BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY
From 1954 to 1999 the advertisement of the Marlborough man,
a rugged lean cowboy smoking a cigarette became the symbol of masculinity. The
strong and silent Wild West man, as Lydia R. Cooper suggests, “ identifies
himself as that other against all others” - the wilderness, the native tribes
and women. To post World War II American Culture is also ascribed, by Daniel
Wickberg, the term homophobia, first coined by the psychologist George
Weinberg. Literally meaning the fear of sameness, homophobia was described as a
disease as well as an attitude. Wickberg places this against the back drop of
the Jewish holocaust, which generated a collective guilt in western culture of
tacitly condoning extreme prejudice. The post war years saw all sorts of
liberalizing movements – in particular, the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Rights,
and Gay Rights. R.D. Laing even suggested that schizophrenia was the true voice
of freedom in an insane restrictive world.
As with so many prisms adopted across the world from American
cultural perceptions, definitions of masculinity also universalized. From
hetrosexual to metrosexual, male identity seems to always be discussed in a context of sexuality, politics or power.
The stand-alone understanding of masculinity is lost. Traditional non-western
societies, set aside their own gender traditions to adopt western definitions of
gender disseminated through film, literature and conference papers.
Pakistani men get rather bad press for being macho,
sensitive as a bull in a china shop, aggressive, trampling over the rights of
their wives and daughters, and controlling the destiny of their sons. Psychologist
Nathaniel Lambert quotes Martina Navratilova who said “Labels are for filing.
Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people.” He says even if the
stereotype may be correct, it can still be emotionally damaging, trapping the
person into reinforcing the label.
Diving a bit deeper into Pakistani culture, its language,
poetry and relationships, the picture becomes more complex. Most intriguing is
the male ease of crossing gender. In one
of Imran Aslam’s Grips plays, a character asks why the Urdu words mooch ( moustache)
darhi ( beard and fauj ( army) have a feminine gender when they are clearly
descriptive of a man’ world. If one accepts that social attitudes are reflected
in language then what does this say about masculinity in Pakistan?
Along with Shah Hussain, smiling unrepentantly at being
acquitted of stabbing his class fellow, Khadija, 23 times,
the Pakistani male is also a soldier called Phool Khan; he is also the
owner of city buses who instructs his conductors to not charge khwaja saras (
transgenders) because they already have a tough life. He is a young man in
Mehboob cloth market who has no qualms about draping a sari so his client can
select what she should buy. He is a taxi driver who is determined his daughters
should study and have careers of their own.
Boys are said to be socialized into restraining emotions
except for anger, but many Pakistani men cry in a muharram majlis, love
watching sad films and sing romantic songs. When two policeman with AK 47s on
their shoulders can walk down the street holding hands, we all know it’s simply
a sign of friendship or camaraderie. Nilander
Chatterjee observes that men or boys who
not speak English naturally hold hands.
Blurring or crossing gender lines is an old tradition. Ghazal
poets use the androgynous mahboob (lover) and male poets
may even depict themselves as female
lovers. Amir Khusro’s chap tilak, always
presented by male qawals, depicts Khusro as a woman in love with his sufi master Nizamuddin. Aulia.
The poet Sanaullah Daar took the takhalus or pen name of a woman,
Miraji. The wai singers of the shrine
of Bhit shah recite the verses of Shah Latif Bhitai in both male and female
voices. Shemeem Burney Abbas, in her book “The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual” notes
the deep respect and admiration by male Sufi poets for women in Urdu, Purbi,
Hindi, Panjabi, Siraiki, and Sindhi Sufi poetry, and kinship with women and
their work husking, grinding, spinning, and weaving, and honour bold female
lovers like Hir, Sohni, Sassi, Layla, Mira Bai. The Bheel male fire dancers of
Sindh, dress in women’s clothing. Khwaja
saras or transgenders, are not only an integral part of the society but
regularly stand for national elections. Pakistan is one of only 6 countries,
four of which are South Asian who officially acknowledge a third gender.
Many names are gender
ambiguous such as Talat, Shamin and Akhtar. Traditional Pakistani male and
female clothing is not that dissimilar – the lacha and lungi, the shalwar
kameez with a chadar are worn by both genders with nuanced gender differences
of colour and style . Almost all male actors of South Asian cinema
have dressed as women on screen without any dent to their manly image.
Pakistani Lollywood cinema scriptwriters and songwriters have been male, but
relate to the emotions and dialogues of women with great sensitivity and authenticity
of the female voice.
It is difficult to reconcile these observations with the
very real cruelty against women which also sadly exists in Pakistan. Clearly
there is a disconnect between the male public political self and an internalized
tenderness that only finds a voice through cultural expression.
Durriya Kazi
June 9, 2018
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