Paul Amar in their article, "Turning the Gendered Politics of the Security State Inside Out?" addresses the context of Egyptian women activists who were victims of violence (sexually assaulted, charged with sexual harassment) by the state (police) who used their tactics in response to increased protests by civilians against the police throughout the revolution. Similar to Mahmood and Abu-Lughod's arguments in our past readings, Amar challenges the binaries of local vs international human rights (Western feminist agendas). For example, the attack of Lara Logon which created a hypervisibility of the Arab street or mob ("its uncontrollable sexuality returned with a vengeance") was displayed widely in Western media. However, there was no mention of the possibility that the attack against Logon was committed against "paramilitaries or subcontracted thugs by State Security" to attack foreigners as they had been for weeks against what they deemed imperialist agendas or no mentioning of the fact that Egyptian women and military officers rescued Logon. Additionally, Amar cites the organization El-Nadeem who resisted the pressure from external forces such as NGO's (who only endorce more police "protection" and state violence, according to Amar) and instead focused on helping civilians cope with the violence committed by officials. El-Nadeem also helped sex workers (despite how "respectable" they are labeled) and focused on challenging Egyptian state violence. Logon argues that organizations such as El-Nadeem and many others in Egypt actually are more productive in achieving feminist work since they learn from the ground up the conflicts with NGO's and international-human-rights frameworks.
Afsaneh Najmabadi in their article, "Vatan, the Beloved; Vatan, the Mother," discusses the connection between the romantic love for a female vatan, produced through patriotism and heterosexuality, and a femaleness "of the beloved." The author addresses how the vatan was considered both an imagined community and the actual land where you were born or homeland. The love for the vatan was so strong that it went above love for your wife and children because it was connected to the love for God. Thus, the lover is a patriotic son or male masculinity that through protecting his homeland is earning his honor. The beloved is produced through gendered notions of nation and modern citizenship that creates the land as an object of desire that needs male supervision, care and protection. Masculine protection produced a masculine brotherhood--a homoerotic space. Nadmabadi argues that this "Nationalist appropriation...produced a sense of persons belonging to a common land with a common history." Yet those who could claim the land often were only those born to the land and foreigners who claimed Iranian allegiance were eventually challenged. The author ends the article by showing visual representations that showed the masculinity of the state and the femininity of the vatan.
The final images you cite are particularly illustrative of the evolution of discourse regarding the nation. They feminize the homeland and masculinity the state, relying on a discourse of male guardianship to assert state authority. A weak homeland is read then as a failure by the state, in this case the Qajar state. In this discourse, the homeland can only thrive under the careful protection of a vital, masculine state, represented by Riza Kahn.
ReplyDeleteThrough out Paul Amar's article we see a sense of people being put into categories based on prejudices. We saw how new stations for instance displayed Egypt as a place that has yet to modernize where women are specifically those who are international are beat. We see the news stations broadcasting Egypt as a whole in this light of barbarianism. Amar also tells about how women who joined the protest were sexually molested, as if the officials were telling them since you are out her fighting for what you believe in, you are giving us the opportunity to take advantage.
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