gender and sexuality Flashcards
formation of modern states and female authority
- Andaya “and formation of modern state institutions (including colonial rule) = decrease in women’s spiritual authority”:
Iberian views of non-gender conforming
- Iberian authorities viewed 3rd gender people as sodomites and treated them as such – eg slaughter of men dressed as women by conquistador Vasco de Balboa in Panama 1513
Iberians and spread of religion
- Imperial legitimacy for Iberians bound up in Catholicism – thus necessary for subservient population to internalise Catholic values too.
Hindu temple dancers and christianity
- Devadasi
Devadasi is partnered to a Brahmin but symbolically married to the temple of the god and caste-less
Symbol of sexualisation, fetishization, and orientalism
October 1699 – viceroy expels dancers from Goa on the grounds that they threaten Catholic morality
female priestesses and catholicism
Female baylan in the Phillipines held authority as Animist ‘priestesses’ until Hispanic Catholicism gradual deprived them of their respected status as spiritual practitioners. They were replaced by male baylan who had formerly been subservient to them - with the Spanish Catholic conquest came new and unequal gender relationships
In Taiwan, VOC (dutch East India Company) exile old women to undergo religious reinstruction and punish those seen to be witches
limits of religious education for women
in the late eighteenth century, a Vietnamese envoy returned from China after studying a technique known as “spirit writing” that could divine supernatural wishes but was restricted to men.
religion and female role
- In stressing the behavior expected of “good” women, the newly arrived religions of Islam and Christianity joined Buddhism and Confucianism in presenting forthright and persuasive models of female modesty and submissiveness
female subordination in Islamic courts
- Concerning the distinction between men and women, men had greater legal weight since at the shari’ ah courts they were most often called upon to serve as witnesses and to offer testimony. Women’s testimony was not considered equal to men’s, and they received lesser shares of inheritances as well. Justice was gendered, and bodies and lives not equally valued, since among commoners the free-born Muslim male was most privileged
- Islamic law- As Judith Tucker reminds us, the “male power of talaq, the power to end a marriage at any time and without offering justification, stood at the center of a system of divorce that privileged men.
Shariah court hierarchy
- The Shariah court also articulate the social hierarchy by demonstrating how, as a result of women’s decision to convert, Muslim men gained the most, new Muslim women gained less than Muslim men and non-Muslim men were the biggest losers
intermarriage and growth of Islam
- Intermarriage played an important role in the growth of Islam. Arabic traders often married local women to gain access to economic and political power through kin connections; such households then blended Islamic and Indigenous marital practices, religious rituals, and norms of behavior for men and women. These blends were also shaped by social class, with elite households generally following Islamic norms more closely than those of more ordinary people
general- ottomans and women
- Ottomans- as they emerged as the paramount Muslim power after the conquest of Constantinople, they made an effort to win the allegiance of Muslim ulamaby adopting the rules and values of classical Islam. One of the manifestations of this development was the seclusion of women. By the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent(1524–66), Ottoman women had withdrawn from public life
why did women support Christianity
- At the same time, it is not difficult to understand why many women became fervent supporters of Christianity. In an environment where child mortality was high and where every pregnancy could be a death sentence, holy water, rosaries, and religiousicons all seemed to offer protection against powerful spirits
no. of female rulers and permeation of religion
No. of female rulers goes down under increasing permeation of Islam and Christianity:
- 1699 – after reign of 4 successive queens (1641-99) in Aceh, envoy arrives from Mecca saying female rule is against the law of Allah.
- Ottoman sultan Murad III’s circumcision festivity
1582
o Muhammed advocated for circumcision – not compulsory for Muslims, but expected
o Circumcision as a mark of manhood that transcends social, political, and ethnic backgrounds and unites the population, including the sultan
o Institutionalised into a formal ritual in 1530 after Suleiman’s ritual for his 3 sons
Idea of ‘acting out’ masculinity before an audience – cf Judith Butler
o Ceremony circumcised not only the prince by other royals and sons of the poor – sources vary wildly from estimated 3000 to 10,000 circumcicions.
o All women excluded, except as spectators
circumcision festivity and imperial leadership
o Murad stages elaborate 2 month celebrations for his son Mehmed – a distraction from his own military failures and economic problems
o Men from all over the empire and all classes parade before the emperor
o Presences of foreign guests – from Russian, Spain, Damascus
o Mehmed and Murad arrive on horseback carrying bejewelled swords – symbols of heroism in Turkish literary culture
conversion as an escape from oppression
o Christians/Jews could convert to Islam to be freed from oppressive husbands, or owners if they were slaves
- When Christian and Jewish women converted to Islam, they often appeared at the sitting of the shari’ah courts to record their marriages and divorces and claim their legal rights to marriage portion and alimony, thus changing their social relations. Slave women who converted went to court primarily when the inheritances of their masters were recorded. In such cases, they asserted their freedom and their rights to shares of their masters’ estates. Conversion was a moment of transition, when both free and slave women were able to assert their legal agency
- The shariah court narratives of women who converted, divorced, took custody of their children and remarried provide evidence of their legal empowerment
Ottoman segregation of religions
o State concerned that Muslim women should only sleep with Muslim men, and Muslim slaves only be owned by other Muslims
Ottoman regulation of converts
maybe conversion isn’t freeing?
o After conversion, state immediately acts to ensure their new social status
▪ Converts are at a transitory stage and thus dangerous
▪ State quickly assigns them to new husbands and owners
o Rigorous social hierarchy is porous, yet new means of entrapment – women once again under the control of men and would have to appeal to a magistrate in order to be freed from their new Muslim husband or owner
difference in financial divorce support for women
- according to Orthodox Christian law, when a marriage was annulled the husband did not return to his wife the drahoma, the premarital donation given by the prospective bride’s family to the prospective groom. She did receive her marriage portion, but this was usually substantially less than the drahoma. This contrasted with the rights of a woman who was married and divorced according to Islamic law. A Muslim woman collected the premarital donation or prompt dower (mehr-i muaccel) upon marriage, and received a marriage portion or deferred dower when the marriage dissolved because of death or divorce
conversion to Islam and freedom of slave women
- Conversion to Islam appeared to be a more significant act of partial liberation for slave women. Conversion to Islam or marriage to a free man did not free a slave, but it could lead to a radically different social status. Upon being purchased at the central slave market in Istanbul, most slaves lived with Muslim owners and were acculturated into Istanbul life… It would be to a slave woman’s advantage to convert and give birth to the child of an older, esteemed Muslim. Some researchers have found that this was indeed the practice of many slave women in seventeenth-century Istanbul.
marriage when both consenting parties were muslim
- Marriage in the shari’a was viewed as a reciprocal relationship in which the husband provided support in exchange for the wife’s obedience.
Islam on remarriage
- It is noteworthy that Islam condoned both divorce and remarriage, and that a Muslim widow did not immolate herself on her husband’s pyre as occurred among high-ranking nobles of Bali, where Hinduism survived
religion in Ghana and female freedom
- Among the Anlo of what is now Ghana, for example, young women joined the Nyigbla and later Yewe religious orders as a way to defy their parents and also maintain rights to property after marriage
Akbar’s socially inclusive masculinity
O’Hanlon - Akbar and his coterie of reformers, I want to argue, drew on a careful selection of akhl ̄aq ̄i themes to construct a socially inclusive model of masculine virtue which transcended law and religion, caste and region. This model emphasised both the natural inner purity of the male body, and the possibilities for moral and human perfection in all three of the homologous worlds that men inhabited as governors
prescribed reading for imperial officials by Akbar
- Tusi’s Akhlaq-i Nasini – Abu’l Fazl said Akbar had this read to him regularly and set it as prescribed reading for imperial officials from 1594
Work states that the rational soul should govern the savage and bestial souls in order that man achieve his highest moral being in ‘adalat (equity/justice)
Tusi: the family is like the body; its head is the physician and each member a limb
Boys should be trained in self-discipline, obedience, manners, and restraint; girls in modesty and female accomplishments (not reading and writing)
Almost Victorian – and thus modern – ideas about gender/sexuality
why is inclusive masculinity integral for Akbar
- Mughal regime draws together disparate groups – Irani, Turani, Afghan, Rajput, Indian, Muslim, Hindu
- Need to create a unifying dynastic ideology – this is done by Akbar’s trusted advisor Abu’l Fazl in the Akbar-Nama
This Akbar as the perfect man (insan-i kamil), one of worldly virtue and supreme toleration
Presentation of the individual, the household, and the kingdom as microcosms of each other
importance of the humours, bodily regulation, and moral regulation of the household in order to preserve the sanctity of empire
Akbar’s authority and masculinity
- These ideas sanctioned Akbar’s authority without resorting to divisive Sunni orthodoxy
A ‘natural’ authority that supersedes religious endorsement
Physically and ideologically binds men to imperial service – only through service to the emperor can a man be his best
Offers a model for senior court members to apply to their own houses and domains, bolstering their authority too
- Akbar as the guardian of ideal marriag
Prostitutes of Dehli were compelled to live outside the capital under a warden/inspector, to whom men must apply to seek their services
Young women found in bazaars/streets without veils, and ‘disobedient’ wives could also be banished to this quarter
Female sexual activity for adultsonly – men told not to lie with women >12 years older than themselves
policing of sexuality by Akbar because of nuclear family model
Homosexual love not a part of self-controlled masculinity – lustful and cannot produce children
Jalal Khan Qurchi 1566 – tries to flee with his male youthful lover but Akbar has him seized, brought to court, and confined beneath the public staircase to be trodden on
Form of N. Indian/Hindustani patriotism against Mughal allies/rivals
Ideas of patriarchal and heterosexual authority contrast with perceived sexual transgressions of the N. Turanians and the Deccan in the South
Contrast also with warrior Timurid ancestry of Mughals, where fierceness and aggression were valued qualities – Mughals no longer a conquering state but need to consolidate and control rather than encourage disputes/subversion
Uzbek story of homosexuality
- Uzbeg military commander Ali Quli Khan Zaman – fell in love with Shaham Beg, a member of Akbar’s special bodyguard, whom he was eventually forced to give up
Khan allegedly used to bow down before Shaham Beg, call him emperor, and perform the kornish (royal salutation)
The filthy manners of Transoxiana’ – this story proliferates to demonstrate that Uzbegs are good military men but morally depraved
household hierarchy in Japan
- In the first decades of the seventeenth century, the shogunate formalized a system of organizing society in which each household was assigned a status ( mibun ) and placed within a social unit, which John Hall memorably called a “container.” These containers— households ( ie ) of samurai or nobles, villages ( mura ) of peasants, city wards ( chō ) of townsmen, sects ( shū ) of Buddhist clergy, and so on… A household’s position in one of these containers determined its place of residence along with its tax burden and corvée labor obligations, and it also established its members’ legal standing relative to those who belonged in other containers— a samurai, for example, was considered superior to a peasant, who ranked higher than an outcast. Ideally, every household was headed by a man, and his dependents would take on his status designation.
Shogunate’s repressive gender laws
- A household head’s wives and children occupied a different social stratum from hereditary servants, but in certain situations they too were counted among a household’s possessions. During the Kamakura period (1185– 1333), women were permitted to inherit, possess, and amass property. They could keep their own lands separate from their husbands’ holdings, and they exercised authority over their own hereditary servants. But the shogunate’s law codes considered women’s bodies to be part of their husbands’ or fathers’ estates, treating violent crimes against women as violations of their household heads’ property rights. For example, a man who raped a married woman owed compensation not to her but to her husband
taboo of sex work in the shogunate
- Janet Goodwin has shown that until the fourteenth century, there was no clear distinction between women who made a living selling sex and those who did not.
- By the late medieval period, however, patterns of work in the sex trade had changed. In 1500, lists of prostitutes referred to women who sold sex as their sole occupation, such as the “madame stander” ( tachigimi ) and the “madame person of a narrow alley” ( zushigimi). These designations reflected the increasingly urban and commercial nature of the business.
female attempts to rebel in Japan
- Like Innai’s wives, prostitutes resisted their masters’ efforts to treat them as property. One such woman, Jūzō, caused the magistrate so much trouble that he wrote several diary entries despairing of her behavior. Jūzō’s master, the proprietor of the Innai branch of a large Fushimi brothel had died suddenly, leaving behind four prostitutes— Jūzō, Nagasaki, Hyōzaemon, and Kokane (possibly the same Kokane who ran away with Sōdayū two years later). A few months after her master’s death, Jūzō came to Masakage’s office and informed him that she wished to return to her home in Kansai. Like many of the mine’s women, she had no relatives or acquaintances in Innai, and she argued that she could no longer support herself. Masakage was troubled by her request, and he ordered her to remain in the mine for several more months. If her master’s relatives came to claim her, he explained, they would be justifiably upset to learn that she had left the mine.
importance/value of sons in China
- Loyalty and honor were to be extended to one’s living family and to one’s ancestors, a quality termed “filial piety.” Sons were needed to carry out the rituals honoring family ancestors properly. As a result, various ways were devised to provide sons for a man whose wife did not have one: taking second or third wives or concubines, legitimizing a son born of a woman who was not a wife or concubine, or adopting a nephew, or an unrelated boy or young man. A woman whose husband had died before she gave birth to a son might be expected to remarry his brother, so as to produce a son who was legally regarded as the child of her deceased husband.
