Gender, Sexuality, and Diaspora

Fataneh Farahani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781134458806
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études relatives au genre

To what extent do women accept, adjust and challenge the intersecting and shifting relations of cultural, political and religious discourses that organize their (sexual) lives?

Seeking to expand the focus on changing gender roles and construction of diasporic femininities and sexualities in migration studies, Farahani presents an original analysis of first generation Iranian immigrant women in Sweden. Certainly, highlighting the hybrid experiences of Swedish Iranians, Farahani explores the tensions that develop between the process of (self)disciplining women's bodies and the coping tactics that women employ. Subsequently, Gender, Sexuality, and Diaspora demonstrates how migratory experiences impact sexuality and, conversely, how sexuality is constitutive of migratory processes.

A timely book rich with empirical and theoretical insights on the subject of gender, diaspora and sexuality, it will appeal to scholars and undergraduate and postgraduate students of gender studies, anthropology, sociology, sexuality studies, diaspora, postcolonial and Middle Eastern studies.

1
Theoretical Platform and Methodological Concerns

An Introduction

This book contributes to the under-researched area of diasporic sexuality and examines sexuality as gendered, historicised, and culturally constructed through an analysis of the narratives of some first generation Iranian immigrant women living in Sweden. Since sexuality, both inside and outside Iran, has primarily been identified as heterosexuality, my main focus here is to examine the women’s narrations of their heterosexuality.¹ In other words, by focusing on women narratives, I analyse what constitutes a desirable (hetero)sexual feminine subject(s) in Iranian/Iranian diasporic social settings. By using the narratives of Iranian women who live in Sweden—as a case study—this research provides further understandings of the processes of identity construction within diasporic space as well as their (re)negotiation of sexuality and subjectivity as they shift across multiple boundaries within historically specific, yet contingent and relational, social contexts. By being attentive to how the interviewee women recognise, long for, challenge, avoid, (re)negotiate, and distance themselves from (un)desirable femininity, I examine how normative femininities are performed and established through shifting boundaries within a variety of historically specific social contexts. Here, it is significant to pay particular attention to how and in what ways the ideal and desirable heterosexual feminine subject is already constructed in relation to the abnormal, undesirable, and unacknowledged femininities.

To carry out this task, I have conducted ten in-depth interviews with urban-dwelling Iranian-born women living in Sweden. By studying women who have spent their adolescence and early youth in Iran, yet who left post-revolutionary² Iran and have lived in Sweden for more than a decade, I explore how and to what extent women resist, accept, (re)negotiate, adjust, confirm, seize, and challenge the conflictual cultural norms that organise their (sexual) lives. The interviews are the textual field for exploring the divergent and contingent intersections of the discourses that constitute the women’s shifting notions of sexuality. Common themes surface repeatedly in the women’s narratives and form the core focus of this book. Throughout the course of the interviews, each woman spoke of the importance of virginity, the strong connection between family honour and women’s sexuality, the practice of veiling and requirements for modest dress codes, lack of sexual education, first sexual experiences, the wedding night, divorce, as well as the impact of migration, racism, and orientalist stereotypes. Yet these common threads reveal diverse agencies; along with underscoring a variety of regulations and tensions in regard to the way they view their bodies and sexuality, the women narrate the numerous tactics they use(d) and, in so doing, demonstrate a challenge to cultural determinism through the expression of agency.

By studying each woman’s narration of her experiences,³ I trace the impact of ‘Iranian Islamic discourses,’ particularly (early) post-revolutionary⁴ Islamic legal practices on women’s understanding of their sexualities and especially in relation to how they perceive these codified practices and discourses in regard to their approach to sex and sexual desires. I examine how normative values and social practices surrounding sex and sexuality enter women’s personal narratives, and how cultural and legal restrictions and representations of sexuality are articulated by women. This probing includes an analysis of the ways in which moral imperatives assume the normality of heterosexuality and patriarchal ethics in constituting the (un)desirable femininity. I also explore how, if, and to what extent movement across national/cultural borders, boundaries, norms, and practices (trans) forms interviewees’ concepts of their femininity and sexuality as well as how they understand, (re)negotiate, (re)settle, confirm, seize, disavow, and challenge racist and orientalist stereotypes in their daily diasporic experiences. The aim is to elaborate the tension that develops between the process of (self)disciplining women’s bodies and the coping tactics that women employ in order to negotiate, resist, adjust, and deal with the governing social order. Here, it is noteworthy to mention that by the ‘border,’ here, I refer to the process of bordering (Newman 2007), rather than the border as a permanent outcome that divides and set the boundaries. Along with the works of borders scholars such as Anzaldúa and Moraga (2002), Newman (2007), Khosravi (2010), and Pötzsch (2010), I also view ‘border’ as an intersecting zone of contact and constant negotiations which enables a reconstitution of different divided parts of entities.

Besides, while the word ‘sex’ often refers to sexual acts and practices, the word ‘sexuality’ encompasses a variety of fields (Wheleham 1995). Instead of reducing ‘sex’ merely to (hetero)sexual intercourse, ‘sexuality’ is considered one of the central organizing principles of identity and identity formation. It covers a wide spectrum of elements and includes questions regarding gender and identity, femininity (and masculinity), embodied practices, emotion, desire, fantasy, body language, clothing norms, and moral values, among others, which have a significant impact on the construction of identity. Therefore, it is impossible to engage with the notion of sexuality(ies) without taking into account gender roles and gender inequality, social norms and gendered sexual practices. One of the queer theories contributions in the study of sexuality has been to demonstrate how the ‘normal’ sexuality is not only governed by the attraction between the ‘right’ sexes, but it is also constantly constructed interestingly with class, race, ethnicity, religion, region, age, and ability among other factors. This shows how what we perceive as a ‘normative’ gender and sexual practices, and the normative image of a (married) couple is tightly linked with race, class, age, height accent/dialect, education level, religious (un)attachments, etc. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to how Iranian female subjects reflect over their (un)desirability as a feminine subject in a diasporic context but also on (im)possibilities to meet (new) partners. Do they consider their racialised bodies, ethnic background, and transnational experiences as an asset that they can benefit from or as something that makes their lives and sexualities more complicated? Once more, what constitutes the desirable heterosexual female subject in different contexts, and how do women challenge, confirm, and deal with these expectations?

The theoretical platform for this book stems from different threads, which have, in different but intersecting ways, inspired and shaped the intellectual framework of this study. The following perspectives, without any order of priority, are: Foucauldian discursive analysis of sexuality, feminist postcolonial analysis, Iranian and/or the Islamic discourses on sexuality, and theories on diaspora and its impact on identity formation, which I will briefly explain.

Foucault and Diasporic Sexualities

In The History of Sexuality Foucault defies the essentialist approach of a natural (hetero)sexuality and instead emphasises its historical and social roots. He explores how the social control of sexuality is accomplished through mechanisms of discipline and regulation, which construct the social and cultural order, producing and perpetuating behaviours and attitudes. Foucault’s discursive and anti-essential approach to sexuality (1972, 1980, 1990a, 1990b) along with his discursive model of power relations, articulates that the operation of power “is not ensured by right but by technique, not by law but by normalisation, not by punishment but by control, methods that are employed on all levels and in forms that go beyond the state and its apparatus” (1990a: 89). He, therefore, recognises the authority of the process of normalisation and discusses how the extension of truth is directly related to the extension of power. He also accentuates that resistance is under no circumstances exterior in relation to power: “Where there is power, there is resistance” (1990a: 95).⁵

Through a gendered and interdisciplinary use of Foucauldian discursive genealogy, which traces historically and culturally specific threads, I examine, to use Foucault’s words, “how, why, and in what forms was sexuality constituted as a moral domain” (1990b: 10) for the Iranian-born Swedish women who spent around the first two decades of their lives in Iran. Being interested in examining the ways women normalise, communicate their refusal/acceptance/reluctance, I pay particular attention to their daily struggles and tactics. Therefore, I focus mainly on the simultaneous existence of opposing elements, which Foucault calls heterotopia. Contesting the homogenous space of the unreal “utopia,” Foucault advocates for a “heterotopic” space inhabited by contradictory and conflictual elements at the same time and place (1986).

Noteworthy to mention, while Foucault’s study in regards to sexuality has been used extensively, his analysis has been criticised for its gender-blindness⁶ and Eurocentricity.⁷ His failure to nuance his theory of sexuality with the specifici-ties of gender and racialisation processes shows an ignorance of many crucial discourses, laws, and restrictions, and reveals clearly the limitations of his otherwise politically charged history of sexuality. In particular, Foucault’s Orientalist approach toward the 1979 Iranian Revolution and his blindness of Iranian women’s placement in discourses makes his stand additionally problematic for this study.⁸ I find Foucault’s methodology constructive, although I am aware of the specific shortcomings of his work such as gender-blindness, Eurocentricity, and Orientalist approach toward Iran/Iranian Revolution, which are significant aspects for this research. Nonetheless, it is not the outcome of his work that interests me. His way of thinking through discourses and his relational view on power are beneficial to my study. By incorporating the cultural/historic/religious specificities of the diasporic gendered subjects along with the Foucauldian concepts of discursive practices in normalisation process of sexuality, I examine how the Iranian Islamic (hetero)normative construction of sexuality and existing racist and orientalistic stereotypes in diasporic space function as a disciplinary power in the lives of the Iranian-born Swedish women I study.

Islamicated Discourses on Women’s Sexualities

In Islamicate Sexualities: Translations Across Temporal Geographies of Desire (2008), historians Babayan and Najmabadi explain how term islamicate is used to refer to the variety of attitudes and practices that in one way or other are associated with cultures and societies that live by various versions of Islam (see also Marshall G. S. Hodgson’s earlier discussion, 1974). By adopting the term ‘islamicate,’ here, I aim to avoid deeming individual or practices only through the lens of religion (Islam). For instance, one of the crucial inquiries for researching the position of women (and men) in Iran (or Middle East in general) has been the necessity of associating or disassociating cultural authenticity from Islam. This tension, and the conflation of Islam with culture, has resulted in the double bind of, as Deniz Kandiyoti asserts, “either denying that Islamic practices are necessarily oppressive or asserting that oppressive practices are not necessarily Islamic” (1996: 9).

While not negating the significant role of Islamic discourses, a binary approach tends often to ignore or minimise the influence of other variables, fails to take into account the political, social, and cultural relations unique to each society, and sets up the truncated parameters of analysis. Each of the poles of the problematic dichotomy has its own shortcomings. On the one hand, it is vastly reductionist to accuse Islam of being exclusively accountable for repressive gendered practices. Doing so opens ways for ahistorical, essentialist, and Orientalist stereotypes. On the other hand, it is problematic to entirely exonerate ‘Islamic doctrines’ (in all of their complexities and multiplicities). Doing so leads to discounting and underplaying their hegemonic and disciplinary power in societies and communities where Islamic ideology is normative. While avoiding monolithic Orientalist assumptions that identify Islam as the sole accountable component in the construction of ideal (desirable heterosexual) femininity in general and women’s sexuality in particular, the importance of the disciplinary power of Islamic gender and sexuality policy in Iran makes the impact of Islam irrefutable.

In addition to problematic dichotomised approaches that either accuse or excuse Islam for being accountable for repressive gendered practices, another binary approach divides faithful Muslims (believing) from secular Muslims or practicing Muslims from non-practicing Muslims. The division that has emerged from the secularism-religion binary pays not only no attention to the historical and socio-political contexts but also ignores the role of different ‘religious’ as well as ‘secular’ actors/subjects. Rejection as well as historicisation and contextualisation of the fixed secularity/religiosity binary not only disregards interchanges between secular and religious ideas, actors, and institutions but also fails to recognise the suspension of beliefs as well as disbeliefs (Hurd 2011).

By distinguishing mazhabe āryā-mehri/mazhabe avvām (the religion of common people) from that of rigid Islamists, Shahidian explains how the latter “contains not only religious elements, but also other aspects of social life such as class, ethnicity, nationalism, and political orientation” (2002: 117). Here, while Shahidian fails to acknowledge the inclusion of “other aspects of social life” into reading of “rigid Islamists,” he demonstrates that people are constructed in the intersections of diverse social relations. His argument refutes the Orientalist stereotype of a deterministic and monolithic identity based on only one aspect and one reading of religion. Like sexuality, religious practices are also multiple and multivalent; for example, Shahidian explains that “a person who consumes alcoholic beverages may also say prayers; or one may fast and pray during Ramadan without observing other religious rituals during the year” (2002: 117–118). The constant navigations, negotiations, ‘selective’ selections, and everyday cut-and-paste applications of religious rules must be historicised and contextualised and is highly observable particularly when it comes to different genders, amongst others factors such as age, class, level of education, ethnicity, and rural or urban context. For example, while religious discourse constructs sexual interaction outside of the institution of marr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Transliterations
• Prologue: A Diasporic Tale
• 1 Theoretical Platform and Methodological Concerns: An Introduction
• 2 Sexing Diaspora: (Un)desirable Femininity on the Move
• 3 Diasporic (Un)Veiling: Intersecting and Conflicting Meanings, Histories, and Power Relations
• 4 Diasporic Narratives of Marriage and Separation
• 5 Let’s Talk About Sex: Sexual (Mis)communication and Performative Virginity
• An Epilogue: Inside Looking Out/Outside Looking In
• Index