Imagined Masculinities

Writings on gender in the Middle East have tended to focus on the status of women. Issues of male identity, in a region which has seen enormous social change over the past thirty years, have been somewhat neglected. Imagined Masculinities redresses this balance by examining masculinity as a social construct as diverse in its forms as femininity.Initiation rites, ritualised violence and impotence anxiety are explored, as well as images of virility and male sexuality in popular culture and politics. There are moving firsthand accounts here too – a son’s recollection of his relationship with his father; a meditation on what it means to have a moustache; and a vivid recollection of visiting women’s Turkish baths as a young boy.