or an audio part, but because there is not much referential codependency or correlation between audio and visual elements, the textual analysis of the lyrics is separated from the visual component of the video and will be interpreted in a context of before mentioned MM's media persona as Othered artist. Art or poetic language, as it is articulated in Julia Kristeva's work, derives from the margins of the Symbolic order and it is defined by characteristics, such are maternal, ambiguous, chaotic, disorderly, impure. The poetic language is capable of breaking through the conventional social meaning and is, according to Kristeva (76), the only method to change established meanings about language. Yet the semiotic (i.e. revolutionary-maternal) as a source of poetic language is only allowed to male avantgarde artists, something that can be ascribed to MM. MM's artistic persona and expression as Othered can also be traced in lyrics of the video (s)Aint. As it is evident from the title, an abbreviated "s" from the word "saint" connotes his affirmation as an abject persona within pop cultural realm and music industry. This confirmation is multiplied in a repetitive chorus: “Hold the S because I am an AINT”. Another cue of his Otherness can be located in the next verse: “I don't care if your world is ending today because I wasn't invited to it anyway”. The syntagm "your world" can be interpreted more widely, as mainstream culture, where he as an Othered media persona shares a status of an abject – he is belonging to the music industry, but only on the grounds of his visual, musical and artistic Otherness. 122 Masculinities Journal The visual aspect of his persona is described almost selfdeprecatingly in the following verse: “I'm […] a death's head on a mopstick […]”, a visual idea that resembles the image of the corpse or an absolute abject. Another dimension of dirt can also be traced down in the usage of profane language in MM's lyrics. Words, such are "fucking" or "bitch", are words of obscenity that challenge notions of semantic properness or "purity". Yet the connotation of the word "bitch", employed as a slur against women and amplified with the visual image of the immobile woman in bondage, is still embedded into a misogynistic notion of femininity and therefore does not function as a term of gender deconstruction or empowerment. The verse “But now I'm not an artist I'm a fucking work of art” comprises his overall comprehension of himself as a part of the music industry that emphasises the importance of performance over substance or essence. MM is Othered on the grounds of his media persona and selfOthered because of his possible discontent with the lack of the artistry in music industry. Conclusion T he decision for an in-depth analysis of music video (s)Aint has been made because of MM's self-chosen position as Other(ed) persona in music industry and the ban of the video due to the explicit content ("dirt"), reasons that were credible enough to reconsider them as a threat to the assumptions about hegemonic masculinity. Various types of dirt or "a matter out of place" (Douglas 35), identified as material, spatial and symbolic dirt, were employed as a subversive tactic within the text (i.e. music video) to challenge or deconstruct that paradigm. The abjection of MM as an rock celebrity is evident in his Antihero persona, resemblant to the corpse or absolute abject and his fascination with grotesque as an artistic expression of the abject. The results of the 123 Masculinities Journal chosen music video analysis predicate with following conclusions about gender and sexuality: the identified dirt as a part of genderfuck narrative in a chosen video did challenge the hegemonic masculinity as a gender standard on several levels: male body, male agency and male heterosexuality. MM is changing his body boundaries (self-cutting, drug abuse, vomiting), his body posture (passive, naked, drug addicted, wearing make-up), agency (not implemental, anticapitalist, leisured) and sexuality (sexual activity with the drag queen and homoerotic petting with other men) and the one-woman representation (i.e. woman in bondage) reaffirmed the notion of hegemonic masculinity on behalf of the unchallenged gender stereotype, related to women as absent or objectified in music videos. The objectification of women that are narrowly carved into a heteronormative model of youth, beauty, thinness and whiteness and the simplistic appropriation of subordinate heterosexualities (BDSM culture in this case study) function as a particular amplifier of hegemonic masculinity via the construction of emphasised femininity. But to fully deconstruct the notion of hegemonic masculinity, the challenge should not be confined only to the one-gender realm (e.g. male homosocial setting) as it is in this music video, but the subversion should also spread to the paradigm of femininity, women's subjectivity and sexuality. In this particular video, the subversion of hegemonic masculinity did happen and yet the new genderfuck masculinity is still positioned as dominant gender concept in relation to the subordinate femininity because it employs the symbol of emphasized femininity (i.e. an image of the woman as passive beautiful object in bondage without BDSM context) as a convenient tool to preserve its primary position. To solely challenge hegemonic masculinity without inclusion of subverted femininities, only conveys that rock music still does not acknowledge the existence of plural identities of women, however abjectly this may sound. 124 Masculinities Journal i Popular music as a part of popular culture defies precise and straightforward definition, so the loose yet sufficient criterion for our analysis is going to be employed – the meaning of adjective "popular". This term indicates that something – a person, a product, a practice or a belief – is commonly liked or approved of by a large audience or the general public (Shuker 3); but in this case the verbs "approved" or "liked" will be altered with "globally recognized". ii When refering to Marilyn Manson, it is not the band at large that is being discussed, but their frontman, Marilyn Manson or Brian Hugh Warner. iii The forefathers of shock rock are Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne from the band Black Sabbath. iv If you google with search words "bondage, discipline", the majority of images will be the ones of women in bondage, mostly taken out of context and sometimes conflated or even substituted with images of violence against women. v BDSM culture also includes power exchange, pain/sensation play, leather-sex, role-playing and fetish within sexual or erotic context (Williams and Storm 2). Works Sited Adams, Carol J. The Sexual Politics of Meat: a feminist-vegetarian critical theory. 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"Unconventional Leisure and Career: Insights into the Work of Professional Dominatrices." Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, volume 15 (2012). 29 March 2012 <http://www.ejhs.org/volume15/BDSM.html> Young, Marion Iris. On Female Body Experience: Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays. 128 “Ucundan Azıcık”la Atılan Sağlam Temel: Türkiye’de Sünnet Ritüeli ve Erkeklik İlişkisi Atilla Barutçu Bülent Ecevit Üniversitesi Özet : Bu makale erkek cinsel organına uygulanan müdahaleleri mitolojiden başlayarak ilkel kabileler ve tek tanrılı dinler üzerinden incelemekte ve bu müdahaleleri günümüzdeki sünnet ritüeliyle ilişkilendirmektedir. Bu müdahalelerin geçmişten günümüze erkeklikle ilişkisinin değişik bağlantılarla da olsa sürekli varlığı söz konusudur. Sünnet ritüelini özellikle Türkiye odaklı ele aldığımızda erkeklerin cinsel organlarından kaybettikleri ufacık bir parçanın onların erkeklik inşasında sağlam bir temel oluşturduğu görülebilir. Çünkü sünnet ritüeli, Türkiye’de çoğunluğu oluşturan Müslüman Türkiyeli erkekler için hegemonik erkeklik yolunda bedene tezahür eden kalıcı bir işaret olarak görülür ve dini görev olarak yapılmasının yanı sıra erkek cemaati içinde yer edinebilmek için gerekli olan bir ihtiyaca da işaret eder. Erkek cinsel organına uygulanması sebebiyle zaten hali hazırda kaçınılmaz bir erkeklik ritüeli olan sünnet, karar mekanizmaları, ekonomik giderlerinin karşılanması, kirvelik gibi içinde barındırdığı pek çok boyutuyla da erkeklik tekelinde bulunur. Bu makalede erkeklik dayanışmasıyla da ilişkili olan sünnet ritüeli, üzerine yüklenen anlamlarla bir iletişim aracı olarak da görülebilen ve etkisini günden güne kaybediyor gibi görünse de hala varlığını ve erkeklikle olan ilişkisini devam ettiren bir ritüel olarak okunacaktır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Sünnet, ritüel, erkeklik, hegemonik erkeklik, erkeklik inşası. -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 129-155 Masculinities Journal A Steady Basis with “the Loss of a Small Piece”: A Relationship between Male Circumcision and Hegemonic Masculinity in Turkey Atilla Barutçu Bülent Ecevit Üniversitesi Abstract : This article examines the rituals about male sexual organ from mythology and primitive tribes to monotheistic religions, and relates these rituals with today’s circumcision. It is argued that these rituals have always relationship from past to present with the masculinity and the construction process of it in different ways. When we take circumcision into hand with respect to Turkey, it can be seen that the loss of a small piece from sexual organ is never seen as a loss, it provides a basis for a construction of masculinity instead. This is because circumcision is seen as a permanent sign on a male body in the way of masculinity for Muslim men who are majority in Turkey, and it refers a need to acquire a place in masculine community next to its strong religious role. Circumcision which is seen inevitably and not surprisingly as a ritual for masculinity because of its characteristics about where the operation is implemented is also monopolized by men with its traditional features like “kirvelik” (a type of relationship between the family of a child and the man who holds a child during the operation and usually responsible for economic costs) and circumcision feast. In this article, circumcision will be read as a ritual which is related with masculine solidarity, which works as a communication tool because of its embedded meanings, and which continues its existence and its relations with masculinity although its effects are not as strong as it has in past. Keywords: Circumcision, ritual, masculinity, hegemonic masculinity, construction of masculinity 130 Masculinities Journal Doğduk, Göbeğimizi kestiler, Sünnet olduk, Kestiler, O gün, bugün kesiyorlar, Kes babam kes. Veli (Hayal Molaları – Şemsa Yeğin, s. 247) Giriş T oplumsal cinsiyet rolleri çerçevesinde erkeklere biçilen rolün erkeklikle ilişkisi üzerine yapılan tartışmalar kadın çalışmaları tarihiyle kıyaslandığında çok genç de olsa son birkaç on yılda önemli gelişmeler kaydetmiştir. Kadın hareketinin ikinci dalgasıyla özdeşleştirilen “farklılık” meselesinin erkek cinsi için de tartışılması gerektiği fikri, kadın hareketinin ikinci dalgasına denk düşen bir tarihte ilk tohumlarını atan eleştirel erkeklik çalışmalarının önünü açmış ve günümüzde erkeklik çalışmalarının interdisipliner bir alana yayılmasıyla varlığını sürdürmüştür. Bireyin doğumundan itibaren çevresinden gördüğü ve edindiği bilgi, deneyim ve öğrenmelerle toplum içerisine karışması ve kendine toplumda bir yer edinmesi, bu yer edinmenin aynı zamanda kadın ve erkeğin biyolojik cinsiyetlerine uygun kimlik inşa etme süreçleriyle de yakından ilişkilidir. Erkeklerin kimlik inşalarında kendi cinsiyetlerine, yani erkekliklerine yapılacak güçlü bir vurguya ihtiyaç vardır. Toplumsal beklentiler erkeklere çeşitli görevler ve roller dayatır ve erkeğin bu görevler ve rollerdeki performansı, onların ya toplumda üst tabakalarda yer almasını sağlar ya da toplumdaki egemen yapının dışına itilmesine neden olur. Erkeğin bu görevdeki performansı, yaşadığı toplumdaki egemen erkeklik konumuna erişmede tartışılmaz bir rol oynar. Erkeğe dayatılan bu rollerin çeşitliliği ve toplumdan topluma gözlemlenen farklılığı ise kültürel bir mirasla şekillenir. 131 Masculinities Journal Bu makalede sünnet ritüelinin erkeklik inşasıyla ilişkisini Türkiye toplumu odaklı ele alacak ve tartışacağım. Pınar Selek Sürüne Sürüne Erkek Olmak adlı çalışmasında Türkiye’de egemen erkeklik konumuna erişmek için dört temel aşamanın geçilmesi zorunluluğuna dikkat çekmişti. Bu aşamalar sırasıyla sünnet, askerlik, iş sahibi olma ve evlilikti.1 Bense cinselliği de en az bu dört temel adım kadar önemli ve kritik gördüğümden ayrı bir adım olarak ele alıp bu aşamalara ekleyerek, beş temel adımın varlığını Türkiye erkeklerinin egemen erkeklik konumuna erişmek için aşması gereken zorunlu adımlar olarak görüyorum. Türkiyeli erkeklerin bu zoraki adımları gerçekleştirme sıralamasında ise cinselliği, Türkiye toplumunun ilk cinsel ilişkiyi temsil eden “milli olmak” meselesinin önem arz ettiği bir toplum olması açısından sünnetle askerlik arasına koymayı uygun buluyorum. Bu aşamalardan sünneti, erkek bedenine tezahür eden kalıcı bir etki yaratmasından dolayı bedensel bir aşama olarak görebiliriz. Cinsellik ise hem erkek bedenini besleyen ve bu bedenden etkilenen bir aşama olmasından, hem de başarılı bir cinsel hayatın erkeğin yaşamı boyunca sürdürülmesi beklentisinden dolayı bedensel ve toplumsal bir aşama olarak ele alınabilir. Askerlik, iş sahibi olma ve evlilik ise daha çok toplumsal yönü ağır basan aşamalar olarak erkeğin karşısına çıkmaktadır. Elbette ki erkeğin görevi evlilikle bitmez. Artık erkek, baba olmakla ve ulaştığı düşünülen o “kudretli” erkeklik konumunu ömrünün sonuna kadar sürdürmekle sorumludur. Bu aşamaların Türkiye’de Connell’in “hegemonik erkeklik”2 kavramını temsil eden idealize edilmiş egemen erkeklik konumuna ulaşmak için olmazsa olmaz adımlar olduğunu vurgulamanın yanı sıra; bu beş temel adımın birbirine bağımlı olduğunu, tek başlarına yeterli olmadığını, (kaslı ve sağlıklı bir vücuda sahip olmak, namus bekçiliği üstlenebilmek, vurdu mu deviren olabilmek gibi) yan rollerle desteklendiğini ve güçlendiğini unutmamak gerekir. Son aşamaya ulaşıldığında ise içselleştirilen bu sürecin ellerinden tutulan küçük erkek çocuklarının benzer algıyla aynı amaca doğru götürülmesiyle bir döngü sağlandığını ve böylece bu algının varlığını sürdürdüğünü söylemek yanlış olmaz. 132 Masculinities Journal İlk aşama olarak ele alınan sünnet, erkeğin bu yolda sağlam bir başlangıç yapabilmesi açısından oldukça önemlidir. Sünnet, günümüzde artık dünyanın her yerine yayılmış bir ritüel olma özelliğine sahiptir. Bugün sünnet eski değerini yitirmiş gibi görünse de hala din, sağlık ya da gelenek-görenek gibi pek çok sebeple uygulanmaya devam etmektedir. Ancak günümüzde erkeklik kurgusuyla da yakından ilişkili olan bu ritüel hakkında pek çok soru kritik önem taşır. Cinsel organa uygulanan bu müdahalenin kökeni neye dayanmaktadır? Bu müdahale hangi aşamalardan geçerek bir ritüel haline gelmiştir? Sünnetin erkeklikle ilişkisi ne zaman ve nasıl oluşmuştur? Bu ilişkinin taşıdığı anlam hep aynı mıdır yoksa tarihsel veya mekânsal etkilerle dönüşüme uğramış mıdır? Ve sünnetin günümüze kadar gelen ve tüm dünyayı etkileyen bu tarihsel yayılımı nasıl gerçekleşmiştir? Bu soruların yanıtını aramak, bugünkü sünnet ritüelini anlamlandırmak için önem arz eder. Akademik literatürde daha çok antropolojik araştırmalarda karşımıza çıkan sünnet ritüelinin toplumsal cinsiyetle ilişkili olarak ele alınıp incelendiği çalışmaların sayısı ne yazık ki oldukça sınırlıdır. Türkiye’de sünnet ritüeline odaklanan kitaplar ya tıp yanlısı bir bakış açısıyla sağlık ve din boyutlarına odaklanmış 3 ya da sünnetin daha çok tarihçesine odaklanarak zararları ve yararları üzerinde durmuştur 4. Bu makale sünnet ritüeline geniş bir tarihsel çerçeveden bakmaya çalışırken sünnetin özellikle erkeklikle ilişkisini tartışmayı ve böylece literatürde yeri hala tam olarak doldurulmamış bu alana bir katkı sunmayı amaçlamaktadır. Antropolog Felix Bryk, sünnet hakkındaki geniş kapsamlı çalışmaların ilk örneklerinden olan Circumcision in Man and Woman: Its History, Psychology and Ethnology (Erkek ve Kadında Sünnet: Tarihi, Psikolojisi ve Etnolojisi) başlıklı kitabında sünnetin tarihini incelerken sadece bu cinsel sakatlamanın gelişimi ve dağılımıyla ilgilenmemeli, aynı zamanda literatüre de yansıdığı gibi çağlar boyunca süren bu geleneğin başlangıç sebebi de dikkate alınmalıdır der. Bu yüzden Bryk kitabında, sünnetin tarihini ele alırken kullandığı kaynakları ikiye ayırdığını belirtir. Bunlardan ilki mitolojide ve çeşitli seyahat betimlemelerinde bulunan farklı uygulama ve dini tören formları ve bunlara bağlı davranış 133 Masculinities Journal ve kuralları içeren özgün kaynaklar; diğeri ise farklı yazar ve insanların sünnetin amacı, nedeni ve yayılımı hakkındaki görüşleridir (Bryk 16). Bu makalede ben de sünnetin tarihini Antropolog Bryk’in kitabında önerdiği gibi iki temel kaynak çeşidine dayanarak ele alacağım. Sünnetin anlamını erkeklik ve fallus ilişkisi üzerinden tartıştıktan sonra sünnetin tarihsel gelişimini mitolojiden başlayarak ilkel kabileler ve tek tanrılı dinler üzerinden günümüze kadar getirecek ve sünnetin amacını ve onu destekleyen gelenekleri anlamlandırabilmek için çeşitli yazarlardan fikirler sunacağım. Erkeklik Yolunda Atılan İlk Büyük Adım: Sünnet S ünnet, erkek çocuğunun cinsiyetine uygun kalıcı bir aşama kaydettiği ilk durak olarak görülebilir. Öyle ki sünnet olan çocuğun cinsel organını herkese göstermesinin gurur kaynağı haline getirilmesinin altında erkekliğe attığı adımın heyecanı yatar. Sünnet, erkek çocuğunun o ana kadar pek vurgu yapılmayan cinsiyetinden dolayı sadece “çocuk” olarak algılanmasının sona erip, biyolojik cinsiyetine uygun kimlik kazanmaya başladığı algısıyla “erkek” diye adlandırılmasını sağlaması açısından oldukça kritiktir. Çocuğun sünnet olmasıyla birlikte artık erkekliğe önemli bir adım attığı düşüncesi hala oldukça yaygındır ve bu algı sünnet olan çocukların büyüdüklerinde kendi çocuklarına veya yakın ilişki içerisinde bulunduğu çocuklara da aynı algı çerçevesinde davranmasıyla varlığını sürdürür. Sünnet olmak Türkiye’de erkekliğin bedene tezahür eden ön koşullarından biridir. Hali hazırda zaten bir erkekliği temsil eden penisin bir güç simgesine, yani fallusa dönüşmesi için sünnetli de olması gerekir. Halperin fallusu, “toplumsal gücün kültürel olarak inşa edilmiş bir göstereni” olarak tanımlar (113). “Fallus olmak, her zaman eril bir özne için olmaktır ve böylece eril özne de ötekinin ayrılığını tanıyarak kendi konum ve kimliğini (iktidarını) gerçekleştirmiş olacaktır” (Taşıtman 116-117). Bu yüzden Türkiye’de sünnetsiz bir erkek, öteki olmayı deneyimler ve fallusa sahip olmada zorlanır. 134 Masculinities Journal Segal fallusun, penisin ve bu nedenle de erkek iktidarının her yerde hazır ve nazır simgesel temsili olduğundan bahseder (117). Ancak burada Butler’cı bir yaklaşıma da vurgu yapmak gerekir. Butler fallusun açık bir şekilde modern cinsel kültürler içindeki ayrıcalıklı bir yolu yönettiğine vurgu yapmaktadır (89). Dolayısıyla toplumlardaki egemen kültür içerisinde erkek cinselliğinin üstün olduğu göz önüne alındığında, fallusun erkeklikle ve erkek cinsel organıyla ilişkilendirildiği açıklanabilir olmaktadır. Ancak Butler fallusu Lacan’cı bir yaklaşımla dilbilimsel olarak ele alır ve fallusu penisten böylece ayırmış olur. Butler, fallusun Lacan tarafından anlamlamayı (signification) meydana getiren veya üreten ayrıcalıklı bir imleyen (signifier) olarak düşünüldüğü üzerinde durur (60). Yani bir imleyen (signifier) olarak fallus, her zaman erkekliği temsil etmek durumunda değildir. Dolayısıyla fallusu direk penisle bağdaştırma yanlışına düşmemek gerekir. Fallus penisi değil, iktidarı temsil etmektedir. Penis sadece bu iktidarı temsil etmekle yükümlendirilmiş bir araçtır. Türkiye özelinde ise bu temsili çoğunlukla sünnetli bir penis üstlenir. Sünnetin fallusa sahip olmada ve “tam” erkekliğe erişmede önemli bir durak olduğu algısının, bu ritüelin aslında erkek cinsel organının bir parçasının kesilmesiyle sağlanması oldukça ironiktir. Erkek çocuk penisinden bir parça kaybederken, erkeklik inşasına sağlam bir temel atar. Özellikle ergenlik döneminde (ve özellikle ikinci adım olarak ele aldığım cinsellik aşamasıyla yüzleştiklerinde) penis boylarıyla erkekliklerini kanıtlamaya çalışan gençler, sünnet olmasalardı neyin değişeceğini bilmedikleri için penislerinden alınan ufacık bir parçayı asla bir eksiklik olarak algılamazlar. Bilecik ilinin Söğüt İlçe merkezi örneği üzerinden sünnet uygulamasını anlatan Antropolog Taylan Akkayan, “gerçekten, ergen olma çağı öncesinde doğal olarak sinir uçlarının yoğun olduğu bir bölgeyi kaybedenler, neyi yaşayamadıklarını hiçbir zaman bilememektedirler” der (139). Yaşadıkları toplum içerisinde sünnet olmayan erkeklerin azlığı nedeniyle bu kişilerle deneyim paylaşımları da yapamayan erkekler, sadece sünnetsiz erkeklerin cinsel ilişkiden daha fazla zevk aldıklarına yönelik yapılan popüler tartışmalara katılmakla yetinirler. 135 Masculinities Journal Sünnetin kelime anlamına baktığımızda Arapça “sunna” kelimesinden geldiğini ve işlek yol, yayılmaya uygun davranış anlamlarını taşıdığını görürüz (Akkayan 139). Benim üzerinde duracağım, bedene etki eden cerrahi bir işlem olan sünnet ise “Arapça ‘hitan’, yani erkek cinsel organının ucundaki derinin bir kısmının ya da tamamının kesilmesi anlamına gelmektedir” (Kırımlı 152). Her ne kadar sünnet denildiğinde akla ilk olarak erkek cinsel organına yapılan müdahale geliyor olsa da ve tanımlarda genel olarak sadece erkek cinsiyetinden bahsediliyor olsa da, sünnet tartışmalı bir biçimde her iki cinse de uygulanmaktadır. Bu makalede sünnetin erkeklik inşasıyla ilişkisini ele alacağım için kadın sünneti üzerinde durmayacağım. Sünnetin kelime anlamındansa toplumsal anlamına odaklanmak, üzerinde tartışacağım konu açısından da yararlı olacaktır. Sünnet “dilde, söylemde kurulan, özel alandan beslenen, burada karşılığını bulan ve nihayetinde kamusal alanda meşru zemini oluşturulan, toplumsal kabul gören bir erkeklik ritüeli” olarak tanımlanabilir (Taşıtman 111). Sünnete, sünnet edilecek cinsel organın sahibinin genellikle bilinçli bir rızası olmaksızın bedenin bütünlüğünü bozma olarak bakıldığında, bu ritüel bir zarar verme veya sakatlama ritüeli olarak da okunabilir. Örneğin Taylan Akkayan makalesinde sünneti bir sakatlama geleneği olarak işlemiştir ve bu fikrini sakatlamanın tanımını şu şekilde yaparak desteklemiştir: Sakatlama, sağlığa kavuşmak gibi bir gerekçesi bulunmayan, kişisel ve/ya birkaç kişisel istekle sınırlı olmayan; toplumun önemli bir kesimi veya tamamı tarafından paylaşılan davranış kalıpları sonunda; gelenek veya görenek düzeyinde ilke, kavram, kuralları netleşmiş; biyolojik doğal yapının, kültürel gerekçelerle, kırılma, kesilme, yarılma, parçalanma, form bozma vb. bir uygulama ile tamamen veya uzun bir zaman dilimi için fenotipik özelliklerin değiştirilmesi eylemidir (131). Sünnet ritüeli iyileşme amacıyla yapılmaması, toplumun büyük çoğunluğu tarafından gerekli görülmesi ve uygulanması, ilke, kavram ve kurallarıyla gelenekselleşmiş olması ve biyolojik doğal yapıya uygulanması gibi özellikleri bakımından Akkayan’ın sakatlama tanımıyla 136 Masculinities Journal birebir uyuşmaktadır. Dolayısıyla sakatlamanın bu tanımını kabul etmek, sünnet ritüelininde bir sakatlama geleneği olduğunu savunmayı zorunlu kılar. Erkek cinsel organına yapılan bu müdahale, elbette ki farklı şekillerde de olsa Arapça “hitan” olarak adlandırılmasından çok daha önceleri de mevcuttu. Günümüzdeki sünnet ritüelinin aldığı şekil tek tanrılı dinlerin ortaya çıkmasıyla oluşmuştur. Ancak tek tanrılı dinlerden çok daha önce de erkek cinsel organına yapılan müdahalelerle karşılaşmak mümkün. Örneğin tıp doktoru ve akademisyen Asaf Ataseven’in Sünnet adlı kitabında da belirttiği gibi arkeolojik araştırmalar sonucunda sünnetin M.Ö. 5000 yılında Babiller tarafından da yapıldığı kabul edilmektedir (11). Tarih boyunca bedene uygulanan bu tarz müdahaleler toplumsal bir algı ve kabulle meşrulaşarak varlığını sürdürmektedir. Peki erkek cinsel organına uygulanan bu müdahaleler geçmişten günümüze hangi aşamalardan geçerek gelmiştir? Mitolojide erkek cinsel organına uygulanan şiddetin altında neler yatıyordu? İlkel kabilelerin cinsel organlarını neredeyse işlevsiz hale sokacak noktaya getirmelerinin altındaki sebepler neydi ve bu müdahaleler tek tanrılı dinlerin doğuşuyla nasıl günümüzdeki şeklini aldı? Bu sorulara cevap aramak, erkek cinsel organına uygulanan müdahalelerin geçmişten günümüze erkeklikle ilişkisini anlamlandırmada oldukça yararlı olacaktır. Mitolojide Erkek Cinsel Organı ve “Kesme” M itolojik hikâyelerin günümüzdeki ritüelleri temellendirmedeki etkisi tartışmaya açık bir konu olsa da, ele aldığımız sünnet ritüelini mitolojiden başlayarak anlamlandırmaya çalışmayı uygun görüyorum. Bunun nedenlerinden biri mitolojide bedene uygulanan müdahale veya şiddet örneklerine çokça rastlamamızdır. Özellikle erkek cinsel organına uygulanan kesme-parçalama işlemi için örnek oluşturabilecek üç önemli mitten bahsetmek mümkündür. Bunlar Yunan mitolojisindeki Ouranos (gökyüzü) ve oğlu arasında geçen 137 Masculinities Journal mücadele, Anadolu mitolojisinde yer eden Attis ile Kybele arasındaki aşk ve Mısır mitolojisinde yer eden Seth ile kardeşi Osiris arasındaki savaştır. Bu mitolojik olayları Roberto Carvalho de Magalhaes’in Antikçağ’dan Günümüze Sanatta Mitoloji adlı kitabından yola çıkarak kısaca ele alabiliriz. Yunan mitolojisinde gökyüzü olan Ouranos ile yeryüzü olan Gaia’nın çiftleşmesinden Titanlar, Kykloplar (tepegözler) ve Hekatonkheirler (elli kafalı, yüz kollu üç yaratık) doğmuştur. Ouranos kimilerine göre kıskançlığından, kimilerine göre ise sevmediğinden dolayı (belki de ikisi birden) Kykloplara ve Hekatonkheirlere gün yüzü göstermemeye karar verir ve onları yeryüzünün derinliklerine yollayarak annelerinin karnına hapseder. Gaia bu olaya çok kızar ve diğer çocukları olan Titanları babalarına karşı kışkırtır. Titanlardan sadece Kronos annesine karşılık verir onunla işbirliği yapar. Gaia bir tırpan hazırlar ve bunu oğlu Kronos’a verir. Ouranos bir gün arkadaşı gece ile birlikte Gaia’ya çiftleşmek için gittiğinde ve onu boydan boya sardığında, Kronos bu tırpanla babasının cinsel organını deşer ve uzuvları denize atar. Böylece Kronos babasının cinsel organını kesmesi sayesinde onu alt etmiş olur ve kardeşlerini de kurtararak gücü eline alır. Kronos’un denize attığı uzuvların toprağa damlayan kanlarından devlerin, uzvun denizde meydana getirdiği köpüklerden de bakireliğiyle ön plana çıkmış olan güzellik ve aşk tanrıçası Aphrodite’in doğması ise oldukça ilginçtir. Kronos daha sonra babası Ouranos gibi iktidar telaşına düşecek ve çocukları tarafından alt edilmemek için onları canlı canlı yutacaktır. Ancak karısı Rhea’nın bir oyununa gelip oğlu Zeus’un doğumuna engel olamayacak ve o da tıpkı babası gibi oğlu tarafından alt edilecektir. Anadolu mitolojisindeki örnek ise Attis ve Kybele arasında geçer. Attis aşkına karşılık bulduğu Kybele’ye evlilik vaat etmiştir. Ama zaman geçtikçe bu evlilik sözünü unutan Attis gönlünü Kral Midas’ın kızına kaptırır ve onunla evlenmeye karar verir. Düğünde Kybele ile karşılaşan Attis büyük bir vicdan azabı çeker ve kendini cezalandırmak amacıyla 138 Masculinities Journal cinsel organını keser. Acılar içinde kıvranan Attis’e acıyan Kybele onu bir çam ağacın çevirir ve ona sonsuzluğu bağışlar. Mısır mitolojisinde ise dört kardeş arasında geçen olay dikkat çekicidir. Bu dört kardeş Seth, Osiris, İsis ve Neftis’tir. Aynı zamanda Seth ile Neftis, Osiris ile de İsis karı kocadır. Seth savaş ve çöl tanrısı olarak bilinir. Çöl tanrısı olarak bilinmesinin sebebi Seth’in hiç çocuğunun olmamasına bağlanmaktadır. Seth çorak bir çöl gibidir. Pek çok kişi tarafından sevilen kardeşi Osiris ise tam tersi bir şekilde oldukça bereketlidir. Seth bu durumun yarattığı kıskançlıkla kardeşi Osiris’i öldürmeye karar verir. Bunun için bir plan yapar ve bir eğlence düzenler. Bu eğlenceye hazırlattığı oldukça süslü bir sandığı getirir ve sandığın sahibinin bu sandığa sığabilecek kişi olacağını söyler. Osiris deneme amaçlı sandığa girdiğinde, Seth sandığı kilitleyip ırmağa atar. Ama İsis ne yapıp edip sandığı bulur ve kocasını kurtarır. Seth bu sefer başka bir plan yapar ve kardeşi Osiris’i on dört parçaya bölerek parçaları Mısır’ın değişik yerlerine dağıtır. İsis yine işin içine girer ve parçaları tek tek bulur. Osiris’in bir balık tarafından yenen cinsel organını ise çamurdan yapar ve tüm bu parçaları birleştirerek kocasını tekrar canlandırır. Bu olaydan sonra tekrar çocuk sahibi olurlar ve oğulları Horus dünyaya gelir. Horus büyüyünce babasının öcünü alacak ve Seth’i alt ederek onu çöle sürecektir. Bu üç mitolojik olayda da erkek cinsel organının belirli bir gücü ve buna bağlı olarak erkekliği temsil ettiği açıktır. Her bir olayda bu güce kast etmek isteyenlerin erkek cinsel organına uyguladığı bir müdahale söz konusudur. Yunan mitolojisindeki olayda Kronos, babası Ouraos’un cinsel organını keserek onun gücünü elinden alır ve böylece kardeşlerini kurtarır. Anadolu mitolojisindeki Attis ve Kybele aşkında ise Attis, yine gücünü ve erkekliğini temsil eden cinsel organını kendine ceza vermek amacıyla keser. Çünkü Attis verdiği evlilik sözünü bir erkeğe yakıştırmadığı biçimde tutmamış ve bu sözü verdiği kişiyi unutarak başka bir kadınla evlenmeye yeltenmiştir. Mısır mitolojisinde ise direk cinsel organa değil, erkek bedeninin bütününe uygulanan bir şiddet söz konusudur. Osiris’in bir balık tarafından yenen cinsel organı çamurdan yapılmış bile olsa, bu cinsel organla yapılan çocuğun güçlü bir şekilde 139 Masculinities Journal doğup babasının öcünü alması yine erkek cinsel organının bir gücü temsil ettiğini gözler önüne serer. Bu üç olayı göz önünde bulundurduğumuzda, erkek cinsel organına uygulanan meşrulaştırılmış bir müdahale olarak ele alabileceğimiz bugünkü sünnet ritüelinin mitolojideki kesme-parçalama gibi müdahalelerden oldukça önemli bir farkı olduğu gözümüze çarpar. Mitolojideki bu tip olaylarda erkek cinsel organına yapılan müdahale, o erkeğin gücüne ve erkekliğine zarar verme amacını güdüyorken; günümüzdeki sünnet ritüeli tam tersi bir şekilde gücü ve erkekliği besleyen bir gelenek olarak karşımıza çıkar. Farklı olmayan şey ise erkek cinsel organının mitolojide dahi bir iktidarı temsil edişidir. Uygulanan müdahale bu bağlamda erkeğe yine erkekliği üzerinden yapılan bir vurguyla geri döner. Günümüzdeki sünnet ritüeli ile arasındaki anlam değişmesinde ise ilkel kabilelerdeki çeşitli ritüellerin etkisi olduğu varsayılabilir. İlkel Kabilelerde Erkek Cinsel Organına Uygulanan Müdahaleler T ıpkı mitolojik hikâyelerde olduğu gibi ilkel kabilelerde de çocukların veya genç erkeklerin cinsel organlarına uygulanan çeşitli müdahaleler bugünkü sünnet ritüelini temellendirmede yardımcı olma rolünü üstlenir. İlkel kabilelerdeki bu müdahalelerin mitolojidekilerden farkı ise buradaki müdahalelerin bir ceza veya kötülük amacı taşımamasıdır. Erkek cinsel organına uygulanan müdahale mitolojide bir gücü alt etmek için yapılıyorken, ilkel kabilelerle birlikte artık bir gücü arttırmak veya bir inancı desteklemek için yapılmaya başlanır. Amaç farklı da olsa bu müdahalenin altında yatan sebep yine erkek cinsel organına atfedilen büyük değerdir. Geçmişten günümüze bazı ilkel kabileler ergenliğe ve yetişkinliğe geçiş olarak kabul ettikleri çeşitli törenler gerçekleştirmiş ve bu törenlerde genç erkeklerin cinsel organlarına çeşitli müdahalelerde bulunmuşlardır. Bu müdahaleler bugün insanlar tarafından akıl erdirilemeyen tehlikeli ve vahşi olaylar olarak algılanırken, taşıdığı 140 Masculinities Journal anlamların sünnet ritüelinden çok da uzak olmadığı açıktır. Öncelikle Desmond Morris’in Çıplak Adam: Erkek Vücudu Üzerine Bir İnceleme (The Naked Man: A Study of the Male Body) adlı kitabında yer verdiği birkaç örneğe bakmak yararlı olacaktır. Aborjinler için ergenliğe geçiş töreninin sosyal önemi oldukça büyüktür ve bu tören için on üç yaşındaki çocuklara “içeriden yarma” olarak bilinen ameliyat biçimi uygulanırdı. Böylece ergenlik çağına giren bir çocuğun penisi önce şimdiki sünnet ritüeline benzer bir biçimde sünnet edilir, dört yıl sonrasında ise penislerinin alt tarafı bir bıçakla boydan boya veya kısmen kesilip idrar borusu yarılırdı. Böylece yayvanlaşan penisin kadınlara daha büyük bir zevk verdiği düşünülürdü. Öte yandan bu müdahale nedeniyle erkekler de kadınlar gibi oturarak idrar yapmak durumunda kalır, aynı zamanda cinsel birleşme sırasında sperm aktarmada da sorun yaşarlardı (Morris 214-215). Morris bu geleneğin mitolojik bir kökeninin olduğunun akla yatkın olduğunu açıklar. Mitolojiye göre bu ritüel Aborjinler’e kertenkele-adam olan ataları tarafından verilmiştir. Çünkü kertenkelenin erkeklerinde çiftleşme esnasında çift penis görünümünde bir uzantının çıktığı bilinmektedir. Böylece kabile halkının bu özelliğe sahip olmaları, onlara atalarının güçlerini bağışlayacaktır (215-216). Aborjinler’in bu geleneklerinde erkek cinsel organının yine bir güç ve erkeklik simgesi olduğu açıktır. Yapılan müdahalenin ergenliğe geçiş evresi olması ve bu evreyle atalarının güçlerinin kendilerine bahşedileceğinin kabul edilmesi bu argümanı destekler. Başka bir penis kesme ritüelinin de Mısır’da ortaya çıktığını görebiliriz. Morris, Eski Mısırlıların uyguladığı yöntemin daha sonra Ortadoğu kültürlerinde taklit edildiğini ve uygulanan ritüelin sebebinin zamanla unutulup, âdetin tek gerekçesinin Tanrı’nın sünnetli penisleri tercih etmesi olarak kalmış olabileceğini belirtmiştir. Mısırlılarda sünnet ritüelinin kökeni bir yılandır. Mısırlılar bir yılanın deri değiştirme anına tanık olmuş ve bunu yılanın yeniden doğuşu ve ölümsüz olması olarak adlandırmışlardır. Buradan yola çıkarak erkeğin de üzerindeki bir deri parçasını atmasının onu ölümsüzlüğe kavuşturabileceği düşüncesi ortaya çıkmıştır. Bu derinin penisten bir deri olmasının sebebi ise 141 Masculinities Journal şüphesiz ki penisin yılanla olan benzerliğidir. Bu mantıktan ortaya çıkan ritüel gitgide yayılmış ve daha sonra da “yılana tapınma” anlamı unutularak sadece Tanrı’nın isteği olarak devam etmiştir (216). Bu gelenek, günümüzdeki sünnet ritüelinin akla yatkın temellerinden biri olarak okunabilir. Bunların yanı sıra Doğu Afrika kıyılarında, Asya ve Okyanusya adalarında bazı halklar arasında “penis deşme” ritüeli mevcuttu. Bu ritüelde penisin uç derisinde tek bir kesik açılır ve derinin herhangi bir parçası tamamen koparılıp alınmazdı. Bu ergenliğe geçiş törenlerinin en az hasarlı olanlarına örnek teşkil edebilir. Arabistan’ın bazı kesimlerinde ise “deri sıyırma” olarak adlandırılan oldukça sert bir âdet mevcuttu. Bu işlemde penis sapındaki derinin tamamı sıyırma yöntemiyle alınırdı. Bu işkenceye bağırmadan katlanabilen erkekler ise en muteber yetişkin sayılırlardı (Morris 219). Bu örnek bize acıya dayanma eşiğinin erkeklikle olan ilişkisini de yansıtır. Günümüzde sünnet olan çocukların cinsel organlarına müdahale esnasında ağlamamaları gerektiği yönündeki telkinler de aynı şekilde “erkek adam ağlamaz” safsatasının bu ilkel kabiledeki algıyla benzer olduğunu ortaya serer. Şüphesiz ki bu verilen örneklere benzer daha pek çok ritüelin varlığı mevcuttur. Önemli olan şudur ki pek çok ilkel kabilenin erkek cinsel organına uyguladığı bu tarz müdahaleler, erkeklerin çocukluktan çıkıp birer yetişkin olmasını sağlama amacıyla yapılmaktadır. Yani erkeklik inşasında cinsel organa uygulanan müdahalenin kritik değeri ilkel kabilelerde de ön plana çıkar ve bu durum bugünkü sünnet ritüelinin erkekliğe giden yolda önemli bir durak olmasıyla birebir örtüşür. Bu örtüşmeyi görmezden gelemeyeceğimiz gibi, günümüzdeki sünnet ritüelinin tek tanrılı dinlerin mevcut olmadığı ilkel topluluklardaki bu âdetlerden etkilenmiş olabileceğini de göz ardı edemeyiz. Öte yandan günümüzde az da olsa hala bulunan ilkel kabilelerin devam ettirdikleri yetişkinliğe geçiş törenlerinin modern toplumlardaki sünnet ritüeliyle varlığını bir arada sürdürmesi, üzerine düşünülmesi gereken bir başka konudur. 142 Masculinities Journal Tek Tanrılı Dinlerde Sünnet T ek tanrılı dinlerin doğmasıyla birlikte erkek cinsel organına yapılan müdahale bugünkü sünnet ritüeline dönüşmüştür ancak bu anlayıştaki sünnetin nerede ve nasıl başladığına dair pek çok tartışma süregelmektedir. Ataseven’in aktardığı gibi bazıları sünnetin Hz. İbrahim ile başladığını kabul etmektedir. Ancak Ataseven, Hz. İbrahim’in sünnetin unutulduğu bir devirde, ilahi emir üzerine kendi kendini ve oğulları Hz. İsmail ve Hz. İshak’ı sünnet ettiğini ve müminlerine sünnet olmalarını bildirdiğini savunur (13). Sünnet günümüzde Müslümanlık ve Yahudilik dinleri içerisinde mevcut olan bir ritüel olarak karşımıza çıkar. Türkiye toplumu içerisinde sünnetsiz bir erkek gayrimüslim olarak lanse edilir ve Müslüman erkek topluluğu tarafından kolaylıkla ötekileştirilebilir. Sünnetsiz erkek de zaten sağlam bir erkeklik inşası için gerekli olan ilk adımı atamadığından bu yolda diğer erkeklere hiçbir zaman yetişemeyecektir. Taşıtman “Bir dinin üyesi olabilmek için de bazen bedeninde belirleyici olan bir iz, işaret bırakmak gerekli olabilir. İşte sünnet de gerek Yahudi gerek Müslüman toplumların erkekleri için olmazsa olmaz bir semboldür ve bu sembolün simgesel anlamının ağırlığını taşır” der (123). Sünnetsiz Müslüman bir erkek bu sembolik ağırlığın altında ezilir, dininin gerekliliklerini yerine getirmediği için “dinsiz” olarak yaftalanır. Sünnet olmamanın altında yatabilecek başka ideolojiler olabileceği fikri çoğunlukla ihtimal dâhiline bile alınmaz. Öte yandan sünnet ritüelinden Müslümanların kitabı olan Kuran’ı Kerim’de hiç bahsedilmemesi sünnetle ilgili bir başka ironik durum olarak görülebilir. Neden Müslümanlıkta zorunlu tutulduğu ise sünnetin peygamberin hadislerinde geçtiğinin savunulmasıyla açıklanmaktadır. Müslümanlıkta sünnetin fıtrat, yani yaradılış, tabiat, tabii eğilim olduğu düşüncesi oldukça yaygındır. Ataseven beş şeyin İslam fıtratından olduğunu aktarır: Sünnet olmak, kasık bölgesini temizlemek, bıyıkları kesmek, koltukaltı tüylerini temizlemek, tırnakları kesmek (12). Hz. Muhammed’in neden veya nasıl sünnet olduğu üzerine ise çeşitli rivayetler vardır. Hz. Muhammed’in sünnetli bir şekilde dünyaya 143 Masculinities Journal geldiğini savunanların çokluğunun yanı sıra, doğumunun sekizinci gününde dedesi Abdülmuttalip tarafından ziyafet verilerek sünnet ettirildiğini veya sütannesi Halime Hatun’un yanında bulunduğu sırada melekler tarafından sünnet edildiğini düşünenler de mevcuttur (19). Assmann’a göre “dinin genel işlevi hatırlamak, canlandırmak ve tekrarlamak yoluyla geçmişin devamına aracı olmaktır” (Akt. Taşıtman 122-123). Bu bağlamda bir Müslüman geleneği olan sünnetin Kuran’ın Kerim’de yazmamasına rağmen İslamiyet’in doğduğu günden şimdiye kadar nasıl geldiği, dinin Assmann’ın açıkladığı bu işlevsel özelliği sayesinde açıklanabilir. Benzer şekilde Bouhdiba da sünnetin bir İslam pratiği olmasından öte Müslümanların pratiği olduğunu savunur. Yani sünnetin sosyolojik boyutunun kutsal boyutundan daha önemli olduğunu ileri sürerek toplumsal önemine vurgu yapar (26). Sünnetin Kuran’ı Kerim’de yazmadığı halde Müslümanlar arasında bu derece önem arz etmesi, Bouhdiba’nın sünnetin sosyolojik boyutunu öne çıkardığı bu analizini destekler niteliktedir. Kitab-ı Mukaddes’te ise Tekvin bölümünde sünnetle ilgili ayetler yer almaktadır. Bu ayetlerde Hz. İbrahim’in, kendi soyundan olmasa bile sahip olduğu kölelerin ve evinde doğmuş her erkek çocuğunun sünnet edilmesi gerektiği, bunun Tanrı ile aralarında bir antlaşma olduğu bildirilir. Tekvin, 17: 10-14:Seninle ve soyunla yaptığım antlaşmanın koşulu şudur: Aranızdaki erkeklerin hepsi sünnet edilecek. Sünnet olmalısınız. Sünnet aramızdaki antlaşmanın belirtisi olacak. Evinizde doğmuş ya da soyunuzdan olmayan bir yabancıdan satın alınmış köleler dâhil sekiz günlük her erkek çocuk sünnet edilecek. Gelecek kuşaklarınız boyunca sürecek bu. Evinizde doğan ya da satın aldığınız her çocuk kesinlikle sünnet edilecek. Bedeninizdeki bu belirti sonsuza dek sürecek antlaşmamın simgesi olacak. Sünnet edilmemiş her erkek halkının arasından atılacak, çünkü antlaşmamı bozmuş demektir (http://incil.info/#%2Farama%2FTekvin%2B17 Son 04.07.2014). 144 erişim: Masculinities Journal Tekvin, 17: 23-27: İbrahim evindeki bütün erkekleri -oğlu İsmail’i, evinde doğanların, satın aldığı uşakların hepsiniTanrının kendisine buyurduğu gibi o gün sünnet ettirdi. İbrahim sünnet olduğunda doksan dokuz yaşındaydı. Oğlu İsmail on üç yaşında sünnet oldu. İbrahim, oğlu İsmail’le aynı gün sünnet edildi. İbrahim'in evindeki bütün erkekler -evinde doğanlar ve yabancılardan satın alınanlar- onunla birlikte sünnet oldu (http://incil.info/#%2Farama%2FTekvin%2B17 Son erişim: 04.07.2014). Bu ayetlerle birlikte sünnetsiz bir erkeğin sünnetli erkekler tarafından ötekileştirilip cemaat içine alınmaması dini bir temele dayandırılabilir. Çünkü Yahudi bir erkek sünnet olmamışsa bu Tanrı’yla aralarındaki antlaşmaya uymadığına işaret eder. Bugün Yahudilerin büyük çoğunluğu hala çocuklarını sünnet ederler. Bu ritüel kutsal kitaplarında yazdığından dolayı onlar için genellikle dini bir amaç taşır. Bu yüzden “sünneti Sinagogda Hahamlar yapar” (Ataseven 16). Yahudi olmayan bir doktorun, bir Yahudi çocuğunu sünnet etmesi söz konusu değildir. Hıristiyanlıkta ise bugün sünnetin dini bir boyutunu tartışmak pek mümkün değildir. Ataseven’in aktardığına göre Hıristiyanlar Hz. Musa’nın tebliğ ettiği şeriata tabidir. Bu yüzden de Hz. İsa doğumunun sekizinci gününde sünnet edilmiştir. Ancak Hz. İsa’dan sonra Hıristiyanlar sünneti devam ettirmemiş ve bu geleneği terk etmişlerdir (16). Müslümanlar ise Hıristiyanlıkta olduğu gibi kitaplarında yazmamasına rağmen Hz. Muhammed’e uygulanan bu ritüeli devam ettirmiş ve ona pek çok sembolik anlam yüklemişlerdir. Sünnete yüklenen sembolik anlamların en temelinde bu makalenin de odak noktası olan “erkeklik” meselesi yatar. “Grup, tarihini hatırlayarak ve kökenine ait hatırlatma figürlerini belleğinde canlandırarak kimliğinden emin olur” (Taşıtman 122). Bir erkeğin bedeni, onun kimlik oluşumunda rol oynayan önemli bir etken olmasının yanı sıra bu kimliği dışarı yansıtan temel araçlardan da biridir. Dini bir amaçla sünnet olan erkek, bu adımla birlikte kendine diğer erkekler 145 Masculinities Journal arasında yer bulmada kolaylık sağlar. Çünkü sünnet, erkek için dinsel bağlılığın bedendeki tek kalıcı tezahürüdür. Tüm bunların yanı sıra günümüzde sünnetin artık din için mi yoksa sağlık için mi bir gereksinim olduğu tartışılır olmuştur. Erkek cinsel organının sünnet edilmesinin pek çok hastalığın önüne geçmede bir etken olacağının düşünülmeye başlanması, bugün sünneti Müslüman veya Yahudi olmayan topluluklar tarafından da uygulanır kılmıştır. Ataseven de sünnetin son yarım asırdan beridir birçok ülkede tıbbi bir gereklilik olarak daha sık uygulanmaya başlandığını belirtmiş ve sünnetsizlerde bazı hastalıkların görülebileceğini belirtmiştir5 (43). Yine de sağlık sebebiyle yapılan sünnetler çoğu zaman dini amacın önüne geçememektedir. Sünnetin bir diğer kalıcı rolünün ise dini işlevle de yakından ilişkili olan ve bu işleve hizmet eden iletişim sağlama rolü olduğu söylenebilir. Bu bağlamda sünnetin erkeklik inşasında kritik önem taşıyan temsili daha anlaşılır bir hal alır. Bir İletişim Aracı Olarak Sünnet B ir erkeğin bedeni onun toplumdaki konumu açısından önemli bir göstergedir. Sakatlığı olmayan, kaslı, bedenen güçlü olan, kadınını koruyup kollayabilecek ve diğer erkeklerle fiziksel kavgaya giriştiğinde kendini ezdirmeyecek bir erkek, erkeklik inşasını tamamlamada büyük artılara sahipken; zayıf, ufak tefek veya kadınsı tavırları olan bir erkeğin bu inşayı tamamlaması çoğu zaman yavaş ve zorlu, bazen de imkânsız olur. Benzer şekilde bir erkeğin anne ve babasıyla olan ilişkisinin de erkeklik inşasına etkisi büyüktür ve sünnetin bu ilişkide kritik bir önemi olduğu söylenebilir. “Bedeninden kesilen parça, erkek çocuğun iç-anne dünyasından koparak dış-erkek dünyasına geçtiğinin işaretidir” (Tuğrul 99). Yani sünnetle birlikte erkek çocuk, kız çocuğa atfedilen annesinin dizinin dibinde oturma rolünden yavaş yavaş uzaklaşır ve dış dünyaya adım atarak erkek topluluğu içinde kendine yer edinmeye hazırlanır. 146 Masculinities Journal Romanienko Body Piercing and Identity Construction (Bedeni Delme ve Kimlik İnşası) başlıklı kitabında çağdaş batı toplumlarında beden değişimi (body modification) adı verilen olayların gitgide popülerleşmesinden bahseder ve bunları sözsüz ve sözlü iletişim araçları olarak ele alır. Beden değişimine ise dövmeyi, delmeyi, dağlamayı, kesmeyi, deriyi germeyi ve deriyi kazımayı örnek olarak verir. Hem bağlı oldukları dinin, hem de adım attıkları erkekliğin en önemli göstergelerinden biri olması açısından erkek bedenine uygulanan kesme işlemi olarak görülebilecek sünnet ritüeli, Türkiye’deki erkekler için Romanienko’nun ele aldığı tarzda önemli bir iletişim aracı olarak okunabilir. Connell de erkekliğin fiziksel anlamının oldukça karmaşık bir yapı olduğundan bahseder. Bir erkeğin “boy pos ve şekli, tavır ve hareket alışkanlıklarını, belirli fiziksel becerilere sahip olmayı ve belirli becerilerin eksik kalmasını, kişinin kendi beden imajını, bunun öteki insanlara sunuluş biçimini ve bu insanların buna karşılık verme biçimlerini, kişinin bedeninin çalışma ve cinsel ilişkilerdeki işleyiş biçimini içerir” (Connell 122). Dolayısıyla Türkiye toplumunda sünnetsiz bir erkek, erkekliğin toplum algısındaki fiziksel tanımına uymaz, daha doğrusu bu tanıma göre eksik kalır. Bir erkeğin toplumda egemen olabilmesi için salt erkek olması yetmez, bu erkeğin toplumun içselleştirdiği erkeklik normlarına da sahip olması beklenir. Bu ideal erkekliğin özelliklerinden biri, dinine bağlı, dolayısıyla Müslümanlığının bir getirisi olarak sünnet olmuş bir erkeğin sahip olduğu erkekliktir. “İktidarı elde bulunduranlar olarak erkeklerin toplumsal tanımı, yalnızca zihinsel beden imajları ve fantezilere değil, kas gücü, duruş, beden duygusu ve dokusuna da dönüştürülür. Bu, erkeklerin iktidarının başlıca ‘doğallaştırılma’, diğer bir deyişle doğa düzeninin parçası olarak görülme biçimlerinden biridir” (Connell 123). Erkeklerin sünnet ritüeliyle birlikte erkekliklerine sahip olmaya başladığının düşünülmesinin altında yatan nedenlerden biri de elbette ki diğer erkeklerle aralarında var olan kısmi bir dayanışmadır. Lynne Segal, “çocukluğun bağımlılığından ve zayıflığından ayrılmayı ve yetişkin erkeklerin farklı dünyasında yeni bir ait olma duygusuna sahip olmayı 147 Masculinities Journal içermesi gereken uygun erkekliğe geçiş törenleri varsa, erkekler erkekliklerine kolektif bir güven duyabilirler” der (169). Geçmişten günümüze erkeklikle ilişkisi yok olmayan erkek cinsel organına müdahale ritüelleri, aynı zamanda bu ritüellerin içselleştirilmesini ve meşru kılınmasını sağlaması açısından erkekler arası kolektif bir desteğe ve güvene dayanır. Peki bir iletişim aracı olarak da düşünülebileceğini tartıştığımız bedene uygulanan bu müdahalenin erkeğin “müstehcen” bir bölgesinde vücut bulması bu iletişimi zorlaştırmaz mı? Erkekler bu önemli adımı attığına ve hem dinine hem de erkekliğine vurgu yapan bu ritüelin gerçekleştiğine ilişkin kanıtı nasıl sağlar? İşte bu noktada devreye sadece basit bir gelenekmiş gibi görünen ama aslında pek çok önemli işlevi olan sünnet törenleri girmektedir. Hatıralardan Silinmeyen Kalıcı Bir Kanıt: Sünnet Törenleri B ir çocuğun çocukluktan çıkıp erkekliğe adım attığının görünür kılınmasını sağlayan en önemli olaylardan biridir sünnet törenleri. Sünnet çocuğunun giydiği kıyafetten, at üzerinde yaptığı gezilere; törende çalınan şarkılardan, verilen hediye ve altınlara kadar geçmişten günümüze süregelen pek çok gelenek, toplum tarafından sünnet ritüeline verilen önemi kanıtlamakta ve bu ritüelin toplum içindeki değerini stabil kılmaktadır. Bedeninde özellikle cinsel organı gibi üreme açısından önemli bir bölgesine müdahalede bulunulan erkek, bu müdahale ile birlikte kimlik oluşumuna büyük bir katkı sağlamış olur. “Birey verili kimliğinin varlığını devam ettirecek ya da sürdürecek gücü cemaatten alır, törenlerle pekiştirir ve alınan bu güç toplumsaldır” (Taşıtman 119). Günümüzdeki sünnet düğünü geleneği veya ilkel kabilelerdeki erkekliğe geçiş törenleri, erkeğin kimlik oluşumunu etkileyen bu tarz ritüellerin gücünü toplumdan aldığının ve yine toplum tarafından beslendiğinin en büyük göstergelerinden biridir. Beyazlar içindeki pantolonu, gömleği, yeleği, ayakkabıları, pelerini, asası, tacı, papyonu ve “maşallah” yazısıyla 148 Masculinities Journal sünnet kıyafetleri, bir çocuğun “çocukça” değil “erkek gibi” giydirilmesini sağlaması açısından sünnetin en önemli ve kaçınılmaz geleneği haline gelmiştir. Çocuğun bu sünnet kıyafetiyle oradan oraya gezdirilmesi, herkese üzerinde oynanmış cinsel organını gösteremeyecek olan çocuğun erkekliğe adım attığını daha kısa ve gösterişli bir yolla tüm çevresine duyurmasında etkili olur. Günümüzdeki sünnet törenleri elbette ki yerel farklılıklardan beslenerek çeşitlilik göstermektedir. Bazı bölgelerde sünnetçi geleneği devam etmektedir ve doktor olsun ya da olmasın bu mesleği yapan kişi sünnet çocuğunun evine gelerek bu ritüeli gerçekleştirmektedir. Büyük şehirlerde ise çocukların hastanelerde uzman bir doktor tarafından sünnet ettirilmesi tercih edilmektedir. Bu yol günümüzde çocuğun sağlığı açısından daha tercih edilir bir yol olmuştur. Ancak her iki durumda da sünnetle birlikte erkek çocuğunun biyolojik cinsiyetine uygun kimlik kazanmaya başladığı kabul gördüğünden, sünnet sonrası geniş çaplı bir “sünnet töreni” veya daha mütevazı bir “sünnet kutlaması” yapılması günümüzde hala devam eden bir gelenektir. Ataseven’e göre İslam’da bir çocuğun sünnet olabilmesi için iki şart vardır. Bunlar Müslüman olmak ve sünnet derisinin mevcut olmasıdır. Bazı çocuklar sünnet derisi olmadan doğabilmektedir. Bu çocuklar Ataseven’e göre doğuştan sünnetli kabul edilirler, ama sünnetçiler bu çocukları sünnet yapmış olmak için biraz kanatırlar (23). Bu durum bize sünnet ritüelinin önemini bir kez daha vurgular. Çünkü bir erkek çocuğunun sünnetli doğmuş olmasına rağmen cinsel organına müdahalede bulunulması, onun sünnet olduğunun ve erkekliğe adım attığının duyurulması açısından önemli görülür. Herhangi bir sebeple bebeklikte sünnet edilmiş bir çocuğa yıllar sonra bir sünnet töreni yapılması da aynı şekilde çocuğun sünnet edilmediğinin düşünülmesinin önüne geçmek veya çocuğa erkekliğe adım attığı bilincinin aşılanmasını sağlamak açısından bazı aileler tarafından gerekli görülmektedir. Sünnet törenlerinin gösterişli ve uzun olmasının önemi de oldukça büyüktür. Çünkü bu törenler sünnet çocuğunun ailesinin veya masrafları karşılayacak başka bir aile büyüğünün ekonomik durumunun en büyük 149 Masculinities Journal göstergelerinden biridir. Elbette günümüzde ekonomik durumları uygun olduğu halde çocuklarına sünnet düğünü yapmayan aileler de mevcuttur. Bunun altında sünneti sadece sağlık için bir gereklilik olarak görme, sünneti erkeklikle bağdaştırmama ve kutlamaya gerek görmeme veya sünneti dini bir zorunluluk olarak görüp kutlamasını yapmayarak gösterişten kaçınma gibi farklı sebepler yatabilmektedir. Sünnet törenlerinin gerçekleşmesinde ve gerçekleştirilecek ritüelin öncesinde ve sonrasında pek çok karar mekanizması rol oynar. Bir erkeklik ritüeli olan sünnetin gerçekleşmesi için alınan kararlar da elbette ki çoğunlukla erkeklerin tekelinde bulunur. Sünnet işlemine karar vermede aile reisi veya sünnet töreninin masraflarını karşılayacak başka bir aile büyüğü esas roldedir. Sünnet işlemini yerine getirenlerin başında sünnetçinin gelmesinin yanı sıra kirveler de bu ritüel içerisinde kilit rol oynar. Erkeklerin tekelinde olan başka bir erkeklik kurumu olan kirvelik, gerek sünnet çocuğunun gerekse de onun ailesinin bambaşka bir ilişki kurduğu, çocuğu sünnet esnasında tutarak fiziksel rol oynamanın çok daha ötesinde bir role sahip sosyal konumu temsil eder. Erkeklik Ritüelinde Bir Erkeklik Dayanışması: Kirvelik K irve, Farsça “kir-kamış” ve “-tutmak” kelimelerinden gelmektedir (Ataseven 28). Halk arasında basitçe çocuğu sünnet esnasında tutan kişi olarak algılansa da çok daha derin anlamlar içerir. Ataseven’e göre “kirve, erkek çocuğun sünnet masraflarını karşılayan başka bir ailenin büyüğüdür, sünnet olacak çocuğu kucağına alarak sünnetin yapılmasını sağlar” (28). Ayşe Kudat ise kirvelik üzerine yaptığı kapsamlı çalışması Kirvelik: Sanal Akrabalığın Dünü ve Bugünü adlı kitabında kirveliği, “bir erkek çocuğun sünnet töreninin yük ve masraflarını, ana babasının dışında başka bir aile büyüğünün üzerine alması ile iki aile arasında kurulan sanal akrabalığa verilen ad” olarak açıklar (11). Kirve ise “temelde sünnet töreninin masraflarını kısmen de olsa yüklenecek ve tören sırasında çocuğu kucağına alarak fiziksel olarak hareket etmesine engel olacak kimsedir” (12). 150 Masculinities Journal Doğu Anadolu bölgesine ait bir gelenek olan kirvelik, Kudat’ın da belirttiği üzere, devletin uyguladığı değişik politikalarla birlikte sağa sola dağıtılan Doğu insanıyla beraber bölgesel niteliğini değiştirmiş, ulusal, hatta uluslararası yeni bir kimlik kazanmıştır (16). Dolayısıyla bu gelenek bölgesel bir gelenek olarak kalmamış, sünnet ritüelinin tüm Türkiye’de uygulanan bir parçası olagelmiştir. Ayrıca “Batı ve Orta Anadolu’da, Doğu Anadolu’daki ‘kirvelik’ âdetine karşılık ‘sağdıçlık’ vardır. Sağdıç, dost anlamındadır. … Sünnet düğünlerinde, sağdıç sünnet olurken çocuğun yanında bulunur” (Ataseven 29). Sünnet törenlerinin ekonomik sermayeyle yakın ilişkisinden bahsettiğimiz gibi, kirvelik ilişkisinde de sosyal sermayeden bahsetmek mümkündür. Çünkü kirvelik ilişkisi kuran iki aile aralarında kan bağı olmayan yepyeni bir yakın ilişki içerisine girmiş olurlar ve bu ilişki sadece sünnet töreninin yapılıp bitmesiyle kalmaz, ömür boyu sürer. “Çocuklarını birbirleriyle evlendiren aileler nasıl adına “dünürlük” denilen kurumlaşmış bir yakınlık kurarlarsa, bir çocuğun sünnet töreninin üstlenilmesiyle birbirine bağlanan aileler de kurumlaşmış bir yakınlık içine girerler. Bu yakınlık onlar için önemli bir sosyal sermaye kaynağı oluşturur” (Kudat 12). Kirveliğin toplumsal bir rol olduğundan bahsetmek yanlış olmaz. Kirvelik sünnet ritüeliyle ortaya çıkan bir kavram olmasına rağmen, kirvelerden yapılması beklenen şeyler sünnet sonrasında da devam etmektedir. Ataseven’e göre kirveler, çocukları sünnet ettirmek ve masraflarını karşılamanın yanı sıra, ileride okumaları ve iş bulmaları konusuna da onlara yardımcı olmaktadır. Ayrıca kirveliğin özellikle Doğu Anadolu Bölgesi’nin bir âdeti olduğunu söyleyen Ataseven, kirvelerin kan davalarının önlenmesine yardımcı olma, sosyal ilişkileri perçinleme ve aşiretler arası dostluk sağlama gibi görevleri olduğunu da belirtir (28). Ancak “ilginçtir ki kirvelik yoluyla kurulan sosyal birikimler de, parasal birikimlerde olduğu gibi erkeklerin monopolisindedir” (Kudat 13). Kirvelik bağlarının kurulmasında kadının rolü yok denecek kadar azdır. Bu da erkek cinsel organının konu olduğu bir ritüelin doğurduğu her türlü ilişkinin yine erkekler ve erkekliklerle ilgili olduğunu ve kadını dışarıda tuttuğunu bir kez daha gözler önüne sermektedir. 151 Masculinities Journal Kirvelik aileler arası basit bir ilişki değildir. Kirvelik yapacak kişi, bir çocuğun erkekliğe attığı ilk adımda ona maddi destek sunduğu ve onunla birlikte olduğu için saygıdeğer bir konuma erişir. Kirvelik ilişkisi hem babalar için, hem de kirve olacak kişi için bir erkeklik meselesidir. Kirvelik ilişkisi kuran iki aile arasında verilmiş bir söz vardır ve bu sözden dönmek “erkek adam”a yakışmayacağından, kirve olacak aile reisi sözünü “erkekçe” tutmak durumundadır. Aynı şekilde kirve olması için birine teklif götüren ve kabul alan bir sünnet çocuğu babası da son anda başka birine daha teklif götürüp onu kirve yaparsa, bu davranış da erkeklik kalıbına sığmaz ve toplum tarafından fazlasıyla ayıplanır. “Kirvelik için verilen söz o kadar ciddiye alınır ki, şakası bile yapılamaz; bir şakalaşma sırasında bile olsa ortaya atılan öneri kabul edildikten sonra verilen sözden dönülmesi hoş karşılanmaz” (Kudat 38). Çocuğuna kirvelik yapacak kişinin seçimi, üzerinde düşünülmesi gereken kritik bir süreçtir. Bu süreçte adayların ekonomik durumlarının göz önünde bulundurulmasının yanı sıra, bu adayların erkeklik vasfı da sünnet çocuğu ve ailesi için önemlidir. Kudat, “genellikle, çocuğu sünnet töreni sırasında kucağına aldığı için, ‘tören babası’ dediğimiz kişi evli, askerliğini yapmış, ailenin seçkin kişilerinden seçilir” der (45). Kendisinin de içinde bulunduğu yerel farklılıkların katkısıyla şekillenmiş olan erkeklik algısı ve kalıpları içerisine girmeyen bir erkeğin kirve olması düşünülmez. Örneğin, sünnetsiz bir erkeğin bir sünnet düğününde kirvelik yapması abeste iştigal eder. Ya da henüz eli ekmek tutmayan, bekâr genç bir erkek kirvelik için uygun görülmez. Kirvenin tam erkekliğe ulaşmış ve Kudat’ın belirttiği gibi “çocuğu kucaklayabilecek ve fiziksel olarak hareketine engel olabilecek bedeni güce” sahip olması beklenir (45).Yani sünnet ritüeli sadece sünnet olacak çocuk için değil, kirvelik geleneği nedeniyle farklı aileler arasında da bir erkeklik meselesi haline gelir. Kirvelik ilişkileri günden güne değişen sosyal ilişkilerden ötürü boyut değiştirebilmektedir. Yıllar öncesinin sıkı kirvelik bağlarının günümüzdeki varlığından bahsetmek zordur. Türkiye’nin doğusunda doğan bu geleneğin zorunlu veya gönüllü göçle önce batıya, oradan da farklı coğrafyalara yayılması bu geleneğin varlığının evrensel bir hal 152 Masculinities Journal almasını sağlamasının yanı sıra, yerel farklılıklardan ve değişik kültürlerden etkilenmesi sebebiyle biçim değiştirmesine, varlığını bu değişimle devam ettirmesine ve hatta bazen yok olmasına da neden olmuştur. Yine de değişmeyen bir şey varsa o da kirveliğin bu erkeklik ritüelinde ortaya çıkan ve erkeklik hamurunu iyice yoğuran bir erkeklik dayanışmasının iyi bir örneği olmasıdır diyebiliriz. Sonuç Yerine: Oldu da Bitti Maşallah M akale boyunca ele alınan sünnetin erkeklik ile olan ilişkisi, sünnet olan erkeğin cinsel organının zaten bir iktidar simgesi olmaya başladığını ve bu ritüelin hali hazırda bu amaca hizmet eden bir rolünün olduğunu gözler önüne sermeyi amaç edinmiştir. Türkiye toplumu ele alındığında erkek bedeninde kültürel değer yüklenmiş gösterenlerin başında (başka birçok toplumda olduğu gibi) elbette ki penis gelmektedir. Penisin bu temsili elde edebilmesinin gerekli koşullarından biri de Türkiye toplumu için şüphesiz ki sünnet olmaktır. Türkiye’deki erkeklerin hegemonik erkekliğe ulaşması ve iktidarı elinde tutabilmesi için büyük ve sünnetli bir penise sahip olması beklenmektedir. Sünnet, erkek çocuğunun erkeklik inşa sürecinde uğradığı kilit roldeki temel duraklardan ilki olarak görülebilir. Erkek cinsel organına sahip olmasından ötürü doğumundan itibaren erkeğe uygun görülen renklerde giydirilip, bu cinsiyete uygun görülen oyuncaklarla oynayan ve erkek cinsiyetine atfedilen söylemlerle büyütülen çocuk, bir erkek olarak toplumsal rol ve görevlerini yerine getirdiğini belirten en önemli göstergelerden birine sünnet olarak sahip olmaktadır. Sünnet olan çocuk, çocukluk evresini bir nebze olsun geçerek erkekliğe adım attığı için gurur kaynağı haline gelmektedir. Bu bağlamda temelini mitolojiye kadar dayandırılabildiğimiz sünnet ritüelinin altında tarihsel süreç içerisinde asla değişmeyen kritik bir mesele yattığı savunulabilir. Bu mesele erkeklik meselesidir. 153 Masculinities Journal Geçmişten günümüze sünnet; gerek mitolojideki, ilkel kabilelerdeki ve tek tanrılı dinlerdeki konumuyla, gerek kutlama törenleri ve kirvelik gibi gelenekleriyle ve gerekse de erkek tekelinde bulunan kurgusuyla, erkekliğe yaptığı vurgu ve onunla olan ilişkisi asla sarsılmayan bir müdahale biçimi olarak varlığını sürdürmektedir. Referanslar Akkayan, Taylan. “Bedenin Kültürel Gerekçelerle Sakatlanması ve Söğüt’te Sünnet”. İğdiş, Sünnet, Bedene Şiddet Kitabı. Ed. Emine Gürsoy Naskali & Aylin Koç. İstanbul: Kitabevi Yayınları, 2009. 131150. Ataseven, Asaf. Tarih Boyunca Sünnet. İstanbul: Boğaziçi Yayınları, 2005. Bouhdiba, Abdelwahab. “Festivities of Violence: Circumcision and the Making of Men”. Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East. Ed. Mai Ghoussoub & Emma Sinclair-Webb. London: Saqi Books, 2000. 19-29. Bryk, Felix. Circumcision in Man and Woman: Its History, Psychology and Ethnology. New York: American Ethnological Press, 1934. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge, 1993. Connell, Robert William. Toplumsal Cinsiyet ve İktidar: Toplum, Kişi ve Cinsel Politika. İstanbul: Ayrıntı, 1998. de Magalhaes, Roberto Carvalho. Antikçağ’dan Günümüze Sanatta Mitoloji, İstanbul: Alfa Yayınları, 2007. Halperin, David. “Cinselliğin Bir Tarihi Var mıdır?” Queer Tahayyül. Ed. Sibel Yardımcı & Özlem Güçlü. İstanbul: Sel,2013. 87-118. Kırımlı, Yüksel. “Yetişkinliğe İlk Adım: Sünnet”. İğdiş, Sünnet, Bedene Şiddet Kitabı. Ed. Emine Gürsoy Naskali & Aylin Koç. İstanbul: Kitabevi Yayınları, 2009. 151-165. 154 Masculinities Journal Kudat, Ayşe. Kirvelik: Sanal Akrabalığın Dünü ve Bugünü. İstanbul: Ütopya Yayınevi, 2004. Morris, Desmond. Çıplak Adam: Erkek Vücudu Üzerine Bir İnceleme. İstanbul: NTV Yayınları, 2009. Romanienko, Lisiuni. Body Piercing and Identity Construction. A Comparative Perspective – New York, New Orleans, Wroctaw. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Segal, Lynee. Ağır Çekim: Değişen Erkeklikler Değişen Erkekler. İstanbul: Ayrıntı, 1992. Selek, Pınar. Sürüne Sürüne Erkek Olmak. (4. Baskı).İstanbul: İletişim, 2010. Taşıtman, Ayşegül. “Kutsal Erkekliğin İnşasında Bir Durak: Sünnet Ritüel”. Bellek İzleri: Kurgudan Kurama Görüntüler. Ed. N. Gamze Toksoy. İstanbul: Kalkedon Yayınları, 2012. 109-129. Tuğrul, Saime. Ebedi Kutsal Ezeli Kurban: Çok Tanrılıktan Tek Tanrılığa Kutsal ve Kurbanlık Mekanizmaları. İstanbul: İletişim, 2010. 1 Ayrıntılı okuma için bkz. Pınar Selek, Sürüne Sürüne Erkek Olmak, İletişim Yayınları, 2010, 4. Baskı. 2 Kavram hakkında ayrıntılı okuma için bkz. Robert William Connell, Masculinities, University of California Press, 2005, Robert William Connell, Toplumsal Cinsiyet ve İktidar: Toplum, Kişi ve Cinsel Politika, Ayrıntı Yayınları, 1998 ve Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity rethinking the concept. Gender & society, 19(6), 829-859. 3 Bkz. Asaf Ataseven, Tarih Boyunca Sünnet, Boğaziçi Yayınları, 2005. 4 Bkz. Nil Gün, Sünnet: Sünnetle İlgili Yalanlar ve Gerçekler, Kuraldışı Yayınları, 2005. 5 Bu hastalıklardan belli başlı olanları şunlardır: İltihaplanma, sünnet derisi altında taş teşekkülü, sünnet derisi darlığı, darbelere dayanıksızlık, erken meni boşalması… Ancak Ataseven sünnetin insanları özellikle penis kanserinden, rahim ağzı kanserinden ve AIDS’ten koruduğunu savunmuş ve bu üçü üzerinde durmuştur. (2005 s.43-51). 155 “Ceremonial Circumcision” as One of the Mechanisms Which Enables the Regeneration and Intergenerational Transmission of Manhood Culture in Turkey N. Gamze Toksoy Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Ayşegül Taşıtman Sabancı University Abstract: Male circumcision is a male tradition which can be traced back to ancient times and is still practiced today as a religious duty by Jewish and Muslim societies. In today’s modern societies, across different geographical locations, there are cases in which members of different religions practice it by claiming that it enables the protection of men and baby boys from sexually transmitted illnesses. However, apart from such cases and the operations on baby boys carried out at hospitals, in Muslim and patriarchal societies like Turkey, male circumcision is ritualized by the majority of society. It is perceived as male rite of passage and practiced in a manner similar to a wedding ceremony preparations extend over many days. Starting from the day the preparations begin until the day the ceremony is realized and the day after, ceremonial circumcision involves culture codes centering around praises to manhood and symbolic meanings. Several details like, what kind of preparations are made before the ceremony, what parts the members of the family play in the ceremony, which place is chosen for the ceremony, how it is decorated, the qualities of the costume the circumcised child is wearing, the words and the moves repeated during the ceremony and the invitation cards chosen for the -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 156-188 Masculinities Journal ceremony give us significant footprints of how manhood is being regenerated in certain patterns in certain geographical locations. In other words, as a manhood practice which involves direct interference to male existence, ceremonial circumcision regenerates the manhood myth which is strong, enduring, unlike women, or belonging to the masculine society to found the basis of it. In this article how circumcision ritual which is carried out as a religious and cultural practice is provided with a legitimate ground in social sphere and how it takes part in the generation and transmission of the existing manhood patterns are going to be problematized. The analysis that will be included in the text is based on an ethnographic research realized by a group of men who have experienced the circumcision ritual. The narratives related to circumcision rituals collected during the research will be examined in detail; in addition to this, the codes of manhood which have become common will especially be evaluated. Besides, the circumcision pictures every Muslim family has in their family album today in Turkey, the invitations announcing the circumcision ceremony in the social sphere also have important part in the spreading and transmission of manhood culture. In this regard, the analysis of visual aid will be covered in the article, as well. Key words: Male Genital Circumcision, Ceremonial Circumcision, Masculinity, Man/Masculinity Studies, Gender, Social Memory 157 Masculinities Journal Türkiye’de Erkeklik Kültürünü Yeniden Üreten ve Kuşaklar Arası Aktarımını Sağlayan Mekanizmalardan Biri Olarak “Törensel Sünnet” N. Gamze Toksoy Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi Ayşegül Taşıtman Sabancı Üniversitesi Özet: Erkek sünneti, kökeni oldukça eski dönemlere dayanan, günümüzde ise yahudi ve müslüman toplumlarında dini gerekliliklerden biri olarak hala sürdürülmeye devam eden bir erkek geleneğidir. Erkek sünnetinin günümüz modern toplumlarında dini gerekçelerin yanında çeşitli coğrafyalarda ve farklı dinlere mensup erkeklere/erkek bebeklere cinsel hastalıklardan korunmayı kolaylaştırdığı iddiasıyla da yapıldığı örneklere rastlanmaktadır. Ancak, bu tür örneklerden ve erkek bebeklere yönelik hastahanelerde yapılan sünnet operasyonlarından farklı olarak, Türkiye’deki gibi kimi müslüman ve ataerkil toplumlarda, erkek sünneti toplumun geniş kesimleri tarafından ritüelleştirilen, erkekliğe geçiş töreni olarak kavranan ve günlerce hazırlanılan bir düğün olarak pratik edilmektedir. Bu metinde; Türkiye’de dini ve kültürel bir pratik olarak sürdürülen sünnet ritüelinin toplumsal alanda meşru zemini nasıl sağladığı ve mevcut erkeklik kalıplarının yeniden üretilmesinde ve aktarımında nasıl rol aldığı sorunsallaştırılacaktır. Araştırmanın sorunsalı, görüştüğümüz sünnet ritüelini deneyimlemiş erkeklerin anlatıları ve ritüelin aktarımını sağlayan materyaller etrafında örülecektir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Erkek Sünneti, Törensel Sünnet, Erkeklik, Erkek/Erkeklik Çalışmaları, Toplumsal Cinsiyet, Toplumsal Bellek 158 Masculinities Journal T he male image is founded upon willpower, hierarchy, unconditional commitment and loyalty to qualities such as courage, fearlessness and invincibility. Yet, in the modern and modernizing societies of today’s world, how much of a response to this traditional image can be found? During the past twenty years manhood studies have developed significantly, discussions about the eye-opening questions related to how the roles and acceptances attributed to men in the modern societies are perceived and how they are transformed continue today. It can be seen that the “new” forms manhood is transformed into are frequently discussed with thematic centering on the “manhood crisis” in modern societies. The determination of the crisis meets on the common ground that it is no longer possible to legitimize the superiority of men for biological, cultural, economical or ideological reasons. It is determined that a number of facts such as the changing living conditions, dissolution of the relations in the countryside, the modern organization of work life, the structure of the information society etc. mean the dominant qualities of the patriarchal societies are transformed (Sancar 111; Castells 134; Kimmel/Kaufman 261-266). In today’s societies in which life is reorganized completely, significant transformations have been and are being experienced in the roles and acceptances concerning gender. On the other hand, in the aspect of Connell’s definition, “ beyond the visible power struggle hegemonic manhood continues to make its presence felt in the organization of private life and cultural processes” (246). In the countries which depend on male dominance like Turkey, we observe that manhood is pursued – more specifically- as a practice of power. The status of manhood in the basis of gender continues to be a determiner over the relationships among people of the same sex. Masculine dominance which is nourished with certain social institutions can still employ acceptance generating mechanisms and is accepted in the public sphere. The determination of the fact that manhood arises not from biological and natural causes, but from social and cultural conditions, inevitably points out that manhoods from different cultures and cultural practices intended for men will vary (Cornwall&Lindisfarne 11-12) 159 Masculinities Journal Considering this point, in Turkey manhood carries qualities special to geographical location and culture. The effort made to understand these qualities suggests the possibility of revealing the relations between different manhoods and cultural functionings they are in negotiation with, instead of perceiving manhood homogeneously through one point of view, as if a single definition is possible. Hence, the ongoing and changing forms of manhoods are nourished by numerous cultural practices, and while some of these practices lose their influence over time, some others can be adapted to present conditions and continue their existence. In this study, we will focus on circumcision as a male practice and despite the fact that social life has been widely reorganized through Turkish modernization, we will direct our attention to basic questions such as how we can give meaning to male discourse and the unchanging sides of its products, how we can define the ways manhood has penetrated into daily life and how we can evaluate the means which enable the spreading and transmission of pursued manhood practices. Although the manhood studies in Turkey do not have a deeprooted history, there do exist studies related to subjects within the scope of our research, such as how the male identity is formed as an identity and by which social institutions it is supported, how it can relate to militarist-nationalist opinion, especially revealing culture based qualities of manhood are increasing in number. (Kandiyoti; Atay; Sancar; Selek; Kuruoğlu; Erdoğan; Altınay)i. With these kind of studies, we can see corrosion of the traditional character of the system in parallel with the changes in the network of social and economical relations in the Turkish society which is dominated by patriarchal values. However, apart from these corrosions not resulting in the elimination of inequality between the sexes, it has led to the functioning mechanisms of male hegemony to become more and more complicated. It can be said that the norms and values which are influential in the organization of daily life are still highly defined from the masculine point of view. Therefore, examining the social mechanisms and cultural practices which are influential during the process of forming the male identity is of basic significance in order to understand the essence of manhood today and the social structure 160 Masculinities Journal which is becoming more and more conservative every day (Kandiyoti 187). Let us start from the way a male child is raised: in the street, in work life, in the army where he must carry out compulsory service; in brief, across each field of social life structured with norms, the hegemonic qualities are protected in the aspect of Turkish men. In this sense, hegemonic male image is in social circulation and pursues its hegemony above the legitimacy it creates in the social ground. The mediums which enable the continuity of its legitimacy are the rituals which are rooted and repeated unquestioningly as much as today's media which deal with masculine values. Rituals like circumcision are examples of how the male body is "trained" and turned into cultural image in the practices of daily life. On the other hand, these kinds of traditional institutions provide the environment in which codes related to manhood that are protected in the collective memory are regenerated through repetition. In this context, it must be remembered that ceremonies have the function of making a connection with the past to form a basis for the identity of a group. The repeated words during the rituals, practices reminding figures belonging to the roots refresh social identities in the social memory. As a result, the sense of belonging to the collective identity is strengthened (Assmann 56). Male circumcision is a male ritual which can be traced back to ancient times. A fresco which depicts a circumcision ritual in Ancient Egypt shows that the known proof is dates back to 2400 B.C. (Gollaher 14) Some research points out that the practice of circumcision can be dated back to very early times (DeMeo, J. 9-13). The study of circumcision is one of the most disputed issues in contemporary anthropology and anthropologists are criticized male circumcision from multiple angles during the last century. Silverman’s analysis of anthropological literature on male circumcision elucidated the wide range of approaches to male circumcision (419-427). While some of these approaches focused on circumcision as moral, political, and scientific obligations of a cultural practice some others criticized this practice as an impassioned debate on human rights. In this article, we 161 Masculinities Journal are focusing on male circumcision as religious duties which reinforce masculinity and as a cultural indicator. The most widespread reason which brings the practice of circumcision from the past to the present and enables its validity, even today, is the fact that it is accepted as the compulsory condition of religious duties. The unifying aspect of religious tradition differentiates him from his other (female body and the uncircumcised); in other words, ostracizes the other and brings him closer to the same kind. Owing to the mark of circumcision, the male identity and the values attributed to manhood are approved socially. In this context, it has been emphasized that it has social meanings as a sign of masculinity (Immerman and Mackey 267-273; Gün 32; Paige 40-47; Segal 119). The continuity of this sign with rituals, which comes to surface with the rise of patriarchy can be associated with the fact that patriarchal tendency is still strong. Although religious reasons and traditions are shown as the causes of the circumcision ritual today, the real cause is that hierarchical superiority of men continues to exist in patriarchal societies (Montagu). In today’s Muslim communities like Turkey, the practice of circumcision which is an absolute must for boys to be admitted to religion carries significant traces of how symbolic meanings related to manhood and codes are embedded, how religious duties are functionalised in this context and how it can still be performed in modern societies. The event in which these traces are unfolded is the circumcision ceremony. The ceremony enables the inheritance of circumcision as a tradition from generation to generation and its social legitimacy. Circumcision becomes a stage of transition to manhood by way of the ceremony. It then is the indicator of belonging to male society and finds its place in the socially approved belief system. The holiness derived definition and design of the institutions which are indispensable for the perpetuity of the masculine reign enable their continuity and transmission. With the use of holiness, social institutions and the meaning codes which shape their characteristics can be more effective and permanent. Hence, circumcision is applied as a 162 Masculinities Journal religious necessity in Turkey as it is applied in most of the countries which are populated by a muslim majority and there is social acceptance and approval of the ritual. In fact, in the Koran, the holy book of Islam, there is neither a direct reference to circumcision, nor a suggested way of celebrating it. The religious side of circumcision is based on the prophet Muhammad’s sayings which state that male children must be circumcisedii. Similarly, there is not a source clearly stating at what age circumcision must take place. A muslim man can be circumcised at any age. The period between the ages seven and twelve which is known as puberty is mostly recommended for children. As for the ceremonial circumcision practices in Turkey, the tradition of circumcising children within the recommended age range is substantially approved of. In certain cases, when there are two sons in a household, even if one is much younger, they can be circumcised at the same time. The perception of circumcision as a religious obligation in Islam enables the continuity of this practice; thus it keeps existing by repeating itself in the social memory. For this reason, the ethnographic observation of the ceremony provides us with a rich field of study in which we can perceive how the words and practices repeated through the ceremony become permanent and turn into memory codes that we can associate with manhood. Hence, we can see how the sexist discourse and practices related to body become ordinary in daily life and how their intergenerational transmission become stronger as they become norms. The words and behavior repeated through the ceremony, the relations founded with the objects, the new design of the place, wishes, prayers, all give new meanings to the images of the past today, recycle them and turn them into mediums of male hegemony. On the other hand, rituals and ceremonies are a way of embracing the values transmitted from generation to generation in order to be part of a certain culture as well as being applications of the practices which are products of those values. For this reason, a way of perceiving the social acceptance of circumcision and how every man positions himself within the male culture is achieved by listening to the experiences of the circumcised men. Therefore, the basic arguments in the article you have 163 Masculinities Journal before you, center around the circumcision stories of the men who have agreed to share them with us. Certainly, the limited number of narratorsiii we could interview cannot be claimed to represent the entirety of circumcision experiences in this country. None the less, listening to the experiences of the circumcised men in their own words makes it easier to see the connections between the present gender regime and those experiences. As we looked for the answer to the question, we could see the transitivity between the stereotypes concerning rooted genders in society and circumcision ceremonies. This was observed through the circumcision stories of these men who were born in different regions of Turkey, who have experienced living in a cosmopolitan city (Istanbul) and who have grown up in average economical conditions and had educational opportunities. The common emphasis in the narratives has enabled us to understand how the judgments which found hegemonic male identity are reorganized in the field of discourse and to deepen our questioning about the male existence under the masculine hegemony. Below, in spite of the changing life conditions, roles, identities, and relations between genders in today’s modernizing Turkey, the continuing masculine discourse and practices which are influential on daily life and the relations between them and the details of the ceremony will be examined by focusing on the details of the ceremony. Ceremonial Circumcision, First Step Taken to Manhood T he circumcision ceremony for which the child and the family have been waiting for weeks, months, even years and to which relatives and neighbors are invited is arranged through a number of preparations. A considerable part of the preparations take place in the house of the child to be circumcised. The child rests on the specially adorned circumcision bed after being circumcised and the guests visit him there. For this reason, the house is cleaned days in advance, the place of the bed is determined, the decorations for the bedhead are selected with care; moreover, additional shopping is done 164 Masculinities Journal for the bed lining and decorations. The house is prepared so that it can host the guests during the circumcision ceremony and the following few days and treats like snacks and beverages are kept available. Among the preparations, the costume of the circumcised child is of significant importance because of the symbolic meanings it has. Particular shopping is done for the circumcision costume in advance. As every piece of the costume has a different meaning and function, details are taken into consideration. A comfortable undershirt is bought and appropriate underwear and pajamas to be worn after the circumcision are chosen. The outer pieces of the costume usually consist of circumcision pants, shirt, a cloak worn over the shirt, and most of the time a hat designed like a tarboosh. Figure 1: Circumcision dress (see www.sunnetelbisesi.com) 165 Masculinities Journal Figure 2: Circumcision dress (see www.sunnetelbisesi.com) Protection from all evil is wished for the circumcised child with the band saying ‘maşalllah!’iv worn over the circumcision costume and blue beadsv. The hat, the gilded cloak, the scepter which completes the costume turn the male child almost into a king. One of the interviewees expresses what he remembers about the costumes as follows: I remember going to İstanbul to buy the circumcision needs. Lots of things are bought, all just for you. Such an important thing! Your aunts, mother are making an effort. Some have bought something and they are making a cloak, there is the ‘maşallah!’ band, those strange scepters, crowns. That is, you 166 Masculinities Journal become the sultan’s son! It was beautiful in that sense. Then the bed is made, huge, like a real sultan’s bed.” (1986, İzmir) Figure 3: Circumcised child (Taşıtman’s Family Album, 1988 used with permission) The bed which is prepared for the guests to see the child and the balloons hung around the bed are of material that can entertain the child. Besides, the gifts which the guests bring for the child (gold, money, wristwatch, toys etc.) are placed on the bed in a way that they can be seen. A jewellery case or pillow are kept ready for these. Moreover, above the bedhead nationalist symbols such as the Turkish flag and religious symbols like sections of the Koran and streamers written with ‘maşallah’ are given place. The direct association of circumcision with 167 Masculinities Journal decretals are supported with the religious items that we see in different ways, symbols with religious references and religious practices starting from the preparations of the feast till its end. On the other hand, we encounter nationalist symbols and nationalist discourse in certain occasions throughout the ceremony. When it is taken into consideration that nationalist point of view and nationalist movement are realized with the power relations based on social gender, the relation between the employment of nationalist elements during the circumcision ceremony and the “masculinizing” practice of the male child can be seen. The manhood myth which is nourished with discourse such as devotion to one’s country, owning the mission of defending the country, sacrificing it all for one’s country, have the function of strengthening and supporting the relation between hegemonic manhood values and militarism. When institutions like the army which enable the continuity of militaristic and nationalist factors are observed, it can be seen that they completely involve gendered practices. As a matter of fact, turning a young man into a warrior requires certain institutional organisations and cultural practices. To be invincible, powerful, fearless, to endure physical pain, etc. are qualities which are stipulated for men by militarist-nationalist policies and also lead to the reinforcement of the sexist policy in which strict hierarchy between sexes gets stronger (Sancar 153-174; Enloe 208-224; Nagel 68-90) The perception of manhood as the basic element which the nation is founded on and the mission of defending the country assigned to him, require him to be a strong, courageous, venturous, warrior. Likewise, endurance to pain, trial of the body with pain which are frequently emphasized in the narratives are prices to be paid “to leave behind the dependence and weakness of childhood and have a new feeling of belonging in the different world of the grown up men” (Segal 169). Thus, the male body trained with pain rises in rank and fictionalised courage is attributed to men by the society. The masculine words which form these virtues are uttered to the male child repeatedly during the circumcision feast. The symbols which are placed beside the bed are praised and the child is taught to respect and value these symbols. 168 Masculinities Journal Figure 4: Circumcision bed (Hanged paper means “Real men must be circumcised”) (Interviewees’s Family Album, 1995 used with permission) After the preparations in the household are completed, the family members and the close relations start organising the circumcision feast. One day before the day of circumcision feast, the child is dressed in the circumcision costume and taken to a Turkish bath with the children of the relatives and other invited men. After the ‘purification’ and ‘cleaning’ ritual, again in the circumcision costume, visits the relatives and kisses the hands of the elderly. If there are any religiously significant places in the city the family inhabits, these places are visited to make wishes and pray for the circumcision to be auspicious.vi In some regions the circumcision feast starts with the henna ceremony. The henna ceremony is a festivity which takes place the night before the circumcision to which close relations and family friends are invited. Snacks are served and guests dance with the child to be circumcised. The henna night is a commonly practised part of the Anatolian culture and is celebrated at the bride’s house the day before the wedding or it can also be organized for a man who is conscripted (Sharabi 11-42; Acara 91-94). Henna is applied to the bride’s hands with 169 Masculinities Journal best wishes. Likewise, it is applied to the child’s hands praying that he will be a healthy, strong and successful man in the future. As it has been mentioned above, the symbols identified with male strength can be observed during the henna night. One of our interviewees describes his henna night as follows: The circumcision festivities last two days. Before the circumcision the henna night takes place. There is entertainment and henna is applied to my hands. That day, women applied henna to their hands besides me. Henna was applied to my hand in the shape of a gun, my thumb pointing up and my index finger forward. Not in my hand palm but to my fingers like that. (1986, İzmir) The men interviewed used themes in common to define the day of circumcision as a stage one has to go through, or even a childhood trauma. An interviewee born in 1981 describes the necessity of circumcision as follows; It is as if circumcision is like a doxa, it was going to happen anyway. I mean, nobody had to cheer me up or prepare me for the event. There was no need for neither my father nor my brothers to prepare me as it was going to happen; it had to happen. This thing that had to happen was completely a requirement of religious codes and Islam which had to be carried out (1981, Van). In these stories, “uncle circumciser” who comes to the house to circumcise the child is a feared person. Most of the time he is not a doctor, but someone experienced in circumcising. Before and after the circumcision the child bears in mind the scary image of this man holding a razor in his hand for a long time. The circumciser is a feared profile, but uncles tell about him, your father tells about him and you just remember the known razor. (1985, Ankara) 170 Masculinities Journal The circumcisers in the village…well, the man never had schooling, but he circumcises. For two days we couldn’t walk. On the fourth day, we could stand up, I waddled for fifteen days. What’s worse we had it done in winter, I was galled all over. (1975, Kars) Besides, the person who holds and keeps the child still during circumcision, ‘kirve’, tells him calming words such as he should be a strong man, he should endure pain and be a real man. He is also a person who will be an important figure in the child’s future. Being a Kirve is a sociocultural institution in the tradition of circumcision. Kirve can be a friend of the family or a close relation like an uncle or an adult man who is granted rights over the child like a father by the family. Even when there is no blood relation between the child and his kirve, he is counted as one of the close relatives of the family and is of moral and material support to the child. Kirve may also have a share in the circumcision feast and his wife or his mother may help with the preparations. Circumcision is realized in a room of the house where women (especially the mother of the child) are not allowed to enter, with the operation of the uncle circumciser accompanied by the kirve and close male relations who are present in the room to hold the child still. The child who may shout and cry during the operation is calmed down with words like, a real young man/man does not cry. After the child is circumcised, he is put to the circumcision bed. The family members, relatives and guests visit him lying in his bed. They celebrate and dance before him. Special dishes are prepared only for him. They try to entertain him all day so that he can forget his pain. The circumcised child gets pats on his back, hearing sentences like, “now you are a man”, “from now on you are a strong man enduring pain”. He is spoiled with gifts such as toy cars mostly and toy guns and rewarded for his courage. However, the liveliness of the festivity day is replaced by the painful healing process of the child’s wound. The majority of the interviewees who were circumcised between 1960- 90s have stated that the dressing for the wound to heal is an unbearably agonizing process. It can be understood that different from today’s hospital treatment or doctor 171 Masculinities Journal practices, in those years quite primitive techniques were commonly used to dress wounds. The period after the circumcision was much worse than circumcision itself. I still remember that. Especially what happened to my brother and I. I really cried for that. It was one of the worst pains I have ever had. (1980, Aydın) The dressing was applied first. It has a special powder and there is a hat on it. The man came again 3-5 days later. Of course, by then you are alone, there is no attention. The excitement disappears. He came to take off the dressing. Taking off that bandage was the most painful of all. It hurt so bad. (1952, İzmir) I always saw that moment in my dreams after the circumcision. It was terrible. It had to happen, everyone’s watching you. It was a disaster for my brother. It caused serious damage on him. (1975, Kars) It may be the first trauma of a man. The earlier, the better. It better not be remembered. I generally sense the worry that the child shouldn’t remember it. I do remember. I don’t know, but maybe it has several effects on me which I don’t know or haven’t realised. (1981, Van) There are studies stating that the trauma created by the moment of circumcision taking place during childhood or even infancy and the treatment stage following it, remain in the body memory and thus affect the behaviors of the person in the future (Immerman and Mackey; Montagu; Salam 9-17). In this context, male circumcision provides a field of study for disciplines such as medicine, psychology and interdisciplinary studies they are interested in as much as it does for social sciences readings related to rituals. Within the framework of our focus of attention in this study, we emphasize that the codes related to male body that have long been reproduced are reproduced during circumcision ceremony. On the other hand, ceremonial circumcision has 172 Masculinities Journal a dominant part in the construction of the codes related to the” myth of the mighty man” which connects the past with the present and enables the continuity of the patriarchal system and the reconstruction of these codes in the cultural area. In the mythological narratives which came into existence thousands of years ago, circumcision stories with different cultural functions from one another can be encountered. In these stories, circumcision is sometimes a condition to become a member of a tribe, the symbol of growing into manhood from childhood, sometimes a proof of strength, the fruitfulness and holiness spilling blood brings or knowing your enemies and at times, a sign of building a different identity from the others, a way of punishing prisoners of war (castration), a control over sexual pleasure, a protection from disease etc. vii (Gün 33-34; Taburoğlu 37; Bell 104; Salam 1-9) In the narratives about ceremonial circumcision and its application it can be observed that themes such as blood, sacrifice, trial with pain have always been repeated. There are strong ties between the meanings attributed to these themes by the society and the continuing advantageous status of the male child in patriarchal societies. Blood and blood relation are indicators of belonging to a group. In patriarchal societies, male sided blood relations are in the centre of the line of descent and masculine discourse. It is believed that the genealogical and common religion based qualifications are transmitted by blood from father to son. In religious texts and mythological narratives many examples are given related to the holiness that is reached by spilling blood, protection from evil spirits derived by the blood of the sacrifice, blood as an indicator of a heavenly contract. The blood spilled, the discourse generated about the pain suffered are still significant parts of the circumcision ceremony today. The fear the child experiences, the pain he suffers are of vital necessity for him to proceed to an important stage in his life, becoming a “man”. From then on, with the contributions of the adults, the child starts to feel himself in the advantageous position he deserves. His body which is tested through pain is blessed and heroized. Circumcision is about being a man and when we consider it publicly I can say it is related to courage. If you dare to do 173 Masculinities Journal something, if you can present a bold front you are a man. If you can’t, you are called a sissy. It can be said, courage is a must to be a man. (1977, Ankara) With this intervention to a male child’s sexual organ his body is marked and this mark turns into a special indicator which ensures that he is approved by other similar collectives of men. Like his peers, the child is marked with the piece ruptured from his body. In this regard, penis, an organ of a male child’s body, gradually leaves behind its biological existence, finds a place among practices which help his collective identity as a “male” to be approved and ceremonial circumcision turns into a public approval of manhood. According to this point of view, ceremonial circumcision can be described as an operating male institution. That is to say, it is an indicator of a man’s acceptance to religion and his becoming a member of a group of men of his kind; therefore, it is one of the most significant factors of a man’s socialization. In the protection and transition of the male culture within certain codes, the social mechanisms which enable the approval of the culture function in various ways. In the masculinizing process of men, families, relatives, male friends, neighbors, local culture, cooperate as homosocial structures feeding this process. The realization of the ritual as it should be and its being announced to the social circle are the necessities of the social control mechanism: As you cannot isolate yourself from the society, circumcision is a prior condition to be a man. We should look at the matter from the society’s standpoint. To me, that ritual is necessary. To be a man, you are to be circumcised. For this reason, I would have my child circumcised and with a feast. (1985, Ankara) When everyone around you says, you can’t be a man without being circumcised, what can you think as a boy of 7-8? (1987, Trabzon) Circumcision does not mean anything to me, but the society puts pressure on you for this. It is probably the same with 174 Masculinities Journal marriage, you get married because of social pressure. If I were to turn 20 without being circumcised, I would be ostracised. I would be ostracised by my close boy and girl friends. (1986, İzmir) When I was circumcised, I felt relieved when among my friends. I had it done too, I joined them as well. Indeed, the circumcised are like a community in childhood, saying, oh that boy isn’t circumcised, he still hasn’t had it done at this age, worked like a ostracizing mechanism… (1981, Van) On one hand, the ceremony which is defined as the very first occasion that gives joy to the family is referred to as mürrüvetviii by the male child’s parents, and is really significant for the prestige of the family as much as it symbolizes the approval of manhood in their own social circle. Details such as how the family organized the feast, whom they invited, how they carried out the preparations, what was served to the guests etc. are also related to the family’s, especially to the father’s status among relatives and neighbours. The parents have to carry out their religious duties and socially approved responsibilities as well as strengthening their own socialization process by way of the ceremony. For starters, there is pressure on your family. Parents who don’t have their son circumcised are very likely to be despised. Senior members of the family will put a lot of pressure on them to have it done. Secondly, it will be a problem for the child’s social circle. Hey, are you uncircumcised? Moreover, as it is imposed by Islam, it can be drawn to the religious ground or the person can even be exposed to sexual insult. The person may be made fun of about his gender. These things happen. For this reason, not being circumcised may cause lots of problems. (1980, Aydın) While referring to the role of the circumcision feast in the socialization of the family, it must be mentioned that as the stories covered in this study belong to the middle class urban families, the details quoted are of ceremonies which middle income families can afford to. However, as the level of income changes, although the traditional elements which form 175 Masculinities Journal the basis of the ceremony are repeated, some differences or additions may be observed in celebration styles. For instance, for a family with a high level of income, the circumcision feast may take place in luxurious places. It can turn into ceremonies in which special nights, dinner parties, entertainment are prepared for guests which may even last for days. In Turkey, especially during the last ten years of conservative governing, this kind of circumcision feasts have become popular. Some of these feasts have been so attention grabbing that they aroused great public attention, found coverage in newspapers and televised. ix On the other hand, it is striking that for families who cannot afford to hold a feast, municipalities organize “mass circumcision ceremonies” These ceremonies in which many children are circumcised together are referred to as public service and whose expenses are covered by the municipality are worth being the subject of another study. They are also significant as they show the part institutions of public utility play in the generation of acceptance related to circumcision. The Repeated Images of Social Memory Figure 5: “The Dance of the Father and Son”, (Taşıtman’s Family Album, 1988 used with permission) 176 Masculinities Journal As is seen, the circumcision feast is a performance displayed in the social sphere rather than being the privacy of the child or an event in the family from beginning to the end. It adjusts to the patriarchal system of values. It is reinforced by the religious and nationalist discourses. Although there is direct intervention to the child’s body at an age he can remember the event, this intervention – with the social discourse and practices which frame it- is approved of by large sections of the community; in other words, it has a legal ground in the eye of the public. At this point, visualizes must be considered among the means of circumcision which feed the hegemonic male culture and normalize it in daily life. Hence, pictures certifying various moments starting from the day before the circumcision when the circumcision costume is bought, to the time when the feast ends are kept as the page of honour in the family album in the homes of the average Muslim Turkish family. Beyond being the pictures of this special day, they are the repeated images of a social memory in which we can find the traces of the cultural history of a specific society.x These conventional pictures in the family albums represent the memories which the family finds important and therefore, chooses to pass on to the next generations. They are a way to affirm and keep the experience the family had alive. In certain cases the pictures of the circumcision day are hung on the walls for many years and thus, kept observable. Similarly, the invitation cards which are the announcement of the circumcision day are still significant parts of it. It is customary to send invitation cards to acquaintances, relatives and close friends to inform them about the ceremony in advance. The words and images repeated in these invitation cards are like the refined versions of the common acceptance of hegemonic male culture. When the words, written mostly as short poems, and the visuals accompanying them are evaluated as a whole, we can see the examples of how hegemonic male culture is kept fresh in daily life. These images which are the announcement and notification of manhood to the neighbours are the stimulus of the manhood myth rooted in the social memory and they normalize them in daily life. 177 Masculinities Journal Figure 6: Invitation Card (see www.sedefcards.com) Figure 7: Invitation Card (see www.sedefcards.com) 178 Masculinities Journal The idea emphasized in most of the invitation cards is that the boy will become a man from then on. In the majority of the samples there are expressions referring to the necessity of ceremonial circumcision to grow into adolescence, the continuity of the father’s lineage, courage and fearlessness. Mostly, a picture of the child in his circumcision costume, holding a scepter in his hand on horseback (like a prince) accompany these expressions. Figure 8: Invitation Card “They put a tarboosh on my head, and I suddenly Turned into a prince, I am not afraid circumciser, Cut as much as you will.” (see www.yasambu.com) 179 Masculinities Journal Figure 9: Invitation Card “On this blissful day our one and only son will take his first step to manhood, we will be honoured to see you, our friends beside us” (see www.bursadavetiyeci.com) Figure 10: Invitation Card It will hurt, but I am not afraid, come and see I am becoming a man, I expect the ones who love me and my beloved to my feast (see www.bursadavetiyeci.com) 180 Masculinities Journal Figure 11: Invitation Card “They kept saying ‘circumcision’ and got me fed up. And they said, if no circumcision, no bride, Farewell to childhood, salute to youth, I will be expecting you to my feast” (see www.fotobeyza.de) As well as the traditional circumcision costume, we may come across visuals of toys such as cars and motorbikes which are coded as boys’ fields of interest in the invitation cards. The short folk poem which emphasizes the importance of the male child, “I am the only son of the family and the right arm of my daddy, I grew up and I am becoming a man” is one of the most frequently used ones. These short poems which are employed in the invitation cards are customary, just like the rituals repeated during the ceremony. Despite certain improvements in the technical specifications of the photographs, studio shootings or invitation cards, the lines of the overtold poems are old-dated and they are imprinted in our memories along with the visuals which they form a symbolic pattern with. Among these ingrained images which nourish the hegemonic male culture, we can encounter nationalist and militarist expressions as well. The short folk poem, "I must cross such a bridge, I am the Turk son of a Turk, not a coward. Come and see I will be circumcised, then everyone shall know how a man must be"xi is remarkable for the 181 Masculinities Journal emphasis it puts on both manhood and nationality as we have mentioned. In the invitation cards which this emphasis is made, Turkish flag can be seen in the circumcised child’s outfit or in the background. Figure 12-13: Invitation Card (see www.sunnetdavetiyeleri.org) 182 Masculinities Journal Conclusion S ince the 90’s the organization of daily life has been changed significantly by the social transformations and these changes are pressing forward toward new lifestyle habits in which identities and belongings make themselves more visible than ever. In the beginning, the transformation of present social habits which is felt especially in the cities, reflected on the relations between the sexes. The roles and responsibilities assigned to sexes at home, in the work place, and in the street are brought up for discussion from different perspectives. Especially, as an attainment of the struggle of the feminist movement which is getting stronger day by day, the practices causing inequality between the sexes are being questioned and are trying to be neutralised. However in Turkey, with those who are currently in power in the political system, institutions that foster and cultivate the patriarchy have continued to dominate without the slightest sign of a loss or diminishing of power. Indeed, institutions such as that of the family, the institution of marriage that confirms the heterosexual male and heterosexual relationships, the institution of male justice, which aims to control women sexually and socially, implements sanctions and punishments in the name of morality and takes shame and honour as criteria for decision making, are still quite intact and functional. All these make it vital for us to reconsider the ongoing practices in our daily life and the present permanent social institutions that we are accustomed to. Hence, circumcision, a functioning institution, can regenerate the basic values of the patriarchal system and the roles and responsibilities given to men within the opportunities of the modern world. It can add legitimacy and normalize it in the public eye. Looking at male practices, like circumcision, is a way enabling us to see how masculine discourse, which penetrated into the details of the ceremony and generations of this discourse, can be brought to life through repetitions, and how it wins a place in the social memory and is transmitted to the next generations. Moreover, ceremonial circumcision is the story of the experiences they have on the road to “being made a 183 Masculinities Journal man” which is in fact, a burden that they are forced to carry thoughout their lives and which becomes heavier every day. i As an example for the socially influential platforms where critical discussions on manhood are made and male experiences are shared in Turkey, see http://www.erkekmuhabbeti.com/. ii The word circumcision originates from “Sunna” in Arabic. It means track, course of events. As an Islamic Law term it refers to the statements, actions and proposals of the Prophet Muhammad. They are accepted as the secondary source to code decretals after the commandments of the Koran. Although circumcision is also used to mean male circumcision in Turkish, in Arabic there is another word, “hitan” for it. For further details, see, http://kurul.diyanet.gov.tr/soruSor/DiniKavramlarSözlügü iii The stories of twenty men interviewed so far are covered in the study (the ages and the places of birth are stated at the end of the stories told so that they can give an idea about the period of time the information belongs to). The research is expanded around the academic thesis of Ayşegül Taşıtman. iv The term maşallah which means, will of God shall happen, is used to state apprecitiation in case of a well-liked, nice, good or succesful event and to ask for protection from evil eyes in colloquial language. For further details, see http://kurul.diyanet.gov.tr/SoruSor/DiniKavramlarSozlugu.aspx v These beads which are dated back to ancient times and are believed to protect people from evil eyes are mostly eye shaped , blue in colour and made of glass inTurkey. Especially, when there is a birth or circumcision ceremony, these beads are pinned on the child’s costume or somewhere on the bed along with the other gifts presented. vi Among the visits made a few days before the ceremony the one to Eyüp Sultan is the most respected. This is the place where the grave (tomb) of His holiness Eyyüb Ensari which is enshrined by the muslims is. It also has historical value. It is visited before the circumcision and prayed for the circumcision operation to be succesful and good wishes are made for the male child. As the tomb is in İstanbul, mostly inhabitants of İstanbul visit the place; yet there are also people coming from other cities. 184 Masculinities Journal vii We may come across the practice of circumcison in mythological narratives which generated in different geographical locations with different cultural functions and symbolic meanings. Among these mythological narartives, Kybele and Attis is remarkable for the symbolic loss of manhood, sacrifice, blood and fertility. For an example narrrative, see http://mitoloji- mithology.blogspot.com/2008/12/kybele-ve-attis.html viii The word “mürrüvet” which means character, manhood and personality originates from Arabic, and is used to express the pride and joy felt in occasions like birth and circumcision. For further details, see https://kurul.diyanet.gov.tr/SoruSor/DiniKavramlarSözlüğü.aspx ; http://www.tdk.gov.tr./index.php?option=com_gts&arama=gts&guid=TDK.GTS. 5311cdfe3330a6.83919735 Here, the expression “ilk mürrüvet” refers to the first of the three stages men are expected to go through. In the social acceptance these are circumcision, military service, and marriage (becoming a father). ix For further examples, see the following news coverages: http://www.haberler.com/isadamindan-ogluna-festival-gibi-sunnet-dugunuhaberi/;http://webtv.hurriyet.com.tr/2/54667/0/1/isadaminin-oglununsunnet-dugununde-dolar-yagmuru.aspx ; For the organization of circumcision feasts in Cıragan Palace, one of the most luxurious places in Istanbul, see http://www.adilorganizasyon.com/sunnet-dugunu-organizasyonu.html x For the article about circumcision photographs which provided the motivation which had significant influence in the beginning of this research, see Taşıtman, Ayşegül (2012), “Kutsal Erkekliğin İnşasında Bir Durak: Sünnet Ritueli”, in N.Gamze Toksoy (ed), Bellek İzleri, İstanbul: Kalkedon Yayınları. xi For similar short folk poems, see http://www.ankaramatbaa.web.tr/sunnet- davetiyesi-sozleri-manileri.html 185 Masculinities Journal Works Cited Acara, Eda. “The Militarization of Henna”. 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Jug Baylor University Abstract: This article examines the development of soldierly masculinities in the Red Army in 1942-1943. The period served as a critical juncture between initial crisis and fully mobilized national war effort, in which rhetoric, identity, and experience had yet to adapt to the reality of total war. By comparing individual soldiers’ writings and Soviet media sources, this article argues that the interaction of soldierly and official masculine norms that shaped their evolution over the course of the war. The article focuses on how individuals developed a masculine subjectivity that responded to links with home, frontline experiences, and official discourse as their senses of self evolved in wartime. Studying masculine subjectivity in the seemingly stifling context of Stalinism at war reveals the important role masculinity played in the legitimating and contesting of power that replaced direct challenges to political or military authority. Such a study of masculinity in the Stalinist context likewise affirms the larger theoretical and methodological value of focusing on the reception and adaptation of masculine discourses alongside their production. Keywords: Russian history, masculinity, subjectivity, discourse, Red Army, World War II -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 189-212 Masculinities Journal “Kızıl Ordu Söyleminde ve Öznelliğinde Militarist Erkeklikler, 1942-1943” Steven G. Jug Baylor Üniversitesi Özet: Bu makale askerî erkekliklerin, 1942-1943 yıllarında Kızıl Ordu içindeki gelişimini incelemektedir. İncelenen bu zaman dilimi, savaşın başlangıcındaki kriz durumu ile tam bir ulusal savaş seferberliğine geçişin yan yana geldiği kritik bir dönemdir. Retorik, kimlik ve deneyim bu geçiş sürecinde, topyekûn savaşın gerçeklerine henüz uyum sağlayabilmiş değildir. Bu makale, sıradan askerlerin mektupları ile Sovyet medyasında yer alan haberleri ve yorumları karşılaştırarak, askerlerin ve resmi yetkililerin bağlı oldukları erkeklik normları arasında savaş boyunca süren şekillendirdiğini etkileşimin, askerî savunmaktadır. erkekliklerin Makalenin gelişimini odak noktası, bireylerin savaş sırasında benlik algılarının değişmesiyle birlikte, geride bıraktıkları aileleri, cephe deneyimleri ve resmi söylem arasındaki ilişkileri idare etmelerini sağlayacak bir eril öznelliği hangi şekillerde geliştirdikleridir. Savaş zamanı Stalinciliği’nin görünürde boğucu atmosferi çerçevesinde erkek öznelliklerini incelemek, politik ve askeri otoriteye doğrudan meydan okumanın yerini almış olan, iktidarı meşru sayarak onunla çekişme sürecinde erkekliğin oynadığı önemli rolü ortaya koyar. Stalincilik bağlamında erkekliği bu şekilde incelemek ayrıca, odak noktasına erkeklik söylemlerinin üretimlerinin yanı sıra, alımlanmaları ve uyarlanmalarının da yerleştirilmesinin teorik ve metodolojik kıymetini bir kez daha göstermektedir. Anahtar kelimeler: Rus tarihi, erkeklik, öznellik, söylem, Kızıl Ordu, İkinci Dünya Savaşı 190 Masculinities Journal T he Soviet Union’s sudden, forced entry into the Second World War presented a new set of physical and psychological challenges to a generation of men who lived through the extraordinary transformations and turmoil of the Stalinist 1930s. Soviet propaganda had emphasized the masculine character of national industrial achievements and individual labor heroes throughout that decade, providing a rough template for wartime mobilization (Schrand, 2002: 195). Under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s iron hand recycled political slogans and increasingly prevalent national themes, all of which received apathetic public responses, contribute to a case for continuity in wartime discourse (Berkhoff, 2012: 274). This article asserts that a study of masculine ideas in both official discourse and the soldierly subjectivities of individual men reveals change in Soviet propaganda and the diversity of Soviet soldierly masculinities. The lens of masculinity enables this analysis of Soviet wartime culture to move beyond political or ideological binaries of support and opposition or belief and rejection by illustrating the interaction and reinterpretation of crucial motives and goals for fighting men. This study focuses on masculine themes in Soviet frontline culture by drawing from the work of theorists as well as historians of masculinity and gender. The article engages sources based on the insights of Michael Roper, a historian of masculine subjectivities, who asserts that soldiers’ writings constitute a site of gender performance alongside their actions at the front (Roper, 2004: 301-302). Roper provides a further methodological parameter essential to this study: incorporating subjectivity into the study of masculinity restores the importance of personal relationships and emotions over the clear but often hollow discourse of official culture (Roper, 2005: 59-61). The theoretical works of R.W. Connell and Demetrakis Demetriou underpin this article’s analysis of Red Army masculinity’s official and soldierly variants. They explain gender hierarchy as comprised of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ masculine hegemony, in which internal domination over subordinate masculinities serves as a prerequisite for external 191 Masculinities Journal patriarchal domination over the opposite and inferior ‘emphasized femininity’ (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005: 847-848). Demetriou provides further elaboration of the reformulated theory of hegemonic masculinity crucial to this article’s analysis, whereby masculinity changes but remains dominant through the evolution of different elements of a ‘masculine bloc,’ which develops through a process of constant hybridization and incorporation of ‘diverse elements from various masculinities that makes the hegemonic bloc capable of reconfiguring itself and adapting to the specificities of new historical conjunctures’ (Demetriou 2001: 348-349). These distinctions are essential to understanding the complexity of wartime masculinities in the Soviet Union, in which ideas of femininity and actual women’s roles mattered, but contested ideas and interactions among men played a critical role. Male political workers, whose writings and speeches constituted frontline propaganda, and male soldiers entered the war with different notions of masculine duty, and responded differently to the strategic changes and local conditions of war. Beyond illuminating divergent ideas of masculine duty, this article seeks to engage the role of ‘social practice' in relationships between individuals in forming subjectivities to consider the ways in which gendered subjectivities deviated from official norms and models (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005: 843). By employing a theory of dynamic masculinity, this article argues that masculine ideals and subjectivities changed during the war. Soldiers were willing to adapt or ignore official discourse without opposing it, while aspects of soldiers’ views of duty often appeared months later as elements of the heroic masculine ideals presented in propaganda. Such changes become apparent in a close reading of official newspapers and leaders speeches in combination with soldiers’ letters and memoirs. The start of 1942 marked end of the immediate German threat to capture Moscow, and by the end of January 1943, the commander of the German Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad. 192 Masculinities Journal The period therefore provides a valuable chronological case study of a much larger set of interactions, changes, and adaptations as a time when the initial shock of invasion and crisis of invasion had subsided and new ideals of duty and interpretations of military service developed amidst see-sawing military fortunes. The stabilization of the front line by the start of the year provided a clearer glimpse of the German enemy and the invasion’s impact on the country. Entrenched at the front, soldiers faced the reality of extended removal from their role as familial provider and the renewed existential threat to national and familial survival that put prewar and wartime duties in conflict. In this phase of the war, the interaction and divergence of official and soldierly masculinities focused on the contrast between Soviet and enemy treatment of women, the use of violence, and the nature of comradeship. The significance of this transition period from initial crisis to sustained and total war lies in the reinterpretation of masculinity it forced on propagandists and soldiers alike, with few illusions of quick victory and restored civilian status surviving the winter months of 1942. The German Enemy as Masculine Other O nce frontline propaganda began to consistently represent the German enemy in 1942, it produced a figure unseen in the desperate months of 1941. Propagandists no longer sought to present a worthy foe as they had with Japanese or Finnish enemies during the border war period, but an antithetical masculine other, who challenged the Red Army hero’s honor and ethics through his attacks on Soviet women and civilians (Petrone, 2002). The German enemy appeared in a battle between two types of men idealized as good and evil, rather than battlefield opponents engaged in a struggle of strength and tenacity. Enemy atrocities began to feature prominently in the main Red Army newspaper, Krasnaia Zvezda [Red Star] from the first days of the year based on the reports of soldiers advancing into occupied territory and ‘preliminary information’ from areas further behind enemy lines. In 193 Masculinities Journal early January, a front-page editorial entitled ‘A Pack of Murderers and Robbers’ elaborated on the scale and variety of ‘heinous acts of violence’ the enemy had perpetrated in occupied territory, including the numbers of dead in different regions and the methods involved. The editorial highlighted ‘women, girls, and schoolchildren’ as victims and explained that the atrocities took place due to the ‘unleashing…of the most base, animal instincts among [enemy] officers and soldiers’ (Red Star, 1942: 1) Such reports continued to appear in Krasnaia Zvezda throughout the winter, including a multi-panel illustration of the hanging of Soviet civilians on February 6. Neither Hitler nor fascist ideology received more than a passing mention, if any, in the condemnation that accompanied these reports. Instead, the German rank-and-file soldiers and frontline officers appeared as the central perpetrators in a consistent definition of a single enemy type. Such articles made clear that the enemy pursued violence outside the normal bounds of the conventional soldier, which suggested he would not surrender or obey the rules of war or accepted military conduct. Above all, he lacked honor. In an article titled simply, “On Hatred,” celebrated Soviet writer Ilia Ehrenburg explained the psychology of the enemy: Spite drives every soldier of Fascism… One German lance corporal wrote in his diary that torture ‘cheers and even excites’ him… The naïve ones thought that there were people marching against us, but against us marched monsters who had selected the skull as their emblem, young and shameless robbers, vandals who were thirsting to destroy everything in their path (Red Star, 1942: 4). Rather than traditional notions of honor or national duty, destruction and violence drove the enemy to fight. Ehrenburg went on to explain that it was the enemy’s perpetration of atrocities during the invasion, rather than killing on the battlefield, which made them barbarians: Above all, they brought death with them to our land. I do not speak of the death of soldiers: there is no war without victims. I speak of the gallows on which Russian girls swing, of the terrible ditch near Kerch 194 Masculinities Journal where the children of Russians, Tatars, and Jews were buried. I speak of how the Hitlerites finish off our wounded and burn down our peasants’ homes (Red Star, 1942: 4). Descriptions of the enemy as “monsters” and “vandals” were part of a consistent set of terms that emphasized his sadistic use of violence in war, which separated him from the soldiers of the Red Army. In line with the overall portrayal of the enemy in Krasnaia Zvezda, Ehrenburg articulated the belief that the objects of the enemy’s violence, and the reasons for that violence, distinguished and diminished him as a soldier and as a man. What fully set apart and vilified the German soldier in Red Army propaganda, and further marks Ehrenburg’s portrayal as that of an enemy soldierly masculinity, is his behavior towards women and children. An editorial on 10 April, ‘For the honor of our women!’ named several women found raped and killed by the enemy before elaborating on the larger ramifications of such behavior: ‘German fascists, brazenly mocking the honor of Soviet women – these are lustful animals.’ Beyond the obvious love of destruction and violence evident in their behavior, the motive of lust reinforced portrayals of the enemy as driven by savage, but human impulses. The editorial emphasized that the enemy’s actions were not the result of wartime circumstances, but had deep roots: ‘They have defiled their youth in German brothels and made the customs of brothels the catechism of their behavior in occupied countries.’ The editorial continued to emphasize how the enemy’s lustful behavior and rape of women, rather than the torture of other civilians generally, was definitively the behavior of savage men: ‘They have no shame, no remorse, [and] no heart. In the village of Semenov in Kalinin oblast Hitlerites raped 25-year-old Olga Tikhonova, the pregnant wife of a Red Army soldier.’ Young German men with lustful and violent ‘animal instincts’ were therefore the typical enemy type to appear in propaganda (Red Star, 1942: 1). Such depictions helped strengthen the contrast with Red Army soldiers’ rational nature and ethical defense of their homeland. 195 Masculinities Journal The propaganda effort to characterize the German invader as a savagely masculine figure also explained how heroic Red Army soldiers should respond. They were to hate the enemy, but fight differently than him, and of course treat women in an entirely different manner. Inspiring hatred would help motivate soldiers, according to Stalin in his May Day speech: A change has also taken place in the ranks of the Red Army. Complacency and laxity regarding the enemy, which was evident among the troops in the first months of the war, have disappeared. The atrocities, pillage, and violence perpetrated by the German fascist invaders against the peaceful population and Soviet POWs have cured our men of this disease. … They have learned to hate the German fascist invaders. This newfound hatred would inspire soldiers to defeat the enemy, because ‘one cannot defeat the enemy without learning to hate him with every fiber of one’s soul’ (Red Star, 1942: 1). Hatred did not mean Soviet troops should themselves become like the enemy. Their task was to kill only the enemy, rather than massacre prisoners and ravage civilians: “acre by acre, town by town we are cleansing our land of the rapists. There is no greater exploit’ (Red Star, 1942: 3). The invocation of a man’s duty to defend women’s honor revealed an unambiguous distinction between Soviet citizens’ relationship with violence, and the masculine nature of national defense. Amidst the new focus on the enemy in propaganda, male soldiers, writing to an overwhelmingly female audience of relatives, wives, and girlfriends, continued to perform a civilian-oriented masculinity in their letters home. Red Army troops’ focus on family and personal ties affected their discussions of the enemy more than the vitriolic language of newspaper propaganda. Many troops cursed the enemy simply for disrupting their lives, as one junior officer explained: ‘At the enemy that has broken our happy life, I strike mercilessly, to destroy every one of them’ (GARF Fond 6903 Opis 9 Delo 142 List 161). Some troops expressed their duty to contribute to the enemy’s defeat, 196 Masculinities Journal but nonetheless presented returning home as their ultimate priority. A reconnaissance squad leader on the Kalinin Front explained this to his wife and daughter: ‘the duty of every soldier should be to destroy the German oppressor in order to return home with victory’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 48 List 1). A lieutenant reassured his wife in a similar manner: ‘don’t worry, everything will be alright. …be fully confident that I will return home only as a hero who destroyed the [fascist] reptiles’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 779 Listy 9-10). Another soldier, lamenting that he had not yet seen his newborn son, wrote to his wife: ‘If it weren’t for these Hitlerite dogs, we would be enjoying our life together’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 254 List 11). Taken together, these letters suggest the continued importance of personal motives and a duty to family for frontline soldiers in early 1942. Instead of discussing the enemy, Red Army men’s letters usually sought to minimize concern for their own safety. The favored way to do this was by focusing on their family’s well-being in the rear and omitting any discussion of frontline danger as a way to remain a symbolic masculine protector. Lieutenant Ismaev expressed this concern when he wrote to his wife: ‘I’m very happy, that [my parents] are out of harm’s way… About me there’s nothing to write, I’m healthy’ (RGASPI Fond M33 Opis 1 Delo 222 List 5). Red Army men still attempted to provide for their families’ material needs through the unreliable option of sending home their pay. In typical fashion, one soldier promised his wife: ‘I do not know if you have received any from me, [but] I have money now from which you will get a sum of 750 rubles every month’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 254 List 13). When faced with the prospect of confirming their families’ fears of frontline danger, wounded soldiers continued to downplay the seriousness of their condition to minimize their loved ones’ worry. A soldier on the Leningrad front took a typical approach to report his condition in a reassuring manner: ‘presently, I am wounded, but it is not serious so do not worry… Kiss [our] son and daughter for me, and tell them that papa will soon be home’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 110 List 14). While only a performance, in this 197 Masculinities Journal way, soldiers could preserve some calm at home by silently enduring frontline hardships. The focus on hatred of the enemy that emerged in soldierspecific propaganda in 1942 followed the discovery of mass atrocities in liberated regions. The same pattern seemed to operate in individual expressions of hatred against the Germans, whether contemporary or remembered decades later. Violence distinguished enemy and hero, not only as opposing forces, but as fundamentally different men, with women as passive figures caught in between. As a mobilizing tool, official rhetoric emphasized the suffering of women and children, Germans’ animalistic nature, including sexual urges, and the defense of women’s honor as recurring theme tied to the masculine ethic. Still strongly oriented toward family, especially in the first months of the year, servicemen showed little concern for Germans’ violation of general ideals of honorable warfare. Only after soldiers grew more accustomed to frontline life and especially combat would they contrast themselves as soldiers. Heroic Violence and the Individual Soldier A s the Red Army prepared to expel the German invader in 1942, the violence and aggression of offensive operations gained greater attention at all levels of the military. A new hero emerged in propaganda to reflect the focus on using violence differently from the enemy. This imagined Red Army fighter’s motives, qualities, and combat exploits marked a departure from the desperate calls to sacrificial defense of 1941. In their place, propagandists and political workers sought to connect the male soldier of 1942 with the New Soviet Man and masculine labor heroes of the 1930s, and in particular coal miner Alexei Stakhanov, who gained national fame for a record-breaking shift in the mine attribute to Communist zeal. This new ideal, hitherto referred to as the Stakhanovite-at-arms, strove to exterminate the hated enemy by engaging his fellow soldiers in socialist competition. On 20 January, a report about Communist Youth 198 Masculinities Journal League work in the military, one of the first efforts to promote the new movement, demanded that ‘the expansion of competition among fighters in the destruction of fascist troops. There is too little fury [at present]. …Political work is needed to support this competition’ (RGASPI Fond 77 Opis 1 Delo 936 List 8). In February, Andrei Zhdanov, chief Party representative on the Leningrad Front, deliberately employed the language of socialist competition and Stakhanovism to explain the heroism that political workers should promote: “the Komsomoltsy of a single division decided to begin socialist competition between units in the extermination of the fascist reptiles…there are many similarities with the Stakhanovite movement, and I would call our exterminating soldiers Stakhanovites on the military front’ (RGASPI Fond 77 Opis 1 Delo 938 List 5). Such heroes’ skills and optimistic belief in victory were to overcome the unfavorable military realities that prevailed at the front in 1942, just as Stakhanovites’ strength and will-power overcame the empirical limits of production (Clark, 1993). Socialist competition to exterminate the hated enemy, inspired by Stalin, motivated the new hero, and the number of enemy dead he produced demonstrated his merit. The new ideal combined established norms of masculinity in labor centered on strength and skill with a military focus on killing. Official rhetoric promoted a high number of enemies killed as the measure of a hero, rather than the bravery or risktaking otherwise involved in successful battler performance. The difference in who and how the hero killed further defined the “Stakhanovite-at-arms” through contrast with the enemy. Unlike the enemy barbarian who slaughtered women and children, the hero of Red Army propaganda only struck down other men, did so skillfully, and killed with a calm, detached demeanor, despite his hatred. The new hero also provided another important example for Red Army men: the basis for frontline comradeship. Snipers commonly appeared as examples, given their favorable circumstances to personally kill (and keep count of) individual enemy soldiers and officers, but were not operating as isolated hunters. Zhdanov explained that what further distinguished these new heroes was their ‘fulfillment of their comradely, 199 Masculinities Journal civic duty to the [other] soldiers of our army, to pass on their shooting experience to their comrades by all means’ in order to ‘raise all marksmanship in our army to the highest level’ (RGASPI Fond 77 Opis 1 Delo 938 List 8). Indeed, Zhdanov made sure to emphasize that other skillful soldiers could achieve the feats of snipers, and that the Stakhanovite-at-arms ‘exists among soldiers of all types of weapons’ (RGASPI Fond 77 Opis 1 Delo 938 List 11). Much like his predecessor in labor, the new ideal soldier was to act as an example for others to emulate and proof that the Soviet system could transform men, whether from peasants into advanced workers or from civilians into sharpshooting exterminators. These skills and their dissemination were to form bonds, but they simultaneously created an elite status that reinforced the notion of combat and national defense as a masculine realm. Red Army fighters began to develop masculine bonds at the front without any connection to these calls to kill counts or skill sharing. Soldiers emphasized the masculine character of their new bonds by describing them as brotherhoods. They used this term only starting in 1942, when their sense of solidarity and commitment to each other grew strong, and well after official rhetoric deployed it in the first months of the war. A tank man explained that he liked to use The term brotherhood. The crew was one family. Of course, much depends on the character of the commander and on the character of the crew, but in the majority of cases, in the absolute majority, the crew had one united purpose, it was one person. It never happened, that one or two did something, and the others sat or watched or smoked. Everyone worked together (Shishkin, 2007: 254-255). Popular usage at the front differed from propagandists’ description of the whole Red Army as a brotherhood that followed Stalin’s guiding hand. Troops did not discriminate by age or generation, but they remained selective in terms of who belonged, even among the men of their regiment, by ensuring that everyone received and provided mutual support. Among infantry, brotherhood could begin on the march to the 200 Masculinities Journal front, as when soldiers took the packs of those who struggled during overnight marches: ‘In the war such small gestures of assistance, and others like it, gave rise to frontline brotherhood. …We particularly valued these unwritten rules of conduct. They eased our difficult army life, drew the men together, and lifted our combat spirits’ (Gorbachevsky, 2008: 65). Such brotherhoods were not national, nor counted in millions, but operated as close knit groups that functioned as surrogate families. Individual actions counted, punishment and praise operated outside the rank or disciplinary structure, and propaganda had little influence. Non-combat hardships at the front further contributed to the formation of primary groups among Red Army fighters. Among frontline soldiers, the same action, taken for oneself or for ones comrades, prompted contrasting reactions. The same submachine gunner noted without criticism how ‘one of our soldiers slipped secretly into a food cellar adjacent to a house where an outside office stayed. The officer caught the soldier red-handed and shot him down on the spot’ and yet fondly remembered how the next evening, thanks to a thieving orderly, ‘The main course of our company’s festive table was the goat’s meat. To steal in your shelter is the highest extent of meanness! There we were!’ (Guzhva, 2012: 56-57). It was with everyday aspects of front life that bonds were forged, even before combat, given the extent of the hardship and the feelings of separation from civilian life that they brought (Lynn, 1996: 29). Traditional practices of Russian working class masculinity, drinking and smoking also added to group bonds outside battle (Starks, 2008: 181). A tank man remembered how while waiting for the order to advance, ‘The gun-layer Vitya Belov and the loader Misha Tvorogov lit up “goat legs” [hand-rolled cigarettes] – how quickly they had learned from the ‘old guys’ how to roll a cigarette deftly around the little finger’ (Krysov, 2010: 8). In each aspect of front life, both the shared practices themselves and the extra effort that comrades displayed for each other helped build the cohesiveness of their primary group and the linking of their sense of self with it as a collective (Lynn, 1996: 33). 201 Masculinities Journal In response to presentations of exterminator-heroes and kill tally exploits, letters from Red Army troops expressed a remarkable lack of enthusiasm about the act of killing as part of their duty as soldiers. While some fighters adopted the language of killing and exterminating enemy soldiers, making proclamations such as ‘I can already note a tally of 21 exterminated white Finns,” they more commonly failed to mention it at all’ RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 445 List 2. This likely reflected the fact that Soviet military failures throughout the winter and spring provided few opportunities for troops to match official rhetoric and exterminate the enemy in large numbers. Perhaps the most compelling reason that soldiers failed to embrace the socialist competition in killing promoted in official rhetoric was their actual experience of combat at the front. A political worker, who was otherwise responsible for spreading propaganda in his unit, wrote his wife a bleak letter, hoping to discourage his son from volunteering for the front: ‘at the front, romance and poetry are much less [evident] than hardships and even horror. War is war. It is full of death, wounds, and other terrors’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 92 List 7). Such sobering thoughts of combat hardly endorse the masculine ideal of propaganda that linked the numbers of passive enemies killed with records in coal hewing. For many other Red Army men, killing remained a basic and inevitable part of warfare, part of the duty they had to perform to end the war and return home. One soldier explained this view matter-offactly: ‘If you don’t kill the German, he kills you’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 254 List 12). Others did not accept the new measure of a fighting man, and understood the exterminator-hero as one role among many. Signaler Aleksandr Myl’nikov explained this to his brother: ‘I have not managed to finish off a single German because I am not a rifleman, nor a machine-gunner, nor an artilleryman, but a radio operator and such opportunities have not yet arisen…and I carry out my orders pretty well’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 484 List 3).While Myl’nikov addressed the significance of personally killing the enemy, he expressed an alternative pride in his specialization, which lay outside the bounds of socialist competition and the sniper-centered heroic ideal. 202 Such Masculinities Journal responses amidst a general silence about the specific act of killing demonstrate the limitations of the new heroic ideal, the Stakhanovite-atarms, to resonate amidst soldiers who otherwise shared some of the hatred of the enemy present in official rhetoric. In 1942, comradeship, despite its value for unit cohesion and combat effectiveness, provided for the greatest divide between the ideal hero of propaganda and the masculine subjectivities of the rank and file. Soldierly subjectivities focused on a sub-unit-sized group of comrades, not the Red Army or Soviet population at large, which was not inherently a problem for military effectiveness, but revealed the limited effectiveness of official rhetoric and political work. Given the articulation of a clear model of soldierly behavior in the Stakhanovite-atarms, soldiers’ orientation toward local front groups shows how independent their thinking could be. While they upheld a sense of masculine bond that separated them from family at home, front experiences limited their interest in official discourse. Desperation and the Interaction of Masculine Ideas A fter the Germans launched a massive offensive in June, a new soldierly ideal in propaganda developed from the deteriorating military situation that culminated in the battle for Stalingrad. Propaganda continued to present the enemy as a brutal killer, but a much more dangerous one, who threatened the very existence of the Soviet people. Stalin used this approach when he mentioned that the enemy would shoot civilians if partisans prevented ‘some German beast… from raping women or robbing citizens’ in his October Revolution anniversary speech (Stalin, 2010: 67). Discussions of such enemy villainy sought to inspire soldiers’ hatred and will to resist, and began to echo soldiers’ focus on home and defense of family. Hitherto referred to as the Last Soviet Man, this ideal figure fought out of desperation, killing to keep his country from being overrun, and no longer part of the march to impending victory. A notion of young men’s generational duty helped define the new hero, in which “sons” had to 203 Masculinities Journal defend the victory of their fathers and the gains of the Revolution. In battle, the Last Soviet Man remained disciplined without resorting to sacrificial actions, and yet he refused to retreat under pressure. Instead, he fought on and stayed alive because his will was greater than that of enemy. Speaking to agitators on the Voronezh Front in September, formed after the German summer offensive began, Army Commissar Lev Mekhlis focused on the stakes of the battles about to unfold while explaining what motivated the Last Soviet Man: We are talking about – whether or not the great Russian people will be in slavery, and all peoples of our country, who on the field of battle have bloodily linked their fate with the fate of the great Russian people…We are talking about – Comrade Stalin has highlighted this – whether or not there will be Soviet power…The issue is the national and social enslavement of our country (RGASPI Fond 386 Opis 1 Delo 14 Listy 26-27). The existential threat to the Soviet people and the Soviet system operated as the basic motivation of the new hero, and reflected desperation totally absent from the “Stakhanovite-at-arms” ideal soldier that preceded him. Newspaper articles explained to soldiers directly that in response to the enemy’s invasion ‘there can only be one answer: death or victory!’ because death could allow ‘fascist bandits…to make your wives and children into slaves’ (Red Star, 1942: 2). Despite changes to official soldierly masculinity, it remained tied to the femininity of the Soviet home front to be defended and of victims under occupation. Generational distinctions further differentiated the “Last Soviet Man” from previous soldierly masculinities in official rhetoric. Such soldiers had a duty not only to defend Soviet women, but also as ‘sons of October,’ to defend the Revolution their fathers had won and thus prove their manliness (Red Star, 1942: 3). On 4August, a Krasnaia Zvezda article presented the oath of a group of Don Cossacks, who, ‘death threatening our children, our wives…Vow on the honor and blessed memory of our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers…to destroy 204 Masculinities Journal mercilessly the hated enemy’ (Red Star, 1942: 3). In September, another such article invoked the duty of the younger generation of men to act as defenders, this time unfavorably comparing battles of the Russian Civil War to those of 1942: ‘when under the ruins of our homes our wives and children perish, we, the defenders of Tsaritsyn, decided to contact you, defenders of Stalingrad’ (Red Star, 1942: 1). To mark the anniversary of the Revolution, editorials reinforced the message of inter-generational male contrast and obligation, ‘In October of 1917 our fathers and brothers went into battle against the forces of slavery and oppression…in battles with the hated German invaders we defend the gains of October’ (Red Star, 1942: 1). The language of family in official rhetoric consistently presented the general duty of soldier heroes as unambiguously masculine: saving wives, honoring fathers, and holding off total defeat and the loss of a generation’s worth of progress under Soviet power. The combat exploits of the “Last Soviet Man” also diverged from those of the heroic ideal that preceded him, and continued to contrast with portrayals of the enemy’s use of violence. Red Army soldiers no longer became heroes by accumulating a high number of enemies killed, but by overcoming larger forces through whatever means necessary, fueled by greater will and hatred. A lieutenant in the article ‘One against ten’ demonstrated the power of hatred: ‘he was wounded, but his hatred of the enemy gave him strength. He pushed the German off him and, grabbing him by the throat, strangled him’ (Red Star, 1942: 2). Killing the last of ten Germans with his bare hands, the Lieutenant highlighted the importance of continuing to fight, rather than panicking or retreating, not only to display heroism, but also to survive, as the Lieutenant’s actions helped his unit escape encirclement and continue fighting. The article ‘Not a step back!’ emphasized this same theme: ‘Four fearless Soviet guards, Belikov, Aleinikov, Boloto and Samoilev drove back the attack of 30 enemy tanks, destroying 15, and they themselves remained alive. Staunchness conquers death’ (Red Star, 1942: 3). Rather than skills or kills, or sacrifice against superior enemy 205 Masculinities Journal numbers, soldiers who were so driven to destroy the enemy that they would not retreat, panic, or even die appeared as the true heroes. As the Red Army’s crisis over the summer and fall of 1942 grew, Red Army soldiers’ letters changed significantly in response. The intensity of combat and high casualties wore down the resolve and altered the masculine performance of many Red Army men in their letters home. Troops could still emphasize their devotion to family, but their pessimism about survival was clear, as in a soldier’s final letter before reaching the front outside Stalingrad: ‘I’m sorry that we did not have more time together, but nothing can be done about war’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 299 List 1). A junior lieutenant wrote to his wife: ‘Many of my comrades from the academy assigned here have been wounded or killed. Several mortars just fell not far from where I am writing’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 76 List 3). Soldiers’ growing willingness to share such details communicated not only their proximity to mortal danger, but also the continued development of new relationships and loyalties at the front. Another soldier began a letter to his mother by detailing the fate of two comrades: ‘Firstly, I want to report that I am alive and healthy. Ilya Baiakin was killed [10 days ago], and Ivan Bogatov was wounded in his first battle’ (RGASPI Fond M-33 Opis 1 Delo 1413/6 List 3). This focus on the fate of comrades underscored the breakdown of earlier letter-writing performances along with the growth of new relationships with male comrades. Alongside seeing fellow soldiers die, the need to kill increasingly separated troops’ war experience from that of their families in the rear as the year wore on. Men at the front often realized that combat altered their sense of self, as Mansur Abdulin, an infantryman, recalled: ‘By nature I am a tender and sensitive person. I was never a hooligan or a brawler. But when I went to war I wanted to destroy the Fritzes: “Kill or be killed.” This was my message to the newcomers’ (Abdulin, 2004: 109). Changes like the one Abdulin described helped very different people integrate into effective units and emotionally connected groups of soldiers, but often at the price of their family ties. A submachine-gunner reflected on the difference between ‘relatives and the group on which he 206 Masculinities Journal places his hopes in combat. At times, [the group] will pull him to shelter. I would not give preference to one relationship – they are parallel and very important’ (Evdokimov, 2012: 29). Others more casually noted the contrast between the toughness of the combat collective and the comforts of home: ‘If anyone started to grumble, he was immediately rebuked: “You haven’t come to your mother-in-law’s for pancakes!” Quite so!’ (Gorbachevsky, 2008: 67) Troops often idealized home as a safe place as their own lives grew more centered on violence. Their feeling of distance from family and their civilian selves contributed to an imagining of front and rear as distinctly masculine and feminine spaces. Soldiers’ reactions to death and killing reveal the cultural transformation of citizen soldiers that took place as the Red Army replenished its ranks in 1942. Killing had profound meaning to individuals, in strong contrast to thoughtless kill count accumulation of the Stakhanovite-at-arms, which provided few soldiers with a serious blueprint for action. Red Army troops believed that killing set them apart from civilians, brought them closer to the veteran combatants among them, and reflected a certain masculine nature to undertake. Because it had such an impact on them, they believed that it defied the capabilities of most women. Troops thus possessed a parallel view of violence dividing the front and rear, but changes to their sense of self, rather than propaganda portrayals, fueled their assessment. Conclusion T he experience and exercise of violence dramatically reshaped Soviet perceptions of the war effort by integrating the enemy as a counterpoint to heroic masculine ideals and driving individual men to form new relationships and communities at the front. Contrasting uses and targets of violence distinguished official heroic and enemy masculinities, while fighting men found combat and violence to have a transformative impact on their sense of self. Propagandists focused on the character and motives of the enemy to explain his violent actions, which targeted Soviet women and children above all. Rather than simply 207 Masculinities Journal dehumanizing the enemy, frontline newspapers presented an enemy soldier who contrasted with his counterpart in the Red Army in very specific ways, but remained comparable as well as different. He emerged as an “other” to the Red Army hero as a soldier and as a man, defined by opposing notions of honor regarding motives for waging war, the individual use of violence, treatment of women, and personal courage in the face of danger. The enemy’s villainy therefore rested on heinous wartime behavior and motivation, rather than ideological differences, historical connections, or leaders’ machinations. The depiction of the enemy that emerged reinforced the masculine ethic and underpinned exhortations to drive him out of Soviet territory. Despite this sustained effort, soldiers’ reaction to the enemy were quite varied, and the universal hatred expressed in print rarely echoed in soldiers’ views, even in hindsight, without firsthand experience of atrocities. The Soviet idea of enemy masculinity contrasted significantly from that of its two major allies, the United States and Great Britain, both in content and in the extent to which it helped define their respective heroic masculinities. In British newspaper propaganda, the enemy appeared as an overly-militarized but professional soldier: focused only on war and combat, always in the company of other soldiers, quick to show dominance and aggression, and utterly devoid of civilian relationships or interests. In contrast, British soldiers appeared as typical citizens above all: husbands and fathers, who retained their civilian personas and morality in wartime through humor, camaraderie, and reserved emotions (Rose, 2003: 153-159). The prevailing American view of the German enemy was essentially that of an honorable foe, although a clear competitor in masculine vigor and physical power. However, American propaganda appeared quite similar to its Soviet counterpart when discussing its Japanese enemy. Racist rhetoric constructed Americans’ Japanese enemy as a savage killer, prone to torture and rape, and often compared him to animal figures such as monkeys or gorillas (Jarvis, 2004: 125-129). In both British and American cases, much more limited experiences of German soldiers in battle and especially occupation were likely a factor in the more 208 Masculinities Journal restrained presentation of the German enemy, just as specific atrocities appeared as a consistent feature of the Soviet idea of enemy. Nonetheless, the differing cases of its allies show the extent and significance of the enemy in Soviet efforts to define the Red Army hero and motivate soldiers to fight. Official and soldierly perspectives interacted as a masculine bloc, modulating and responding to developments while preserving combatant status as an elite masculine role. Troops’ bonds and feelings of comradeship developed in opposition to the women they left at home and engaged through letters, as well as through interaction with official rhetoric. Identifying such consistent gender change matters because it played a central role in the interaction between individuals’ masculine subjectivities and the ideals official rhetoric promoted through its soldier heroes. The framework of the masculine bloc shows how frontline culture developed across the boundary of official and popular values and norms. Even for the military sub-group of the Soviet population, the pace of change in masculine ideals meant that there were multiple scripts for individuals to adopt in any given year of the war, in addition to the competing influence of comrades, family, and wartime experiences. Works Cited Archival Documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) Archival Documents from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) Abdulin, Mansur (2004), Red Road from Stalingrad: Recollections of a Soviet Infantryman, Barnsley: Pen and Sword. Anon (1942), ‘Krasnaia Zvezda’ Borenstein, Eliot (2000) Men Without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1929, Durham: Duke University Press. 209 Masculinities Journal Chaterjee, Choi (2002), Celebrating Women: Gender, Festival Culture, and Bolshevik Ideology, 1910-1939, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press. Clark, Katerina (1985), The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Connell, R. W. and James W. Messerschmidt (2005), ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender and Society, 19: 6, pp. 829-859. Demetriou, Demetrakis Z. (2001), ‘Connell’s Concept of Hegemonic Masculinity: A Critique’, Theory and Society, 30: 3, pp. 337-361. Drabkin, Artem (2009), Red Army Infantrymen Remember the Great Patriotic War: A Collective of Interviews with 16 Soviet WW-2 Veterans, Bloomington: Author House. Emilianenko, Vasily B. (2005), Red Star Against the Swastika: The Story of a Soviet Pilot over the Eastern Front, London: Greenhill books. Ewing, E. Thomas (2010), Separate Schools: Gender, Policy, and Practice in Postwar Soviet Education, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Gorbachevsky, Boris (2008), Through the Maelstrom: A Red Army Soldier’s War on the Eastern Front, 1942-1945, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch (1992), The Cossack Hero in Russian Literature: A Study in Cultural Mythology, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Kobylyanskiy, Isaak (2008), From Stalingrad to Pillau: A Red Army Artillery Officer Remembers the Great Patriotic War, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Krylova, Anna (2010), Soviet Women in Combat, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Christina Jarvis (2004), The male body at war: American masculinity during World War II, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Litvin, Nikolai (2007), 800 Days on the Eastern Front: A Russian Soldier Remembers World War II, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. 210 Masculinities Journal Lynn, John A. (1996), Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791-94, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Merridale, Catherine (2006), Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945, New York: Metropolitan Books Meyer, Jessica (2009), Men of war: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain, New York: Routledge . Mikhin, Petr (2010), Guns against the Reich: memoirs of an artillery officer on the Eastern Front, Barnsley: Pen and Sword. Pennington, Reina (2001), Wings, Women, and War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II Combat, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Phillips, Laura L. (2000). The Bolsheviks and the Bottle. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Pilyushin, Joseph (2010), Red Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Joseph Pilyushin, Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books. Pyl’cyn, Alexander V. (2006), Penalty Strike: The Memoirs of a Red Army Penal Company Commander, 1943-1945, Solihull: Helion and Company. Reese, Roger (2007), ‘Motivations to Serve: The Soviet Soldier in the Second World War,’ Journal of Slavic Military Studies 20:2, pp. 263282. Roper, Michael (2004), ‘Maternal Relations: moral manliness and emotional survival in letters home during the First World War’ in Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh, eds. Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp 295-315. Roper, Michael (2005), ‘Slipping out of View: Subjectivity and Emotion in Gender History,’ History Workshop Journal 59 (Spring), pp. 57-72. Sonya O. Rose (2003), Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945, New York: Oxford University Press. Rush, Robert S. (2004), Hell in Hurtgen Forest: The Ordeal and Triumph of an American Infantry Regiment Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 211 Masculinities Journal Sanborn, Joshua (2003), Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905-1925, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Stoff, Laurie (2006), They Fought for the Motherland: Russia’s Women Soldiers in World War I and the Revolution, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Temkin, Gabriel (1998), My Just War: The Memoir of a Jewish Red Army Soldier in World War II, Novato: Presidio Press. Yakushin, Ivan (2005), On the Roads of War: A Soviet Cavalryman on the Eastern Front, Barnsley: Pen and Sword. 212 Gerçek Erkek Ayağa Kalkabilir mi Lütfen: Trans Erkeklerin Cinsiyetlendirilmiş Performansı1 Elijah C. Nealy Columbia University Çev.: Baysar Tanıyan, Berk İnan Berkant G ünümüz toplumunda, kimlik sorunları, bir erkek ya da kadın olmanın, ama daha da tartışmaya açık şekilde de trans erkek veya trans kadın olmanın etrafında örülmüştür. Transgender kimliği günlük hayat çerçevesinde sürekli olarak tartışılır ve tekrar tartışılır – sokakta ve metroda, mesleki konferanslarda, benzin istasyonları ve köşe-başı büfelerde, umumi tuvaletler ve soyunma odalarında, inanç topluluklarımızda, arkadaşlar ve aileyle, sağlık kurumlarında, semt berberinde, çocuklarımızın ilkokullarında; toplumsal cinsiyet herhangi bir yerde ve her yerde dikkat çekicidir. Trans olarak tanımlanmak bu işlemlerin her birinin zorluğunu arttırır. Bu müzakere süreci trans erkek için başarıyla tamamlayıp geride bırakabileceği bir cinsiyetlendirilmiş şey değildir. kimliklerini her Aksine, gün transgender hayatlarının erkekler, değişkenlik gösteren ilişkisel bağlamlarında “icra eder” ve “tekrar sahnelerler”. Oyun bittiğinde ve perde kapandığında kimliğini arkasında bırakan profesyonel aktörlerden farklı olarak, transgender erkek rolünü durmadan oynar. Evet, hepimizin kimliklerimizi müzakere ve/veya icra ettiğimiz yollar vardır. Erving Goffman, şimdi bir klasik olmuş The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Benliğin Günlük Hayatta Temsili) başlıklı metinde, 1 Bu metin, Elijah C. Nealy’nin 11-13 Eylül 2014 tarihlerinde İzmir’de düzenlenen 1. Uluslararası Erkekler ve Erkeklikler Sempozyumu’nda sunduğu bildirinin çevirisini sunmaktadır. This text is the Turkish translation of the paper Mr. Nealy presented as a keynote speech at 1. International Men and Masculinities Symposium, Izmir, Turkey on 11-13 Sept. 2014. -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 213-233 Masculinities Journal kişiliklerimizi sürekli olarak icra etme şekillerini tarif etmek için tiyatro metaforunu kullanmıştır. Goffman’ın bakış açısından bakıldığında, bu konuşmayı yaptığım zaman ya da Columbia Üniversitesi’ndeki bir sınıfımda ders verdiğim zaman olduğu gibi rolümü halka açık icra ettiğim bir ön sahne ve belki de evde ailem ile birlikte olan arka sahne vardır. West ve Zimmerman, 1987 tarihli “Doing Gender” adlı makalelerinde, sürekli olarak “toplumsal cinsiyet rollerini icra etme” eyleminde olduğumuz ilkesini örneklemek için bir trans kadın olan “Agnes”in vakasından yararlanmışlardır. Buna göre, toplumsal cinsiyet doğuştan edindiğimiz cinsiyet değil, günlük hayatta icra ettiğimiz bir şeydir. Daha yakın zamanda, Judith Butler toplumsal cinsiyetin edimsel olduğu ile ilgili kapsamlıca yazmıştır. Ama benim tecrübeme göre, trans erkeklerin toplumsal cinsiyetlerini diğerleriyle etkileşime girmek zorunda oldukları her yerde – yabancılarla sokakta, arkadaşlarıyla, aileyle, tıbbi profesyonellerle, işverenleriyle – sürekli bir şekilde yönlendirdikleri belirli yollar vardır. Keith Berry (2013), bazı insanlar için kimliğin bir tertipten ziyade bir müzakere meselesi olduğunu ileri sürer. Kendi yolculuğuma baktığımda, gerek bir “erkek fatma” olarak çocukluğumda, geçiş dönemimin başlangıcı olan erken yetişkinlik dönemimde genderqueer “butch” dyke3 2 olarak, gerekse daha yakın zamanlarda bir (transgender) erkek olarak, toplumsal cinsiyetimi müzakere etmediğim hiçbir zaman olmamıştır. Yaşadığımız dünyada transgender olmak halen büyük bir damga 4 meselesidir. Gezegendeki çoğu insan için birlikte doğduğunuz organlar cinsiyetinizi, yani toplumsal cinsiyetinizi tanımlar. Bu, sizin kendinizi nasıl tanımladığınıza ya da cinsiyet geçişi yaşayıp yaşamadığınıza bakılmadığında doğru olandır. Gerçek bir erkek olmak tipik olarak doğumdan gelen organlarınızla tanımlanır ve bu yüzden trans erkek 2 Genderqueer: Toplumsal cinsiyeti belirsiz, karışık, uyumsuz, tuhaf olan 3 Butch dyke: Oldukça normatif şekilde erkeksi lezbiyenleri tanımlamak için kullanılır. 4 ÇN: Yazı boyunca stigma sözcüğü yerine damga ifadesi kullanılmıştır. 214 Masculinities Journal çoğu zaman “gerçek” erkek olarak nitelenmez hatta bazen bir insan olarak bile görülmez. Erving Goffman (1963), bu damganın sosyal etkisini tartışırken, sosyal etkileşim içerisinde biriyle karşılaşıp o kişinin onu bizden farklı kılan bir niteliğe sahip olduğunu anladığımız anı tasvir eder. Bu farklılık istenmeyen bir özellik ise, Goffman, bu kişinin “bütün ve olağan bir insandan lekeli ve önemsiz birine indirgendiğini” (s. 2-3) belirtir. Bu durum, bu damganın insan olarak bizlerin gündelik etkileşimlerimizi nasıl etkilediğinin önemli bir göstergesidir. Goffman gözlemlerini şöyle aktarır: “bu özellik kendini belli ettiğinde, bizleri bu izi taşıyan kişiden uzaklaştırır, bize etki eden diğer özelliklerini geçersiz kılar... tanım itibarı ile, bu damgaya sahip kişinin tam olarak insan olmadığına inanırız (p. 5). Şimdi anlatacağım kısa hikaye insanlığımın hem sorgulandığı hem de değersizleştirildiği bir anı gösterir: Testosteron tedavisine başladıktan yaklaşık altı ay sonra, Greenwich, New York’ta rutin bir kan tahlili için bir laboratuara gittim. O zamanlar, sosyal ortamlarda tam bir erkek olarak “yorumlanıyordum”. Tesis alçak tavanlı dar bir bodrum odasındaydı. Sıcak bir yaz günü sabahın ilerleyen saatleriydi. Kaydımı yapıp küçük ve kalabalık resepsiyon alanında bir sandalyeye oturdum. Kısa bir süre sonra ismim çağrıldı, “Elijah.” Resepsiyon görevlisine yaklaşırken, bilgisayarda dosyamı gözden geçirmeye başladı. Suratı şaşkın bir hal aldı. “Siz Elijah mısınız?” diye sordu. Başımı sallayarak onayladım. “Ama burada ‘kadın’ yazıyor,” dedi. Derin bir nefes aldım ve “Ben trans bir erkeğim ve evraklarım erkek olduğumu söylüyor...” diye söze başladım. Kaşlarını ani çatışı ikimizi de durdurdu. “Sağlık sigorta kartımın üzerinde halen ‘K’ var,” diye belirttim, “yani eğer jinekologa ihtiyaç duyarsam sigortamın karşılayacağından emin olabilirim.” 215 Masculinities Journal Kalemini masaya durmadan hafifçe vurarak bana baktı ve odadaki herkesin duyabileceği bir ses tonuyla bana sordu: “Pekâlâ, nesin sen o halde?” Bu kısa hikaye ve Goffman’ın (1963) diğer birçok benzer örneği, bu izi taşıdığı bilgisinin kişinin kendi insanlık hissiyatını nasıl azalttığını ve başkalarının bize yaklaşımını nasıl bozduğunu gösterir. Bu görünmez damga ile yaşamanın kişinin insanlığını azaltması bir sağlık çalışanına sabırsızlıkla, “Nesin sen o halde?” diye sorma imkanı tanır, sanki ben insandan çok bir nesneymişim gibi. Bu damganın insanlığımızı azaltması benim bir trans erkek olduğumu bilen insanlara ve şüphelenen yabancılara bedenim ve cinsel organlarımla ilgili “Ameliyat oldun mu?” ya da “Operasyon öncesi veya sonrasında mısın?” gibi sorular sorma izni verir. Goffman’a göre (1963), itibarsızlaştırılmış insanın, “normallerin” [Goffman’ın damgaya sahip olmayan insanlara verdiği ad] arasında çıplak bir şekilde mahremiyetinin ihlaline açık hissetmesi muhtemeldir. İfşa olmanın hoşnutsuzluğu, yabancıların istedikleri gibi başlattığı ve onun ise durumu ile ilgili hastalıklı bir merak olarak algıladığı sohbetlerle artabilir.” (16) Özellikle, trans kişilerin insanlıklarının inkarının bir yolu da tanımlanmış toplumsal cinsiyetlerini kabul etme ve farkına varmada başarısız olmaktır. Bettcher (2009) şöyle yazar: “Eğer diğerleri benim cinsiyet ifademle ilgili arzularımı kabul etmiyorlarsa, aslında beni kişi olarak kabul etmemektedirler. Saygısızlığın en temel biçimlerinden birini sergilemektedirler.” (105) Her yıl, bir meslektaşın düzenlediği lisans düzeyinde sosyal hizmet kursunda misafir öğretim görevlisi olarak transgender farkındalığı üzerine bir ders veririm. Birkaç yıl önce, bölüm başkanı derse katıldı. Bu sene, dersten sonra meslektaşım, bölüm başkanının ne zaman benden bahsetse dişil zamir kullandığını söyledi. Bilgi acıtır. Bu kadın benimle sadece geçiş dönemi sonrası karşılaştı, beni sakal ve erkeğe has kellikle 216 Masculinities Journal gördü, takım elbise ve kravat içinde gördü, beni sadece Elijah Nealy olarak biliyor. Dişil zamirler kullanmak için ne sebebi var? Dişil zamir kullandığını duymak bir şekilde benim kimliğimi alçaltıyor. Şöyle diyor: “Sen Elijah Nealy değilsin. Sen erkek değilsin. Söylediğin kişi olduğuna inanmıyorum. Sen bir kadınsın.” Bugün olduğum şeklimle beni kabul etmeyi reddetmesinde açık bir saygısızlık var. Meslektaşım olması, bir bölüm başkanı olması, bunu sindirmeyi iki kat daha da zorlaştırıyor. Trans insanlarla nasıl çalışılabileceğini, kendilerini nasıl tanımladıklarına saygı duyulması gerektiğini anlattığım ders boyunca sınıftaydı. Sosyal hizmet öğrencilerine ders veriyor. Trans insanlar hakkında acaba onlara ne anlatıyor? Biliyorum, bunun beni üzmesine izin vermemeliyim, ama birkaç gün boyunca bu mesele beni yedi bitirdi. Damga taşıyan kişiyi daha az insan kabul etmek birçok trans insanın karşılaştığı sözlü taciz ve şiddete imkan tanır, hatta teşvik eder. Bu gerçeklere değinirken Judith Butler (2004) şöyle yazar: “bazı yaşamlar yaşam olarak sayılmazlar, insanileştirilemezler. … bu düzlem, fiziksel şiddeti arttırır, kültür içerisinde hali hazırda etkin olan, bir anlamda insanlıktan uzaklaştırma mesajını taşır” (25). Butler (2004) [insan] yaşamlarının “farklı şekilde desteklendiğini ve sürdürüldüğünü, yerküre boyunca insanın fiziksel kırılganlığının paylaşımının çok farklı yolları olduğunu” anlamamız gerektiğini söyler. “Bazı hayatlar sıkıca korunacaktır ve kutsallıklarının feshi savaş güçlerini harekete geçirmeye yetecektir. Bazı hayatlar ise bu denli hızlı bir destek bulamayacak ve hatta ‘acınılabilir’ olarak bile değerlendirilmeyecekler.” (24) Butler temel olarak her hayatın insani sayılmadığını, ya da bazı hayatların diğerlerinden daha insani ve değerli olarak sayıldığını iddia eder. Bu şemada, transların hayatları, toplumsal cinsiyet normlarına uymayanların hayatları, na-trans (cisgender)5 ve 5 ÇN: Sistem sözcüğünün köküyle türetilmiş cisgender, biyolojik cinsiyetiyle cinsiyet kimliği uyumlu kişileri tanımlar. Türkiye'de LGBTİ Hareketi, transları anormal olarak tanımlayan dili yapıbozuma uğratarak cisgender yerine na-trans yani trans olmayan tanımını sahiplenmektedir. 217 Masculinities Journal toplumsal cinsiyet normlarına uyan yaşamlardan daha az değerlidir. Bazı hayatların acınılır bile olmama durumu özellikle beyaz olmayan trans erkekler ve fakir trans erkekler üzerinde etkilidir. Goffman’ın (1963) damga ve Butler’in (2000) liminal özneler üzerine çalışmaları, trans erkeklerin ve hayatlarının nasıl daha az insani bir hal aldığını gösterir. Taşıdıkları damga ortaya çıktığında diğer insani özellikler bu yolla silinir. Sonuç olarak hem değersizleşmiş (damgası görünür ve bilinen olan) hem de değersizleştirilebilir kişi (damgası gizli ve bilinmeyen) tipik olarak birçok sosyal duruma endişe ile yaklaşır çünkü diğerleri ne öne sürerlerse sürsünler onları tam bir insan olarak kabul etmediklerini hissederler ki bu çoğunlukla doğrudur (Goffman, 1963, s.7). Bu, genellikle erkek olarak “onaylanabilen” trans erkeklerin (yani değersizleştirilebilir kişi) eğer trans oldukları öğrenilirse diğerlerinin onlar hakkındaki derin algılarının değişip değişmeyeceğinden şüphe ettikleri anlamına gelir. Benim gibi trans erkekler sürekli olarak başka bir kişinin trans geçmişimizle ilgili bir şeyler öğrendiğinde bize karşı farklı davranıp davranmayacaklarını hesaplar. Onaylanmayan trans erkekler sürekli olarak sözlü taciz ve bazen de fiziksel şiddet tehdidi altındadır. Bu tarihsel gerçekleri ve gelecek ihtimalleri her gün idare etmek inanılmaz zihinsel ve duygusal dayanıklılık gerektirir. Trans erkeğin insanlığının reddedilme şekli onun erkekliğine karşı sıklıkla gerçekleşen itiraz yollarıyla yakın bir ilişki içindedir. Bu sunumun başlığında dendiği gibi, “Gerçek erkek ayağa kalkabilir mi, lütfen?” 50 yıl önce Goffman (1963) şöyle belirtmişti: Amerika’da sadece bir tane “eksiksiz, utanmasına gerek olmayan erkek” vardır”: genç, evli, beyaz, şehirli, kuzeyli, heteroseksüel, kolej eğitimli Protestan, tam zaman çalışan, güzel görünüme, kiloboya ve iyi bir spor siciline sahip. Her Amerikalı erkek dünyaya bu bakış açısından bakmaya meyillidir. … Bunların herhangi birinden yeterli olamayan bir erkek muhtemelen kendini değersiz, eksik ve aşağı hissedecektir. (128) 218 Masculinities Journal Feminist eleştirinin ortaya çıkışıyla birlikte, Goffman’ın o zamana kadar tanımladığı model “hegemonik erkeklik” olarak adlandırıldı – herhangi bir zamanda, mekânda veya tarihte, toplumda insan olmanın en değerli yolu olarak addedilen erkeklik biçimi (Connell, 1987, 1995; Carrigan, Connell, & Lee, 2002). Erkeklerin sadece küçük bir kısmı kültürün taleplerini gerçek anlamda yerine getirirken, bu istatistikî klişeden ziyade ideal anlamında “normatif” olarak değerlendirilirler. Feminizmin çoğu kazanımlarına rağmen, çok sayıda erkek, hegemonik erkekliğin standartlarını sağlayamasalar bile, hegemonik erkekliği kalıcı kılarak suça ortak olmaya devam etmişlerdir (Carrigan, Connell, & Lee, 2002; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Hegemonik erkeklik, devletin, işletmelerin, okulların, işyerlerinin ve ailelerin içine kurumsal olarak yerleştirilmiştir (Carrigan, Connell, & Lee, 2002). Hegemonik erkekliğin hiyerarşisinin merkezinde kadın üstündeki egemenlik gibi diğer erkeklerin ve farklı formdaki erkekliğin ikincil konuma itilmesi de vardır. Bu paradigmada, erkeklik güçle eşitlenir. Kimmel’e (2003) göre, “Kültürümüzdeki erkekliğin tam tanımları bazı erkeklerin diğer erkekler üzerinde ve erkeklerin kadınlar üzerinde sahip olduğu gücü kalıcılaştırır.” (57) Şöyle devam eder: “Kültürümüzde erkek olmanın ne demek olduğunu, tanımlarımızı bir dizi “diğer”e – ırksal azınlıklara, cinsel azınlıklara ve her şeyden öte, kadına karşı sıralayarak öğrendik.”(52) Aslında Birleşik Devletler'de hegemonik erkekliğin ilk kuralı, bir erkek “kadına atfedilen bir şekilde davranamaz, hareket edemez ve var olamaz”dır (Anderson, 2009, s. 34). Bunun, “eskiden kadın olan” ve bazı gözlerde halen kadın olan trans erkekler için özel çağrışımları vardır. Bu kurala bağlı olan ise erkekliğin normatif modelinin her zaman heteroseksüel olma ısrarıdır (Carrigan, Connell, & Lee, 2002). Buna göre, Herek (1986) “Çağdaş Amerikan toplumunda ‘erkek’ olmak demek homofobik olma – yani, genelde homoseksüel kişilere ve özelde eşcinsel erkeklere düşman olmak” (563) anlamına geldiğini öne sürer. Bu düşmanlık diğer erkeklerin erkekliğimize meydan okuyacağı ve dünyaya “gerçek” erkek olmadığımızı kanıtlayacağı korkusundan kaynaklanır. Bu, diğer erkekler önünde küçük düşürülme korkusudur. Bu 219 Masculinities Journal korku Amerikan erkeğinin yaptığı her şeyde – ne giydiğinde, nasıl konuştuğunda, nasıl yürüdüğünde, ne yediğinde – hiper-maskülen bir cephe almasını sağlar. Kimmel’in de belirttiği gibi (2003), “her davranış, her hareket şifrelenmiş toplumsal cinsiyet dili içerir.” (65) İşte bu anlamda homofobi, cinsiyetçilik, transfobi, hetero-seksizm ve hegemonik erkeklik iç içe geçer. Kimmel (2003) bu erkeğe yakışmaz görünme korkusunun Amerikan erkeğini, diğer erkeklerin erkekliğini haksız yere inkar etmeye sevk ettiğini iddia eder. Kendi erkeklik imgelerini desteklemek için, Amerikan erkekliği Goffman’nın tanımladığı -beyaz, karşı cinse ilgi duyan, orta veya üst sınıf, sağlıklı-klasik erkeğin ülkesi olmuştur ve klasik erkekliğin tanımı, olur da hiyerarşinin tam tepesindeki “gerçek” erkeği devirirler diye, diğer erkeklerin ona ulaşmasını engelleyecek şekilde kurulmuştur. Amerikan tarihi boyunca, bu “diğer” erkekler; ırksal/etnik azınlıktan olan erkek, engelli erkek, göçmen erkek, homoseksüel erkek, ve bugün çoğu vakada trans erkek olarak farklı şekillerde tanımlanmıştır. Şimdiki kısa hikaye bir trans erkek olarak erkek kimliğime ve erkekliğime nasıl karşı gelindiğini gösterecektir: Birkaç yıl önce Yonkers’a taşındım ve bir Cumartesi sabahı bir 12Adım toplantısı keşfettim ve buna dahil olmak istedim. Her hafta oda 16-85 yaşlarında 40 ila 50 erkekle doluyordu. Birkaç AfroAmerikan ve Latin haricinde çoğu beyazdı. Paylaşımlar inanılmaz derecede gerçekçi ve bazen vahşice dürüsttü. Hiçbir şekilde konu sınırı diye bir şey yoktu. Demek istediğim, en son ne zaman bir odada oturup 40 erkeğin, bir saat içerisinde, seks, uyuşturucu ve ibadet hakkında çok fazlasıyla ayrıntılı olarak konuştuğunu dinlediniz? Toplantılar aynı zamanda kahkaha doluydu. Erkekler toplantı boyunca birbirlerine eğlenceli şekilde sataşıp duruyordu. Orada bulunduğum ilk seferde, karım ve altı yaşındaki kızımdan araba kullanırken birisine el hareketi yaptığım için özür dilemek zorunda kaldığım öyküyü paylaştım. Bitirdiğimde daha önce hiç 220 Masculinities Journal karşılaşmadığım bir adam bana “Hey, Eli!” diye bağırıp mutlu bir şekilde el hareketi yaptı. Kapıdan içeri girip bu adamları bulduğum andan itibaren alışılmadık biçimde kendimi rahat hissettim. Rahatlık duygusu toplantılar boyunca devam etti. Kendimi “evde” gibi hissetmiştim. Kahkaha ve dürüstlüğün kaba birleşimini sevmiştim. Öte yandan bu erkekler benim trans tarihimi bilselerdi ne düşünürlerdi diye merak da ediyordum. Beni aynı şekilde görmeye devam ederler miydi? Buna rağmen beni kabul ederler miydi? Bu tek gerçek her şeyi değiştirir miydi? Bir pazar sabahı, bir tanesi ile kahvaltı için buluştum. Restoran, kilise dönüşü yemek için gelenlerle dolup taşıyordu. Sonunda uzak bir köşede bir masa bulduk ve kendi küçük evrenimize yerleştik. Bir noktada sohbetimiz esnasında anlattığım bir durumu gerçekten anlayabilmesi için trans geçmişimi ona açmam gerektiğini açıkça gördüm. Başka her şey aldatıcı ya da en azından eksik görünüyordu. Takip eden sohbet benim için çok bilindikti. İlk olarak söylediğim şeyleri anlamadı. Kadın olmak isteyen bir erkek olduğumu söylediğimi zannetti. “Trans erkeğin” ne demek olduğunu, bir kız olarak doğduğumu ve sürekli erkek gibi hissettiğimi ve birkaç yıl önce de erkek olarak yaşama geçiş yaptığımı anlatmaya çalıştım. Fakat beyni bunu bir türlü algılayamıyordu. Bir noktada, en az üç defa, “Ama vajinan var mı? Bilirsin, Eli, vajina? Vajinan var mı?” diye sordu. Kısa bir parantez – trans olduğumu açıklamadan önce hiç kimse cinsel organlarımın nasıl göründüğüne dair bir soru sormamıştı, ama trans insanlar bu sorularla sürekli muhatap oluyorlar. İnanılmaz derecede saldırgan bir soru olmasına rağmen, size bu soruyu soranlar, sizi çok az tanısalar bile, bu soruları sorarken hiç tereddüt etmiyorlar. Yeni arkadaşım beni vücut parçalarımla ilgili sorguya çekerken, kendimi saldırıya uğramış hissettim. Bu soru, ya da “operasyon” geçirip geçirmediğim sorusu, sorgulayanın sizin 221 Masculinities Journal “gerçek” olup olmadığınızı bilmek istediği imasını taşır – sanki beden şeklimiz bu kültürde erkek veya kadın olmanın tek ve temel belirleyicisiymiş gibi. Transların hayatları boyunca yüzleştikleri şeyler iç parçalayıcıdır; yani, “Eğer trans bir insan olarak sizin karşınıza çıkarsam, yine de beni gerçek bir erkek veya kadın olarak görecek misiniz?” Ve, belki de daha önemlisi, “benim insan olarak değerlendirecek misiniz?” Bu adamın iyi niyetli olduğunu biliyordum, ama eve sersem bir şekilde döndüm. Gelişmekte olan ilişkimiz birden bire ciddi bir tehlike içine girmişti. Kendimi aşırı yüklenmiş hissettim. Bütün etkileşimi bloke etmek istedim. Bu tarz açılım anlarının neden bu derece güç olduğunu düşündüm. Neden bu denli tramvatize hissediyorlar? Kesinlikle, böyle bir deneyimi ilk yaşadığım zaman ile benzer değildi. Kan tahlili yaptırdığım Greenwich’teki laboratuardaki anı düşündüm. Sonra geçişimi ilk ilan ettiğim mesleki bir toplantı olan aile terapi konferansını düşündüm. Trans olarak kendimi açtığım ve birilerinin anlamadığı ya da vücut parçalarımın (yani cinsel organlarımın) şu an nasıl göründüğü hakkında sorular sorduğu diğer düzinelerce zamanı düşündüm. Buna neredeyse alışık olmam gerekir. Bunu önceden tahmin etmeliyim. Ne kadar yıl geçerse geçsin, hali hazırda defalarca bunu ifade etmeme rağmen, bu etkileşim her zaman derinden rahatsız edicidir. Goffman (1963) şöyle söyler: “Bu damgayı taşıyan bireylerin hayatlarındaki temel belirleyen genellikle belli belirsiz ‘kabullenme’ olarak adlandırılan sorunsaldır. Bu bireyle ilişkide olanlar, onun sosyal kimliğinin kirlenmemiş boyutlarının onların sunmasını beklediği, onun ise görmeyi umduğu saygı ve takdiri sunmakta başarılı olamamıştır.” (8) Goffman’a göre damgalanmış kişiler nasıl karşılanacaklarından, diğerlerinin onları kabul edip etmeyeceklerinden hiçbir zaman emin olamazlar, ve bu da günlük müzakere ve travmadır. İçselleştirdiğim utancım üzerine ne kadar gidersem gideyim, kendimden çoğunlukla ne kadar emin hissedersem hissedeyim, başarılı 222 Masculinities Journal bir trans “rol modeli”, toplumsal cinsiyet uzmanı olarak ünlenmeme ve çoğu zaman diğer trans danışanlarla ve sıkıntılarıyla terapist olarak çalışmama rağmen, insanların beni benim kendimi gördüğüm gibi gördüğüne emin olamıyordum. Bazen geçmişimi gizli tuttuğum sürece, kimsenin farkı bilmeyeceği ve (erkek olarak) kabul göreceğimi hissettim. Kimliğimi ortaya çıkardığımda ise hiçbir zaman rahatlayamaz, “erkeklerden biri” olarak kendime güvenemezdim. Her zaman beni “gerçek” bir erkek mi erkekmiş gibi “davranan” biri olarak mı gördüklerini merak etmek zorunda kalırdım. Trans olarak açılmak ve bu yüzden trans erkek olarak değersizleştirilmek erkekliğini sürekli olarak “kanıtlamak” gereği doğurur. “Gerçek” bir erkek misin, Eli, yoksa bir vajinan var mı? “Gerçek” erkeklerin penisi olur, vajinası olmaz. Beraber çalıştığım transların defalarca karşısına çıkan bu soru, trans olarak kimliğimi ortaya koyarsam beni normal bir erkek olarak görecek misin sorusudur. Kliniğimdeki odamda oturan on altı yaşındaki trans erkek, kız arkadaşının onu gerçekten “normal” bir erkek olarak algıladığını hissedip hissedemeyeceğini sordu. Eşcinsel bir trans erkek, hemen yanında yatan na-trans eşcinsel adamın vücudunun kendisininkinden farklı olması nedeniyle kendisini hiçbir zaman “yeterince erkek” gibi hissedemediğini belirtti. Kırk yaşındaki bir adam geçişinin ilk zamanlarında bana şöyle demişti, “bazen çok ikiyüzlü hissediyorum. Beni değişime başlamadan önce tanıyan insanlar, beni hala eski halimde görmeye devam ediyorlar; benim gerçek bir erkek olduğumu düşünmüyorlar.” Bir başka trans erkek ise lise yıllarında birlikte çektirdikleri bir fotoğrafı facebook üzerinden gönderen bir arkadaşından bahsetti. “ Eğer gelecekte sevgilim olacak kişi bunu görürse ne olur?” diye sordu bana. “ Gerçek bir erkek olmadığımı düşünür mü?” Gelişimsel engelli genç bir trans erkek ise babasının ona “Bob, Brenda her neyse” şeklinde hitap ettiğini hıçkırıklar içinde anlattı. “Benim gerçek bir erkek olduğumu düşünmüyor.” Erkekliklerine karşı yapılan bu sürekli meydan okuma, trans erkek danışanlarımın, iş arkadaşlarımın ve arkadaşlarımın peşini 223 Masculinities Journal bırakmıyor. “Gerçek” cevap asla bilinemez. Hatta cevap kabul edici gibi göründüğünde bile, trans erkekler diğer kişinin onları, kendilerinin translığı bağlamında tanımladığını yürekten bilirler. Bu yüzden sürekli diğerlerinin senin hakkında gerçekten ne düşündüğünü bilememe hissi vardır. Goffman’ın da dediği gibi (1963) , “bu damgayı içinde taşıyan kişi muhtemelen, kendisinin tüm sosyal durumlarda ‘uyanık’ olmak zorunda olduğunu, bırakmakta olduğu izlenim hakkında da bilinçli ve tedbirli olması gerektiğini hisseder” (s.14) Bu tetikte olma durumu psikolojik olarak zorlu ve maliyetlidir. Birçok çeşitte trans erkeklik vardır – benim gibi görünen trans erkekler, eşcinsel ve hetero trans erkekler, kadınsı trans erkekler, açık ve gizli trans erkekler, gençken değişim geçirmiş ve çocukluğu boyunca kız gibi görülmüş trans erkekler, daha geç değişim geçirmiş ve hayatının birçok yılını kadın olarak geçirmiş trans erkekler. Benim hikayemde ise, büyüme dönemimde yıllarca görünmez olduğumu hissettim. Benlik algımın sürekli soru olarak kaldığı, hiçbir zaman doğrulanıp onaylanmadığını hissetiğim yıllar. İç sesimin “erkek” ya da “genç adam” dediği, insanlarınsa beni “kız” olarak gördüğü yıllar. Sonunda yetişkinlik hayatımda dönüşüme başlama cesaretini buldum ve erkek olarak doğru ve uygun sosyal ve psikolojik kimliğim ile yaşamaya başladım. Birçok trans erkek için, erkeklikleri onlara dış dünya tarafından kolayca ya da özgürce sunulmaz. Bu, öz tanımlamayla, kendini bilme yeteneğiyle içten gelmelidir, ve diğerlerinin söylediklerini dikkate almadan, kişi, cesurca hayattaki kimliğini talep etmelidir. Bu dünyada kız olarak doğmak ve erkek dünyasında kendine yer edinme gücünü bulmak, muazzam bir cesaret gerektirir. Daha geçen hafta birlikte çalıştığım 16 yaşında biri, son iki yıldır kız olarak görüldüğü okulunda, genç bir erkek olarak ilk senesine başladı. Facebooktaki bütün arkadaşlarına açıldı. Okul müdürüne ve öğretmenlerine açıldı. Diğerleri ne derse desin erkekliğini talep eden cesur ve cüretkar bir genç erkek. Bu, kimliğimizin diğerleri tarafından onaylanmasının, kabul edilmesinin ve meşrulaştırılmasının önemini gösterir. Bu olmadan, 12 224 Masculinities Journal Adım grubu örneğimde de olduğu gibi, trans erkekler oldukları gibi görülmemenin ve/veya kimliklerinin inkarı ya da geçersizleştirilmesi travmalarını tecrübe ederler. Tipik olarak geçişten önceki birçok trans kişinin hayatında eksik olan bu en basit insani ihtiyaç olan kabul görme ve onaylanmadır. Birçoğu için fiziksel geçiş süreci muazzam bir onay ve iyileşme sağlayabilir. Yavaşça kendimizi her zaman içten gördüğümüz gibi dıştan da görmeye başlarız. Devor’a (1997) göre, “her birimizin derinlerde diğerleri tarafından tanıklık edilme ihtiyacı vardır ve her birimiz, kendimizi gördüğümüz gibi diğerlerinin gözünde yansımamızı görmek isteriz.” (46) Tanıklar bizim gibi olmayan (yani na-trans) insanlardır ve bu yüzden bize belirli bir mesafede ve nesnel bakarlar. Trans erkekleri onayladıklarında, bu değerlendirmenin tarafsız olduğuna dair güvence vardır. Yansıma bizim gibi olanların (diğer trans erkeklerin) gözlerindeki yansımamızı gördüğümüzde gerçekleşir. Na-trans insanlar tarafından tanıklık edilme ve diğer trans insanlarca yansıtılmayı içeren etkileşimsel süreç kendi kişilik manamızı güçlendirir. Waskul ve Vannini (2006) “aynadaki beden” üzerine düşüncelerinde benzer bir dinamiğe dikkat çekerler. Charles Cooley’nin (1902) “onlar” olmadan “ben”in olmadığını vurgulayan dönüşlü benliğinden faydalan Waskul ve Vannini, aynadaki bedenin dünyadaki fiziksel varlığımızın bir parçası olarak dönüşlülüğümüzü vurguladığını önerir. Bu anlamda, etrafımdaki insanların beni ve benim erkekliğimi yansıttıkları yollarla ben/erkekliğim cisim bulur. Aile hayatımdan kısa bir hikaye trans erkeklerin hayatlarındaki düşünümsellik fikirlerini yansıtmaktadır. Oğlum ve ben birbirimizi New York’taki bir evlat edinme kurumu aracılığıyla tanıdık. Web sitesinde bekleyen çocukların arasından fotoğrafını gördüm. Uzun beyaz şef şapkalı Puerto Rikolu bir ergen fotoğrafıydı. Özgeçmişi, Alex’in aşçılık okulunda olduğunu ve amacının bir gün kendi restoranını açmak olduğunu söylüyordu. Kocaman bir gülümsemesi ve gözlerinde açıklığın 225 Masculinities Journal ışıltısı vardı. Kurum kendisine ait diyebileceği kalıcı bir aile bulmak için dört yıldan fazla bir süredir onunla çalışıyordu. Alex ile Yankee stadyumuna yakın Bronx’ta beraber bir burger yiyip tanışmamızdan iki hafta sonra doğum günü -barbekü partim vardı. Alex bütün bir öğleden sonra arkadaşlarım ve meslektaşlarımla tanışarak ızgarada takıldı. Hafta sonu için kaldı ve hiç gitmedi. Haftalar içinde bana “babalık” diye sesleniyordu. “Babalık” kulağa çok eski geldiği için üzülmüştüm ama yakın bir arkadaşım genç, havalı, şehirli gençlerin babalarına bu şekilde seslendikleri konusunda moral verdi. Ona ilk zamanlarda açıldım ve beni farklı görüyor mu diye bazen merak etmeme rağmen benim trans olmamdan şikâyetçi görünmüyordu. Bir gece geç saatte ayaktaydık ve verandada konuşuyorduk. Alex, yetiştirme yurdunda büyümekle ve ergenliğini bakım merkezinde harcadığıyla alakalı birçok hikayesini benimle paylaştı. Bir noktada dayanamadı ve dedi ki “Babalık, sana minnettarım. 21 yaşındayım biliyorum ve neredeyse yetişkinim, ama içimde bazen hala küçük bir çocuğum. Yakın olduğum hiçbir erkek olmadı. Seni bulduğum için çok minnettarım çünkü sen bana nasıl erkek olunur öğretebilirsin”. Kelimelerinin ardındaki duygular beni kapladı ve gözlerimde de yaşlar oluşmaya başladı. Bazılarının asla “gerçek erkek” olarak görmediği bu trans adamın gerçekten ona bunu öğretebileceğini mi ima etmişti? Fakat o anda biliyordum ki Alex haklıydı – bırakın bir ailesi olmasını asla bir erkek olacak kadar büyüyemeyeceğini yıllarca düşünen bu çocuk, en sonunda yolun sonuna gelmişti. Oğlum haklıydı – ona nasıl bütün hayatını cesaret, otantiklik ve kendine saygı ile yaşayan bir erkek olunur öğretebilirdim. O noktaya kadar, trans kimliğimi Alex’e nasıl açıklayacağım konusunda çok fazla endişem vardı. Tanıştığımız zamandan beri. 21 yaşındaki bu düz-cinsel6 Puerto Rico’lu genç adamın benim 6 Straight: norma uyan yani na-trans heteroseksüeller için kullanılır. 226 Masculinities Journal trans olmam hakkında ne düşüneceğine dair endişelerim vardı. Beni babası olarak kabul etmek istemeyeceği anlamına gelir diye çok korkuyordum, beni reddeder diye ürküyordum. Ve şimdi, burada bana nasıl erkek olunuru ona öğretebileceğimi söylüyordu. Alex’in yorumları doğrudan korkumun en derin merkezine ve içselleştirdiğim utancıma işledi ve aydınlattı. Daha önce anlattığım laboratuar, 12-Adım grubu arkadaşımla aramda geçen diyalog, meslektaşımın reddetmesiyle ilgili etraftakilerden nasıl beni hikayelerim, karşı tepki erkek olarak trans erkeğin geldiğini, kabullenmeyi erkekliğine erkekliğimizin nasıl sorgulandığını açıklar. Ve bu dış dünyadan gelen meydan okumalar çok gerçektir. Ama aynı zamanda bu mesajları bizim nasıl içselleştirdiğimiz ve damgalanmayı içselleştirerek söz konusu olmadığı anlarda bile reddedilmeyi nasıl öngördüğümüz sorusu da vardır. İşte bu oğlum Alex’in, benim için kavraması neredeyse oldukça zor olan, ona nasıl bir erkek olunacağını öğretebileceğim ifadesinde açığa çıkmaktaydı. Bu durum “gerçek” bir erkek olma hakkındaki kişisel güvensizliklerime, erkekliğimin gerçekliğine inanma çabalarıma, bir kızın vücudunda doğan birinin gerçekten bir erkek olarak büyüyüp büyüyemeyeceğine dair iç ikilemlerime işlemişti. Dünya, bu şekilde olmadığını söyler. Dünya, kızların ve erkeklerin var olduğunu ve bu ikisinin tamamen zıt olduğunu söylemektedir. Ben de bu inanışları içselleştirmiştim ve sonuç olarak da erkekliğimin güvenilebilir olduğuna inanmak için verdiğim içsel mücadelem ile yüzleşmiştim. Bu kişisel korkuların derinliklerine dokunmak Alex’in ona nasıl erkek olunacağını öğretebileceğimi söylediğinde kendimi tutamayıp ağlamayı istememe, kendi erkek kimliğimi kabul etmek için aşmaya mecbur bırakıldığım bütün engelleri, dünyaya erkekliğimi ilan etme yolculuğum süresince rastladığım bütün bariyerlerin ağırlığını, hala erkekliğimi inkar edenlerle rastladığım anları, ve bu yüzden beni, benliğimi ve insanlığımı inkar etmelerinin acısını hıçkırarak atmak istedim. Daha önceden, hegemonik erkekliği ve nasıl sadece kadınları değil öteki erkekleri de bastırdığı ve marjinalleştirdiğini tartışmıştım. 227 Masculinities Journal Goffman’ın (1963) yazdığı “eksiksiz, utanmasına gerek olmayan erkek” tabii ki trans erkekleri içermiyordu. Goffman, “bu yönlerden herhangi birini yerine getirmede başarısızlığa uğrayan bir erkeğin, muhtemelen kendini … değersiz, yarım ve aşağı olarak gördüğünü” söyleyerek bütün diğer erkeklerin bu basit erkeklik standardı tarafından nasıl marjinalleştirildiğini vurgulamıştır (s. 128). Bu birçok trans erkeğin mücadelesinin temelidir. Hegemonik erkekliğin standartlarını içselleştirmede, trans erkeklerin her zaman yetersiz kalması kaderlerinde vardır. Bu baskın anlatı göz önüne alınacak olursa, trans erkekler asla “gerçek” erkek olmayacaklardır. Ve bu standartlar içselleştirildiğinde, trans erkekler kendilerini muhtemelen “değersiz, yarım ve aşağı” olarak görürler. Goffman daha sonrasında bu utancın genellikle başkalarının varlığında baş gösterdiğini belirtmektedir, ama “kendinden nefret ve kendini aşağılama sadece kendisi ve ayna söz konusu olduğunda meydana gelebilir” (s. 7) diye ekler. “Gerçek” bir erkek miyim değil miyim sorusu birçok erkeğin yüzleştiği mücadeledir. Trans erkek ve uçlardaki erkekler çoğu zaman bizi hükümsüzleştiren dünyada gerçek olarak kanıtlanmak için mücadele verirler. Kültürel tarihçi Michael Kimmel (2012), Amerika’da erkekliğin tarihinde, “gerçek erkekliğin” hiçbir zaman sabit bir zemini olmadığını iddia eder. Kimmel’e göre, erkekler – bütün erkekler – devamlı bir şekilde erkekliklerini ispat etmek zorundadırlar. Bu bağlamda, trans erkeğin gerçek olarak görülme çabası (ya da toplumsal cinsiyet performansının inandırıcı olması) Amerika’da erkek olmanın – özellikle uçlardaki bir erkek, cisgender ya da trans, eşcinsel ya da düz-cinsel erkek olmanın – ne demek olduğunun uç bir ifadesidir. Afro-Amerikalı eşcinsel yazar James Baldwin (1962)’in bahsettiği gerçek budur: Kimliğini, erkekliğini onu yok etmek isteyen insan zalimliğinin ateşinden söküp almak zorunda bırakılan bu erkek, uğraşları sonucunda ayakta kalsa da kalmasa da, kendi ve insan yaşamı hakkında dünya üzerindeki hiçbir 228 Masculinities Journal okulun – ve kesinlikle, kilisenin de – öğretemeyeceği bir şey bilir. Kendi sarsılmaz otoritesine kavuşur ve bu sarsılmazdır. Bunun sebebi hayatını kurtarmak için görünümlerin altına bakmaya, hiçbir şeyi kesin olarak kabul etmemeye, kelimelerin ardındaki anlamları duymaya zorlanmasıdır. (98-99) Siyah erkekler, Latin erkekler, queer 7 erkekler, Türk erkekleri, engelleri olan erkekler, trans erkekler; aslında uçlarda olanların hepsi baskının ve haksızlığın ateşinden sıyrılıp kimliklerine sarılmak zorunda bırakılıyorlar. Hepimiz hiçbir şeyi sorgulamamaya mecbur bırakılmışız. Trans erkeklerin “gerçek” olarak sayılma mücadelesi bazı yanlarıyla her yerde bütün erkeklerin mücadelesidir. Zira bu hikayenin tamamı değildir. Erkekliğimizin acı şekilde inkar edilmesine rağmen, benim gibi trans erkekler, kendileri hakkında kendi inançlarını damgalanmayı oluşturabildikleri, içselleştirmeyi onları saran reddedebildikleri bu görünmez zaman başarılı olabilirler. Irksal ihlaller hakkındaki bir çalışmada, Sue, Capodilupo & Holder (2008) bazı katılımcıların ihlalleri mikroagresif olayların ardındaki utanç ve aşağılıktan ziyade suç işleyenlerin hatası olarak görebildiğini belirtmişlerdir. Bu başa çıkma stratejisi onları güçlü kıldı ve benliklerini daha güvenilir oluşturmasında onlara imkan tanıdı. Interseksler8 üzerine yapılmış bir çalışma hakkında yazan Preves (2003) kendine güvenme yetisinin kurbandan güçlü olana geçme döneminde önemli bir rol oynadığını belirtmektedir. Engelli olan kişiler hakkındaki yazısında Charlton (1998) “uyandırılmış bilinç”li kişileri, bu kişilerin belirgin bir şekilde baskın kültürden olanlardan farklı olarak inançlar ve değerler geliştirdiğini ileri sürerek anlatmaktadır. Aslında, bu bir “direnç” bilinci olarak terimleştirilebilir (syf. 5). 7 Queer: o biçim, kırık, tuhaf, lubunya 8 ÇN: Genel kanının aksine interseks çift cinsiyetli demek değildir. Çift cinsiyetlilik, kromozom yapısıyla cinsel organların uyumsuz olduğu yüzlerce interseks tanımından biridir. 229 Masculinities Journal Preves (2003) bu görünmez damgadan arınma sürecinin uzun ve zorlu olduğunu öne sürmektedir. Sıklıkla gizliliğin, soyutlanmanın ve utancın ötesine geçmekle başlar – yani birinin hikayesini başka birine, hatta kendine bile, anlatmasıyla başlar. Preves, bu damga ile yaftalanma hikayesini güçlendirme hikayesine dönüştürmede bireyin bir bilinç değişikliği – “kişisel zorluklar”ın “politik konular” olarak yeniden şekillendirme yetisini ( syf 87, rfrns Mills, 1959) – tecrübe etmek zorunda olduğunu belirtir. İşte bu anlamda hikaye anlatımı problemi içsel olandan daha dışsal olana yeniden konumlandırır. Hikayedeki bu hareket pozitif benlik imajının gelişiminde gereklidir. Corrigan, Roe, and Tsang (2011), bu damga ile yaftalanmanın şokunu atlatmanın anahtarının, kişisel edilgen kurban anlatısından kendi yaşamının etken öğesine, “kendi hikayesinin kahramanı olmaya” geçmekte yattığını belirtir. (137). Bu bireyler kendilerine olumlu bakarlar, birçok pozitif öz ifadeden faydalanıp öz-yeterlilik hissine sahiptirler. Baskın kültürün sunduğu bu damga ve yaftalanma öyküsüne, kurban anlatısına karşın, aktif bir şekilde kendi hayat öykülerine alternatif anlamlar inşa etmeye çalışırlar. Kendi hayatları için farklı anlatılar geliştirirler. Eşim ve üç çocuğum var – 10 yaşında bir kızım, oğlum Alex, ki daha önce bahsetmiştim ve daha büyük kızım Karen. Hayatımdaki varlıkları baskın kültürün sunduğundan daha farklı bir anlatı yaratmamda bana yardımcı olmuştur. Aşağıdaki kısa hikaye bu süreci anlatmaktadır. Karen ve Alex, Baltimore’da düzenlenen geçişimdeki deneyimlerim hakkında konuşma vereceğim aile terapistlerinin ulusal bir konferansında bana eşlik ediyorlardı. Kara yoluyla seyahat ettik ve hepimiz bir motel odasına doluşturulduk. Sabah konuşmam planlanmıştı. Alex astım atağı geçirmiş ve Johns Hopkins’te acile yatırılmıştı. Onu nebülizöre bağlamışlar ve daha uzun süre tutmak istemişlerdi. Fakat o ve Karen konuşmamı kaçırmamakta kararlıydılar. Konferansın düzenlendiği otele tam ben takdim edilirken yetiştiler. Konuşmam, trans bir erkek olarak 230 Masculinities Journal kendi hikayem ve hastalarımdan elde edilen deneyimlerim hakkında kişisel paylaşımlar içermekteydi. Konuşmamı verirken meslektaşlarımın olduğu kadar çocuklarımın da önünde olduğum için iki misli kırılganlık hissediyordum. O günün ilerleyen saatlerinde otelimize geri yürürken, Karen ve Alex trans olmak hakkında daha önceden hiç sormadıkları– hormonlar ve ameliyatlar ve flört etmek hakkında - birçok detaylı kişisel sorular sordular. Açıkça benimle, benim konuşmamla ve de orada benim çocuklarım olarak bulunmaktan gurur duyuyorlardı. Sorularına cevap verdikçe, hem görünür hem de kırılgan ve gururlu hissettim. Geçmişim ve kimliğimle alakalı hiç böyle detaylı ve açıklayıcı bir konuşma yapmamıştık. Otelimize neredeyse bir blok kala, Alex birden durdu ve bana baktı ve şöyle dedi : “Biliyor musun baba? Seni bir trans olarak düşünmüyorum. Bence sen bir dönüşümcüsün.” Baltimore şehir merkezinin sokaklarında bu etkileşimi derinlemesine düşünürken, trans kimliğimin çocuklarım için kimliğimin genellikle en belirgin yanı olmadığı dikkatimi çekmişti. Bana karşı olan gururları o gün oldukça belirgindi. Meslektaşlarıma, oğlum ve kızım olarak tanıştırılmayı sevmişlerdi. O gece, biri konuşmamın ne kadar güçlü olduğunu söylemek için her geldiğinde çocuklarımın gözleri parlıyordu. Konuşmamı takip eden soru cevap kısmı boyunca, sabah onların katılımlarına referans veriyordum ve her ikisi de “Muhteşemsin, baba” diye bağırıyorlar. Bu deneyime bakarak, onların gözünde en önemli şeyin babaları olarak kendileri ile ilişkim olduğuna dair hiçbir soru işareti kalmamıştı. Net bir şekilde, bu onlar için benim kimliğimin en dikkat çekici yanıydı. “Seni transgender olarak düşünmüyorum, baba”. Onların gözünde, erkek olmak, özellikle de onların babası olmak basitçe penisinin olmasından çok daha fazla önemliydi. Onlar bu kadar net bir şekilde benim erkekliğimi babaları olarak sahiplenebiliyorlarsa, bu durumda rahatlamamı hala bazen güçleştiren şey neydi? “Gerçek” bir erkek olup olmadığım hakkında endişelerimi tetikleyebilmeye ara ara devam eden 231 Masculinities Journal şey neydi? Dahası, trans erkeklerin, bırakın insanlıklarını, inkar edilemez erkekliklerini tanımakta dünyayı bu kadar zora sokan şey nedir? Bu dünyada erkek olarak kimliğimi sürdürebilmek için – hatta samimi arkadaşlarım ve aile üyeleri için bile – dünyalar kadar akli ve duygusal enerji harcadım. Bu enerjinin büyük bir kısmını trans bir erkek olarak geçmişim hakkındaki bilgileri idare etmeye adadım. Bazı durumlarda etrafımdakiler tarafından trans durumumun bilinmesi yüzünden daha başlamadan itibarsızlaştırılırım. Trans geçmişimin gizli ve bilinmez olduğu diğer karşılaşmalarda ise potansiyel olarak itibarsızlaştırılabilirim. Bunlar hayatımın hem “dış” dünyadaki hem de evdeki gerçekleridir. Bu bilgiyi idare etme kırılganlık, endişe, ve mükemmel tasdik etme anlarıyla doludur. Kimmel’in eserine dönüp referans vererek, hepsi olmasa bile çoğu erkeğin erkeklikleri hakkında güvensiz oldukları bir durum olduğu doğrudur. Terapist olarak, her hafta hikayelerini anlatan trans erkekleri dinlerim. Her yıl yaklaşık 70 eşcinsel erkeğin invizaya çekilmesine öncülük ederim. Ve her cumartesi sabahı, çoğunluğu hetero erkekle dolu olan bir odada otururum. Oldukça farklı bu üç grupta, erkekler kendi erkeklikleri hakkında endişe duyduklarından bahsederler. Aynı zamanda, trans erkeklerin karşılaştığı zorlukların özgün olduklarına da inanıyorum. Birçok erkeğin yüzleştiği soru “Yeterince erkek miyim?” dir. Na-trans bir erkek oldukça kısa, oldukça şişman, sporun içinde olmayan, oldukça koyu tenli, oldukça duygusal, bir engelle yaşayan biri olabilir ama genellikle erkekliği sorgulanmaz. Egemen erkekliğin gerçekleri düşünüldüğünde bu özelliklerden herhangi biri ona erkekliği hakkında güvensiz hissettirir. Trans erkeklerin yüzleştiği soru “Gerçek bir erkek miyim?” sorusudur. Trans bir erkek olarak kimliğimi açığa koyduğumda açıklamamı duyanların beni umursamayacağını ve odaya bakarak “gerçek erkek lütfen ayağa kalkar mı?”diye sorup sormayacağını bilemem. Amerika’da ya da Türkiye’de hastaneye gitmem gerekirse, acilde etrafa bakarak, beni umursamayarak, “gerçek erkek lütfen ayağa kalkar mı?” diye sorup sormayacağını bilemem. 232 Masculinities Journal Judith Butler tanınmak ve “gerçek” olarak sayılmanın gerekliliği ile boğuşmaktadır. Butler’ın bakış açısından, yaşadığımız gerçek dünyada; beden yalnız; cinsiyet, toplumsal cinsiyet ve arzu, ancak heteroseksüellik ile şekillendirilmiş bir çerçeve ile tutarlı olduğu zaman anlam ifade eder (ve ancak önem taşıyan bedenler olarak sayılır) (Butler, 1990). Butler için (2000), trans insanlar “insan tanınabilirliğini kontrol eden normlardan” dışlanan ve insan kategorisinde bütünlüğe ulaşmak için feda edilen “liminal özneler”dir (Halberstam, 2005). Butler (2004), “gerçekdışı olarak adlandırılmanın ve bu adlandırmayı kabul etmenin gerçekleştiği yerde, ayrımcıl muamelenin kurumsallaştırılmasının bir şekli olarak insani olanın aksine bir şeye dönüşerek öteki olmak” şeklinde açıklayarak konuyu bağlar (p.218). Bu açıdan, insanlar “Peki sen nesin?” diye sorduklarında, insanlar cinsel organımın şekli üstünden beni sıkıştırdıklarında, insanlar erkek kimliğime ve taşıdğım eril göstergelere rağmen dişil zamirler kullanmakta ısrar ettiklerinde, sadece erkekliğimi değil aynı zamanda insanlığımı da inkar etmektedirler. Dünyanın her gün bana sorduğu şekilde, Elijah Nealy, lüfen gerçek erkek ayağa kalkabilir mi? 233 REVIEWS Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu (eds.) Erkek Millet, Asker Millet: Türkiye’de Militarizm, Milliyetçilik, Erkek(lik)ler İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2013, 558 pp. ISBN 9789750511530 E rkek Millet, Asker Millet is an initial attempt to discuss military masculinity in the Turkish context and in the greater spheres of nationalism and gender studies. The book traverses a relatively uncharted territory and compiles sixteen articles, which relate to masculinity from different perspectives with compelling arguments and well-chosen examples. Articles focus on a range of problems varying from military masculinity in Balkan wars, martyrdom, and compulsory military service, to Korea war, disabled veterans, football and the representations of masculinities in media. The book convincingly argues that masculinity is a critical issue surrounding discussions not only about war and the military but also about sacrifice, discipline, hegemony and education. The introduction by the editor, Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu, covers the historical and theoretical framework for the analytical discussion of military masculinity, and discusses the socialization of people into a militarized culture in parallel to the rise of nation-states ably supporting the discussion with references to several theorists that led the way and flourished men’s studies. Quoting key names such as Cynthis Enloe and G.L. Mosse, Sünbüloğlu reminds that militarism is a complex social issue, which cannot be downgraded to war periods, and that the attempt to define what is normal masculinity, always comes with a discussion of militarized power since normative codes of masculinity are derived from the myth of warrior men. First set of articles in the book has the concept “militarized nation” at their explicit focus with different time frames. In his “Soldier -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 235-239 Masculinities Journal Citizens and Heroic Men,” Yaşar Tolga Cora opens a discussion on the masculinity of the Turkish nation-state, taking his lead from the body politics of the pre-republican period. Güven Gürkan Öztan in his article “Militarist Tendencies in Turkey during the Construction of National Identity” carries the discussion to the early Republican times and up until the Korean War. Tebessüm Öztan in her “Şimal Yıldızı (Northern Star) as a Narrative of Excess” discusses the masculinity promoted in Turkey in relation to Korean War, focusing on the popular movie Şimal Yıldızı. Şafak Aykaç in his article “Martyrdom and the Reproduction of Militarism in Turkey” takes the war with separatist PKK at focus, and discusses how the discourses on martyrdom became tools of manipulation to enlist public support in war. Murat Belge in his “Teaching the Importance of the Military or on the Impossibility of Professional Army in Turkey” discusses how compulsory military service in Turkey has been acting as a tool to legitimize interventions of the Armed Forces in Turkish politics. The following articles provide case studies and detailed examples on experiences of men in military. Barış Çoban in his “Hegemony of Spectacle and Militarist Masculinity,” discusses how militarized discipline is used to create prototypic men in a regime of hegemony, which he argues to be based on performance. Ayşe Gül Altınay, in her “One is not Called a Man until Completing Military Service: Compulsory Military Service, Masculinity and Citizenship” argues that education as designed in Turkey has an intention to militarize the culture, and hence the army service is an extension to a more general education in masculinity in Turkey. Ömer Turan in his article “To Stand at Attention: Experiences from the Barracks or the Anthropology of Compulsory Military Service in Turkey” discusses barracks as specific settings of discipline and ideology formation, taking his lead from an autoethnographic study and interviews conducted in military compounds outside zones of clash. Shifting the focus to mothers, gay men and injured war veterans, the next four articles elaborate on the side effects of compulsory military service. Senem Kaptan’s article “Militarism in the Shadows of Cracks: 236 Masculinities Journal Military, Motherhood and Gender in Turkey” reminds that women are also inevitable part of the discourses on military masculinity although they are mostly excluded from the army. Alp Biricik, in his “Seventh Arrow-Militarism: On Citizenship, Indebtedness and Being Exempted from Draft” elaborates on gay men’s experiences of military service focusing on the health report often referred as “çürük raporu” (draft exempt report) expected from them for being excluded from military service. Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu in her “Fortifying Militarist Rote: Media Representations of Disabled Veterans of Wars of Korea, Cyprus and South East Turkey” focuses on newspapers and discusses the transitions of the term “ghazi” (disabled veteran) in news from the fronts, considering wars in Korea, Cyprus and South East Turkey. Salih Can Açıksöz discusses the complex problem of sacrifice in his “Construction of ‘Ghazi’ in the Context of Kurdish Issue: Hegemony, Masculinity and Disability” and looks at disabilities caused by the armed conflict. The final three papers broaden the problem of militarism so that it exceeds the confines of the military. Tanıl Bora discusses football as a political, nationalist and militarist medium in his “Masculinity, Militarism and Nationalism in Football: Single Goal”. Nazan Üstündağ in her “Pornographic State-Erotic Resistance: General Economy of Kurdish Male Bodies” discusses the construction of Kurdish identity taking her lead from specific historical settings such as the infamous Diyarbakır prison. Arus Yumul in her “Taking Rojin up in the Mountains or Militarism, Woman and Humor” looks back with a gender sensitive approach to the article written by a well-known columnist in 2009, in which he used a sexually offensive language objectifying the Kurdish popular singer Rojin. Overall, the volume provides an integrated entrance into the problem of militarist masculinity in Turkey, which has been mostly taken for granted, and initiates a critical look at previously taboo subjects such as the clashes in South East Turkey, unidentified deaths in barracks, draft exempt reports obtained by providing graphic ‘evidences’ of homosexual relationships etc. in a joint effort. Although a thoroughgoing 237 Masculinities Journal and combined discussion theory-wise on masculinity is missing in the volume, except in the introduction by the editor, there are provocative swipes in the articles which add on to each other, bringing together the individual agendas of the articles to form a generalized critical perspective required in an edited volume. Some very interesting critical twists are created unintentionally or they appear in secondary comments, which are made in passing. Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu, for example, raises a theoretical question in her contribution on media appearances of war veterans without privileging it, by her use of the term “nationalist militarism”. Is there a militarism that is not almost already nationalist? Defending territories and defending “a nation” are two different dimensions of war; however, inasmuch as the protection of territories relates to the protection of an “imagined community” conscious of its unity (i.e. the Ottoman Empire) there is a meaningful overlap. Hence, although Sünbüloğlu devotes her critical attention to war veterans, the question whether there is a more “nationalist” militarism in post-Ottoman Turkey settles on table as an open debate, haunted by the continuities between the Empire and the nation-state. Likewise, Nazan Üstündağ, opens a baffling discussion in her article on Kurdish men that relates to horrible memories of Diyarbakır prison during post-coup period following the military intervention that took place in September 12, 1980 by resembling the Diyarbakır prison to the “uterus of state” producing Kurds. The metamorphosis of the state in the article from a violent masculine agent of torture and castration that aims to annihilate Kurdish men to a feminine agent of reproduction, producing impaired and traumatized Kurdish masculinities is a challenging swing, which invites questions on the “gender” of the state. Senem Kaptan’s ironic definition of motherhood as a kind of military service in civil life, which is supported with a quote by Susan Zeiger referring to the similarities of ideal soldier to ideal mother in her article on gender dynamics of militarism, is also stimulating, and invites further discussions. The book has its strength in such moves into blurred areas of gender. 238 Masculinities Journal Erkek Millet, Asker Millet is a successful attempt to force militarism out of the confines of the military, and also masculinity out of the confines of men. The book successfully shows the political imperatives beneath the creation of militarist masculinities and gives a sufficient historical depth to the concept considering the Turkish history. It also makes persuasive arguments about the failures of the education system, drafting system, media ethics etc. when the complex issue of gender is at stake. Anyone researching or studying masculinities, nationalism and military in Turkey would find it a valuable initial attempt to discuss crucial issues surrounding these very complex phenomena. An apparent gap in the volume to strengthen the arguments, however, is the issue of literature. Although the volume addresses textbooks used at schools, media representations and movies while discussing masculinities, an article that discusses literature produced in Turkey from the perspective of men’s studies is missing. With some observations on fictive literature, the book could have gone further in the critical analysis of masculinities since literature provides the nuanced medium where it becomes possible to speak aloud about otherwise intimidating stories. It could also have given more attention to the issue of religion, to give a fuller picture of masculinities in Turkey. Religion is not entirely absent in the book; but it is not given a thorough analysis. Nonetheless, articles in this book make important points on masculine/militarist power and hegemony, and open challenging discussions about several issues such as body, discipline, sacrifice etc. which makes Erkek Millet, Asker Millet a significant contribution to men’s studies. The critical effort to deconstruct the dynamics beneath nationalisms, militarization and masculinities in Turkey is vital to propose a bold shift from a long history of gender conflict and political inequalities. Çimen Günay-Erkol Ozyegin University 239 Ofer Nordheimer Nur Eros and Tragedy: Jewish Male Fantasies and the Masculine Revolution of Zionism Boston, Academic Studies Press, 2014. XXIV + 220 pp. ISBN 978-1-936235-85-8 I n the Preface to Eros and Tragedy, Ofer Nordheimer Nur describes Zionism as a project of national rehabilitation, a ‘manly’ response to a modern antisemitism1 and its ‘venomous view of the Jewish body as ugly, abject, deformed, repulsive’ (VII). This statement conveys the gendered framework employed to his analysis of one of the Zionist movements, Hashomer Hatzair, which inspired Jewish youth in Palestine and that living in the Diaspora, that is outside of Palestine, in the first decades of the twentieth century. Hashomer Hatzair was established in 1916 in Vienna with the merging of two separate youth organisations, Hashomer and Tse’irei Tsiyon, founded before the war in the provinces of eastern Galicia. It was an independent and idealistic youth movement, imbued with Zionist and socialist ideas that gave birth to a powerful myth of a “new man”, which would overcome the negative image of the diasporic Jew. A small group of Hashomer Hatzair’s members, who between 1920 and 1922 came from the territories of the disintegrating Habsburg Empire to Palestine, formed a community called Bitania Ilit. Even though Bitania existed only for eight months, from August 1920 to April 1921, it laid foundations for Israel’s first kibbutz movement – kibbutz meaning a ‘group’ in Hebrew – and created a mental map and set of rules by which the community tried to live by after settling down in In this review, I respected Ofer Nur’s spelling of the word ‘antisemitism’ without the hyphen. 1 -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 240-246 Masculinities Journal Palestine. Bitania promoted a new way of life and it was to lay the foundations for a new society, which would oppose the unhealthy, degrading and repressed life in the Diaspora. Although Hashomer Hatzair was a coeducational organization accepting women into its ranks, the majority of the group’s members were young men. The type of discourse and practices promoted by Bitania’s leaders were expressions of the male fantasy, as Nur describes it, evident in their almost obsessive determination to reinvent a Jewish man as a “real man”; a hyper-virile man who would embody strength, both physical and psychological: ‘the presence of women in this orbit of fantasy was irrelevant and even detrimental’ (101). As Nur’s book demonstrates, the quest for a “new man” and the emphasis on male bonding within Bitania’s community, betrayed a desire of empowerment that resulted from a deep crisis of manliness experienced by the young generation of East and Central European Jews. The new historical circumstances, the lack of sovereign territory and military power, resulted in vulnerable and dependent Jewish communities and stemming from it a sense of powerlessness. Zionist thinkers and intellectuals, including Hashomer Hatzair, rejected the life in the Diaspora as ‘ill’, ‘miserable’, morally and spiritually degrading; through this approach, ironically, they, in a sense, emulated the antisemitic stereotypes (23). Cited by Nur Daniel Boyarin, the author of anti-Zionist pamphlet “Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man”, suggests that the condition of living in exile (Diaspora) made a particular mark on Jewish masculinity, which, in order to rehabilitate itself, had to somehow negate this experience of powerlessness. Bitana was a manifestation of that sense of crisis, and, at the same time, an attempt to create a new radical way of living and a new “invigorated man”, without any mental or physical restraints (22). The latter, according to Nur, was very much an expression of the Central European age with its ‘assertion of youth as a force with its own consciousness’ (21). The book sets out to explore the historical context which made the myth of a “new man” vital and appealing among young members of 241 Masculinities Journal Hashomer Hatzair by recreating the ‘mental world of a group of teenagers’ who belonged to the Bitania community in the early 1920s (Introduction, XIV). In order to disclose the imagery of the new man and the new society they wanted to form, Nur reaches for the original material, such as the collection of confessions (Kehiliatenu), diaries and letters of Hashomer Hatzair intellectual leaders, who worked together as a part of the labour community, the material which reveals also their cultural and ideological affiliations. As the author stresses on many occasions, the new vision of society they sought to create in Palestine expressed not only Zionist influences but also Central European sensibilities apparent in the use of the most influential cultural conceptual framework of the time. The two defining concepts of Hashomer Hatzair’s new man and new society were based on the trope of Eros and Tragedy, betraying exposure to the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and the German philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose influence in the Jewish world and on Zionism are discussed in the Chapter IV. Chapter I provides the historical context of eastern Galicia and Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century and the status of the Jewish Diaspora in both regions. The author introduces a particular historical trajectory, which he describes as ‘Galicia-Vienna-GaliciaPalestine’, where all the places are of equal significance in forming Hashomer Hatzair’s mental outlook (2). Since Nur’s narrative is densely woven and rich in factual detail, the general overview of the book in the preface and introduction sections, as well as the introductory Chapter I prove indispensable in facilitating the reading of this highly ambitious work. The events introduced in the first chapter, that is a period between 1914-1919, which saw the decline of the Habsburg Empire followed by the civil war between Polish and Ukrainian ethnic minorities in Galicia, were crucial factors in determining Hashomer Hatzair’s ideological direction. The outbreak of the World War I forced many Jews to leave eastern Galicia and travel to Vienna, at the time, a multinational, cultural and intellectual centre of the Habsburg Monarchy. Although at the end of the war some families decided to settle in Vienna, many returned to 242 Masculinities Journal Galicia to their abandoned properties and businesses. Yet, at the end of the war, Polish and Ukrainian nationalistic tendencies led to a violent conflict in Galicia in the years 1918-19 over influence in the region. Jewish communities trapped between the two national entities became the target of antisemitism and abuse. The author notices that the Polish national rebirth and the pogroms resulting from it, in particular, proved ‘a bitter disappointment for many Polonized Jews’, who had a strong sense of belonging with the Polish culture, being themselves immersed in the Polish language and literature (5). It was the rejection of the Jewish Diaspora by other nationalities that in return provoked enthusiastic responses to the Zionist visions. Zionism, whose popularity grew in those years of conflict, offered fantasies about political sovereignty in Palestine and a new independent society. It was the political chaos and brutality in Galicia that drove many young Hashomer Hatzair members to immigrate to Palestine in 1920. The events in Galicia contributed also to intergenerational conflict between the youth who retained a sense of a separate Jewish identity and wished for a “Jewish renaissance”, and their orthodox parents who became assimilated; that is, in the eyes of their children, they willingly accepted an unhealthy and humiliated life in the Diaspora. The members of Hashomer Hatzar, which stands for “The Young Watchman”, strived to promote a Jewish national consciousness and create a new society for Jewish people, which would oppose that of the Diaspora. In that, Hashomer Hatzair’s mentality expressed Central European ideas and values, brought about by the political awakening of the national consciousness at the end of the nineteenth century. Nur set the stage for the Jewish national revival in the disintegration of the Habsburg monarchy which put the status and identity of the Jewish Diaspora into question and, paradoxically, gave rise to Zionism. Most importantly, the author provides evidence of the extent to which other European national revivals, their symbols and heroes became part of Zionist theorisation and practices. Chapter III discusses the aesthetics of Hashomer Hatzair’s tragic man, which expressed the human condition at the end of World War I. Hashomer Hatzair’s tragic man was a product of being entrapped 243 Masculinities Journal in a tragic history, combining the elements of ancient Greek tragedy, a romantic revolutionary hero and Nietzchean Übermensch, a ‘Promethean personality, who dares to freely shape human history’ (69, original emphasis). The members of Hashomer Hatzair found the embodiment of the ideal tragic man in the book Flames written by the Polish writer Stanisław Brzozowski; a book, which, according to Nur, had a ‘tremendous role’ in forming the movement’s ideal of the “new man” (69). Nur’s research on the influences and significance of the tragic man within the movement’s conceptions of new masculinity is the subject previously overlooked and thus constitutes one of the most original contributions to his book. The second pillar of Bitania’s new man and new society, was the quest for Eros, introduced in Chapters II and IV. In 1922, the most popular weekly among Palestine’s workers, Hapoel Hatzair, presented the concept of Eros as one of the most fundamental elements in the ideal community of Hashomer Hatzair (58). In its conceptualization Eros did not express merely a sexual experience but was based on the framework of Karl Marks’ socialist ideas of work, and Freud’s psychoanalytical discourse on libido. In his depiction of an erotic, and also a tragic man, Nur draws heavily on the writing of Meir Yaari, one of the movement’s leaders and its most influential thinker and theoretician. Yaari saw work as a remedy for the distorted life of Jews in the Diaspora and as a mean to overcome the sense of uselessness and passivity. Therefore, in the new ideal society in Palestine, productive labour became essential for regeneration of the Jew as an individual, a vehicle to change the whole society. Unlike Freud’s repressed libido, manifested in dreams, Hashomer Hatzair’s Eros was to be turned into a creative force: ‘sublimation of libido through work’ (63). Hashomer Hatzair therefore, sought to use Eros as a medium for personal and social change, to create an ideal, erotic community. Yaari’s approach exposes his concern about the negative image of a Diaspora Jew as neurotic and sexually repressed and his fantasies of a new man, who would embrace hard physical work as well as his naked body, were attempts to overcome this stereotype. 244 Masculinities Journal Chapters V, VI and VII trace the development of Hashomer Hatzair’s ideal erotic community, Eda, from a Hebrew word for ‘community’, which wanted to practice and live by the ideas Hashomer Hatzair’s educated, middle-class members, encountered and adopted while living in the intellectual circles in Vienna, before arriving in Palestine. Eda, the community inspired mostly by the non-Jewish German thinkers, Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber and their concept of spiritual community, was imagined as the fusion of all its members into one whole. The most profound manifestation of Bitania’s eda was through working, dancing and confessing together at nightly gatherings, which was to ‘reveal their deepest and most personal secrets’ (140). One of the most surprising conclusions from the reading of Nur’s book is the extent to which the often racist discourses informed the new vision of a man, coined by Hashomer Hatzair’s thinkers, with a desire to override the image of the effeminate man of the Diaspora. Eros and Tragedy is an original and interesting addition to the subject of Jewish masculinity and Zionism, which, as the author himself remarks, is a growing body of research. In his depiction of the complex history of Hashomer Hatzair and their intellectual legacy, Ofer Nordheimer Nur stressed that Bitania was a unique variant of Labour Zionism, which offered more complex fantasies of a man than merely a muscular Judaism. In the last chapter, Nur tries to argue that the quest to create a heroic tragic man within the Bitania community, resulted in the creation of a new type of masculinity, a sensitive man, conscious of his “innermost feelings”, a claim which is however not supported by a convincing argument (191). In its dealing with Zionism as a male fantasy for creating white male dominance in Palestine, something that was denied Jewish men living scattered in Europe, Nur conveys not only gendered but also a post-colonial perspective. It is worth mentioning that Nur’s teacher, and one of the main inspirations for his books, was Saul Freidländer, author of a recently published study of Kafka’s letters and diaries, Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt (2013), which reveals how the discourses of racial, ethnic and class shame resurface in issues of the body and sexuality. Nur’s book conveys a somewhat similar 245 Masculinities Journal message when presenting the fantasies of a new man as rooted in the tragic historical events, which saw Jewish people abused and humiliated. In that sense, Eros and Tragedy, although based on the early twentieth century events, can provide a new perspective on Israel’s aggressive military politics namely, as a continuation of the Zionist myth of empowerment in response to antisemitism. Aneta Stępień Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies Trinity College Dublin, Ireland 246 Laura Louise Paterson British Pronoun Use, Prescription and Processing. NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.h/bk 192 pp. ISBN 978-1-137-33272-1 Price $55. L aura Louise Paterson’s book entitled as British Pronoun Use, Prescription and Processing gives a very compelling, lucid and indepth analysis of the term epicene pronoun, which is defined as a pronoun which does not convey gender or sex information and is coindexed with a singular noun phrase referring to an animate being. The book targets for linguistic and non-linguistic readership and also designed for students and it aims at chronologically giving a survey of epicene pronouns and proposes the Homonymy Theory, an analysis of different varieties of English. The book has 5 well-designed chapters starting with a focus on theoretical, experimental and empirical data, concerned with languageinternal (syntactic) and language-external (social) factors affecting an epicene choice. The development of the epicene pronouns, he and they, is showcased in a historical context, documenting that generic he appears to have a default masculine value in Chapter 1 “Exploring Epicene Pronouns in History”. Chapter 2 “Epicenes in the Twenty-First Century” is the first of two corpus- based investigation of current epicene usage. Almost 10.000 occurrences of he and they are analysed in two subcorpora of BE06 (based on Lancaster University) and this remarkable study highlights that the use of they is the overwhelming choice of epicene pronoun in British English. However, generic he is quite frequent in the modern data despite the issues of gender neutrality and proponents of she. -MasculinitiesA Journal of Identity and Culture, Feb., 2015/3, 247-249 Masculinities Journal Chapter 3 “Epicenes and Social Movement” takes a very close look at the language-external (social) factors affecting the personal pronoun paradigm and revolves around two key elements of the epicene debate: the promotion of generic he in the eighteenth century and the rise of second wave feminism which rejects gender exclusive terms. This structured chronologically arranged chapter moves from traditional grammatical prescriptivism during the Middle Ages (where the dominance of male generics is understandable as women were all but excluded from the educated audience) to sexist language reforms which argue that “languages which mark gender assiduously in their grammars and treat the masculine as the unmarked gender will lead their speakers to perceive the world in gender-polarised and androcentric ways (91). The result of these reforms is the singular use of they, which correlates with the fact that 60 per cent of the teachers (in Pauwels and Winter’s study in 1998) would correct any students’ use of generic he in the classroom despite the promotion and overemphasis in the grammar books. Chapter 4 “Prescriptions, Standards and Epicenes” delves into research on epicene prescriptions in grammar books up to date and address the fact that there is very little data on epicene prescriptions after the 1980s with little hypothesis that grammars published at the start of the twenty-first century will continue the trend stated in Chapter 3. Laura Louise Paterson talks about how she created the Grammar Corpus in detail and meticulously by enthusing that she went through a long ordeal to select 20 bestselling grammar books out of 42 books, 31 of which have been published post-2000. It is clear that not only has there been a movement away from endorsing generic he, there has also been an increase in the consideration of singular they which is six times more likely to coindex with an indefinite pronoun (such as somebody, anybody…) than he. The last chapter “Accounting for Epicene Choice” is concerned with the results from the corpus analyses which are contextualized within a wider literature. Paterson claims that the current epicene choice in written British English is singular they, which is treated more 248 Masculinities Journal favourably in grammar books. The final section of Chapter 5 is devoted to Whitley’s theory (1978), known as the Homonymy Theory, which is based on the principle that there are two morphologically identical but syntactically different forms of they in the lexicon: one singular and the other plural, which are accessed depending on the syntactic form of the antecedent. For all the readers whether they have linguistic or non-linguistic background, Paterson’s work offers insights into the pronouns he and they and constitutes an indispensable tool in understanding not only the chronological history of epicene pronouns but also their current status derived from corpus studies. Paterson renders the study a stimulating and welcome contribution to the rising critical dialogue in epicene pronoun scholarship. However, these five chapters do not conform to a conventional train of thoughts of an average reader who expects a linear presentation of historical documentation of epicene pronouns. It requires a very alert and circumspect mind to assemble the bits of information and the results of the corpus studies highlighted in the book and to visualize the future debate of the use of epicene pronouns of which even the author herself is not sure. Feryal Cubukcu Dokuz Eylul University 249 Masculinities Journal Contributors to this Issue Aneta Stepien Aneta Stepien (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She teaches a number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Polish and European Studies, Comparative Literature and Gender. Currently, she works on a project, which explores issues of sexuality and gender relations in the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer. The project received a research grant from the Irish Research Council. Atilla Barutcu He was born in Antakya, in 1988. He graduated from METU with a major in Sociology and a minor in European Studies in 2011. He was employed in aviation industry for 1.5 years. He got a masters degree from Ankara University, Women Studies with his thesis titled “Physical and Social Phases of Construction of Masculinity in Turkey”. He worked as a project assistant for academic projects. With his short film titled “Damla Baligi” (The Blobfish), which he co-directed, cowrote and played a part in, he was awarded second place in “Women’s Voices Now Film Festival” in the USA. He was qualified for competition, with the same film, in “International Encounters of Short Films” in France. Currently, he is continuing his studies for phd in METU Sociology and Ankara University Gender and Women Studies programs, and is employed as research assistant in Bulent Ecevit University Sociology department. He is also writing short stories and has a book titled “Damla Baligini Anlamak”. Ayşegül Taşıtman Ayşegül Taşıtman received her master degree in General Sociology and Methodology Programme of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University to worked on masculinity. In 2013, her project on women’s human rights was awarded Raoul Wallenberg Institute Human Rights Research Grant Scholarship. She works in Sabancı University, Education Reform Initiative as a Research Assistant. Çimen Günay-Erkol Çimen Günay-Erkol graduated from METU Department of Mining Engineering, but never worked as an engineer except during her summer internships. She obtained 250 Masculinities Journal her master's degree from Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent University in 2001, upon completing a dissertation on socialist realist writer Suat Derviş. Between 2002-2008 she conducted PhD research in the Netherlands at Leiden University's Department of Literary Studies, and earned her PhD degree from Leiden University with a thesis on post-coup novels of 1970s, the so-called March 12 Novels. Since 2008, she is assistant professor of Turkish Literature at Özyeğin University in Istanbul and since 2009 she is the mother of Ali Liber. Her fields of interest include gender and masculinity studies, disability studies, biography, and topics such as testimony in coup periods and fictionalization of history. Feryal Cubukcu Assoc. Prof. Dr. Feryal Cubukcu got her B.A. and M.A. on ELT from Dokuz Eylul University and Ph. D. on critical literary theories from Ege University. Her main interests are deconstruction, literary theories, film studies, applied linguistics and psycholinguistics. She has currently been working at Dokuz Eylul University, Faculty of Education. Gloria Gadsden Gloria Gadsden earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary areas of interest are gender/sexuality, race, pop culture and crime/deviance. She recently relocated to the South Western part of the United States where she teaches Criminal Justice and Sociology at New Mexico Highlands University. Ivan Ferrero Ruiz Ivan Ferrero Ruiz was born in León, Spain, where he obtained a BA in English Language and Literature. After finishing his studies in 2011, he moved to Massachusetts to work as a foreign language assistant for Spanish at the College of the Holy Cross. Currently, he is a PhD student in the department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages at the University of Connecticut (Uconn), where he also completed an MA in the Spanish section. 251 Masculinities Journal N. Gamze Toksoy N. Gamze Toksoy is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. She teaches Visual Studies courses in the Department of Sociology. Her research interests qualitative researches, social thought and images, visual documentaries, gender, masculinity, narratives, social memory and social power. Nataša Pivec Nataša Pivec, an independent researcher, has obtained a Ph.D. degree in sociology at Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has published in prominent Slovenian academic journals, such are "Teorija in praksa" and "Družboslovne razprave". Her research focuses on genders, sexualities, media representations, intersectionality, feminist and queer theory. Steven G. Jug Steven G. Jug received his BA and MA in history at the University of Toronto, Canada. He received his PhD in Russian History at the University of Illinois in 2013. His dissertation, “All Stalin’s Men? Soldierly Masculinities in the Soviet War Effort, 1938-1945” won the graduate essay prize (for the best chapter or article about gender by a male or female graduate student) of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies for chapter three, also in 2013. He currently lectures at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Tamas Nagypal Tamas Nagypal is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at York University, Toronto. He has a double Master’s in Philosophy from Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary and in Gender Studies from Central European University, Budapest. His current research focuses on a Lacanian psychoanalytic reading of cynical masculinities in contemporary neo-noir films. He has essays in the edited collections Zizek and Media Studies: A Reader and the forthcoming Holy Terrors: Essays on Monstrous Children in Cinema. 252 Masculinities Journal Guidelines Masculinities is an online biannual journal of interdisciplinary and critical studies of gender and masculinity. It aims to enable researchers and scholar to discussissues in an independent and inspiring forum related to the representations of gender, particularly masculinity, formations of gendered identities, cultural, social, and aesthetic reflections of masculinity in culture and literature. Masculinities primarily offers interdisciplinary and pioneering research in the field of gender and masculinity, necessarily outreaching into arts, literature, history, sociology, philosophy, communications, linguistics, and medicine. 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Reviews of any kind must generally conform to the guidelines above mentioned. They must include such information in the heading like author, title, place of publication/organization, publisher/organizers, date of publication/organization. number of pages, length, language, price, etc. wherepossible. The review itself is expected to provide accurate information about the content of the publication/event as well as a very brief introduction of the authors/ organizers. The review should also emphasize the significance and the impact of the work/event in its field besides sometimes a critical assessment of its weaknesses and potential failures in addressing certain topics. The finished paper should be limited with 1200-1500 words at most. 254 Masculinities Journal 11. You must submit your papers and reviews to both [email protected]. You will get a confirmation mail in return once the editors have received your e-mails. STYLESHEET All submissions to be considered for publication should be sent by email to the editors as a .doc file and a pdf version. Please make sure that • Your text includes a title page on which the title of article, name and affiliation of the author(s), and contact information are provided. Page numbers should start on the first page of the text consecutively in the heading outer corner. In line with the policy of blind submission, the author’s name and institution should appear only on the title page to ensure strict anonymity for both authors and referees. •The paragraphs should be properly indented (1,5 cm) •Notes and explanations must be inserted as end notes (if any). •The text must be justified, except titles and headings which should be ranged left. •Word-breaks should be certainly avoided. •The text should be double-spaced including end notes and references. •Any images or graphs should be supplied as separate .jpg files. •The recommended font is Times New Roman (11 pt; end notes 9 pt). •For quotations longer than 2-3 lines, you should leave an empty line before and after the quotation and increase the left magrin by 1 cm. •Highlighted words or words in languages other than English should be written in italics. • For in-text referencing and bibliography, all essays should conform to the current MLA Style Manual. For further information, please visit http://www.mla.org. •Pleasea void using abbreviations unless very necessary, except conventionally used ‘etc.’, ‘i.e.’, ‘e.g.’. ‘et al”. Please do not hesitate to contact the editors should you have any further queries via provided contact information 255 Masculinities Journal Yayın ve Yazım Kuralları Masculinities toplumsal cinsiyet ve erkeklik çalışmalarına eleştirel bir yaklaşımı benimseyen ve yılda iki kez yayınlanan disiplinler arası bir akademik dergidir. Araştırmacıları ve akademisyenleri, toplumsal cinsiyet, ve özellikle de erkeklik temsilleri, toplumsal cinsiyet kimliklerinin oluşumu, erkekliğin kültür ve edebiyatta kültürel, sosyal ve estetik yansımalarına ilişkin bağımsız ve ilham verici tartışmaları yürütecekleri bir platform sunmayı amaçlamaktadır. Erkeklikler, öncelikle toplumsal cinsiyet ve erkeklik alanında ama aynı zamanda kaçınılmaz olarak sanat, edebiyat, tarih, sosyoloji, felsefe, iletişim ve dilbilim alanlarını da kapsayacak disiplinler arası ve öncü çalışmalara yer vermeyi hedeflemektedir. Dergi editörleri, her türden bilimsel ve eleştirel katılımı, makaleleri, kitap ve film incelemelerini, yayınlanmış makale incelemelerini, gerçekleştirilecek etkinlik duyurularını, konferans raporlarını, ve toplumsal cinsiyet çalışmaları ve/veya erkeklik çalışmalarına herhangi bir çalışmayı dergide görmeyi arzu etmektedirler. Gönderilen metinler, ikili kör hakemlik değerlendirmesinden sonra yayınlanırlar ve ana yayın ölçütleri orijinallik, kuramsal ve yöntemsel olgunluk, bilimsel öneme sahip olmak ve netliktir. Editörler, gönderilen metinleri yayınlamak üzere kabul ya da red etme hakkına sahiptir. Metinde yapılacak herhangi bir değişiklik yayından önce yazara bildirilecek ve onayı alinacaktır. Yayınlanmak üzere gönderilen makalelerin dergiye gönderilmesi şu hususların net bir şekilde anlaşıldığını ve kabul edildiğini gösterir: 1. Masculinities dergisinde editörlerin ve katkıda bulunan yazarlarının ifade ettiği fikirlerin sorumluluğu kendilerine aittir. 2. Derginin dili İngilizce ve Türkçedir ve dergiye erişim ücretsizdir. 3. Yazarlar yazılarının elektronik ortamda (ücretsiz bir şekilde edinilebilen PDF kopya) yayınlanma hakkını editörlere vermiştir. Gönderilen yazıların içeriği tüm metin içeriğini ve buna eşlik eden yazılı ve görsel tüm materyali de içerir. 256 Masculinities Journal 4. Yazar, yazısının kopyasını eğitim ve araştırma amaçları doğrultusunda meslektaşları ile derlemeler ya da diğer yayın türlerinde paylaşabilir. 5. Orijinal metnin herhangi bir şekilde çoğaltılması izni için yazara yönlendirme yapılacak, yazarin yeniden basım için izin vermesi ve metnin ilk basıldığı yer olarak Masculinities dergisine atıf verilmesi koşulu ile,Masculinities dergisi herhangi bir itiraz dile getirmeyecektir 6. Yazar, yayınlanmak üzere gönderdiği metinin orijinal bir çalışma olduğunu ve daha önce başka bir yerde yayınlanmadığını ya da yayınlanmak üzere değerlendirmeye alınmadığını taahhüt eder. Çok yazarlı metinlerde, metni dergiye ileten kişinin tüm yazarlar adına söz hakkını kullandığı varsayılacaktır. 7. Dergide basılacak metinler, güncel MLA formatında yazılarak gönderilmelidir. 8. Metinler, 7000 kelimeyi geçmemelidir. Metne ek olarak, kısa bir özgeçmiş, 150-200 kelimelik Türkçe, 500-600 kelimelik bir İngilizce özet, anahtar kelimeler ve iletişim adreslerini ayrı bir metin dosyasında gönderilmesi istenmektedir. 9. Yazarlar hakemlerin kararı ile ilgili olarak en geç 60 gün içinde bilgilendirilecektir. Metinler, yayınlanacak ilk sayıda değerlendirilecektir. 10. Makaleler dışında, kitap, makale, konferans, akademik toplantı, film, performans, yüksek lisans ve doktora tezi incelemelerini de yayınlanmak üzere gönderebilirsiniz. Bu türden her inceleme genel itibarı ile yukarıda bahsi geçen hususlara tabidir. Ayrıca, her bir inceleme, (eğer mümkünse) yazar, başlık, basım/ düzenleme yeri, basim/düzenleme tarihi, sayfa sayısı/uzunluğu, dili, fiyatı vb. bilgileri başlığın hemen altında sağlamalıdır. İncelemenin basılı metin/düzenlenen etkinliğin içeriğine dair net bir bilgi sunması ve yazar/düzenleyenler hakkında kısa bir bilgilendirme yapması beklenmektedir. İnceleme metni çalışmanın/olayın kendi alanında önemini ve etkisini olduğu kadar belli konulara değinme konusundaki yetersizliklerini de 257 Masculinities Journal içermelidir. İnceleme metni 1200-1500 kelime ile sınırlanmalıdır. 11. Makalelerinizi ve incelemelerinizi bu metnin sonunda verilen iletişim adresine gönderebilirsiniz. Metniniz editörlerin eline geçtiğinde bir doğrulama mesajı alacaksınız. YAZIM KURALLARI Yayınlanmak üzere gönderilecek tüm metinler .doc ve PDF formatında e-mail ile gönderilmelidir. Metinlerin şu hususları taşıdığına emin olunuz: •Metin, ayrı bir kapak sayfasında makale başlığı, yazar(lar)ın ismi ve kurumsal bağlantıları, ve iletişim bilgileri yer almalıdır. Sayfa numaraları metnin ilk sayfasından itibaren üst dış kenarda yer almalıdır. Kör hakem değerlendirmesi politikası uyarınca, yazarın ismi ve kurumu yalnızca kapak sayfasında yer almalıdır. •Paragrafların ilk satır girintisi düzgün bir şekilde verilmelidir (1,5 cm). • Notlar ve açıklamalar (varsa eğer) son not olarak verilmelidir. •Metin iki yana yaslanmalı, başlık ve alt başlıklar sola hizalanmalıdır. •Satır sonunda kelimenin bölünmesinden kesinlikle kaçınmalıdır. •Son notlar ve referanslar kısmı dahil metin çift aralıkla yazılmalıdır. •Resimler ve grafikler ayrı bir klasörde .jpg dosyası olarak gönderilmelidir •Tavsiye edilen yazı karakteri Times New Roman’dır (11 pt; sonnotlar9 pt). •2-3 satırı geçen alıntılar için ayrı bir paragraf açmalı, öncesinde ve sonrasında bir satır boşluk bırakarak soldan girintiyi 1 cm artırmalısınız. •İngilizce/Turkçe olmayan önemli kelimeler/terimler italik olarak verilmelidir. •Metin içi referans ve kaynakça için, tüm metinler MLA formatına uygun olmalıdır. Daha fazla bilgi için lütfen bkz http://www.mla.org. 258 Masculinities Journal •Lütfen, çok gerekli olmadıkça kısaltmalardan kaçının, kısaltma verilmesinin gerekli olduğu durumlarda, ilk kullanımda kısaltmanın açılımını da veriniz. Herhangi bir sorunuz olduğunda lütfen aşağıda verilen iletişim bilgileri üzerinden editörlerle temasa geçiniz. Murat Göç İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Bölümü Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Pamukkale Universitesi Denizli Turkiye [email protected] 259