PM's recent post about a special "virginity" soap available in the Middle East has sparked quite an interesting discussion of female chastity. The double-standard applied to men and women when it comes to chastity is yet another example of cultural and religious hypocrisy at work. Islam demands chastity irrespective of gender, yet Muslims cling to a cultural paradigm that places the greater burden of remaining chaste upon women because female chastity is inextricably tied to male honor. While men can conveniently hide their sexual behavior behind a zipper or flowing white robe (and often do), women carry the evidence of their sexuality around with them for all the world to see, thus bringing shame to their families.
All too often we see parents placing entirely too much emphasis on controlling the behavior of their daughters while neglecting to recognize that without placing the same type of controls on their sons, they place the daughters of others in the same danger from which they seek to protect their own girls! What is that cliche about needing two to tango?
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5 comments:
I was working up to comment over at Jamila's about the Male Honor Syndrome. I don't get it. I do come from a society that the idea of male honor connected to female family member's chasity and behavior seems to be non-exsistant in. Maybe that is a recent development and that in other cultures it has not been diminished. I just don't get it.
We've had similar, although not quite as extreme, standards here in the US when it comes to female chastity. Ever heard of a shotgun wedding? If a girl's parents were unsuccessful in forcing the male tango partner into marriage in the event of a pregnancy, she would be sent away and the baby handed over for adoption. All the while, HIS honor and that of his family remained intact because there was no physical evidence on display, he could always claim that SHE was a whore (and often did), and his family would make the age old claim that "boys will be boys."
Oh yeah. I do know one woman in her late 30's that had a sort of shotgun wedding. Alhumdiallah she is now muslim. But don't you think that mentality (Western Man's Honor)is fading VERY fast?
I am a bastard and growing up, I never met any others. All my peers had moms and dads and few were even divorced...this is only 20-25 years ago. Now must of my peer group...from growing up, though many of my local revert/convert sisters too...are unmarried but not virgins or had children out of wedlock. And there isn't any cultural shame placed on it.
So what's happening? And why is it changing so quickly? And is it a worldwide/cross-cultural occurrence?
Ummbadier, I think that the idea of female chastity being tied to male honor began to change in the West with the sexual revolution. With the sexual revolution came a rejection of the morality imposed by religion and the social stigma of illegitimacy. Even our language has adapted to reflect this social change. We no longer refer to children born out of wedlock as "bastards"; they are the children of "single parents." Personally, I like this much better because I have never felt that the children of irresponsible adults should suffer for the bad decisions their parents made and branding them with a label such as "bastard" places the blame on the innocent where it does not belong.
That I know of, I was only jokingly called "Bastard" by a couple of good friends when I was in my teens. I didn't grow up feeling a stigma of being a "fatherless chid" or "bastard". Of course, I have little idea how people judged/viewed my family when I was young...I know know the grandparents were not happy! Though it seems it may have happened to family members in their generation too. I don't remember hearing the term single parent until much later...and now of course we have the charming terminology "Baby-Mama" and "Baby-Daddy". And that is what I am suprised about. That the times are a changing so quickly...or maybe this just goes hand'n'hand with the days going by so much faster the older I get!
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