Etnográfica Revista do Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia vol. 19 (2) | 2015 Inclui dossiê "Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change"

Edição electrónica URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etnografca/3981 DOI: 10.4000/etnografca.3981 ISSN: 2182-2891

Editora Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia

Edição impressa Data de publição: 1 junho 2015 ISSN: 0873-6561

Refêrencia eletrónica Etnográfca, vol. 19 (2) | 2015, « Inclui dossiê "Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change" » [Online], Online desde 19 junho 2015, consultado em 25 março 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/etnografca/3981 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografca.3981

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SUMÁRIO

Artigos

“These days, it’s hell to have boys in France!”: emotion management in a French adolescent center Isabelle Coutant e Jean-Sébastien Eideliman

Prazeres perigosos: o contrato e a erotização de corpos em cenários sadomasoquistas Maria Filomena Gregori

Das nomeações às representações: os palavrões numa interpretação inspirada por H. Lefebvre José Machado Pais

Dossiê: "Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change"

Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change: introduction Adriana Piscitelli e Valerio Simoni

Porous masculinities: agential political bodies among male Hamas youth Maria Frederika Malmström

The Pentecostal reworking of male identities in Brussels: producing moral masculinities Maïté Maskens

Masculinity in crisis: effeminate men, loss of manhood, and the nation-state in postsocialist China Tiantian Zheng

Negotiating desirability and material resources: changing expectations on men in post- Soviet Havana Heidi Härkönen

Breadwinners, sex machines and romantic lovers: entangling masculinities, moralities, and pragmatic concerns in touristic Cuba Valerio Simoni

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Artigos

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“These days, it’s hell to have boys in France!”: emotion management in a French adolescent center “Hoje é um inferno ter rapazes em França!”: gestão da emoção num centro francês para adolescentes

Isabelle Coutant and Jean-Sébastien Eideliman

Introduction

1 The 2005 riots in France drew worldwide media attention and provoked a wide range of discourse.1 Sparked by the deaths of two teenage boys who took refuge from the police inside an electrical transformer, the riots were a link in the chain of recurring urban violence in the peripheries of large cities since the early 1990s but were more striking in their scale, both geographically in how they spread across the country, and temporally in terms of how long they lasted. Although the rioters were not all of immigrant descent, cartography of the riots shows that they occurred in neighborhoods sheltering the most recent waves of migrants, where large families of sub-Saharan African origin were over-represented (Lagrange and Oberti 2006). In France as elsewhere, commentators blamed the failure of the French model of integration, accused of being rigidly stuck on a republican conception of the nation that, by denying differences, hid discrimination (Jobard and Névanen 2009). Some observers noted that there was relatively little vandalism and that, with the exception of burned cars, rioters targeted symbols of the State in all its forms – in addition to local National Police headquarters, rioters damaged schools, municipal gyms, and libraries (Lagrange and Oberti 2006) – as if the youth engaged in these events had simultaneously wanted to express their anger at being the target of incessant police controls as well as the educational system’s unkept promise of integration.

2 And so, like in the late 19th century, the “social question” returns to prominence, renewing Durkheimian concerns for the quality of social relations and the risks of

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dissociating populations whose oppositions seem increasingly irreducible: poor and rich, young and old, Catholic and Muslim, French and foreigner. One of the special features of this new social question is that it specifically concerns youth from working- class neighborhoods peripheral to city centers (the banlieues). The most visible reaction came from the legal front, with increasing criminalization of juvenile delinquency (Bailleau 2009), but in social and educational institutions the issue takes other forms. Fears that troubled teens might become violent prompted incentives for opening listening spaces. Specifically moral issues (the unacceptability of teen suicide) thus got blended with more specifically political issues (the management of public order), which relate back to socially differentiated populations: behavioral problems (always thought to lead to delinquency) for the most part affect lower-income boys, while suicide attempts are mostly made by girls from a range of social backgrounds. The division between victims and perpetrators that has been promoted by the repressive policies of the last decade has allowed for the surreptitious reintroduction of distinctions of gender and class, with boys from the banlieues increasingly being cast in the role of perpetrator (Coutant and Eideliman 2013). 3 The psychiatric sector has seen some particular developments that provide good examples of the ambivalent qualities of policies trying to combine benevolent listening with social control. As so many have shown (notably Foucault 2006 [1961], and Barrett 1996), contemporary psychiatry as a site of work on individual normality is in a state of major and uncertain upheaval, its range of application being broadened as its expertise is diluted when it fades into a grey area shared with other professions on the edges of the medical and social fields (Ehrenberg and Lovell 2001). Absorbed into the new field of mental health, psychiatry saw its patients transformed into “clients” and its objectives go from healing mental illnesses to the improvement of nearly everyone’s psychic well-being. Hereafter integrated into a great variety of institutions, psychiatry is present, for example, in the new adolescent centers (Maisons des adolescents) that we chose for our research. These are public institutions created in the early 2000s at the intersection of social work and psychiatry. Between January 2010 and March 2011 we conducted observations of counseling sessions and team meetings twice a week and interviewed professionals, adolescent clients, and members of their families all associated with one adolescent center, located in an underprivileged town in metropolitan Paris. Given its geographical location, the center we studied serves predominantly working-class families, most of them immigrants. 4 A significant portion of the work done in this center consisted of making adolescents, and even more so parents, acknowledge affects (anger, sadness, shame…). Many institutions have seized upon the notion that speech heals and self-knowledge emancipates, making it common ground and the basis for how they intervene. In the studied adolescent center, professionals find this “pedagogy of reflexivity” (Coutant 2012) especially useful because their young clients tend to accumulate attributes distinctive to dominated categories of people (their young age, working-class backgrounds, and immigrant backgrounds), making them less predisposed to take themselves this reflexive approach to their difficulties, let alone their emotions. The last of these attributes is given particular attention because the center relies heavily on the ethno-psychiatric approach that holds that migration produces trauma by causing ruptures in familial transmissions that should be put into words.

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5 Psychologists (Lewis 1971) and sociologists (Scheff 2000) have been interested in the acknowledgement of emotions, especially its beneficial effects for the individual and society at large. We propose building on and enhancing their work by showing how these effects vary and take on different meanings depending on the social processes around them. We hypothesize that patients’ characteristics (gender, social background, social trajectories, and migratory paths) have a significant influence on their reactions to the injunction to express their emotions. 6 We will start by describing the workings of the studied organization, which is faced with situations where social and psychic difficulties are often intimately intertwined. Certain social and migratory trajectories, which we will explore more deeply in the following section, produce particular sentiments of shame and humiliation themselves. In conclusion, we will see that the handling of these situations leads to differing consequences depending on the gender and life course of the adolescents coming to the center.

An institution under tension

7 Formed in response to new injunctions for professionals to work in networks and provide a place for expressing individual suffering, adolescent centers appear to be echo chambers of problems encountered by the other institutions (like schools and child protection organizations) that turn to them in desperation. Their objectives are to guide and comfort the adolescents they take in, as well as to reassure and support other institutions struggling with difficult or distressed adolescents. Like the mental health sector as a whole, adolescent-center professionals are increasingly faced with situations where social and psychic problems overlap, to the point of having difficulty building therapeutic alliances based on anything other than a request for social assistance.

Missions that are difficult to reconcile

8 The youth center we studied, headed by a psychiatrist, was created in the early 2000s and served young people aged 12 to 21. It was intended for adolescents “with psychological or psychiatric problems, or who are at risk,” excluding acute crises or psychiatric emergencies. A variety of “pathologies” are listed in the intern handbook: attempted suicide, depression, speech disorders, eating disorders, nervous disorders, school phobias, family crisis situations, difficulties related to immigration status, dropping out of school, drug addiction. The center begins counseling with some initial interviews (three on average) during which a team (often comprised of a psychologist or psychiatrist and a social worker) assesses the situation. More detailed follow-up may then be offered – individual counseling, family counseling, workshops, relaxation – in a dynamic favoring a psychoanalytic and / or cross-cultural psychiatric approach in the significant number of cases where clients come from immigrant families.

9 The youth center professionals are charged with untangling complex situations in which family conflict, social (and sometimes legal) instability, cultural distance, and academic underachievement may all blend together. A social worker we met felt that it is often adolescents’ living conditions that make them “go nuts.” She spoke of families “torn apart by insecurity.” According to INSEE data, over 50% of housing is public

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housing in the city where we conducted our study. In 1999, 33% of its population came from countries other than France, 30% had not graduated from high school, 22% lived in single-parent families, and 38% were under the age of 25. According to income tax records, in 2004, half of the city’s households did not earn enough to be subject to taxation. In 2006, the unemployment rate hovered around 20%. 10 Referrals often come from other institutions under pressure, usually the school system and, to a lesser extent, child welfare. Even when teenagers or parents contact the center themselves, it is frequently because they had been referred by someone from one of these institutions. Professionals at the center sometimes felt that adolescents mainly suffered from institutional mistreatment, be it the “failure” of social and educational services or the “brutality” of the school system. The psychiatrist in charge of the facility we studied claimed to be mindful of the risk that schools might exploit his service, which would only reinforce the stigma that the child already carries. As an Algerian immigrant who had fled the violence in his country in the 1990s and descended from marabouts in a small Kabyle village, he was trained in cross-cultural psychiatry and was particularly attuned to the backgrounds and situations of immigrant families. He believed that the whole point of the institution was, paradoxically, to “de-medicalize this period of life.” To avoid further stigmatizing adolescents, he saw his work as partly resisting other institutions’ demands whenever they seemed inappropriate. 11 Consequently, comforting both adolescents and the institutions that sent them to the center could sometimes prove contradictory, because the center’s professionals feel that responding to institutional demands may sometimes go counter to pursuing adolescents’ improved well-being.

A surprisingly easy research process

12 After some initial reservations, our proposal to conduct research in the adolescent center was ultimately well received. We were not only able to conduct observation and interviews as we intended, we were even partially integrated into the care team during family counseling. We will detail the material that these research methods allowed us to collect, but first of all we wish to discuss the relative ease with which we were able to operate and what we might learn from it.

13 There are three main arguments that might explain our being so well accepted by the center. The first is its wide multi-disciplinary mix (social workers, psychologists, nurses, pediatricians, and psychiatrists collaborate on a daily basis) and the predominance of psychoanalytic and ethno-psychiatric theoretical approaches. A variety of professionals thus seemed to forget their particular professional specialization regularly, positioning themselves on psychotherapeutic analysis. The presence of sociologists is not incongruous in such a setting, and given the considerable connections between the social sciences and ethno-psychiatry we were expected to contribute to group discussions. Secondly, the center’s doctors were also university- affiliated researchers, and as such saw themselves as colleagues comprehensive of the constraints of conducting research and even eager for scientific discussion with us. Lastly, this center was in a particular moment in its history, going through an institutional crisis after a period being a pioneer in its domain. In the years leading up to our study it had become overshadowed by the adolescent center of Paris, which had

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become much more prestigious and drew considerable media coverage and for which this center’s previous director had left shortly before we began our study. Our study could certainly have been perceived as a threat during difficult times, but it seems instead to have been seen as a way to give new luster and visibility to the work carried out there. 14 This ready access to our research site seems revealing of both developments in the mental health field and the particular position held by institutions such as the adolescent center we studied. Sociologists may be seen as experts and allies in such institutions, which are dominated within their field both because they are situated in marginal geographical and social zones and because they treat difficulties that are challenging to classify in psychiatric nosology, since they combine psychological and social problems. Sociologists are allies because they reveal the mechanisms of domination to which these institutions’ professionals are victim (Bourdieu et al. 1999 [1993]) and because they seem to have the potential to support their legitimacy and raise recognition with their description of professional practices. This alliance between “psych” professionals and representatives of the social sciences is likely facilitated by the recent development of the field of mental health, which altered the balance between the disciplines of reference (Elias 1969). The declining influence of psychoanalysis and some psychodynamic approaches in favor of cognitive and biological sciences may lead the former to see the social sciences as allies that, like them, find the environment and life histories determinant in behaviors and feelings. 15 Over the course of the study, we followed the experience of a selection of families from the consulting room to their homes, via the offices of implicated professionals, the adolescents’ secondary schools, and other institutions involved in keeping track of their situations. This allows us to back up this article’s analysis with some detailed case studies, which are obviously only a small part of the findings used in the overall analysis. Our material consists of observations of approximately forty family counseling sessions, twenty-odd team meetings and as many interviews with adolescents and / or their families conducted outside the centre (usually at their home), besides twenty interviews with various professionals in contact with the adolescents we met. This data was supplemented by the study of medical files. 16 This research protocol raises some important deontological issues. Naturally we requested and received numerous authorizations (from the people we met, the institutions we visited, and ethics committees internal to the world of research), but we also gave considerable thought, jointly with the person in charge of the adolescent center, to how we might best proceed to minimally disrupt therapeutic relationships. We were thus unable to attend individual counseling sessions, and were limited to family counseling where we joined the panel of co-therapists greeting families. It was agreed that we could not be pure observers, because families might be unsettled by the presence of people who never speak or participate, and in fact we had little trouble contributing during sessions because discussions were conducted in a way not dissimilar from sociological interviews: the adolescent’s parents were asked to describe their life-courses and how their relationship with their child had developed through the years. These transcultural family counseling sessions are essentially designed to get the adolescent to hear their parents’ migration story from their own mouths, to introduce continuity into the adolescent’s own history, and to shed light on grey areas. We will now use an observed session to illustrate how center professionals work,

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especially how they give such importance to the expression and acknowledgement of emotions, which might seem overwhelmed by materially difficult living conditions.

Foraging for emotions

17 Mrs. Orélien 2 comes to her family’s first transcultural counseling session with two of her daughters, Gladys, born in 1990, and Elaine, born in 1993 (her four other children live in the United States and Haiti). Guided by the psychiatrist’s questions, she tells the story of their illegal migration from Haiti (where she had been a vendor) to France in 2006. After her husband abandoned her, worried about her daughters’ health, she had seized an opportunity to go to France on a short-stay visa. She had Elaine come over as soon as possible, paying 6,000 euros to a man who passed her off as one of his own daughters, two years younger; an acquaintance helped her bring Gladys over with a similar strategy, making her out to be four years younger. Lodged in insecure conditions with the people that had helped them migrate, educated under assumed identities and ages, both girls develop problems that end up attracting the attention of school employees: Gladys falls into depression, and Elaine threatens suicide.

18 At the debriefing following their first session, the therapist is uncomfortable. The socio-economic problems, he believes, are too significant for a real “therapeutic alliance” to be put in place. Mrs. Orélien incessantly asks them to help with their material situation. The therapist interprets the invoked psychological problems more as the somatization of their socio-economic insecurity than as genuine psychic disturbances that a psychotherapist could treat. The second session provides another opportunity to further explore the women’s material and social problems, and as usual the therapist cites the affects he observes, evoking the mother’s sadness, but also her courage. In reaction, instead of replying Mrs. Orélien intones a Haitian resistance song, then explains its meaning to the transfixed team. After the session, the psychiatrist brings up this episode with a smile, concluding, visibly comforted, “It works well, in the end!” To take up the terminology he used in our first interview with him, “foraging” finally allowed them to get to emotions: “In all psychotherapy, obviously the basic, if not indispensible, ferment, the essential, it’s emotions. When there’s no access to them, you can’t do much, but it’s also case-by-case. Yes, it’s our fuel, but you have to find it. Sometimes, even when you’re trying to forage for a long time, and you’re trying to go further, it doesn’t work, you don’t feel anything at all.” Indeed Mrs. Orélien’s song has the ring of a sort of therapeutic ideal: the transfigured expression, charged with affects, of suffering and will. 19 Adolescent centers are thus institutions in a difficult position, torn between a mission of social control and a therapeutic ideal, itself often inspired by psychoanalysis, that is difficult to implement given the limited time and means at their disposal. When, on top of that, they are faced with publics combining psychic and social problems, their task only becomes more arduous.

Trajectories of shame

20 Among the emotions family counseling “works on,” shame holds a significant place. A number of factors may provoke this particular feeling, which some consider to be the most social of emotions (Scheff 2000). Over the course of our study, it seemed to us that

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the handling of shame was particularly revealing of the entanglement between psychic and social processes that the adolescent center professionals tried to separate from each other as much as possible.

Humiliated parents

21 During a transcultural counseling session, Hamidou’s father tells of the humiliation he felt when he was called to the middle school because of his 12-year-old son’s “behavior problems.” He had the impression of finding himself in “court,” and he felt demeaned: “they were spitting on me,” “I was on the ground,” he says. The terms “humiliated,” “humiliation,” and “honor” appear again and again in this session: “It’s as if I was good for nothing.” The family has lived in a public housing project for a short time and the father dreads his children “falling in with the wrong crowd.” He is also worried about juvenile norms for relations between the sexes: “I’d rather die than see my son caught up in some sex situation, it’s dishonorable.” He is quite fearful his son will “lose his honor.” He straight out admits to the center’s professionals that he had envisaged sending his son to Guinea to protect him from a potential fall into delinquency. Then, seizing the opportunity all the questions provide, he comes back to his life story, recounting that he had been educated up through high school in his country. He said that he would have liked to have continued his studies if he hadn’t been hindered by the need to help out with his father’s business. He confides all the hopes placed on his only son, who disappoints him terribly, while his six daughters cause no problems and do well in school.

22 Although immigrant parents express their distress in terms of their children, they may also feel humiliated by French institutions due to some aspects of their children’s behavior, as Hamidou’s father describes. Immigrant fathers base the legitimacy of their presence in France on work and submission to the norms of the host society. They do not necessarily see themselves in these “children of France,” “these children who don’t carry on the parents” (Sayad 1979a, 1979b), because of the children’s acculturation into their host society. This explains the nagging anguish when they find themselves unable to give credible meaning to their immigration. This may happen after a work-related accident, for example: French professionals of the psyche have long used the category “ sinistrose” to designate the psychic disturbance prompted by these situations of forced inactivity (Sayad 2004), referring to a fall into abject hopelessness. One might hypothesize that for immigrant parents, this might also occur when a child’s deviance at least partially cancels out the family’s plans for ascension that motivated its migration, all the more so as its reputation in its community is quickly tarnished by a child’s deviance. Families usually have high expectations for their children’s success in France. If in theory educational democratization offers identical prospects for all students, in practice, socio-cultural handicaps weigh on individual fates. Boys in particular struggle to satisfy family expectations, and those who are socialized in street culture deal with institutions other than schools: the police, the justice system, social work (Fassin et al. 2013). But these parents fear that in using their traditional child- rearing methods, which include physical violence, they will be pulled into the French justice system, which promotes other norms of childhood protection. Some fathers express their impotence and threaten to return children to the family’s country of origin as the only solution (Timera 2002). As in the United States (Kane 2011) and other

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western European countries (Bledsoe and Sow 2011), parents see sending boys back “home” as an alternative to legal detention.

“Illegitimate” children

23 Shame is found elsewhere on the children’s side of the equation. When social mobility leads to an imbalanced habitus, it may engender a feeling of shame arising from the impression of a gap between real and virtual identities (Goffman 1963). This may be the case in paths of social ascension with or without migration. Annie Ernaux, a French writer, devoted one of her books to shame: from a working class background, she evokes her shame at school when in contact with girls from bourgeois milieus (Ernaux 1998 [1997]). She says that her feelings of illegitimacy stemmed from her unfamiliarity with the legitimate culture so valued by the educational institution, and also describes her disgust for certain aspects of the social milieu she came from and the distance that gradually separated her from her parents. In a chapter of The Weight of the World, Pierre Bourdieu (1999 [1993]) devoted a short text to these ambivalences that children of the working classes in social ascension may feel: guilty of disappointment if they fail, guilty of treason if they succeed. It is in this sense that Bourdieu speaks of “contradictions of inheritance,” an expression giving title to an article referring to the idea of the “double bind”: “Do better than me, but stay like me.” This injunction is perhaps even more pointed for children of immigrant backgrounds, especially in post-colonial societies (Probyn 2004). How to reconcile familial attachment and respect for a culture of origin with a juvenile socialization that quite often transmits other norms that may come into conflict with those of the parents? Parental respect and attachment do not prevent young people from seeing their parents as “backward,” “out of date,” “like back in the village,” whether in juvenile in-group contexts or the intimacy of a therapeutic session or interview with counselors or sociologists.

24 When the children do well in school, they grow even farther from their parents and may find themselves in awkward situations that are conducive to shame. Jennifer, the youngest in a family of five children (all born in Kabylia except for herself, born in France) came to the adolescent center following anxiety crises and suicide attempts. The psychiatrists also mention a “split” functioning in her file, something she seems to pick up on when she speaks of herself. Jennifer is a very good student. She hopes to pursue higher studies in law, but is as anxious about encountering Parisian students as she is about leaving her mother alone, since her parents live essentially as a separated couple. She is aware of the distance separating her from legitimate culture on one side and her family on the other, but she does not talk about her gnawing doubts with her siblings because “they don’t understand.” She feels different. Not only is she the only one born in France, she is the only one to have obtained the baccalaureat, an examination-based degree that caps the end of secondary studies and opens the way to higher education. Light-skinned and very western in appearance, she contrasts physically with her mother, who wears traditional clothing and a headscarf, and speaks in Kabyle. Over the course of her counseling, it seems that her troubles are not unrelated to her ascendant trajectory and the geographical and symbolic rupture that it portends. 25 Conversely, children who disappoint parental expectations and are not up to the role cast for them in the family’s plans may also feel ashamed, but for the opposite reasons:

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they ought to be more than they really are, and their self-image does not match their parents’ perceptions or aspirations. The father of Kevin, who is from the Comoros Islands, confides in the adolescent center professionals: “My parents work in sugar cane. Me, I want Kevin to climb to a certain level. If he doesn’t take the right path, I should set him straight.” These children are often anguished when the school system orients them toward paths of study they feel are degrading, even when their parents, unfamiliar with the complexity of the French educational system, do not understand the significance. This most often means being oriented toward a vocational high school instead of an academically oriented one or having a vocational option imposed without being given the choice, in an institutional rationale of distribution based on the number of places available in various sections. Our observations show that sometimes such orientational problems alone can bring people to the adolescent center. In the case of an adolescent named Sarah, her anxiety crises worsened when she was oriented into a special class for challenged students, which she experienced as demeaning but her parents accepted without understanding what was at stake. She expressed her distress in multicultural counseling, her shame of being mixed up with handicapped youths and her anger at her father who, although he had high hopes for her, approved the educational team’s proposed orientation. In another case, an adolescent boy, initially in counseling because of parental concern about his video-game addiction, ended up admitting that he had been demotivated by his orientation toward a vocational high school when he had wanted to attend a general high school (to which he would eventually be reoriented). 26 Shame is thus a particularly complex emotion that easily combines social and psychic dimensions. Adolescent center professionals’ work partly consists of emphasizing the psychic dimension with adolescents and their families, while minimizing the role of social causes, over which they also have less power.

Healing through acknowledgement

27 Generally speaking, beyond the diversity of cases, the work conducted in adolescent centers may be analyzed both as an activity of mediation (between parents and children, between families and institutions in charge of youth) and one of affect and emotion management (Martin 2000). It is a matter of doing “emotion work” with families (Hochschild 1979). So what are the principles and consequences of this work with socially heterogeneous populations?

Acknowledging shame

28 In the transcultural counseling we attended (and participated in), the moral work largely takes place by legitimating the expressed emotions and naming presumed emotions. On these occasions, the therapist regularly reminds those present that “anything can be said” in such a setting: “You can say what you want here,” “it’s very important that you get things out, this is the place for these things to happen,” “this is the place to dump things that hurt,” and so on. Over the course of the counseling, alongside references and / or expressions of shame, therapists verbalize the underlying anger they suppose plagues at least the fathers. They are encouraged to acknowledge it in order to escape it: “It’s like a seed, anger – when you bury it…”; “You know that

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anger can hurt the people around you?”; “What can be done to get rid of all this anger?”

29 The search for the acknowledgement of affects in general, and shame in particular, has its full place in classic psychotherapeutic practice, especially in the psychoanalytic vein, although the ethno-psychiatric setting gives it a specific connotation here. Psychoanalysts such as Helen Lewis (1971) think it is essential to acknowledge shame so that it does not turn into frustration, humiliation, or uncontrollable anger. Lewis believes that recognizing shame puts a virtuous cycle into motion in counseling; as a therapist she herself believes she under-estimated the importance of these issues for a long time before becoming aware of this term’s omnipresence while analyzing recorded interviews. Psychoanalysts aren’t the only ones to formulate such hypotheses: sociologists (Ryan 1993) and anthropologists have developed very similar theories; Thomas Scheff (2000) is notable among them, basing himself heavily on Lewis’s work to highlight the importance of the acknowledgement of shame in his own work. Starting from an impressive review of the sociological literature, citations spanning Georg Simmel, Norbert Elias, Richard Sennet and Erving Goffman, he adds the idea that the non-acknowledgement of shame comes to directly weaken social bonds to which he believes it is intimately linked. He consequently believes that non-acknowledged sentiments of shame bring about violence, going so far as to account for Franco- German relations from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries in such terms, whose dramatic opposition represented a sort of paroxysm in the destruction of social bonds. He then pleas for acknowledgement of the humiliations that were exercised and suffered, at the individual as well as State levels. 30 Without wishing to challenge these mechanisms’ psychological and anthropological significance, from a purely sociological perspective we think it worthwhile to resituate these theories back into the context that produces them: societies where responsibility, autonomy, and reflexivity have become cardinal values by which we judge adult individuals. In this context, requiring the acknowledgment of emotions also functions as an injunction to reflexivity to which some individuals can adapt much better than others, depending on whether their socialization prepared them for such reflexive contemplation of their practices and feelings.

Acknowledging shame, or arousing it?

31 The professionals’ challenge is to get families to verbalize their affects, but without shaming them by their intrusion. Even if the professionals have the deeply held intent of not judging parents, one of the process’s objectives is to lighten the stigma borne by the child by shifting the weight of the intervention onto the parents, who are in a way summoned to explain themselves, or at least to talk about themselves in front of their children. Although the shame parents sometimes feel when in contact with French institutions (school, courts, police, social work) may be acknowledged in counseling, the counseling process may in turn produce other uncomfortable feelings that can feed into a sentiment of humiliation. Case in point, Mme Orelien’s youngest daughter Elaine, whose situation we presented earlier, stopped coming to counseling because it was too upsetting to lay out family problems in front of strangers, “as if she were ashamed to hear talk about her father, our worries, etc.,” as her mother put it in an interview. Kevin’s mother, an immigrant from the Comoros, was unsettled by family counseling:

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she found herself face to face with her ex-husband, who she had left several years earlier. Before being able to give her point of view (about her arranged marriage and her oppression by her in-laws), she had to listen to Kevin’s father’s complaints and accusations in front of a panel of a dozen people, which ultimately caused her to withhold most of her version of the facts. The processes itself is, if not humiliating, at least quite intimidating.

32 Hamidou’s parents and Kevin’s mother were not truly ashamed during their visits to the center, but they did not feel entirely cleansed of the everyday humiliations they suffer through the school and their insecure living conditions, either. This indicates that shame may touch on different issues for participants on either side of counseling. At the individual level (generally the focus of therapists’ attention), shame is the opposite of pride or self-confidence, of psychic well-being. On a collective level, where it approaches humiliation, it is more in opposition to honor, a structuring category in many Mediterranean societies (Herzfeld 1980; Peristiany 1965), especially in the working classes. Seeking to revive an honor thought besmirched, the adolescent center responds with a reflexive pedagogy aiming to bring out feelings of shame or anger. In this space between shame and humiliation, honor and self-acceptance, tensions and incomprehension may emerge, making the emotional work particularly difficult.

Different effects depending on gender and trajectory

33 Overall, the institution indeed seems to have helped the adolescents develop a higher sense of worth, for their families and in their own eyes. Girls who are doing well in school and have plans for social ascension may invest themselves even more in the place, using it simultaneously as a pretext for this ambition, as a tool to distance themselves from the family, and as a means to acquire self-management skills. Jennifer follows the counseling offered at by the adolescent center because she finds it to be a space “for herself,” and she manifests an interpersonal relational style and a particular relationship to language coming from the higher classes to which she aspires. The institution in a way offers her the opportunity of doing self-transformation work (Darmon 2009) and allows her to express her emotions at this time of her life. In these cases, relations with social work and psyche professionals contribute to the acquisition of emotional skills, a communicational capital (Schwartz 1998). Gladys, Elaine’s sister, took up the counseling process in the same perspective: she would like to become a psychologist. Before coming to the adolescent center, she was suffering from both a downward scholastic slide related to her false identity and from another form of shame because her professional goals didn’t match the hopes of her mother, who associates seeing psychologists with insanity. At the time we met, Gladys seemed to have found a compromise by preparing herself for the nursing school entrance exam while taking advantage of her individual counseling at the adolescent center to better understand and assume her “difference” and to acculturate herself to the professional culture that attracts her (Coutant and Eideliman 2013).

34 To the contrary, some boys are reticent to participate and may even reject the adolescent center. When we telephoned an adolescent named Karim to ask if he would be willing to meet with us for a sociological interview following the conclusion of his counseling, he replied coldly: “No, I’m not interested, I’m not crazy.” Another boy, Gonzalez, refuses to participate in transcultural counseling. In one meeting he loses his

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temper when the therapist asks his mother about her dreams, denouncing it as an intrusion and an additional form of humiliation that goes against formally declared intentions. He rises roughly and storms out, slamming the door and leaving the professionals ill at ease. The psychiatrist asks whether the boy had been forewarned of the collective format of the counseling, aware of the potential violence such a procedure might have for someone taken unawares. 35 Girls’ and boys’ differing attitudes toward the program give particular resonance to a heartfelt exclamation Hamidou’s father’s made during an interview at their home: “These days, at the dawn of the millennium, it’s hell to have boys in France!” The mass of data attesting to the existence of masculine domination (Bourdieu 2002 [1998]) seems to prove him wrong. Yet when it comes to scholastic matters, for the last 30 years girls have been on par with or even surpassed boys: they pursue education further, even if the most valued programs are still overall dominated by boys (Baudelot and Establet 1992). In general, a number of structural social transformations giving increasing weight to cultural capital over economic capital in the construction of social trajectories have contributed to a new appreciation for attitudes that might be qualified as feminine, in that they are more traditionally associated with women than men due to socialization: being a good listener, having relational sense, being able to express one’s emotions. From this point of view, might not the policies informing the adolescent center’s actions – talking about oneself, bringing up the past, analyzing relationships with parents – show over-sensitivity or even weakness? Isn’t it better to “suck it up and deal,” to use a very common masculine expression, and “forge ahead?” Policies of listening – which are moreover deployed in institutions often labeled “homes” (maisons, as in these Maisons des adolescents) in reference to the feminine domain par excellence, the domestic sphere – play on aptitudes that, although not reserved for a particular population category, are more frequently developed and assumed by women, and those of the middle and upper classes in particular. The emotional work deployed in State-supported institutions sketches out an individuality that contrasts sharply with the models that guide the socialization of boys in working- class milieus.

Conclusion

36 How do contemporary policies of the intimate (Berrebi-Hoffmann 2009), especially those concerning the individual mastery of emotions, weigh on individuals today? From a Foucauldian perspective, one could point to new forms of social control coming from institutions at the crossroads of psychic and social works. From a Marxist perspective, one might denounce the hypocrisy of mechanisms that re-enforce the neoliberal order by legitimating it (Sundar 2004). Starting from specific situations and how they were handled in an adolescent center located in a disadvantaged suburb of Paris, we wanted to take the time to focus on what these admittedly ambivalent mechanisms reveal and what influence they might have on the construction of individuality in western societies today. The management of emotions proved to be a precious vantage point for analyzing the transformation of power over individuals. Such power is ambiguous and complex because, although it doesn’t necessarily work against individuals, it can still weigh on them, sometimes with their consent or even

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investment, with different consequences depending on the individual, one’s characteristics, and the configurations one is embedded in.

37 Even more than weakness in the social bond, the expressions of shame we recounted from the adolescent center seem to us to be fundamentally linked to a mismatch between virtual and real social identities, themselves caught up in the interplay between trajectories and anticipation, which leads to thinking about identities in a collective, especially familial, dimension. Adolescent centers, like so many other institutions based on a pedagogy of reflexivity, try to get clients to admit their emotions to release tensions and help individuals respond to the injunction to “be themselves”: the soul-searching and dredging up of the past should allow people to project themselves more easily into the future and transition from adolescence to adulthood successfully. Yet the consequences of this work are mixed because, depending on their trajectories, individuals may be able to follow these injunctions with ease, or they may struggle to do so. The most resistant are boys, with the greatest social and cultural distance from the dominant (which in this setting are incarnated by psychiatrists, among others). It must be said that these policies are imbued with more feminine and intellectual values than the repression-based policies they compensate for or complement. 38 These results allow us to understand the difficulties some families, especially immigrants and those living in difficult socio-economic conditions, face in satisfactorily raising their children (especially boys) to an adulthood of autonomy, responsibility, and social recognition. Their child-rearing norms put into question, challenged by the gap between their social ambitions and their living conditions, they are also tested in institutions that have a tendency to psychologize and culturalize their difficulties by rapidly removing social determinants from the discussion. This state of affairs certainly shows the power of the culturalist paradigm, but it is also the product of societies where economic difficulties curb structural actions addressing social inequalities. Through their work on emotions, adolescent centers do provide non-negligible support for ascendant trajectories, but doubts about their effectiveness in preventing the new uprising against public and moral order called for by many heavily dominated marginal groups are justified unless people are given the material support needed to set them free.

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LAGRANGE, Hugues, and Marco OBERTI (eds.), 2006, Emeutes urbaines et protestations: Une singularité française. Paris, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques.

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RYAN, Michael Timothy, 1993, “Shame and expressed emotion: a case study”, Sociological Perspectives, 36 (2): 167-183.

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NOTES

1. This study was supported by Advanced Grant 230347 funded by the European Council. The paper was translated by Juliette Rogers, to whom we are deeply grateful. 2. This and other proper names have been changed to help preserve anonymity.

ABSTRACTS

How do contemporary health policies, especially those concerning the mastery of emotions in the psychiatric sector, weigh on individuals? Based on fieldwork in an Adolescent Center in a disadvantaged Parisian suburb from January 2010 to March 2011, this article analyses what these institutions reveal of and contribute to the fabrication of individuality in western societies. In these institutions at the crossroads of psychiatry and social work, the management of emotions appeared to be a useful tool for analyzing the transformation of power over individuals at the bottom of the social ladder, especially immigrants. Our analysis shows how the effects of this work are ambivalent, and vary according to gender and social trajectories.

Como pesam sobre os indivíduos as políticas de saúde, especialmente as relacionadas com o domínio das emoções no setor psiquiátrico? Com base em trabalho de campo realizado de janeiro de 2010 a março de 2011 num centro para adolescentes de um bairro desfavorecido nos arredores de Paris, o artigo analisa o modo como estas instituições revelam e contribuem para a construção da individualidade nas sociedades ocidentais. Nestas instituições, situadas na interseção da psiquiatria e do serviço social, a gestão das emoções parecia ser um instrumento útil para analisar a transformação do poder sobre indivíduos nos escalões sociais mais baixos,

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especialmente os imigrantes. Esta análise mostra como os efeitos deste trabalho são ambivalentes e variam segundo o género e as trajetórias sociais.

INDEX

Funder http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781 Palavras-chave: psiquiatria, género, imigração, emoções, vergonha, França Keywords: psychiatry, gender, immigration, emotion work, shame, France

AUTHORS

ISABELLE COUTANT

CNRS, Iris, France [email protected]

JEAN-SÉBASTIEN EIDELIMAN

University of Lille 3, CeRIES, France [email protected]

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Prazeres perigosos: o contrato e a erotização de corpos em cenários sadomasoquistas Dangerous pleasures: the contract and the body erotization in sadomasochistic sceneries

Maria Filomena Gregori

1 Este artigo propõe um desafio: discutir as articulações entre prazer e perigo em algumas manifestações do erotismo contemporâneo. O prazer está associado à sensação de bem-estar, ao deleite, e indica uma inclinação vital. O perigo sugere uma circunstância que prenuncia um mal a alguém ou a algo. Em vez de confrontar a satisfação ao risco como se fossem expressões excludentes, pretendo tratar dos prazeres perigosos presentes no mercado erótico.

2 A reflexão apresentada a seguir é parte dos resultados colhidos pelo esforço prolongado de pesquisa feita no Brasil sobre novas formas de erotismo, e nelas sobre a consolidação de um mercado erótico e de toda a cultura material associada a ele. Uma breve pesquisa em lojas eróticas nos Estados Unidos, em 2001, forneceu perguntas concretas para o desenvolvimento posterior das investigações no Brasil, mostrando a emergência no mercado erótico contemporâneo do que eu chamei de “erotismo politicamente correto”, ou seja, as fantasias, imagens e objetos que constituem parte da pornografia atual valorizam a satisfação da autoestima pessoal, da saúde corporal e da capacidade dos indivíduos para realizar escolhas e estabelecer limites. Tal vertente do erotismo foi criada nos Estados Unidos, a partir dos anos 70 do século XX, por mulheres sensíveis ao feminismo que, dentre variadas iniciativas, atuaram no mercado com a abertura de sex shops como o Good Vibrations de São Francisco. A partir dos anos 90, as ideias e produtos ligados a essas iniciativas passaram a ser difundidos no universo mais amplo de produção, comercialização e consumo eróticos ao redor do mundo.1 As variadas experiências eróticas contemporâneas mostram – seja nas modalidades de um mercado cada vez mais transnacional, seja nos usos que as pessoas fazem de objetos, técnicas e fantasias – que as prescrições de gênero e sexualidade estão sujeitas a deslocamentos e

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ressignificações. Trata-se, inegavelmente, de uma dinâmica viva que supõe a criação ou invenção de novas normas, bem como idiomas diversificados para velhas e persistentes restrições. Prazer e perigo permanecem combinados nos erotismos, expressando assimetrias de poder relacionadas não apenas ao gênero, mas à idade, à raça, etnia ou nacionalidade e, também, aquelas que dizem respeito à posição de classe. Hierarquias permanecem marcadas pelos mesmos eixos que produzem a desigualdade social, econômica e política. Contudo, tais marcas de diferença são também empregadas de modo a tensionar o que é sancionado, provocar um arremedo, parodiar. O efeito mais significativo de muitas das experiências investigadas foi o fato de elas submeterem as inscrições normativas à ambivalência. Inscrições fálicas são tornadas sex toys, ampliando o escopo de experimentações sociais e corporais. 3 Diante de novos limites da sexualidade, porém, restam algumas questões: e quando os toys são chicotes, floggers, palmatórias e cordas? E quando a relação entre passivo e ativo sexuais se dá entre pessoas que escolhem posições em um jogo de dominação e humilhação? Qual lugar simbólico ocupa o mestre e seu submisso (ou escravo) numa sociedade que reconhece os direitos sexuais? 4 As práticas sadomasoquistas (SM), sobretudo as que se desenvolvem em meio ao mercado erótico contemporâneo, interessam particularmente ao desenvolvimento dessas reflexões. Âmbito estratégico para a investigação antropológica, as variadas expressões SM introduziram uma retórica, técnicas e rituais sobre o lado “seguro, saudável e consensual” de práticas eróticas que lidam com o risco. 5 No início de minha pesquisa com os sex shops, ainda nos Estados Unidos, eu encontrei, nos catálogos e manuais sobre direitos sexuais e técnicas eróticas, material sobre SM. Ignorante e intrigada, a minha curiosidade foi atiçada ao notar a ênfase a respeito dessas práticas: “In fact, S/M has nothing to do with coercion, either sexual or non sexual. The common denomination in all S/M play is not a violent exchange of pain but a consensual exchange of power” (Winks e Seamans 1997: 210). 6 Tal definição contesta as noções de senso comum sobre sadomasoquismo, inclusive a conceituação presente no dicionário, que define a prática como uma perversão de ordem sexual ou, ainda, como algo que descreve uma dinâmica entre pessoas envolvidas em comportamento coercitivo ou abusivo (Novo Dicionário Aurélio, edição revista e ampliada, 1986). O contradiscurso fornecido acentua, ao contrário, que SM é um exercício erótico de poder e não um abuso físico ou emocional. Suas expressões mais antigas podem ser encontradas desde o século XVIII, na Europa, mas ganham a conotação de minorias sexuais a partir dos anos 70 do século XX, nos Estados Unidos: nesse período, passam a ter visibilidade, no cenário político, grupos SM gays e lésbicos, paradoxalmente criados no mesmo momento em que apareceram alguns grupos feministas contrários à pornografia e ao sadomasoquismo (como o Women Against Pornography).2 Os estudos a respeito indicam não ser possível entender a retórica desses grupos SM e suas propostas práticas sem levar em conta os contenciosos políticos com os conservadores e com os radicais: de um lado, com o movimento em torno da New Right, de outro, em relação de contraposição ao feminismo radical.3 7 Simultaneamente, é necessário considerar a influência que muitas práticas SM sofreram (tanto nas modalidades heterossexuais, como nas gays e lésbicas) do que a bibliografia chama de leather culture. Associada por alguns aos veteranos de guerra da Coreia e, por outros, aos jovens rebeldes e aparentemente sem causa dos anos 50, a Leather Folk começou reunindo gente que gostava de andar de motocicleta, vestida

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com jaquetas e calças de couro e que se encontrava em poucos bares espalhados pelos Estados Unidos. Ao que indicam alguns de seus representantes, o que era uma expressão localizada organizou um movimento de maior destaque, passando a integrar interessados em variadas modalidades de radical sex, a partir dos anos 70. Guy Baldwin, psicoterapeuta norte-americano, além de ser adepto do que designa como SM/leather/ fetish erotic play desde jovem e de atender gente engajada nessas práticas, escreveu a coluna “Ties that bind”, por toda a década de 1980, na publicação Drummer (importante publicação leather, cujo aparecimento remete aos anos 70). Suas principais colunas foram publicadas em livro, no qual o autor conta que uma das fortes influências simbólicas foi a série de histórias em quadrinhos de Tom of Finland que circulou desde os anos 50, ganhando maior divulgação a partir dos anos 70 (Baldwin 1993). O conteúdo erótico é acentuado nesses desenhos, evocando o que mais tarde foi definido como radical sex: fist fucking, SM heterossexual, gay e lésbico. Baldwin informa também que parte considerável das lideranças gays e lésbicas participou dos movimentos leather. Há mesmo uma aproximação significativa entre cultura leather e SM (em suas diferentes expressões).4 8 Além disso, muito do que é praticado nas experiências SM apresenta um diálogo crítico e, em forma de paródia, tendo como referências Freud e, mais precisamente, Richard von Krafft-Ebing – sexólogo a cunhar, no final do século XIX, o sadismo e o masoquismo como psicopatologias. Em Psichopathia Sexualis (1886), ele definiu o sadismo como psicopatia, ou mais precisamente, como uma manifestação aberrante do desejo inato de humilhar, de machucar, ou ainda de destruir os outros, de modo a produzir prazer sexual para si mesmo (Von Krafft-Ebing 1886). 9 Desde os anos 70, alguns grupos organizados de SM escolheram adotar outras expressões: jogos de dominação/submissão, sensualidade e “mutualidade”, mágica sexual, sexo radical ou jogo de poder e confiança. Esses grupos têm o cuidado de, em suas palestras e workshops, divulgar a necessidade de as práticas SM se darem em meio a um contexto de segurança, devendo este ser estruturado a partir da negociação e comunicação entre as pessoas envolvidas: “you can’t dominate your partner unless he or she allows you to take control, and you can’t submit to your partner unless he or she accepts control” (Winks e Seamans 1997: 211). 10 No início do novo século, após intenso e longo combate à epidemia da AIDS e em contexto de mercado, essas práticas encontram lugar, bastante sintonizadas com alguns aspectos do que chamei de erotismo politicamente correto. Nos catálogos e folders a que tive acesso no Good Vibrations, há o esforço de tornar o sadomasoquismo uma alternativa erótica aceitável, a partir de uma retórica que salienta o jogo consensual entre parceiros que brincam com conteúdos e exercícios, ligados às posições de dominação e de submissão. Os chicotes coloridos e as cenas nos vídeos reforçam essa tendência. Tudo parece estar sendo cuidadosamente montado para encenar uma situação que teatraliza a humilhação. A dor parece não fazer parte dessa encenação, assim como a subjugação real ou concreta. E essa simulação vai sendo montada, no texto, a partir da explicitação de algumas fantasias sexuais: de um lado, o desejo de ser dominado e subjugado por sequestradores, estupradores, às vezes por aliens; de outro, aquele que posiciona o sujeito no controle de uma relação com uma espécie de escravo amoroso. 11 No limite, os textos dos manuais tentam legitimar o SM, empregando o argumento de que o jogo de poder é central na nossa imaginação erótica. A noção que está por trás de

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tal afirmação é a de que o sexo entre duas pessoas raramente ocorre em meio a um patamar igualitário ou de satisfação mútua, em um orgasmo simultâneo, sendo mais frequente que os parceiros se revezem no controle das sensações do outro. Sem dúvida, importa assinalar que esse tipo de sugestão incorre em uma espécie de naturalização do erotismo, como se ele fosse desencarnado de todo um mapeamento simbólico, cuidadosamente tecido em meio a processos históricos e culturais. 12 É interessante notar também que os manuais SM ou o capítulo sobre essa prática no manual Good Vibrations (Winks e Seamans 1997) apresentam, em contraste com os relativos a outras práticas, afirmações mais categóricas e toda uma caracterização detalhada sobre como definir quem está no controle e quem está submetido. Além disso, enfatizam a todo instante o fato de ser essa uma das expressões do sexo seguro: assim como os sex toys, os jogos SM não implicam o intercurso genital; e os manuais aconselham as pessoas a não ingerirem álcool ou drogas quando o praticam. Há um conjunto de normas que o potencial praticante deve seguir: identificar seus desejos e fantasias; encontrar o parceiro; negociar a cena; procurar o local adequado para encená-la; escolher a posição e os personagens; e cuidar da saúde e da segurança. 13 Minha primeira hipótese, sobretudo diante dessa vertente mercadológica, foi a de que o pragmatismo que recobre os SM plays seria resultante justamente da premência de torná-lo politicamente correto, afastando-o da violência. Indaguei, inclusive, se todo o cuidado com a segurança, saúde e consentimento não seria decorrente de um esforço de neutralização ou apagamento das desigualdades de gênero que marcam a violência. De fato, os produtos relacionados ao SM nas lojas são cuidadosos a esse respeito. Contudo, foi preciso conhecer melhor as práticas e os praticantes, bem como as referências simbólicas que estão sendo mobilizadas, de modo a reconhecer que o SM não se reduz a uma vertente tão politicamente correta e que suas variadas manifestações trazem elementos para, inclusive, contrastar com a violência, sobretudo quando a consideramos marcada por gênero. 14 Pesquisas etnográficas começam a ser feitas no Brasil, acompanhando a difusão e visibilidade das práticas sadomasoquistas, na última década. Regina Facchini (2008), ao analisar a sexualidade de mulheres na cidade de São Paulo, apresenta uma rica investigação sobre uma rede de adeptas do BDSM (bondage, disciplina, dominação, submissão, sadismo, masoquismo). Essa sigla é empregada pelos sujeitos de sua pesquisa como forma de salientar a diversificação de práticas, para além daquelas inscritas nas liturgias e rituais SM. Bondage, por exemplo, é uma atividade de privação de movimentos ou sentidos, normalmente utilizando cordas. O importante a remarcar aqui, segundo a autora, é que se trata de um campo complexo que reúne diferentes concepções de liturgia, de dominação profissional, da relação entre o intercurso sexual e o BDSM e distinções relativas aos temas caros nesse universo, como a consensualidade e o risco compartilhado. 15 A rede de praticantes é formada por pessoas da classe média paulistana que criaram, no início dos anos 90, o SoMos, uma comunidade de adeptos SM, responsáveis pelas primeiras reuniões no país e ainda hoje atuante. Naquele período, as pessoas interessadas nessas práticas se encontravam no clube Valhala – que fechou – e, durante os primeiros dez anos desse século, se encontraram no clube Dominna, criado há 13 anos. Atualmente, esse clube não opera como espaço físico próprio. Contudo, são realizadas festas com frequência mensal, com encenações de FemDom (dominação

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feminina), podolatria, bondage e as play parties (momentos mais íntimos da comunidade e que se realizam em espaço separado). 16 O estudo de Facchini aborda experiências observadas e narradas e decifra a formação e os contornos de uma comunidade (ou confraria), a partir das intrincadas relações entre as práticas e escolhas eróticas referentes ao BDSM e aquelas que são vividas no cotidiano, fora do clube e distantes da Internet, qualificadas por seus informantes como “mundo baunilha”. Dessas relações de contraste e oposição saltam intrigantes considerações sobre normas de gênero e sexualidade. A autora assinala que, no meio BDSM que investigou, os marcadores de diferença relacionados ao sexo, gênero e orientação sexual são mobilizados de modo bastante flexível, sem que sejam demarcadores de segmentação entre comunidades SM, como no caso das experiências norte-americanas. Além disso, segundo seus termos, “a descontinuidade entre desejos, práticas e identidades relacionados à ‘orientação sexual’ convive, em intrincados esquemas classificatórios, com distinções entre ‘sexo biológico’ e expressões ou ‘identidades de gênero’, mas sobretudo com classificações que remetem a desejos e práticas BDSM ou fetichistas […], ainda que haja coincidência entre desejos e práticas, ela não necessariamente leva a identidades que substantivem condutas em personagens, conduzindo-nos a considerar o BDSM como prática ou mesmo arte erótica que, embora tome parte na produção de subjetividades, não são transpostas, de modo substantivado, como algo que possa descrever os sujeitos” (Facchini 2008: 214). 17 Bruno Zilli (2007) estudou, a partir de sites brasileiros da Internet, o discurso de legitimação do BDSM. Ele mostra como a linguagem e conclusões psiquiátricas do século XIX, a respeito das fronteiras entre os comportamentos patológicos e os de natureza moral, ecoam nas reivindicações de direitos às identidades BDSM. O advento da Internet, inclusive, é um fator decisivo na difusão dessa forma de erotismo em nosso país, sobretudo nas interações entre adeptos e a criação de suas comunidades. No Brasil, até a década de 1990, o acesso a informações sobre as técnicas, os objetos e as possibilidades de encontrar pessoas interessadas nessas práticas era bastante reduzido: na cidade de São Paulo havia um sex shop, no centro, que oferecia produtos e serviços SM, segundo informação que me foi fornecida por uma informante, atualmente proprietária de loja e vendedora nos anos 80. Os interessados ainda poderiam estabelecer contatos através de anúncios classificados em jornais ou revistas eróticas (Facchini 2008), seguindo o mesmo padrão dos entusiastas SM dos anos 50 até os anos 70 em cenário norte-americano (Rubin 1991).

18 Chama atenção o fato de que, no Brasil, tais práticas ganharam visibilidade recentemente, com a expansão do mercado na direção dos produtos e bens eróticos. Tal aspecto delimita, entre nós, um universo singular de relações sociais, bem como de referências, imagens e práticas, se comparado à diversidade de expressões SM nos EUA, visíveis desde os anos 70 do século passado. É preciso lembrar que as variadas alternativas sadomasoquistas em cenário norte-americano tiveram destaque e participaram ativamente nos contenciosos políticos de diferentes posições feministas, do movimento lésbico e do movimento gay. No Brasil, como salienta Facchini, os adeptos, a discussão, o debate “BDSM não está inserido na agenda política dos ‘direitos sexuais’, também não está no campo de interesses do movimento feminista” (Facchini 2008: 196). Aqui, o SM é uma das expressões das novas faces do erotismo, particularmente daquelas alternativas que estão se desenvolvendo e se difundindo no marco do que tenho chamado de erotismo politicamente correto (Gregori 2003).

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24/7

19 As pessoas no clube se apresentam com seus nicknames, todos ou a maioria compatíveis com os apelidos empregados na Internet. São nomes escolhidos que já assinalam a posição ou status que o sujeito tem nas relações SM. Assim, nicks como Mestre K ou Y, Rainha Laura, Domme Virgínia são comuns, bem como nomes dos escravos(as) ou submissos(as) que são grafados em minúsculo e que incorporam uma letra que faz referência ao nome do seu senhor(a), como por exemplo, o caso de marYa, esposa do Mister Y. As posições de status são eminentemente relacionais: Dominatrix, Dom/ Domme, Dono/Dona ou Mestre/Mistress se afiguram em relação aos subs (submissos/ as) e escravos. Ainda existem os que se qualificam como sádicos e outros como masoquistas. Caso especial, me parece, são os switchers: as pessoas que podem ocupar posição de dominação ou submissão, dependendo da relação escolhida.

20 Existem diferenciações estabelecidas nessas posições. Dominatrix é a dominadora profissional (a que vende seus serviços na dominação feminina), Dom/Domme é o par dominador dos subs, Mestre/Mistress domina com ênfase no castigo e no sadismo. A Rainha é a escolhida pela comunidade e que supera qualquer Mestre ou Dom. Não existe uma distinção muito clara entre ser sub e ser escravo. Masoquista é alguém que está numa posição de submissão, mas que busca a dor corporal. 21 Facchini (2008) chama atenção que essas relações são produzidas em meio a uma comunidade, como uma espécie de confraria imaginada, definida por contornos (litúrgicos ou normativos) e por controles. Assim, é preciso ter em mente que as relações não são essencialmente diádicas. Elas podem se estabelecer entre um dono/ dona e variados subs ou escravos e, fundamentalmente, são definidas a partir de um conjunto de prescrições partilhado coletivamente. Tal controle comunitário “por outro lado, não deixa de propiciar um campo de conflitos, fazendo com que a comunidade se estruture em um equilíbrio tênue entre vaidades, fofocas, posições isolacionistas, debates de concepções, solidariedade e busca de respeito” (Facchini 2008: 198). 22 Além de termos que contemplar as relações entre as pessoas no marco de uma comunidade, existe outro aspecto que me parece especialmente importante: as posições ocupadas pelas pessoas e as interações estabelecidas entre elas não são pautadas pelo sexo biológico dos parceiros. Ser mulher ou homem não é critério de dominação ou de submissão. Também não há uma exigência de que essas posições sejam estipuladas a partir da orientação sexual. É possível que um heterossexual seja sub ou mestre de alguém do mesmo sexo. Também, há a possibilidade de o jogo erótico envolver uma relação sem, necessariamente, haver sexo. 23 Na primeira visita ao Libens, conheci narinha e Mestre Sargitarius. Ela é uma moça de aproximadamente 25 anos, estudante de administração de empresas, morena parda com os cabelos pintados de dourado. Mestre S, dez anos mais velho, é branco e presta serviços de informática. Ele se vestia com uma roupa comum de trabalho, calça e camisa clara de mangas curtas. Narinha, ao contrário, estava arrumada para a “noite”: escarpins altos e estampados, meia arrastão 7/8, um vestido preto curto e justo, cabelo cortado reto, frisado, preso por presilhinhas, maquiagem leve. O conjunto sugeria uma “meninota”, uma sedutora Lolita. Já se apresentaram com seus nicks e logo narinha caracterizou sua posição e relação com Mestre S como sendo D/s (de dominação e submissão), com componentes de sadismo.

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24 Ele, calado a princípio e “siderado” nela, que, eloquente, transmitia enorme vivacidade. Ela nos disse que a relação deles é 24/7 (vinte quatro horas por sete dias), o que significa: ela é escrava, mas também esposa dele. Mesmo tendo se conhecido há menos de um ano, eles já estão morando juntos. Para narinha, como a relação SM é 24/7, o casal estabeleceu que ele detivesse o controle e ela presta contas de tudo o que faz durante o dia. Não só relata como pede permissões. Na hora do almoço, quando está no trabalho, ela o avisa dos horários de saída e pede autorização sobre o que comer. Em casa, faz a comida para ele, serve, faz toda a limpeza e lhe dá banho. 25 Na narrativa, Mestre S usou imagens que supostamente estariam relacionadas com a escravidão no passado para descrever como vivem. Mesmo sem saber como era exatamente, o que importa para eles é o que se estabelece como fantasia. O repertório serve como cenário e inspiração para as práticas. Em dado momento, ao comentarem sobre a distinção entre escrava, submissa e masoquista, narinha explicou: a sub é aquela que deseja servir; a escrava é a que pode ou não servir, e costuma questionar, contestar; e a masoquista vai querer provocar seu dominador para ser punida. O Mestre assinalou tratar-se de um jogo de recompensas e castigos, o que ela completou se referindo a como se comporta, enquanto escrava, de modo a obter o que quer. Esse “o que quer” foi entoado de modo a demarcar o seu consentimento na subjugação e o prazer que essa relação proporciona. 26 O enlace entre narinha e seu Mestre apresenta uma conotação contratual, como, aliás, está na base da relação masoquista a partir da interpretação de Deleuze (1983) sobre a obra de Sacher-Masoch, indevidamente ignorada em contraste à significativa visibilidade de seu nome, designando uma perversão. É o contrato que exprime não simplesmente o consentimento da vítima, mas, sobretudo, a sua habilidade em persuadir, em seduzir e até ensinar o seu algoz. Ele produz uma espécie de efeito de tipo jurídico que, segundo Deleuze, diferencia cabalmente a dinâmica erótica do masoquismo em comparação ao efeito institucional provocado pelas cenas de Sade. Enquanto Masoch dá particular importância à forma estética (na arte e no suspense) e à forma jurídica (o contrato e a submissão), Sade acentua o naturalismo, a partir de um sistema movido a um mecanismo de moto perpétuo. O pensamento de Sade se exprime em termos de instituição: as interações entre libertinos e vítimas são baseadas em um estatuto de longa duração, segundo uma configuração involuntária (a vítima é presa da vontade soberana do libertino), sendo os direitos e deveres substituídos por um modelo dinâmico de ação, de poder e de potência (Deleuze 1983: 84). A submissão no caso dos personagens de Masoch não é passiva. Severino apela a tornar-se escravo de sua Deusa das peles, primeiro em sonho, em fantasia, e em seguida em um relacionamento que ele pretende eterno. A sua escolhida, Wanda, é a vizinha misteriosa que passa a ser, na narrativa em forma de suspense, a sua Vênus. Ele a seduz com tempo e calma, convencendo-a a amá-lo e, a partir de então, ensina a ela como submetê-lo e como provocar nele a sujeição física. 27 Deleuze acredita que esse romance traz todos os elementos que fornecem a base do masoquismo e que foram desconsiderados pela psicanálise: a presença de uma significação especial de fantasia, ou melhor, a recorrência de uma forma de fantasma que aparece nas cenas sonhadas, dramatizadas ou ritualizadas; o emprego frequente do que ele chama de “fator suspensivo” (a espera, o atraso como forma de tensionar o apelo sexual); a recorrência no texto de um traço demonstrativo, ou seja, persuasivo (o escravo ou submisso clama e exibe a humilhação); a provocação, como se, ao demandar

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a punição, o masoquista aliviasse a angústia de ansiar um prazer proibido; e, finalmente, o contrato que supõe a vontade dos contratantes, estabelecendo direitos e deveres e por um tempo determinado.5 28 No final de uma das edições de Vênus das Peles (Sacher-Masoch 1976 [1870]) são apresentados três diferentes contratos estabelecidos pelo próprio Masoch com suas mulheres e amantes.6 O primeiro foi o contrato estabelecido, por ele, na idade de 33 anos, com Fanny Pistor Bagdanow, sua amante no período. Reproduzo, a seguir, um pequeno trecho: “Sob palavra de honra, Leopold de Sacher-Masoch compromete-se a ser o escravo de Madame Pistor, e a executar absolutamente todos os seus desejos e ordens, e isto durante seis meses. Por sua parte madame Fanny de Pistor não lhe pedirá nada de desonroso (que possa fazer-lhe perder a sua honra de homem e cidadão). Além disso, deverá deixar-lhe seis horas diárias para os seus trabalhos e não lhe verá nunca as cartas ou escritos. Por cada infração ou negligência, ou por cada crime de lesa-majestade, a dona (Fanny Pistor) poderá castigar ao seu gosto o escravo (Leopold de Sacher-Masoch). Em resumo, o sujeito obedecerá à sua soberana com uma submissão servil, acolherá os seus favores com um dom encantador, não fará valer nenhuma pretensão de amor nem nenhum direito sobre sua amante. Por seu lado, Fanny Pistor compromete-se a usar freqüentemente e sempre que possível peles, principalmente quando se mostre cruel” (começado a executar em 8 de dezembro de 1869; Sacher- Masoch 1976 [1870]: 247). 29 Essa dimensão do contrato, mesmo sem a referência explícita feita pelas pessoas que conheci na cena SM, parece estar inteiramente de acordo com a bandeira “são, seguro e consensual” que sustenta as práticas contemporâneas, tanto no Brasil como no exterior. Há um “zelo escrupuloso com a lei” que, segundo a leitura de Deleuze (1983: 96), leva ao absurdo. Voltarei a essa reflexão, a seguir. Trata-se aqui de entender que, mesmo no caso do autor que dá origem simbólica a essa expressão do erotismo, há a operação de elementos que conferem “agência” aos escravos e uma maior permeabilidade entre a cena literária ou encenada, no clube, e a vida cotidiana das pessoas. Nesse sentido, o 24/7 implica uma fronteira tênue com o que está presente na liturgia das cenas praticadas pelos membros das confrarias. A sensação que fica é a de uma dinâmica que certamente terá que ser mais investigada, de que os limites entre a vida no mundo SM e no “baunilha” vão esvaindo, mas ao preço de um esforço enorme em ir estabelecendo, até inventando, rotinas ritualizadas. Por mais irônico que possa parecer, não é fácil garantir a experiência do domínio e da servidão, em meio a uma vida organizada para a autonomia dos indivíduos. Não se trata, apenas, de evitar o estranhamento público (ou privado) quanto às assimetrias acentuadas presentes nessas relações. No caso de narinha e Mestre S, foi preciso ir criando um conjunto de prescrições para o dia a dia, o que, certamente, deve ser exaustivo.

30 Provavelmente o senso comum imagina que existam muito mais dominadores(as) do que submissos. Outra das idiossincrasias interessantes dessas experiências é que ocorre justamente o contrário. É muito comum ouvir, no clube, uma queixa em relação à exiguidade de pessoas que ocupam essas posições. São muitas as atribulações das Rainhas, Mestres ou Mistresses. A eles cabe inventar as punições, criar o material apropriado, não hesitar no controle às solicitações e provocações dos subs. Além disso, Mestre S alertou que um dos cuidados que um dominador deve ter, em uma relação 24/7, é o de estimular que os escravos não parem de estudar, de trabalhar, de terem amigos e que não rompam seus laços familiares. É preciso evitar, segundo ele, a

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dependência relativamente ao Dono quando as relações chegam a termo. A palavra “guiar”, aliás, foi bastante empregada por ele: “o Dono deve guiar sua peça, cuidar dela”. 31 Patrick Califia (1991), fundador do Samois e uma das maiores referências do cenário SM norte-americano, discute os aspectos paradoxais da relação top/bottom.7 A partir de sua posição como top, ele indaga sobre as razões da significativa escassez de dominadores nesse campo e argumenta que a fantasia de dominação, com o paradigma da dissimetria de status (idade, classe, educação), é pouco vivenciada. Tal disparidade é ainda mais intrigante pela natureza consensual que caracteriza o processo de negociação entre parceiros. De modo levemente irônico, ele reclama que, ao ser basicamente um sádico, não tem interesse em roupas ou no comportamento submisso do que diz serem as empregadas francesas ou em bondages. Diz que as subs que conhece não acreditam nele. Aliás, pontua: elas escolhem não acreditar nele. De um lado, tal fato tem a ver com a pouca experiência da maioria dos parceiros e o parco conhecimento disponível sobre a variedade de dominadores e de subs. De outro, ele já se sentiu, em inúmeras ocasiões, como se fosse um objeto na mão de suas escravas ou submissos, sendo demasiadamente solicitado. Os subs não precisam ter habilidades ou competências, não são desafiados e não precisam ter energia. Além de a comunidade não oferecer treinamento aos Donos – o que exige deles imenso esforço –, ele afirma que, nas discussões sobre segurança e consentimento, o foco de atenção está inteiramente direcionado para a proteção do sub, quanto aos eventuais danos físicos ou psicológicos. O top que apresenta seus limites, inclusive, nem é considerado como um verdadeiro dominador. 32 Ainda que os marcadores de diferença sexual não possam ser considerados como critério para posicionar o dominante ou o submisso nessas relações, é preciso admitir que as tensões de gênero permanecem atuantes. Não se trata de uma operação de inversão que irá garantir a transgressão, como erroneamente imaginou Deleuze ao acentuar que a posição de dominação deveria ser ocupada por uma mulher. Esse não é o elemento inovador, até porque no cenário SM não existe sequer a preponderância de um dos sexos no lugar da submissão. Me parece relevante atentar é no caráter marcado, até exagerado, dos gestos e sinais que indicam o mando ou a obediência. Assim, o que marca em termos de gênero as assimetrias de poder é acionado, produzindo um efeito quase caricatural. As tensões são escrupulosamente ativadas como para afastar a verosimilhança, expondo a armação contingente que trama o poder. De fato, o lado contestador dessas iniciativas quanto às normas de gênero está nessa espécie de ritualística que expõe as posições de mando e controle, que ainda marcam as relações de gênero, de um modo extrapolado e causando uma sensação de algo inapropriado.

Quando a pele vira carne

33 Deleuze afirma que os textos de Masoch (e também os de Sade) não constituem propriamente pornografia. Ele cria o neologismo “pornologia”, de modo a definir esse gênero de linguagem erótica, cujo traço marcante não é o do mero comando e descrição, mas da demonstração (em Justine, por exemplo, há toda a discussão com a vítima) ou da persuasão (no modelo literário de Masoch, ele é um educador da mulher déspota). Assim, a fórmula “faça isso – faça aquilo” seguida por obscenidades é substituída pela abundância de palavras que passam a agir sobre a sensualidade. A

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ênfase na linguagem literária, me parece, deve ser acrescida de outro elemento fundamental para a compreensão do SM: a encenação da prática do flagelo.

34 A encenação começa pela atenção aos objetos e, em particular, pela invenção de aparatos que são criados e cuidados com enorme zelo. O fetiche pertence essencialmente à dinâmica erótica do masoquismo, daí a exuberância das peles, o rigor e altura dos saltos dos sapatos e, em particular, o gosto pelos chicotes.8 Mestre S e narinha mostraram seu arsenal, guardado em um estojo especialmente escolhido para abrigá-lo. Havia uma chibata de cabo fino, leve e de ponta macia. Narinha explicou que ela servia para aquecer a pele para receber o spanking. Havia floggers, um de tiras plásticas, como cerdas grossas de uma vassoura, e outro era um chicote artesanal feito por um amigo Mestre, de cabo curto de borracha e com tiras de couro sintético, um pouco mais duras e pesadas do que as feitas de camurça. Havia nozinhos na ponta de boa parte dos fios, o que provoca muito mais dor quando do contato com a pele. Havia também um conjunto de canes: uma era praticamente uma vara de marmelo e outras moldadas em madeira ou látex. Segundo narinha, as canes são os instrumentos que mais ferem. É preciso saber usá-los, esperar passar a dor de uma pancada para dar outra, senão a pessoa passa a não sentir mais nada. Uma das canes tinha quatro pontas soltas, como se fosse um flogger. Essa, disse a submissa, era a escolhida para o castigo: as varinhas se abrem quando batem e é como se quatro canes batessem ao mesmo tempo. Havia ainda um relho de couro cru. 35 Causou impressão, não apenas a descrição detalhada de cada chicote e seu uso, mas o brilho no olhar dela ao manusear, esticar e torcer, movimentando o ar com um chiado peculiar. A cada peça, uma demonstração, experimentando as texturas e o volume sobre as mãos espalmadas. Este modo de lidar com os objetos não é muito diferente da relação das pessoas com os dildos e vibradores. O chicote é também um acessório erótico. Porém, um objeto a produzir hematomas. 36 Não que a dor seja menor em função de um corpo já calejado. Dor é dor, ainda que a tolerância a ela possa ser expandida. Para o casal, não se trata de prazer com a dor, em si, pois essas são sensações discerníveis. Eles contextualizam o espancamento em meio a um jogo erótico que envolve recompensas e castigos, de modo a envolver a dor em outros elementos da fantasia. Além disso, lembram que ela, provocada dessa maneira, ativa a produção de endorfina, elevando a pessoa ao que eles chamaram de subspace, espaço no qual o martírio físico fica submerso numa situação de prazer. Uma designação própria, porém não muito distinta da noção de êxtase de Georges Bataille (1987): algo que evoca imergir em um plano não tangível, liminar e, simultaneamente, mágico. 37 Elaine Scarry (1985), em seu The Body in Pain, diz que a resistência à linguagem é algo essencial à dor: ela é inefável, ainda que não possa ser negada. O que se objetiva em discurso diz respeito muito mais às reações que ela enseja. Ela não é contabilizável e as caracterizações não especificam tipos, além de aproximações como a “dor profunda” ou a “dor ardida”. O que essa abordagem ensina é que, ao lidarmos com a dor, evitemos reificações. Portanto, a qualidade de, a partir dela, alçar à transcendência ou à purificação – presente no repertório de variados rituais de expiação –, no caso do casal SM aparece como retórica a traduzir, me parece, pele em carne. “Quando fomos ao Libens, assisti a uma encenação. Sentada em uma das cadeiras, vi Mister Y, vestido de jeans e camiseta, espancar marYa que vestia apenas a roupa de baixo preta e portava uma coleira. Ele é um rapaz grande e ela, bem branca, tem o

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corpo opulento. A brancura do corpo seminu parecia trazer luz àquele espaço escuro. Bem devagar e concentrada, ela se ajoelhou sobre um suporte que permitia apoiar o tronco, de barriga para baixo. O movimento lento fez revelar as nádegas, arrebitadas e expostas. Ele acendeu duas velas grossas uma contra a outra, produzindo gotas gordas de cera que, ainda quentes, foram derrubadas sobre o dorso dela. Na medida em que caíam, a pele parecia enrugar, criando um segundo volume, para além do corpo. Um a um, os pingos azuis foram ocupando a superfície, descendo em direção às coxas. Ela sequer murmurou. Toda a operação lenta, olhares ao redor, silêncio absoluto. Com os dedos, ele tirou a cera, apertando a pele como carícia. Depois, ele escolheu um único chicote usado durante toda a cena: um flogger de camurça. Deu a primeira chibatada abaixo da asa esquerda dela e, a pele branca, antes pontuada de pingos azuis, foi avermelhando. Cada batida parecia estudada. A força dele no chicote estalava a pele, entoando um som, acompanhado de perto pelo gemido dela. Não era grito. O chicote parecia mole e pesado ao tocar a parte dura das costas. Os músculos contraíam. Eventualmente ela levantava a mão e ele parava imediatamente, ia até perto do seu rosto, ouvia algo e acariciava o lugar batido. Esperava a pele rubra acalmar. Voltava a chicotear, dirigindo cada batida para as partes mais baixas do corpo. Comecei a notar um encadeamento sonoro: o som do couro no corpo, cadenciando o gemido, como uma percussão estranha. Mas o corpo não era tratado como tambor. A cada movimento do flogger a lisura da superfície ia dando lugar a reentrâncias, ondulações, volumes moles. A pele sendo tornada carne. Como se o chicote pudesse produzir orifícios e penetrar. Terminada a cena, ela se levantou e beijou os pés dele.” [Caderno de campo da autora] 38 A encenação é uma operação de erotização dos corpos. São gestos, sons, cores e luzes e, também, chicote, volumes de corpo e olhos. Todos articulados em uma combinação material, carnal e simbólica. Não me pareceu ocorrer a preponderância de um elemento sobre os demais. Entrecruzamento é a expressão mais próxima do que vi. Meus alunos me contaram que nunca viram uma cena de sexo num dungeon de clube SM: normalmente, não é proibido, mas as pessoas não o fazem. Eu acho que fazem sim, pois testemunhei um intercurso sexual sem o advento dos genitais.

A performance do risco

39 A literatura sobre sadomasoquismo é bastante vasta, especialmente nas abordagens no âmbito da psicanálise e dos estudos sobre sexualidade, no marco da tradição aberta pela sexologia. Também não é possível desprezar as perspectivas vindas do campo da crítica literária e dos estudos filosóficos.

40 Além dessas contribuições inspiradoras, sobretudo pela sua riqueza, existe um debate sobre o sadomasoquismo no marco das identidades e das minorias sexuais, relevante para os propósitos antropológicos. 41 Anne McClintock (1994) e Lynda Hart (1998) trabalham o sadomasoquismo no registro dos exercícios simbólicos mobilizados, seja como manifestações subculturais (McClintock), seja como performances (Hart). Seus estudos operam no registro do teatro e na análise de várias expressões SM como escolhas e práticas sexuais que só podem ser inteligíveis como encenações, colocando em suas cenas, nos cenários e personagens, aspectos que fazem parte das contradições que emergem no interior das dinâmicas do poder social. Menos do que ver no sadomasoquismo uma cópia ou reprodução do que constitui o cerne da sexualidade heterossexual, modulada como norma pelo patriarcalismo – principal crítica apontada pelas feministas antissadomasoquismo –, as autoras sugerem que consideremos o seu lado contestatório.

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Seguindo tal perspectiva, o SM comercial, o lesbianismo SM e as manifestações SM entre gays masculinos constituem alternativas que, no limite, problematizam os modelos que supõem naturalidade e normalidade entre as fronteiras que delimitam homens e mulheres e, mais particularmente, o comportamento sexual masculino como sendo ativo e o feminino como sendo passivo, além de esfumaçarem os limites que separam o prazer da dor, o comando e a submissão. 42 Essas são experiências que ousam lidar com o risco social, ou melhor, com aqueles conteúdos e inscrições presentes nas relações entre a sexualidade e as suas assimetrias em termos de gênero, de idade, de classe e de raça. McClintock (1994) chega até a afirmar que o SM performa o poder social como um script, de modo que as assimetrias que constituem tal poder passam a ser encenadas, teatralizadas, tratadas como contingentes e sujeitas a mudanças e novas inflexões. 43 Lynda Hart (1998) estuda os casos SM entre lésbicas, experiências que ameaçam certas noções das teorias feministas, principalmente desenvolvidas sobre as relações mulher/ mulher, que alimentam a ideia da igualdade ou de um “não poder” como estratégia de libertação. Segundo a autora, tal forma de SM, ao trazer nos plays as piores cenas heterossexistas, desafia a definição ética e política envolvida no lesbianismo, sobretudo a noção de irmandade. Seguindo a orientação de Deleuze em que também me baseio, ela chama atenção para o fato de que o componente crucial da relação masoquista é o contrato, um acordo sempre formalizado que pressupõe o consentimento, a reciprocidade e que não afeta os indivíduos fora dos limites de cada encenação. 44 Além disso, como Deleuze também já havia formulado, o cuidado extremoso com liturgias ou com a “lei” pode ser interpretado como um movimento que, ao ser intensificado, provoca o efeito oposto: “toma-se a lei ao pé da letra; não se contesta o seu caráter último ou primeiro; faz-se como se, em virtude desse caráter, a lei reservasse para si os prazeres que ela nos interdita”; a lei é “revirada humoristicamente, obliquamente, pelo aprofundamento das consequências” (Deleuze 1983: 96). 45 Contudo, é preciso ponderar que esse lado do contrato não deve nos levar a desconsiderar que as experiências constituem um empreendimento de risco, a partir de atos que implicam negociações delicadas. Os riscos, bem como as operações de produção de consensualidade e segurança das várias modalidades de SM, indicam que é preciso empreender esforços para analisar detalhadamente os vários contextos em que elas se apresentam, bem como as relações sociais e pessoais envolvidas. A preocupação com a segurança e com a consensualidade funciona como uma espécie de ideal. Nenhum desses termos é facilmente acessível ou garantido. 46 Outro elemento a considerar sobre os riscos está relacionado ao fato de serem práticas que implicam uma tríplice relação: a entrega da pessoa que se submete – e essa entrega, como, por exemplo, a amorosa, indica uma confiança cultivada em relação ao parceiro; o cuidado da pessoa que domina que, como já indicado, exige um aprendizado constante; e, finalmente, o controle da comunidade ao propiciar atividades pedagógicas e uma atenção singular diante de casos que venham a extrapolar o “são, seguro e consensual”. Facchini e Machado (2013) descrevem a ocorrência de um contencioso nas páginas de discussão da Internet em 2007, a partir de um caso de abuso que envolveu participantes de uma das cenas BDSM. A profusão de posicionamentos de membros da comunidade revela o controle estrito de problemas desse tipo, tendo como solução provável o isolamento ou ainda a expulsão de quem apresente uma conduta

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inadequada. De modo arguto, as autoras analisam esse debate na comunidade, assinalando que houve nessa crise uma tendência – que até então, no Brasil, nunca estabeleceu vínculo de tipo político – para falar na organização de campanhas públicas de esclarecimento, acalentando certo desejo de se constituir enquanto um movimento. Assim, a violência é controlada, dando espaço para uma atuação que legitima práticas que avizinham o prazer da dor. 47 Se no marco das experiências SM essa tríplice relação indica a neutralização de abusos e relações violentas, o problema do risco não pode ser inteiramente abandonado. Margot Weiss (2011), a partir de uma etnografia recente e bastante completa sobre BDSM em São Francisco (EUA), sugere que é preciso considerar os incômodos efeitos do mercado e, em particular, o que a bibliografia norte-americana atual assinala como neoliberalismo, de modo a apreender em que medida o SM corre o perigo de alimentar desigualdades, inclusive as baseadas em gênero e sexualidade. Basicamente, o argumento elaborado é que o neoliberalismo deve ser tratado como uma formação cultural que articula ideias como as de liberação e liberdade individual com o direito à propriedade privada, livre mercado e livre comércio. No limite, é um modo de governo e racionalidade que supõe uma disjunção entre um mundo público e social “real” e, de outra parte, um mundo privado, individualizado, constituído por escolhas livres e no qual as fantasias de raça e gênero, por exemplo, não teriam nada a ver com “sexismo” e o “racismo” do mundo real. Do ponto de vista da autora, o capitalismo contemporâneo e sua forma cultural (o neoliberalismo) produziram um sentido de transgressão sexual baseado na ideia da fantasia das cenas como espaços seguros para os desejos privados que justificam e reforçam desigualdades. 48 Ainda que as articulações entre mercado e práticas eróticas mereçam um esforço analítico para empreender uma teorização crítica, essa argumentação peca pelo mecanicismo. Além de reduzir o neoliberalismo a ser uma forma cultural, descontextualizando os processos sociais, econômicos e políticos que nele estão tramados, trata-se de uma abordagem que elimina qualquer indagação mais sofisticada sobre os deslocamentos normativos gerados por essas práticas, a partir das paródias e das desnaturalizações que elas provocam. O interesse em investigá-las reside, precisamente, no fato de elas mobilizarem e mostrarem com força dramática, a partir de todo um repertório de convenções culturais e sociais disponíveis, as assimetrias de poder, as materializações e corporificações de normas de gênero, de sexualidade, bem como de outros marcadores de diferença, como classe, raça e idade. Para além da ideia presente no senso comum de que o teatro não é a vida, tratar essas práticas e decifrar seus enredos, cenas e cenários permite entender – até por seus intrincados paradoxos – as convenções que organizam, também de modo idiossincrático, as relações entre violência, gênero e erotismo.

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BIBLIOGRAFIA

BALDWIN, Guy, 1993, Ties That Bind: SM/ Leather/ Fetish Erotic Style. Los Angeles, Deadalus Publishing Company.

BATAILLE, Georges, 1987, O Erotismo. Porto Alegre, L&PM.

BRAZ, Camilo, 2010, À Meia-Luz… Uma Etnografia Imprópria sobre Clubes de Sexo Masculinos. Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), tese de doutorado em Ciências Sociais.

CALIFIA, Patrick, 1991, “The limits of the S/M relationship, or Mr. Benson doesn’t live here anymore”, em Mark Thompson (org.), Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice. Boston, Alyson Publications, 221-232.

DELEUZE, Gilles, 1983, “Apresentação de Sacher-Masoch: o frio e o cruel”, em Leopold Sacher- Masoch, Vênus das Peles. Rio de Janeiro, Taurus, 7-143.

FACCHINI, Regina, 2008, Entre Umas e Outras: Mulheres, (Homo)Sexualidades e Diferenças na Cidade de São Paulo. Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), tese de doutorado em Ciências Sociais.

FACCHINI, Regina, e Sarah MACHADO, 2013, “Praticamos SM, repudiamos agressão: classificações, redes e organização comunitária em torno do BDSM no contexto brasileiro”, Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad: Revista Latinoamericana, 14: 195-228.

GREGORI, Maria Filomena, 2003, “Relações de violência e erotismo”, Cadernos Pagu, 20 (1): 87-120.

GREGORI, Maria Filomena, 2011, “Usos de sex toys: a circulação erótica entre objetos e pessoas”, Mana, 17: 313-336.

GREGORI, Maria Filomena, 2012, “Erotismo, mercado e gênero: uma etnografia dos sex shops de São Paulo”, Cadernos Pagu, 38: 53-97.

GREGORI, Maria Filomena, 2014, “Práticas eróticas e limites da sexualidade: contribuições de estudos recentes”, Cadernos Pagu, 42: 47-74.

HART, Lynda, 1998, Between the Body and the Flesh: Performing Sadomasochism. Nova Iorque, Columbia University Press.

LINDEN, Robin R., et al., 1982, Against Sadomasoquism: A Radical Feminist Analysis. Palo Alto, Frog in the Well.

McCLINTOCK, Anne, 1994, “Maid to order: commercial S/M and gender power”, em Pamela Gibson e Roma Gibson (orgs.), Dirty Looks. Londres, British Film Institute, 207-233.

RUBIN, Gayle, 1991, “The catacombs: a temple of the butthole”, em Mark Thompson (org.), Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice. Boston, Alyson Publications, 119-141.

RUBIN, Gayle, 1993, “The leather menace: comments on politics and S/M”, em Samois (org.), Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M. Boston, Alyson Publications.

SACHER-MASOCH, Léopold, 1976 [1870], A Vénus das Peles. Lisboa, Edição Livros do Brasil.

SCARRY, Elaine, 1985, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Nova Iorque e Oxford, Oxford University Press.

VON KRAFFT-EBING, Richard, 1886, Psichopathia Sexualis. Paris, Georges Carré Editeur.

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WEISS, Margot, 2011, Techniques or Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality. Durham, Duke University Press.

WINKS, Cathy, e Anne SEAMANS, 1997, The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex: The Most Complete Sex Manual Ever Written. San Francisco, Cleis Press.

ZILLI, Bruno Dallacort, 2007, A Perversão Domesticada: Estudo do Discurso de Legitimação do BDSM na Internet e Seu Diálogo com a Psiquiatria. Rio de Janeiro, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, dissertação de mestrado em Medicina Social.

NOTAS

1. Além do mapeamento do mercado erótico e da pesquisa em sex shops em São Paulo, no Brasil, eu entrevistei usuários de produtos eróticos e investiguei um dos nichos desse mercado, o relativo às práticas sadomasoquistas, em clubs, festas e eventos. Para maior detalhamento, consultar Gregori (2003, 2011, 2012, 2014). 2. As primeiras organizações explicitamente SM foram criadas nos anos 70: os grupos heterossexuais The Eulenspiegel Society e Society of Janus foram criados, respetivamente, em 1971 em Nova Iorque e em São Francisco em 1974, e o Samois – grupo S/M lésbico – foi fundado em 1978 (Rubin 1991). 3. Para maiores explicações sobre feminismo radical e New Right, consultar Gregori (2003). Vale considerar a bibliografia sobre lesbianismo e, em particular, as análises e abordagens críticas em relação ao sadomasoquismo. Bom exemplar nessa direção é a coletânea editada por Robin R. Linden et al. (1982), Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis. 4. As afinidades entre essas diferentes modalidades de práticas gays e lésbicas estão analisadas com requinte por Gayle Rubin (1991, 1993) e inteligentemente sintetizadas por Camilo Braz (2010), de modo a pensar seus efeitos sobre homossexualidades masculinas e como as convenções leather viajaram dos Estados Unidos para outros países. A pesquisa de Braz contemplou experiências de “sexo duro” entre homens, em São Paulo e em Madrid. 5. Deleuze critica na psicanálise, sobretudo, a ausência de um exame mais depurado da forma narrativa presente na origem literária que deu base ao masoquismo e, consequentemente, não ter identificado a centralidade do elemento de contrato. 6. Essa edição de Vênus das Peles foi publicada pela Livros do Brasil, de Lisboa, em conjunto com a novela Diderot e Catarina II e traz em anexo, com o subtítulo “Fragmento de Psychopathia Sexualis”, três contratos, segundo Von Krafft-Ebing (1886) coletados por Schlichtegroll (Sacher- Masoch 1976 [1870]: 246-247). 7. Califia nasceu mulher e assumiu identidade lésbica nos anos 70. Escritora de inúmeros livros de ficção e ensaios sobre sexualidade, ela foi uma das fundadoras do Samois (e no grupo, assinalou os elementos da leather culture), participou das sex wars ao lado das feministas e lésbicas pró-sexo, contrárias à lei antipornografia de coautoria de Catherine MacKinnon. Um dos seus livros mais populares é Macho Sluts, publicado no final da década de 1980. Em meados dos anos 90, Califia decidiu-se pela transição de gênero e adotou o nome Patrick. Hoje se autodefine como uma pessoa transgênero bissexual. 8. O fetichismo, definido por Freud, implica a presença de um objeto – substituto do falo feminino – que é a imagem imediatamente posterior à descoberta de que a mãe não possui pênis. Deleuze lembra que o fetichismo é, nessa perspectiva teórica, inicialmente denegação (não, à mulher não falta o pênis); em seguida, neutralização defensiva (mesmo sabendo que ela, na realidade, não possui o pênis, esse conhecimento fica em suspenso); e, finalmente, neutralização protetora (o falo feminino se põe à prova, fazendo valer os direitos do ideal contra o real). Para Deleuze, “o fetichismo, assim definido pelo processo de denegação e do suspense, pertence essencialmente ao

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masoquismo” (Deleuze 1983: 35). Importante grifar que o relevante, no seu caso, não é a definição em termos psicanalíticos, mas sim a sua rentabilidade para demarcar uma qualidade estética.

RESUMOS

Experiências sadomasoquistas são examinadas neste artigo de modo a descortinar articulações entre gênero e sexualidade. Como novas expressões do mercado erótico contemporâneo, tais práticas permitem refinar a análise sobre processos sociais complexos relativos à ampliação ou restrição de normatividades sexuais, em particular sobre a criação de âmbitos de maior tolerância e novas normas que vão sendo impostas, bem como situações em que aquilo que é considerado abusivo passa a ser qualificado como normal.

Sadomasochistic experiences are examined in this article in order to uncover links between gender and sexuality. As new expressions of the contemporary erotic market, such practices allow the refinement of the analysis of complex social processes related to the expansion or restriction of sexual normativities. In particular, it enables further knowledge on the creation of greater tolerance spheres, on the new rules being imposed, and on situations in which what is considered abusive becomes qualified as normal.

ÍNDICE

Keywords: gender and sexuality studies, erotism, sadomasochism Palavras-chave: estudos de sexualidade e gênero, erotismo, sadomasoquismo

AUTOR

MARIA FILOMENA GREGORI

Departamento de Antropologia da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero (Pagu/Unicamp), Brasil [email protected]

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Das nomeações às representações: os palavrões numa interpretação inspirada por H. Lefebvre From namings to representations: swear words in an interpretation inspired by H. Lefebvre

José Machado Pais

1 Quando, em sua conhecida obra La présence et l’absence, Henri Lefebvre (1983 [1980]) se propôs abordar as representações, matutou consigo mesmo: que diriam as pessoas se lhes perguntássemos como representariam a sexualidade ou o sexo? Uma boa parte dos interrogados, suspeitou Lefebvre, responderia com gracejos, ironias ou subterfúgios – o que não deixaria de ser significativo, pois os sentidos da linguagem também se revelam através de subentendidos ou conteúdos obscuros. Contudo, para Lefebvre, uma tal abordagem, com perguntas e respostas, correria o risco de um duplo desconhecimento. Por um lado, o das representações ocultas, não diretamente questionadas. Por exemplo, haverá diferenças de género nas representações do sexo feminino? Por outro lado, correríamos o risco de negligenciar as situações concretas (o vivido) em que se produzem ou circulam as representações (Robinson 2003). É aqui que Lefebvre levanta uma hipótese teórica e estratégica: o mesmo não pode representar-se a si mesmo, já que a identidade só se realiza através da diferença. Vejamos, no exemplo sugerido, onde nos levaria essa mesma hipótese. Desde logo, ao reconhecimento de que “o masculino tende a representar-se no, por e através do feminino” (Lefebvre 1983 [1980]: 168), ainda que o feminino apareça representado por uma ausência. Como chegamos a perceber o sistema de relações entre estes trâmites? Lefebvre aponta-nos um caminho, o das mediações, alertando-nos, contudo, para o facto de a representação não se poder reduzir a uma imagem espelhada, a um simples reflexo, muito pelo contrário. Eis aqui um vasto campo muito pouco explorado no domínio das ciências sociais: o das mediações na análise das representações. Uma investida por estes domínios de pesquisa requer uma metodologia orientada pela busca oblíqua de presenças na ausência. Essa metodologia, pioneiramente desenvolvida por Henri Lefebvre,1 é retomada e discutida no presente artigo, em diálogo com outros contributos teóricos vindos sobretudo da

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antropologia, da sociologia e da sociolinguística.2 Para o efeito toma-se por objeto de estudo o enigma dos palavrões. Como interpretar o pudor social no uso dos palavrões? Por que se calam tais palavras quando saem do mundo do calão? Que sentidos estranhos as transformam em palavras obscenas?

2 Não de todo apartados do universo da gíria e do calão, os estudos sobre os palavrões têm explorado inevitáveis interconexões entre linguagem, sexualidade e sociedade (Mattiello 2008; Cameron e Kulick 2003). Aspetos relacionados com ofensas verbais e códigos de honra no uso dos palavrões têm também merecido a atenção da antropologia (Blok 1981) e da sociolinguística (Sandmann 1993). Os interditos à circulação dos palavrões, frequentemente associados aos tabus sexuais, também têm atraído um crescente interesse de cientistas sociais de diferentes quadrantes disciplinares – não apenas da antropologia, com pioneiros contributos neste campo de análise (Leach 1973 [1964]), mas também da psicologia (Jay 2009), da psicanálise (Arango 1996) ou da sociolinguística (Anderson e Trudgill 1990). No entanto, falta aprofundar o diálogo entre estes diferentes contributos disciplinares. Este repto é tido em conta na proposta de análise sobre os palavrões que adiante se ensaia, ainda que o método regressivo-progressivo de Lefebvre adquira uma relativa centralidade teórica. 3 Embora nunca o tenha sistematizado, o método regressivo-progressivo está implicitamente presente em grande parte da obra de Lefebvre. O descritivo, o histórico- genético e o analítico regressivo (Lefebvre 1953, 1989 [1959]) constituem os componentes essenciais do método que logo mereceu uma calorosa recetividade por parte de Sartre (2002 [1960]). As teorias da presença-ausência (Lefebvre 1983 [1980]) – levando em linha de conta o descritivo (no caso em estudo: os palavrões explícitos ou que implicitamente se afirmam em sua ausência quando invocados por outras palavras ou expressões) e o histórico genético (a descoberta dos meandros históricos e sociais na génese dos palavrões) – permitem-nos dar conta de um importante achado, num registo analítico-regressivo: as significações que saltam à vista encobrem outros sentidos, não apenas em profundidade, mas frequentemente em extensão, isto é, quer na historicidade do que se passa à superfície da vida quotidiana, quer na mutabilidade do vivido. As mediações propostas entre o vivido, o percebido e o concebido mostram-nos que, por detrás do limbo das palavras e dos palavrões, encontramos um amplo campo de análise social. Por isso mesmo, os achados da linguística não passaram despercebidos à antropologia desde a pioneira obra de Marcel Mauss (Karsenti 1997).

O método regressivo-progressivo aplicado à linguagem

4 Aplicado aos fenómenos da linguagem, o método regressivo-progressivo, ancorando as falas do presente aos enlaces sociais da historicidade e mutabilidade do vivido, aparece como uma estratégia orientada para a busca de sentido. Mas não onde supostamente esse sentido poderia parecer mais evidente, na significação: “A significação é literal. O sentido remete-se de todos os lados para outra coisa: para o passado, para o adquirido, para a atualidade, para a memória, por um lado – e, por outro lado, para o virtual, para os possíveis, para a diversidade dos campos percetíveis carregados de sentido” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 215). Ao mesmo tempo cintilante e fugidio, o sentido acabaria por surgir de uma espécie de opacidade. Estamos num campo de debate semiológico que – como viria a ser reconhecido por Melandri (1968) – abre portas a uma

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hermenêutica tensional entre a sintomatologia (onde o signo aparece numa relação de causalidade com o designado) e a simbologia (onde essa relação de causalidade não faz sentido). Melandri (1968) sugere, aliás, uma isomorfia entre a distinção freudiana que coloca o consciente ante o inconsciente e a distinção semiológica que coloca frente a frente a historiografia e a história real (a que tem de ser resgatada). Então, a história crítica, a que promove o resgate, assemelhar-se-ia a uma espécie de terapia cujo objetivo seria o de recuperar o inconsciente, entendido como o histórico removido. No campo aberto por esta rutura epistemológica podemos situar o método regressivo- progressivo de Lefebvre, a arqueologia do saber de Foucault (1966, 1969, 1971) e o método regressivo-arqueológico de Melandri (1968). Em qualquer dos casos há um rastreio da genealogia real dos acontecimentos até se chegar a uma bifurcação de registos do fenómeno indagado – como a que opõe, no caso da psicanálise, o consciente ao inconsciente. Segundo Melandri, não se trata de chegar ao inconsciente enquanto tal, mas de desvendar os fatores, circunstâncias ou processos que fizeram do inconsciente o que ele é, no sentido dialético de removido. O procedimento regressivo tem esse objetivo: o de lidar com o removido. A história crítica é aquela que é capaz de recuperar o alienado, o excluído, o removido, através da contraposição dialética entre racionalização e sublimação.

5 Essa preocupação em fazer pulsar o removido encontra-se bem presente no método regressivo-progressivo de Lefebvre, dada a sua valorização das temporalidades da história (Martins 2003). Nos seus estudos sobre linguagem e sociedade, o que Lefebvre (1968 [1966]) nos mostra é que a palavra tem uma inscrição temporal que lhe dá um valor mutável. Essa variabilidade decorre da mobilidade dos significados das palavras, pois elas são andantes (Galeano 2004), aladas (do latim alatus: “que tem asas”). Mas essa capacidade de voo pressupõe um espaço de aterragem, um lugar de circulação ou de pouso (Nichols 1992) – seja ele um espaço de escrita (uma folha de papel, uma lousa, um ecrã de computador) ou de interação, onde a palavra possibilita a comunicação. É precisamente esta relação entre tempo e espaço que o método regressivo-progressivo explora, permitindo que a linguagem deixe de ser considerada um saco de palavras, isto é, uma língua-nomenclatura, com significação e sentidos precisos, inquestionáveis. No saco de palavras, cada palavra designa uma coisa, um objeto, um ser. Com Lefebvre, à boleia de Saussure (1997 [1916]), abalou-se esta estabilidade. Porém, Lefebvre esquiva- se à tendência saussuriana de fetichização da linguagem (Arrivé 2007), posicionamento que deixaria escapar o sentido mais profundo do que se nomeia: “A representação dissolve-se no signo, unidade de dois termos e duas caras, o significante e o significado, o representante e o representado. Mas que sucede com o sentido?” (Lefebvre 1983 [1980]: 23). É essa busca de sentido que mobiliza Lefebvre para o estudo da linguagem, ao considerá-la um “tesouro do conhecimento”. 6 Para chegar a esse tesouro há que explorar e deslindar o vínculo entre linguagem e sociedade. Manifestando-se crítico em relação aos que defendem que a significação se define pela denotação (o conteúdo, o significado), Lefebvre sugere que, pelo contrário, o que se consegue exprimir empobrece frequentemente o sentido. O que se exprime é apenas vibração do sentido. Daí o desafio de passar do expressivo (descrição) para o significativo (interpretação), tendo em vista o tesouro da linguagem. Tesouro porquê? Porque a linguagem é um núcleo central de descobertas, uma “metáfora cheia de promessas” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 15). É aqui que o procedimento regressivo, tão caro à psicanálise, representa para Lefebvre um verdadeiro desafio metodológico. Aliás, o

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próprio acaba por reconhecer que a psicanálise abriu caminho para a descoberta desse tesouro ao promover o questionamento da linguagem e ao incitar a descoberta de tensões, simultaneamente reveladas e dissimuladas, de necessidades e desejos, “normalidades” e “desvios” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 15). O método analítico-regressivo de Lefebvre projeta-se nesse campo de tensões que se cruzam entre a superfície do observável e a sua subterraneidade, entre o que se dissimula e o que se descobre que é, no fundo, o social. 7 Esta aposta nas estruturas da ausência é uma estratégia de busca de sentido na obscuridade das conotações. Elas arrastam as denotações para um mundo de outras significações: “o número treze tem uma denotação clara (treze convidados, treze ovos) e uma conotação obscura para as pessoas supersticiosas” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 107). Ou seja, surgem frequentes desdobramentos da conotação, através das aberturas que se produzem entre significante e significado. O desafio não é propriamente o de privilegiar o oculto sob o aparente – o que se dissimula ou oculta – em detrimento do evidente. É a relação entre o evidente e o oculto (Pais 2002: 65-68) que interessa ter em mira para rasgar os véus que as representações tecem à sua volta, obnubilando o sentido emaranhado numa outra relação: a que se estabelece entre representado, representante e representação. Como desvendar esta relação e chegar ao sentido que encerra? Só há um caminho. O sentido de qualquer enunciado pressupõe a consideração de um contexto não somente linguístico mas também prático e social (Jourdan e Tuite 2006): “O problema é o de descobrir a relação da linguagem com a ‘vida real’, isto é, com a praxis” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 85), por outras palavras: “a passagem da língua para a vida e da vida para a língua”; ou ainda, “das estruturas linguísticas para as estruturas sociais e reciprocamente” (1968 [1966]: 85). Para tanto, há que situar no espaço e no tempo os processos de comunicação através dos quais se veiculam as representações (Jodelet 1989). Daí a valorização que o método regressivo-progressivo dá ao vivido e ao histórico. De facto, o vivido não pode ser desprovido da sua historicidade, o mesmo se podendo dizer em relação à linguagem. Dando um exemplo, não é por acaso que os historiadores têm dado uma especial atenção à relação entre movimentos migratórios e antroponímia (Salinero e Testón Núñez 2010).3 Nas roturas biográficas associadas aos processos de migração encontramos frequentes mudanças de nome entre os migrantes. Na Época Moderna, podia-se emigrar com o nome de um primo, adotar o nome da clientela de um protetor, eleger um pseudónimo que camuflasse uma trajetória de vida suspeita. Havia emigrantes que deixavam na terra de origem a sua identidade real, viajando com uma identidade fingida (Testón Núñez e Sánchez Rubio 2010). E porque nem sempre é fácil descobrir as identidades que sob os nomes se escondem, estes podem ser peças de um jogo de enganos. 8 Em suma, é no vivido que a linguagem ganha sentido: “A linguagem permite descrever e dizer situações […]. O sentido provém de situações e regressa às situações” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 295). Numa trama de mediações, o percebido desempenha o papel de intermediário (mediação) entre o vivido e o concebido (entre a vida e a reflexão). É a análise dialética (Martins 1996; Hess 1988) entre as dimensões do vivido, do concebido e do percebido que permite a esta última dimensão um lugar de evidência pela densidade e força que adquire nesse jogo de mediações. Através destas mediações descobrimos que no vivido a linguagem assume uma mais-valia, um valor distinto. É por isso que o sentido das palavras é mais difícil de atingir que o seu significado – já que este imobiliza o signo, não sendo por acaso que o signo fica inerte no significado. Ou seja, por detrás do limbo das palavras encontramos um amplo campo de análise social. Como decifrar os

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enigmas da linguagem? É esse desafio que nos move na busca do sentido de alguns palavrões.

Um estudo de caso: o enigma do chá misterioso

9 Há cerca de uma década realizei várias incursões etnográficas por Trás-os-Montes, na alçada do movimento das “Mães de Bragança”.4 As “mães” pretendiam expulsar da cidade as trabalhadoras de sexo brasileiras, por elas apelidadas “putas” e “cabras”. Durante a pesquisa (Pais 2011) fiquei surpreendido por as Mães acusarem “as brasileiras” de seduzirem os maridos com feitiços e macumbas. Falaram-me de um chá com o poder de “amarrar” os maridos. Nunca me revelaram o nome do misterioso chá. Questionado sobre o assunto, o proprietário de uma das mais conhecidas casas de alterne da cidade – então em prisão domiciliária – corroborou, sorridentemente, os poderes do chá. Logo que me revelou o nome, anotei-o, pois nunca ouvira falar da espécie revelada. Pensei tratar-se de um chá importado do Brasil, qualquer variedade exótica das muitas que El-Rei D. João VI de Portugal mandara cultivar, em 1811, no Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro.

10 Quando, despreocupadamente, revelei o nome do chá a dois colegas brasileiros – um antropólogo e uma socióloga que me acompanharam no trabalho de campo5 – arregalaram os olhos e, levando ambos a mão à boca, sustiveram uma gargalhada. A socióloga, assomada de pânico, advertiu-me: “Oi, Machado! Você não vai falar disso, não! Viu?! Por favor, Machado!” O antropólogo, buscando argumentos mais convincentes de dissuasão, advertiu-me que, numa universidade brasileira, um estudante que fizera uso do termo numa tese de mestrado tinha sido convidado a eliminá-lo, sob pena de poder vir a ser reprovado por ofensa à dignidade dos membros do júri. Liberta do termo incómodo, a tese saiu incólume do embaraço, aprovada com distinção e louvor. Apesar de, em Casa-Grande & Senzala, Gilberto Freyre (1995 [1933]: 251) opinar que “a maior delícia do brasileiro é conversar safadeza”, tudo tem os seus limites. Acontece que a palavra que lavra mistério, de uso tão problemático no Brasil, é em Portugal uma palavra desusada e inócua, tendo o mesmo significado com que Machado de Assis a usou em Dom Casmurro (1899): o de uma simples caixa. Para não ferir suscetibilidades, ocorre-me ocultar o nome original do chá, imitando as personagens dos célebres livros de Harry Potter quando, por temor de referirem o nome tétrico de um tenebroso feiticeiro (Voldemort), a ele aludiam com uma insuspeita designação: o Quem Nós Sabemos. Seguindo a mesma estratégia, a entidade que dá nome ao milagroso chá poderá ser designada Quem Nós Sabemos. Inspirado em Lefebvre, apresento de seguida algumas hipóteses de investigação sobre o imbróglio que envolve o nome do chá. À frente delas uma ideia, um princípio orientador que desde já anuncio. Se não fizermos uma distinção entre as palavras “nuas e cruas” e os sentidos (literais ou obscuros) com que se vestem quando se cozinham umas com as outras, não fará sentido realizar análise de discurso e muito menos tomá-lo como um facto social. Bastaria enunciar as palavras, uma a uma, amarradas aos seus significados isolados e diretos. O chá de Quem Nós Sabemos é uma mistela que dá que pensar, não tanto por seus pretensos efeitos mágicos mas, sobretudo, por seus impactos semióticos e socioantropológicos.

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Palavrões: o que mostram sob o que escondem

11 Uma vez que a nomeação de Quem Nós Sabemos é problemática quando dita no palavrão que dá nome ao misterioso chá, sobrevêm muitas outras nomeações que tenho vindo a reunir numa extensa base de dados que já ultrapassou o meio milhar de registos. Muitos destes nomes correspondem a designações que apenas identificam na base do subentendido, como se correspondessem a códigos cifrados que impedem de nomear diretamente o que, possivelmente, já terão suspeitado o que seja, mesmo quando ao abrigo de expressões redundantes como: a Inominável, Aquela, A Própria, A Que É, A Estranha, A Dita Cuja, Fulana, Ela, Elazinha, Toda-Toda. Apelidos que, desde logo, nos desvelam o género feminino da coisa nomeada. No fundo, são nomeações que envolvem um secretismo disfarçado, um falso anonimato, um incentivo ao burburinho, sinal de que Quem Nós Sabemos pode envolver-se em atividades clandestinas ou ilegítimas, daí que também ganhe o apelido de Não-Conta-Pra-Ninguém. O curioso é que o indizível termo recobre uma realidade à qual se diz que devemos a nossa existência. Um poeta popular brasileiro (Briguet), questiona-se: “O que seria de mim sem ela? Nem sequer eu nasceria […], somos todos filhos dela”. E no entanto, arrastando uma dupla personalidade, Quem Nós Sabemos acaba por ser nomeada de Perseguidora e Perseguida, neste último caso podendo estar sujeita a humilhações e cominações. Num livro sobre A Medicina na Voz do Povo, um médico português (Costa 2007) revelou que uma sua doente, ao mesmo tempo que se lamentava da maleita que a trazia à consulta, logo pressagiou a causa: “Tenho esta comichão na Perseguida porque o meu marido tem uma infeção na ponta da natureza.”6 Não se pense que os nomes integram um sistema arbitrário. Produzem-se no mundo de que fazem parte, no vivido. Eles escondem e revelam enigmas que deslizam dos atos de nomeação para as coisas nomeadas, e vice-versa.

12 Ao guerrearem-se entre si, os nomes acabam por gerar verdades que se relativizam ao contradizerem-se. Como sugere Barthes (1977: 39), “a linguagem é um topos guerreiro” – lugar de significados que se desprendem de signos, num deslizamento de sentidos e metáforas, dicções e contradições, significados que se pelejam por incapacidade de alcançarem o significante. Enquanto identificadores de afeto e intimidade, os diminutivos dados a Quem Nós Sabemos são abundantes, mas também surgem modalidades de tratamento formais, respeitosas ou distanciadas, do tipo Dona Pepa, Dona Felisbina ou Dona Vera. O nome personifica a existência, dá-lhe um cunho de individualidade. Porém, o que mais interessa na relação do nome com a coisa nomeada é o que está para além dessa relação. Os nomes funcionam como cartões de visita que, sobretudo, indicam quem é quem aos olhos de quem nomeia. Por isso mesmo, o espaço mítico constituído pela rapsódia de nomeações dadas a Quem Nós Sabemos é um espaço de códigos cujas significações conflituam entre si, não apenas em função do que podem representar mas, sobretudo, por corresponderem a construções intencionais, expressão de divisões sociais (Halliday 1978). Alguns repentistas brasileiros dão conta dessa realidade, sinalizando a possibilidade de o palavrão associado a Quem Nós Sabemos equivaler a uma contralinguagem demarcada do universo linguístico de classes abastadas: “O rico toca piano / O pobre toca corneta / O rico é que se masturba / O pobre bate punheta/ Xana de rica é vagina / Xana de pobre é [Quem Nós Sabemos]”. 13 A criação imaginária ultrapassa os limites da representação na medida em que amplifica as simbolizações do que representa (Legros 1996). É o caso dos referenciais

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lúdicos associados a Quem Nós Sabemos quando é apelidada de Barbie, Bibelot, Boneca ou Ioiô. Podemos procurar paradigmas onomásticos que nos levem do nome à essência da coisa nomeada, mas esbarramos sempre em nomeações que descarrilam, ora como semantemas (noções ou categorias relativas à realidade), ora como morfemas (categorias de pensamento). A ordem do discurso converge frequentemente para representações estereotipadas e, quando assim acontece, muitas nomeações de Quem Nós Sabemos surgem como veículos de afirmação de um indisfarçável machismo. Estamos perante metaforizações que nos permitem compreender a realidade de uma coisa em função de imagens associadas a outra, incluindo a compreensão de identidades sociais a partir dos imaginários em que essas mesmas identidades se projetam. O que se sugere é que, frequentemente, os nomes dados a Quem Nós Sabemos simbolizam, metaforicamente, uma dominação masculina (Bourdieu 1998). Ou seja, os registos semânticos inventariados dão conta de uma dominação de género que estrutura o que se diz e o modo como se diz, um dizer que se afirma para além do que é dito (Guiraud 1978). No entanto, representações elogiosas coexistem com as temerosas, indiciando uma masculinidade ameaçada, ainda que ironicamente. Num tal registo, e numa época em que as redes terroristas proliferam, Quem Nós Sabemos aparece associada a enredos conspiratórios. Há quem não hesite em a apelidar de Talibã ou Bin Laden ou a descreva como um agente malfeitor: Perdição, Perigosa, Calamidade, Escraviza Homens, Desgraça de Macho. Outros apelidos sinalizam tendências macabras: Assassina de Palhaço, Bicho Que Mata o Homem, Cova do Defunto, Ali Onde Eu Me Acabo. Enfim, estamos perante nomeações que emergem, seguramente, de uma “comunidade discursiva” (Maingueneau 1984) – masculina, no caso –, evidência que não pode ser desprezada.

Poderes ocultos

14 A indizível é também apelidada arma de agressão, podendo o motejo ir de uma simples Machadada a um poderoso Canhão, passando por uma trivial Pistoleira. Ela é também vista como uma lutadora – Princesa Guerreira –, reunindo ainda predicados de domadora: Amansa Macho, Devoradora, ou Superpoderosa. Este último atributo parece ser reivindicado por algumas mulheres. Num livro, editado em Portugal, da brasileira Nelma Penteado, sugestivamente intitulado Os Segredos das Mulheres Brasileiras para Manter os Homens Loucamente Apaixonados, é dado às mulheres o conselho: “Use o termo poderosa […]. Além do mais é um nome bonito que já deixa um homem ansioso para conhecer ‘tal poder’” (2010: 116). O badalado poder de Quem Nós Sabemos foi também testemunhado por Pina-Cabral (2003: 55-86) quando, no Noroeste de Portugal, descobriu que negociantes e caçadores ficavam atemorizados sempre que se cruzavam com uma jovem viúva. Mau presságio para negócios e caçadas. Os negociantes queixavam-se de que os ganhos iam por água abaixo e os caçadores lamentavam-se de que as espingardas perdiam a pontaria, por isso friccionavam o cano das mesmas entre as pernas, contra os genitais, para corrigirem a pontaria.7 Como quer que seja, os poderes para gerar o mal também podem gerar o bem. Com efeito, se Quem Nós Sabemos tem sido considerada um Portal do Inferno, fonte de desgraças e sofrimentos, também aparece como um ícone: sagrada, venerada, possuidora da capacidade única de “dar à luz”. A incompatibilidade dogmática entre o bem e o mal desestrutura-se porque a realidade nomeada alberga forças contrárias, forçando-as à convivência. Em suma, no

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imaginário – principalmente no masculino, onde mais fervilham estas representações – há uma união de opostos: tese e antítese, ao mesmo tempo que síntese.

15 Ainda em relação aos poderes ocultos de Quem Nós Sabemos, na Catalunha havia o costume de as mulheres dos pescadores exporem os genitais ao mar antes de os maridos embarcarem. Acreditavam que, desse modo, o mar se acalmava – ao contrário do que sucederia se nele urinassem. A exposição dos genitais femininos é um recurso que tem sido usado, ao longo da História, para expulsar demónios, afugentar espíritos malignos, impedir que vários tipos de males aconteçam. Quando os perigos espreitam ou as adversidades ameaçam, a sabedoria popular de algumas culturas dita que a melhor opção de uma mulher é erguer as saias (Blackledge 2006 [2003]: 17-76). O mesmo recurso é usado em discussões e zaragatas públicas no Norte de Portugal. Numa delas observei que o levantamento das saias era acompanhado de fortes batimentos numa das nádegas pela mão oposta à que levantava a saia. Não é fácil explicar esta exposição deliberada ou insinuada dos genitais femininos, de que existem abundantes referências no folclore e na literatura. Tentativa de humilhar os adversários? De os seduzir? De os atarantar? Mera superstição?8 Uma coisa é certa, Quem Nós Sabemos arrasta um mito de poder e um poder mítico. 16 O mito do poder resvala para a incapacidade de o representar ou até mesmo de o nomear de uma forma unívoca. Daí a pluralidade contraditória das nomeações e representações de Quem Nós Sabemos. Esta ambivalência, de quem pode ser uma coisa e o avesso da mesma, ocorre também quando passamos em revista as suas representações religiosas. Ela é Deusa, Peregrina, Santinha, Irmã Maria, Imaculada, Dona Anja; ou então é vista como Paraíso, Vale Sagrado, Portal do Céu, Abençoada, Aba de Estrelas, Cricrita dos Céus, Estrela Guia, Luz no Fim do Mundo, Sino de Igreja, Milagrosa, Acolhedora dos Santos. Mas, lá está, os apodos vilipendiosos retratam-na também como Profana, Libertina, Fatal, Libidinosa, Sinistra, Pecado, Pecaminosa, Sem-Vergonha, Tentação do Diabo. O método regressivo-progressivo de Lefebvre ajuda-nos a compreender esta diabolização, onde as palavras se convertem num mito de arquipotência que, no caso em estudo, afirma o ser e o acontecer de uma idealizada essência feminina. Com efeito, nos tempos da Inquisição, a mulher era vista como um ser que facilmente se deixava cair em tentação, dada a suposta debilidade da sua fé na palavra de Deus (Cawthorne 2004). Como quer que seja, embora imaginariamente convertida em artesã demoníaca, Quem Nós Sabemos é capaz de destilar amor do mesmo modo que sortilégio. Ela é reversível porque polivalente. Divina e diabo. Mágica porque vista como tendo poderes sobrenaturais, por intervenção de Deus ou do Demónio. E uma vez que um dos atributos da magia é o de criar imagens (Mauss 2003 [1902-1938]), ela própria é ela mais as imagens a que dá lugar. Em suma, por ser uma realidade sulcada em todas as direções no imaginário do desejo ou do temor, ela pode assumir múltiplos nomes, saturando-se de analogias, metaforizações, alusões. O volumoso caudal de tão exóticas nomeações prova a incapacidade de acoitar sob um único nome realidades plurais em suas significações. A menos que esse nome se exceda de sentidos permitindo pensar-se o indizível, numa espécie de “síntese criativa” – expressão que Weber (1993 [1922]: 38-45) usava para dar conta de diversos tipos de conexões (psíquicas ou culturais). Esse nome existe, ainda que indizível. O pudor em o verbalizar esconde um enigma por desvendar.

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Linguagem e pudor

17 Como interpretar o pudor social que se projeta no uso dos palavrões? Qual a razão pela qual o nome que é dado ao chá misterioso é uma palavra maldita? Como bem o sugere Leach (1973 [1964]), a compreensão dos tabus linguísticos passa pela valorização do não dito, do interdito, do que socialmente produz a obscenidade. Quem Nós Sabemos poderia denominar-se “Órgão Sexual da Mulher” ou mesmo “Vagina”, mas estas designações assépticas escondem o tabu que o palavrão denuncia às escancaradas, daí que o tétrico termo se tenha transformado num interdito linguístico, sucumbindo a rumores reverenciais, a uma decência social. Porém, o tabu continua presente em sua ausência. No lugar do palavrão surgem imensas designações substitutivas ou sucedâneas, que o tornam presente em sua ausência. Por outras palavras, os controles repressivos sobre a sexualidade libertam a imaginação na criatividade da linguagem. Não podemos menosprezar os mecanismos sociais que geram o processo de transformação simbólica de uma simples palavra num palavrão ou num prenúncio do mesmo. No caso em estudo, o tesouro da linguagem é um reservatório de imaginários que se alimentam de um cozinhado aparentemente incongruente, onde a ficção se entrelaça com o vivido na antecipação de um retorno imaginado a lugares de memória ou na projeção de desejos fantasiados ou reprimidos.

18 Dito isto, os corpos – representados no sexo e na sexualidade – ganham sentido cultural, na medida em que as palavras os habitam. Nos atos de nomeação, as palavras tatuam culturalmente os corpos. Essas tatuagens – entendidas como mediações – são formas de ler o social. Assim sendo, há que levar a sério os palavrões, deixando de lado a “autoridade etnográfica” arrogante (Clifford 1991) que desvaloriza as categorias nativas como chaves de interpretação do vivido. As metaforizações e tropismos (Fernandez 1991) que giram em torno de Quem Nós Sabemos permitem dar visibilidade ao indizível, em jogos de nomeação cujo encanto recrudesce com o vínculo de parentesco da ilusão com o mito (Lefebvre 1962; Lévi-Strauss 1978; Durand 1981). Jorge Luís Borges (1983: 178) caracterizou a literatura alegórica como uma fábula de abstrações, embora personificadas. O mesmo se passa com as nomeações alegóricas dirigidas a Quem Nós Sabemos. Elas acentuam aparentes singularidades que todavia se movem para um ideal – porque em mira não estão propriamente singularidades mas sim uma espécie; não as espécies mas sim um género; não os géneros mas sim uma divindade; não o múltiplo mas o uno: o “universal triunfante” sobre o “particular irredutível” (Appadurai 1996: 64). De qualquer forma, dá-se também uma simbiose entre duas realidades intrínsecas: uma material (substantiva) e outra formal (idealista). Num caso, Quem Nós Sabemos é um agente produtor de desejos, sensações e experiências a partir de sua existência singular e material. Noutro caso, ela é aquilo que faz de si o que é, a forma em que se encaixam todas as singularidades, pois o universal apenas é alcançável por mediação das partes. Ou seja: se existir é diferir, a diferença é, de certo modo, o lado substancial das coisas: o que elas têm de mais próprio e comum, apesar das qualidades que as singularizam, umas em relação às outras, como Tarde (1999 [1895]) bem o demonstrou em sua monadologia. Nesta dialética, o vivido (registo do experienciado) e o imaginado (registo do idealizado) convergem para o discurso (registo do significado). Os nomes vinculam-se a vidas vividas de coisas reais (Rosenstock-Huessy 2002 [1981]). Por isso mesmo, Quem Nós Sabemos é um lugar de circulação de sentidos, de condensação de imaginários e fantasias, um centro que é

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também lugar de topofilias e topofobias, uma territorialidade de medos e anseios, desejos e equívocos, excitações e proibições. Todos estes imaginários são mais do que meras imagens refletidas de uma qualquer realidade. São também criações incessantes de imagens que criam a sua própria realidade (Castoriadis 1975). Nela se enfileiram significações que remetem para distintas ordens de representações, ao convocarem o percebido, o vivido e o concebido. Uma outra questão é a de se saber por que razão há que buscar no imaginário um complemento necessário da ordem social. De uma ordem que suscita identidades imaginárias com roupagens simbólicas.

Deslizes e tresmalhações

19 O método regressivo-progressivo permite-nos compreender por que razão a ilegitimidade de se dizer o que, por decoro moral, é indizível ganha novos sentidos a partir da articulação do vivido com o percebido e o concebido. Vejamos, mais em detalhe, um outro controverso nome que é dado a Quem Nós Sabemos – o de Cabra. O seu significado linguístico remete para um mamífero ruminante, fêmea do bode. No entanto, o sentido que a palavra desponta escapa-nos se não levamos em conta o seu contexto de uso, na alçada de uma historicidade que nos permita uma aproximação aos refluxos de significação do nome. Até há cerca de três ou quatro décadas, ainda existia no Norte de Portugal um rito denominado “pagamento da cabrita”. Qual o sentido que aqui tem o termo cabrita? Usando o método regressivo-progressivo e resgatando a génese histórica da significação do termo, descobre-se que o antigo rito se projeta num universo de significações onde impera a ideia de uma ordem ocultamente prescrita. Os rapazes consideravam as moças de suas aldeias como propriedade interdita aos forasteiros. Nalguns casos, exerciam uma espécie de direito sobre as moças da terra que consistia em as apalpar quando circulavam pelas ruas (Fontes 1974: 106). E que acontecia se algum rapaz forasteiro pretendesse namorar como uma moça da aldeia? O direito somente era concedido mediante uma penalização, o pagamento da cabrita. Ao descobrirem que uma moça se deixava ir pelo “arrastar de asa” de um forasteiro, os rapazes da aldeia invadiam a casa dos pais da moça, quando o noivo lá estava, para o obrigar a sair e pagar as inevitáveis rodadas de vinho à rapaziada. Em caso de resistência ou insubmissão, era amarrado a uma corda e mergulhado numa fonte, num poço ou num rio. Convencido o noivo, rumavam todos para a primeira taberna que encontrassem, o noivo à frente e os rapazes da aldeia atrás, a cantar. Lá chegados, o noivo pagava vinho, pão e bacalhau para todos. Depois peregrinavam por outras tabernas da aldeia, comendo e bebericando (Lages 1983).

20 O pagamento da cabrita é, certamente, um rito integrativo. Porém, arrasta também a simbolização de um status quo. Por isso, o rito faz sentido porque ordena a desordem, conferindo meios para a controlar. Mas o rito não assegura uma integração plena. Mesmo tendo pago a cabrita, o noivo de terra alheia continua a ser olhado como “de fora”. Se um rapaz que tivesse pago a cabrita por namorar uma moça de aldeia vizinha viesse a namorar com outra da mesma aldeia, de novo era sujeito ao pagamento da cabrita. A questão problemática é a de saber por que razão é que o noivo que vem de fora namorar ou casar com uma moça de uma dada aldeia se vê obrigado a uma punição. Para o efeito importa questionar o sentido oculto do termo cabra ou cabrita, no ritual que leva o seu nome. A hipótese de que uma pequena cabra (no sentido linguístico do termo) poderia ser “partilhada pelos convivas de um banquete” (Lages

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1983: 660) levanta dúvidas. Recentemente, mobilizado por uma etnografia da comunicação (Saville-Troike 1989), visitei algumas aldeias do distrito de Viseu, onde também existia o rito do pagamento da cabrita. Questionei então alguns aldeãos sobre o significado do termo “cabrita”: Era uma cabra que o noivo tinha de pagar? Em risadas negaram-me convictamente a hipótese, tendo-me alguns sugerido que a cabra era uma “ovelha tresmalhada”, ou seja, a moça que tinha rejeitado os rapazes da aldeia para se juntar com um de fora. Também no Brasil colonial eram popularmente designados “cabras” todos os indivíduos que resultassem de indesejáveis misturas sociais. O atributo de cabra, por esse motivo, era depreciativo (Furtado 2003: 49). A cabra, tal qual a moça que se deixa levar por um rapaz de fora, caracteriza-se por uma rebeldia à domesticidade. Embora presas nos fundos das casas (as cabras) ou, em sentido alegórico, nas próprias casas (as moças que têm noivo de fora), o que parece caracterizar umas e outras é o risco de evasão que exige uma contrapartida, uma pena, uma multa ou mesmo uma retaliação: o pagamento da cabrita. Mais uma vez, o que o nome Cabra encobre é uma relação de poder em que a denominação masculina confina a mulher à esfera doméstica, realidade que aparece refletida em muitos adágios populares (por exemplo: “do homem a praça, da mulher a casa”). 21 Aqui chegados, que representa, afinal, a cabrita? Desde logo, o termo parece apontar para uma necessidade social de simbolização das relações sociais. Neste sentido, a cabrita parece assumir uma dupla valência: quer como valor de transação (equivalente geral de trocas), quer como objeto transacionável (associado a um valor de uso). Ora bem, se a cabra, em termos simbólicos, representa a moça que saltou a cerca da sua comunidade de origem, então justifica-se a relação contratual entre os rapazes da aldeia (que perdem a cabrita) e o noivo (que a ganha) através de um pagamento que representa nem mais nem menos que o preço da cabra. Esta hipótese – vou chamar-lhe hipótese de tresmalhação – faz algum sentido, até na medida em que sabemos que os pastores que guardam rebanhos consideram as cabras muito mais ariscas do que, por exemplo, as ovelhas. Por isso mesmo, a designação de cabra também é dada a uma mulher de comportamento duvidoso, suspeito, indigno. Aliás, “puta” e “cabra” são palavras frequentemente usadas como sinónimos (Millet 2001). Neste registo analítico, o apelido de Cabra que é dado a Quem Nós Sabemos pode ser sintoma de uma suspeitada ameaça de “dor de corno” – para usar outro palavrão popular, também cheio de sentido. 22 O simbolismo dos cornos tem sido bastante estudado na antropologia. A sua interpretação não pode dissociar-se dos contextos sociais de uso que lhe dão sentido e que remetem para a um código de honra baseado na força e na virilidade. Um homem cornudo é um cabrão, sendo os cornos atributo de um marido ou amante enganado – devido à sua passividade, como acontece com o bode, por ser condescendente com o acesso de outros machos às fêmeas do seu domínio (Leach 1973 [1964]; Blok 1981). Por a sexualidade das mulheres ameaçar a honra dos homens, estes defendem-se procurando protegê-las do assédio por parte de outros homens. A defesa da honra e reputação justifica as ameaças de violência aos que se esquivam ao pagamento da cabrita: o mergulho numa fonte ou num poço. No fundo, os forasteiros são obrigados a submeter- se à força do rito, ou melhor, ao domínio dos que reivindicam a “imunidade do seu domínio” (Blok 1981: 17). Se o não fizessem passariam por “panhonhas” ou, pior ainda, por “bois mansos”, sem os “tomates” no lugar.

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23 A hostilidade entre aldeias, por efeito de ameaça aos casamentos endogâmicos, ligados a interesses patrimoniais, justifica não só a existência do rito do pagamento da cabrita como muitos dos apelidos que os nativos de aldeias vizinhas jogam entre si. Frequentemente, há uma tendência para se desvalorizar o status das mulheres que não são da terra. Por isso, no Alentejo surgem ditos do tipo: “As do Campinho são bruxas; de São Marcos, feiticeiras; da Cumeada, manhosas; de Reguengos, borracheiras” (Morais 2006: 53). As mulheres da freguesia de Nossa Senhora de Machede (concelho de Évora) são alvo de troça pois delas se diz que “não têm calcanhares” porque “caem facilmente de costas”, isto é, manifestam-se disponíveis para prazeres de cama. Para defenderem a reputação dos homens da sua terra, as mulheres atingidas costumam replicar que os homens “de fora”, por virilidade duvidosa, “não têm biqueiras” (Morais 2006: 77-78). Também se diz que os habitantes da referida aldeia recusaram a edificação de uma escola (“não precisamos dela que nós cá somos todos analfabetos”) mas, apregoavam os das aldeias rivais, reivindicavam a construção de uma praça de touros, dada a abundância de “cornos”. Há pois uma clara oposição entre “os de cá” e “os de fora”, “nós” e “eles”, oposição presente quer em adágios (Pais 1985), quer em muitos ritos e tradições populares de Portugal, como nos festejos de São João, onde há um enfrentamento entre grupos rivais, designados Bugios (representando cristãos) e Mourisqueiros (representando forasteiros), ambos os grupos compostos por rapazes solteiros (Ferreira e Perdigão 2003: 14). Esta oposição manifesta-se em alguns ditos populares que envolvem aldeias vizinhas, desencorajando os casamentos exolocais. Por exemplo: “Eu casei-me na Mutela com uma moça de feição; de bonita não tinha nada, pobre sim, honrada não” (Dias 1984: 293). A tresmalhação é alvo de crítica social na convicção de que “quem fora vai casar ou foi enganado ou vai enganar”, embora sejam interesses patrimoniais – não confessos mas reais – que determinem esta representação, também presente nas loas das festas dos rapazes em Trás-os-Montes (Godinho 2006a, 2006b). 24 O ritual é um domínio privilegiado para desvendar cristalizações sociais de uma cultura, assim como suas transformações. Atualmente, já não são denominadas cabras as moças que saem de uma aldeia para namorar ou casar com rapazes de terra alheia. Em contrapartida, as Mães de Bragança que recentemente se revoltaram contra as trabalhadoras de sexo brasileiras, para além de as acusarem de enfeitiçar os maridos com o misterioso chá, também as apelidam cabras. Ou seja, as chamadas cabras vêm agora de fora, sendo alvo de múltiplas discriminações: enquanto mulheres, estrangeiras, imigrantes e prostitutas. A sua representação, de ameaçadoras intrusas, resulta da constatação de uma outridade como perigosa, caótica, indutora de desordem e insegurança. Por isso são apodadas de cabras, tendo desencadeado, no auge do movimento das Mães de Bragança, fervores patrióticos, nacionalistas, chauvinistas, xenófobos (Pais 2011). As apelidadas cabras aparecem como bode expiatório de uma desordem social. A casa de família é o lugar da mulher recatada e casta; os bordéis são, em contrapartida, o território da maldade erotizada. No universo feminino, o confronto entre “estabelecidos” e “outsiders” (Elias e Scotson (1994 [1965]) pode ser lido como decorrente de uma oposição entre ordem e desordem. Umas reivindicam o papel de mães, outras são simplesmente olhadas como cabras. Em contrapartida, quando o apodo de Cabra se refere a Quem Nós Sabemos, partindo das hostes masculinas, o que está em causa, a nível do inconsciente, é um possível temor de desordem, por efeito de poderes ameaçados por uma crescente emancipação feminina (Romaine 1999): suspeitas, ciumeiras ou desconfianças de possíveis ou imaginadas traições que acabam

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por se transformar em obsessão entre homens que teimam em defender que “em casa manda ela, mas nela mando eu”. A alienação encontra-se também nas representações do vivido enquanto formas de consciência mitificada. A cabra aparece como um símbolo, mas são as analogias que dão razão de ser ao símbolo: “A comparação, a analogia, a identidade parcial (fictícia ou real) entram na consciência do símbolo. O simbolismo assim considerado supõe sempre dois termos, condensados num só por um tropo (elipse, metáfora)” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 225). O sentido cai frequentemente no simbolismo. Porém, o símbolo reveste-se de sentido na medida em que subentende um imaginário social (distinto da imaginação individual) historicamente resgatável. 25 Para enfatizar a importância dos códigos de variabilidade dos nomes, seja tomado o exemplo de um outro palavrão que remete para uma entidade que frequentemente se relaciona com Quem Nós Sabemos. Poderia reproduzir o palavrão, mas, em seu lugar, limito-me a usar um termo corrente no Brasil para designar qualquer entidade: o “cara”. Façamos então uma reflexão sobre os códigos de variabilidade do significado do cara a partir de um contexto concreto de comunicação. O caso aconteceu, recentemente, no Norte de Portugal.9 Um cabo da Guarda Nacional Republicana, irritado por não ter conseguido uma troca na escala de serviço, virou-se para o sargento responsável do escalonamento e desabafou, num misto de frustração e resignação: “não dá p’ra trocar, então pró cara…!” Sentindo-se atingido na sua honra e consideração, o superior hierárquico acusou-o de crime de insubordinação. Nos tribunais, os juízes tiveram de se enfrentar não propriamente com o significado denotativo do Cara, que ninguém contesta, mas com o valor moral do cara, determinado pelo contexto de uso. Dependendo deste, talvez o palavrão não fosse assim tão injurioso ou ofensivo. Por aqui vemos que, dependendo do contexto de comunicação, há palavras que podem promover ou abalar hierarquias sociais. O guarda salvou-se da condenação porque, como Garfinkel (2006 [1968]) bem o demostrou em seus estudos etnometodológicos, nas suas decisões os juízes respeitam, geralmente, as características rotineiras da ordem social. De facto, no Norte de Portugal o Cara aparece como uma verdadeira muleta oratória, para além de ser uma expressão popular de impaciência ou espanto. Aliás, em suas origens, o cara tinha uma significação inócua. Derivando do latim caraculus designava uma simples estaca e, talvez por isso, no tempo das descobertas marítimas, o termo cara era usado pelos marinheiros portugueses para designar o mastro principal das caravelas. Por aqui vemos que as palavras têm uma “génese histórica” (Lefebvre 1953), pois em cada época há modos legítimos de argumentar, narrar, persuadir, provar (Angenot 2010). Como também vimos na tentativa de interpretação do ritual do pagamento da cabrita, a génese não exclui “a análise das relações mais ocultas, de filiações perdidas” (Lefebvre 1983 [1980]: 17), mas também não impede o ganho de novos sentidos. É aqui que emerge a componente “histórico-genética” do método regressivo-progressivo. Se, como bem disse Galeano (2004: 21), “o nome é a coisa que o nome chama”, ideia que aparece no seu livro As Palavras Andantes, também é verdade que uma mesma palavra pode significar muitas coisas diferentes, dependendo de por onde ela circule. Pergunta Lefebvre (1968 [1966]: 71): “Donde, como, de que coisa vem o sentido?” Não vem apenas da significação das palavras isoladas. Vem, sobretudo, dos seus contextos de uso e de suas ressonâncias culturais, das representações que arrastam. Como bem nos ensinou Lefebvre (1968 [1966]: 94, 1983 [1980]: 199-200), as representações sociais não são simples efeitos: são factos de palavras e, sobretudo, de práticas e lugares (Pink 2012).

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Notas conclusivas

26 Na carta escrita a Octavio Paz – que não lhe chegou a endereçar – e que abre La présence et l’absence, Lefebvre colocava a descoberto os ardis da linguagem, isto é, a sua natureza enigmática, por efeito das “dependências e poderes ocultos sob as palavras e os gestos” (1983 [1980]: 10-11). Daí o largo passo em frente que Lefebvre dá em relação à filosofia da linguagem, que a toma como um mero saco de palavras, a cada palavra se associando uma coisa ou uma ideia. Os poderes ocultos que transformam uma palavra num palavrão foram aqui pesquisados a partir de um termo indizível na língua portuguesa falada no Brasil, fora dos circuitos da clandestinidade ou do calão. O facto de, em Portugal, essa palavra arcaica ter um significado que nada tem de obsceno, dado significar uma “pequena caixa”, mostra bem como as palavras têm uma história de vida e ganham um poder (Fairclough 1989) dependente dos contextos de uso: “A significação parece clara e bem definida; mas muda com o valor […]. O contexto torna-se determinante” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 94-95). As próprias onomatopeias só significam o que exprimem quando reportadas a um contexto de uso (Newmeyer 1989; Chambers 2003). Só o contexto comunica o valor da palavra. É também o que se passa com as palavras polissémicas, onde a relação entre significante e significado aparece obscurecida. Mesmo as palavras que parecem ter um significado indiscutível são portadoras de histórias de vida que alojam outros sentidos, dependendo do contexto de uso, como verificámos com as metaforizações de “cabra” ou do polivalente “cara”. Ou seja, os nomes são mais do que cortinas que ocultam o movimento da linguagem, mais do que palavras amortalhadas em significados (Foley 1997). São códigos de variabilidade social que refletem e produzem o social e, por isso mesmo, ajudam a percebê-lo. Como qualquer mercadoria, a linguagem possui um valor na medida em que não se pode nomear sem representar. Por isso mesmo, pela sua natureza comunicativa, a linguagem concretiza-se como uma mediação entre o individual e o social (Lutfi 2003).

27 No estudo de caso aprofundado vimos que o palavrão indizível – que neste texto ganhou a alcunha de Quem Nós Sabemos – denuncia uma ausência que se enche de presenças ficcionadas, ao representar-se através de múltiplas imagens e propriedades. Sem estas, estaríamos perante uma abstração oca, uma sombra, um vazio em busca de seu próprio ser. É certo que o corpo apenas se representa através de investimentos abstratos: os signos corporais. No entanto, no intervalo que desune o corpo das suas representações primárias emerge uma outra realidade: um poder de nomeação. Ele gera-se a partir do vivido, palco de ebulição e circulação das representações sociais. E porque assim é, Quem Nós Sabemos acaba por não extravasar as representações triviais que a representam, pela simples razão que, como nos ensinou Lefebvre, o individual apenas se representa no social, pelo social e para o social. Todos os nomes que Quem Nós Sabemos ganha apenas a representam indiretamente, tornando-a presente em sua ausência através de múltiplas alusões, metáforas e simbolizações. 28 Nas mediações entre as nomeações e representações, o método regressivo-progressivo fez-nos descobrir uma tensão entre coação e libertação, tabu e remissão, alienação o obsessão. O interdito – a nomeação do palavrão – gera o prazer do contradito, uma forma de contornar o interdito a partir de outros ditos, ficando assim superada, de certa forma, a coerção que impede a circulação do palavrão. Esse prazer de rebeldia é claramente sinalizado pela natureza jocosa dos apelidos. Podemos mesmo falar de um “prazer de disparatar”, usando uma expressão que é grata a Freud (2000 [1905]) quando

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analisa a relação do chiste com o inconsciente. A psicogénese do chiste, desenvolvida por Freud, mostra bem como o prazer de disparatar se pode interpretar como uma fuga à coercividade (psíquica ou social) que procede de um jogo criativo de palavras que procura “proteger o prazer contra a sua supressão” (Freud 2000 [1905]: 131). De facto, os apelidos atribuídos a Quem Nós Sabemos dão claros sinais de corresponderem a uma liberdade de jogar com ideias, representações e analogias que produzem o chiste. O prazer de disparatar parece também corresponder a uma fonte de prestígio, caso contrário os apelidos não circulariam, ou seja, não sobreviveriam. É como se a capacidade de nomear fosse equivalente a um poder de exibição quando a comunicação sobre a sexualidade se faz de forma jocosa. É nestas circunstâncias que desponta a possibilidade de toda esta criatividade antroponímica se associar a desejos reprimidos ou intensificados por razões desconhecidas da consciência. Aliás, uma grande parte dos apelidos atribuídos a Quem Nós Sabemos correspondem a elaborações oníricas, como acontece nos sonhos (Freud 1999 [1899]). 29 Muitos dos nomes que afugentam o palavrão sugerem a hipótese de os desejos reprimidos suscitarem múltiplas representações que alimentam imaginários sociais (Harvey e Shalom 1997). Estes, por sua vez, parecem dar sustentabilidade a uma hipótese levantada por Lefebvre: a transformação do sexual em obsessão e ficção. E tudo isto porque o sexual (a coisa que o palavrão designa) se converteu numa figura de ausência, por efeito de sua presença obsessiva: “Mesmo a desnudez, em vez de descobrir uma presença (como na arte clássica) divulga-se como imagem, como ausência” (Lefebvre 1983 [1980]: 182). Finalmente, quanto aos poderes ocultos que transformam uma palavra num palavrão, o estudo de caso sobre Quem Nós Sabemos sugere a existência de importantes processos de mediação simbólica entre diferentes sexos. Algumas pesquisas têm mostrado como a linguagem se associa a identidades de género (Bergvall, Bing e Freed 1996; Cameron 1995; Mills 1995), mas raramente se têm discutido as dimensões de alienação na forma como essas identidades se jogam nos palavrões. Para o efeito, há que valorizar o poder semiológico das nomeações. Como acontece com os mitos, os palavrões vestem-se de roupagens simbólicas que a linguagem projeta no pensamento e nos imaginários sociais.

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NOTAS

1. Com uma vastíssima obra que reúne mais de meia centena de livros, e apesar ou justamente por causa de sua formação filosófica, Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) não deixou de se afirmar em domínios como os da sociolinguística, da história ou da sociologia. A sua sensibilidade antropológica em muito se deve à sua experiência de vida quando, depois de ter cumprido o serviço militar no Norte de África, regressa a Paris para trabalhar como operário na Citroën e, posteriormente, como taxista. Com efeito, uma boa parte da sua produção teórica centra-se na crítica da vida quotidiana, na produção do espaço e na alienação social. Em 1970, Henri Lefebvre fundou com Anatole Hopp a revista Espace et Société que, após a sua morte, lhe consagrou um número de homenagem (n.º 76, 1994). A obra de Henri Lefebvre tem sido recentemente alvo de um recrudescido interesse (Shields 1999; Elden 2004; Stanek 2011; Butler 2012). 2. Num esforço que procura confluências disciplinares, como também se verifica no clássico estudo de Paul Rabinow (1986) sobre representações sociais. 3. A necessidade de cruzamento de estratégias de comparação etnográfica e histórica é também reivindicada por Pina-Cabral (2008) e ilustrada por Harris (2008) quando clarifica a influência portuguesa na prática de atribuição de nomes na história do Pará, confrontando os períodos colonial, imperial e contemporâneo. 4. Em Bragança, o trabalho de campo mais intensivo decorreu entre 2003 e 2008, período em que efetuei duas a três deslocações por ano, com estadias de uma a duas semanas. Posteriormente as visitas tornaram-se mais esporádicas. Para além de Bragança, deambulei por outras regiões de Trás-os-Montes, como Mirandela, Macedo de Cavaleiros e Vinhais. Quando as rusgas policiais às casas de alterne se intensificaram (Pais 2011), tendo muitas das trabalhadoras de alterne rumado para Espanha, realizei algumas incursões por Alcanices, Verin e Zamora. Dados mais aprofundados desta minha pesquisa etnográfica serão publicados num futuro livro.

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5. Refiro-me a Ismael Pordeus Jr. (da Universidade Federal do Ceará) e Roselane Bezerra (bolseira de pós-doutoramento no Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra). 6. No seu livro, o médico dá conta de outras designações que se referem à Perseguida, como: Montadeira, Parreca ou Pardalona. 7. No Rio Grande do Sul (Brasil) a má pontaria das espingardas poderia ser retratada com a expressão “embucetar” (Fisher 2004: 107). 8. A superstição (do latim superstitio) significava, originariamente, “o que persiste de épocas antigas”. É neste sentido que – à luz do método regressivo-progressivo, proposto por Lefebvre (1968, 1983) – se pode tomar a superstição como uma sobrevivência, embora reelaborada, da tradição. 9. O caso ocorreu em agosto de 2009, tendo a denúncia seguido para o DIAP (Departamento de Investigação e Ação Penal) de Lisboa, seguindo depois para o Tribunal de Instrução Criminal, até chegar, finalmente, ao Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa, em outubro de 2010.

RESUMOS

Ao ganharem o estatuto de palavrões, por que razão algumas palavras se tornam interditas ou apenas evocadas através da mediação de alegorias e metáforas sugeridas por outras palavras? Para responder a este enigma, convocam-se as teorias da presença-ausência, propostas por Lefebvre, abordando-se dimensões de análise – o inconsciente, o imaginário, a cultura – frequentemente desconsideradas quando oscilamos entre o representante e o representado, desprezando a representação. Na esteira do método regressivo-progressivo, a análise dos palavrões evidencia a ordem caótica de significações que faz sobreviver o enigma da representação. As mediações entre o vivido, o percebido e o concebido mostram-nos que, por detrás do limbo das palavras e dos palavrões, encontramos um amplo campo de análise social.

In acquiring the status of swear words, why do some words become prohibited or are only evoked through the mediation of allegories and metaphors suggested by other words? In order to answer this riddle, Lefebvre’s theories of presence-absence are called on, addressing dimensions of analysis – the unconscious, imagination, culture – often disregarded when we swing between the representative and the represented, ignoring representation. In line with the regressive- progressive method, the analysis of swear words highlights the chaotic order of meanings which causes the riddle of representation to survive. Mediations between what is lived, perceived and conceived show us that behind the literal meaning of words and swear words we may find ample scope for social analysis.

ÍNDICE

Keywords: imagination, Lefebvre, language, swear words, representations, sexuality Palavras-chave: imaginários, Lefebvre, linguagem, palavrões, representações, sexualidade

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AUTOR

JOSÉ MACHADO PAIS

Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa (ULisboa), Portugal [email protected]

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Valerio Simoni and Adriana Piscitelli (dir.) Dossiê: "Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change"

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Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change: introduction Masculinidades em tempos de incerteza e mudanças

Adriana Piscitelli and Valerio Simoni

1 In July 2014, during two bright spring days a group of scholars gathered for a lively Symposium at the University of Sussex.1 Their aim was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Dislocating Masculinity (Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994), one of the ground-breaking books that marked research on the topic of masculinity, and to explore the major changes in the field of masculinity studies since the appearance of the publication. In the mid 1990s, an effervescent intellectual moment for gender studies, several authors converged in the effort of theorizing masculinities, questioning the widespread equation between gender and women studies but also challenging the vindictiveness of men’s studies (Almeida 1996, 2000 [1996]; Connell 1995, 1996).

2 In those days diverse sociological and anthropological perspectives came to consider that examining men as engendered and engendering was not so much a complement to the study of women, but rather integral to understanding the ambiguities of gender differences (Gutmann 1997: 833). These perspectives problematized accounts of gender based on the theory of sex roles and on the “classificatory theory” that treats women and men as pre-formed categories (Connell 1996: 158; Strathern 1988). They also tended to converge in analytical approaches that scrutinized how power works in the production of gender orders, in considering masculinity as a configuration of practice in everyday interactions, and in paying attention both to culturally authoritative or hegemonic patterns of masculinity and to subordinated/marginalized masculinities (Almeida 1995, 2000 [1996]; Connell 1995, 1996; Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994). 3 In this context, anthropological approaches arguing that the premises and methods of social anthropology were particularly suited to the study of men and masculinities offered a unique contribution to the field. Following Strathern’s (1988) formulations, these perspectives perceived gender as fluid and contingent. They considered that the

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conflation of the notions male/men/masculinity and female/women/femininity in constructions of difference ought to become an object of scrutiny, since the three terms in each cluster did not necessarily overlap and could have multiple referents that blurred and created the possibility of ambiguous interpretations in any particular setting. Finally, these perspectives considered gender as a potent metaphor for difference and power whose import should be understood in relation to historical and ethnographic specificities. A key idea was that there were no fixed ways in which these metaphors were employed in social life: they could permeate a diversity of dimensions, which were not always nor directly connected with sex and gender (Almeida 1995, 2000 [1996]; Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994). 4 As Vale de Almeida (1996) highlighted, this analysis was based on a critique of diverse aspects of a constructionist approach that left the dichotomic categories of men and women intact. Such perspectives failed to question how apparently unitary persons are constituted, assumed that there is a single way of “being a man” – that being masculine is an exclusive identity – and neglected the analysis of how bodies are gendered. Along similar lines of thought, in Dislocating Masculinity Cornwall and Lindisfarne (1994: 3) observed that if notions of masculinity, like the notion of gender itself, are fluid and situational, we must then consider the various ways people understand masculinity in any particular setting, and explore how various masculinities are defined and redefined in social interaction. The main questions that should therefore be addressed are: how do individuals present and negotiate a gendered identity? How and why are particular images and behaviors given gender labels? Who benefits from such labeling? And how do such labels assume different meanings and connotations for different audiences and in different settings? 5 Twenty years after Cornwall and Lindisfarne’s publication, masculinity studies have disseminated widely, as exemplified by the array of academic journals and books on the subject published in different regions of the world. Several of the ideas formulated by Cornwall and Lindisfarne and by Vale de Almeida in the mid 1990s have been incorporated in feminist and queer analyses of a variety of topics – women’s masculinities, masculine hybrids, transnational analyses that allow us to perceive how gender operates as a language for alluding to inequalities of social class and “race,” to regional inequalities and relationships between countries of the “North” and the “South,” to differentiated degrees of civilization or of “Westernization” (Halberstam 2008; Archetti 2003; González Pagés 2010; Piscitelli 2014). 6 Paying close attention to an array of recent studies of masculinities, the scholars gathered at the University of Sussex’s meeting reached the conclusion that the main anthropological insights about gender analysis of the mid 1990s are still significant. The methods of anthropology are still seen as a privileged asset for studying masculinities, given their potential to dismantle “conventional” categories of analysis. The comparative nature of anthropology continues to be seen as highly relevant and productive in that it encourages us to challenge the existence of any universal category, and raises key questions about the social contexts in which such categories are used. Finally, ethnographic studies continue to be considered fundamental also in order to unveil and problematize anthropologists’ own preconceptions. Yet, scholars in the meeting also perceived that a variety of emerging contexts, particularly in situations of radical change and/or crisis, pose a series of new questions for the analysis of masculinities.

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7 The articles in this dossier interrogate precisely these situations, considering how intense transformations associated with economic and political change affect notions of masculinity and the ways these are deployed, negotiated, and eventually modified. During the last decades, political turmoils and a range of crises have impinged on many regions of the world, including European countries. As Narotzky and Besnier (2014) observe, crises are processes beyond individual control that force change in traditional modes of livelihood, and that simultaneously express people’s breach of confidence in the elements that provided relative systemic stability and reasonable expectations for the future. 8 According to Narotzky and Besnier (2014), crises reconfigure values and reshuffle frameworks of moral obligation. As a result, the imagining of possible futures and how to make them happen also changes. In times of crisis, people deploy coping strategies that enable them to locate and access increasingly elusive resources. These strategies may include relations of trust and care, economies of affect, networks of reciprocity encompassing both tangible and intangible resources, and material and emotional transfers that are supported by moral obligations. But these strategies can also have the effect of defining and marginalizing categories of people whose access to resources will be hampered and curtailed. These authors consider that while some institutions that regulate moral and political frameworks of responsibility and support the transfer of resources are being undermined in various ways, other institutional frameworks (e.g., religious, ethnic, nationalistic) for guiding human behavior and channeling goods are being created or reconfigured. This creativity, however, may involve exclusionary practices that create and demonize an Other (in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, or other lines of differentiation), making it a target of violence in struggles over access to resources and respect. 9 In this dossier, which is an outcome of a workshop that took place in 2012 at the Biannual Meeting of the European Association of Social Anthropologists in Nanterre, the authors consider situations of radical change and/or crisis, exploring what the production of multiple and shifting notions of masculinities tells us about diverse political and economic frames and their transformations, and analyzing in turn how these conjunctures shed light on transformations of masculinity. Considering that in situations of economic and social turmoil gender relationships tend to be volatile and unsteady, leading to shifts and alterations in the balance of power, the authors analyze how masculinities are re-enacted, reworked and reshaped to cope with conditions of (continuous) crisis and rapid transformation. 10 The situations considered in this dossier are extremely diverse in terms of the political, economic and social pressure bearing upon the agents involved: the Special Period in Time of Peace in Cuba that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union (Simoni; Härkönen); the migratory contexts of Pentecostal converts of African or Latin- American origin in Brussels (Maskens); the post-socialist Chinese state in contemporary globalizing China (Zheng) and the militant organization of Hamas in the Palestinian/ Israeli struggle (Malmström). In relation to these varied contextual frames, the articles explore the tensions between global imaginaries of “maleness” and the models/styles of masculinity on which people draw to cope with changes and uncertainties, uncovering their transnational diffusion and local translations and appropriations. 11 In shedding light on how masculinities incorporate new defining elements and reformulate ideals and normativities, the articles offer substantive contributions for

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the theorizing of masculinities. One of the innovative aspects relates to the problematization of analyses that have largely approached masculinity from a “Western” perspective and attended to peripheral masculinities such as “gay” or “black” (Zheng). Discussing the case of contemporary China, Zheng analysis shows how gender hybridity, in the form of effeminate men, comes to be seen as a peril to the security of the nation once it reflects powerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity, and social deterioration reminiscent of the colonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the Sick Man of East Asia. The articles also allow us to perceive how styles of masculinity can operate as expressions of a “non-Western modernity.” Suggesting that the politics of Hamas and Islamization are part of a global system and expressions of globalization, Malmström’s analysis of Palestinian male youth’s identities shows how such identities are part of the process by which these young men cast themselves as subjects of modernity. Yet, and in contrast with Western notions of modernity that emphasize secularization, what emerges here is a modern project embedded in religious faith. Within this frame, the analysis of how bodies are gendered, in an interplay of political violence, suffering, resistance and Islamization, acquires particular significance. 12 A second aspect that deserves attention is the consideration of how competing and contradictory models of masculinity are enacted according to situational dimensions in contexts of intense change, which leads the articles in this dossier to uncover the actualization, production, and transformation of different styles of masculine subjectification (see Maskens, Härkönen, Simoni). Depicting different relational possibilities and expressions of masculinity, and analyzing what they tell us about the transformations that tourism engenders in present-day Cuba, Simoni shows how, in a context in which sexual economies are central for the survival strategies of many Cubans and where dispassionate macho attitudes are common, it is also important to recognize Cuban men’s aspiration to love and pay attention, more generally, to the competing emotional, moral, and pragmatic concerns that their different enactments of masculinity responded to. Touristic encounters are thus shown to provide new venues for subjectification and self-stylization, leading for instance people to (re)align masculinities to global circulating romantic ideals of love and romance. Looking at the Pentecostal reworking of masculinities among converts of African or Latin-American origin in Brussels, Maskens shows that ambiguity remains at the heart of such transformations of gender identity. Uncovering the competing, gender-related demands and transformations that impinge on migrants, the analysis shows how religious ideology and normativity can provide ways to channel and express male resistance and adaptation, while still leaving the door open for a multiplicity of discourses on masculinity that vary situationally and are also indexed to people’s biographic trajectories. Focusing on the gendered consequences of the large-scale transformations and economic crisis that have affected Cuba since the 1990s, Härkönen shows how Cuban men cope with women’s intensified demands by embracing distinct cultural notions of masculinity. Expressions of “responsible masculinity” and of machismo, each with its own affordances and challenges, are actualized in precarious attempts to respond to changing expectations. By paying attention to these negotiations, the article illustrates how distinct aspects of local conceptualizations of how to be a man are situationally deployed and worked over. 13 A third aspect to be considered relates to how notions of power are addressed in the articles that compose this dossier. Twenty years ago, Cornwall and Lindisfarne (1994)

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debated whether conceptualizations such as “patriarchy” or male dominance were appropriate tools for analysis, and a number of authors converged in according relevance to the notion of “hegemonic masculinity.” While not absent (see Maskens’s contribution), this conceptualization appears relatively diluted in the analyses presented here. The idea of “hegemonic masculinity” as a model that prescribes the image of the “real man” in a given society, produced throughout the daily socialization of boys and girls as well as the subordination of other forms of masculinity, seems to be problematic and encounter several challenges in contexts of crisis. Ultimately, the analytical fruitfulness of this notion comes into question in situations where force, instead of consensus, acquires the utmost visibility. 14 The articles in the dossier address these situations and help us reflect more broadly, in an ethnographically grounded manner, on how the profound transformations associated with economic and political change affect notions of masculinity and the ways they are enacted, negotiated, and modified.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALMEIDA, Miguel Vale de, 1996, “Género, masculinidade e poder: revendo um caso do Sul de Portugal”, Anuário Antropológico, 95: 161-190.

ALMEIDA, Miguel Vale de, 2000 [1996], Senhores de Si: Uma Interpretação Antropológica da Masculinidade. Lisbon, Fim de Século (2th edition).

ARCHETTI, Eduardo, 2003, Masculinidades: Fútbol, Tango y Polo en la Argentina. Buenos Aires, Editorial Antropofagia.

CONNELL, Ryan, 1995, Masculinities. Cambridge, Polity Press.

CONNELL, Ryan, 1996, “New directions in gender theory: masculinity research, and gender politics”, Ethnos, 61 (3-4): 157-176.

CORNWALL, Andrea, and Nancy LINDISFARNE (eds.), 1994, Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies. London, Routledge.

GONZÁLEZ PAGÉS, Julio César, 2010, Macho, Varón, Masculino: Estudios de Masculinidades en Cuba. Habana, Editorial de la Mujer.

GUTMANN, Matthew C., 1997, “The ethnographic (g)ambit: women and the negotiation of masculinity in Mexico City”, American Ethnologist, 24 (4): 833-855.

HALBERSTAM, Judith, 2008, Female Masculinity. Durham, Duke University Press.

NAROTZKY, Suzana, and Niko BESNIER, 2014, “Crisis, value, and hope: rethinking the economy”, Current Anthropology, 55 (9): S4-S16.

PISCITELLI, Adriana, 2014, “Windsurfers, capoeiristas and musicians: Brazilian masculinities in transnational sceneries”, paper presented at the “Dislocating Masculinity Revisited” Symposium, University of Sussex, July 4-5.

STRATHERN, Marilyn, 1988, The Gender of the Gift. Manchester, University of Manchester Press.

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NOTES

1. “Dislocating Masculinity Revisited” Symposium, University of Sussex, July 4-5, 2014.

ABSTRACTS

This text introduces the articles in the dossier considering the contributions of studies of gender and masculinities for anthropological theory in the last two decades. Taking into account the scholarship of authors that marked these studies in the mid-1990s, we explore continuities and advances in the field. We show how current debates on gender and masculinity suggest that the main insights developed during this period are still relevant. The methods of anthropology are considered particularly suited for the study of masculinities, given their potential to destabilize “conventional” categories of analysis. The comparative nature of anthropology is seen as extremely productive in that it enables to challenge universal categories and raises key questions on the social contexts in which these categories are employed. At the same time, such variety of contexts, especially in situations of radical change and/or crisis, brings new questions to the fore for the analysis of masculinities. Among them the question of the analytical fruitfulness of the notion of hegemonic masculinity in situations in which force, rather than consensus, appears to acquire more salience.

Neste texto apresentamos os artigos que compõem o dossiê, considerando as contribuições dos estudos sobre gênero e masculinidades para a teoria antropológica durante as duas últimas décadas. Levando em conta as formulações de diversos autores que marcaram esses estudos na metade da década de 1990, exploramos as permanências e os avanços nesse campo. Mostramos como o debate sobre essa problemática sugere que os principais insights antropológicos alcançados nesse período ainda são significativos. Os métodos da antropologia continuam sendo considerados privilegiados para o estudo das masculinidades, por seu potencial para desestabilizar categorias “convencionais” de análise. A natureza comparativa da antropologia ainda é percebida como altamente produtiva por possibilitar desafiar a ideia da existência de categorias universais e levantar questões chave sobre os contextos sociais nos quais são utilizadas. No entanto, a variedade de novos contextos, particularmente em situações de mudança radical e/ou de crises, coloca novas perguntas em termos das análises das masculinidades. Entre elas adquire destaque a questão da fertilidade analítica da noção de masculinidade hegemônica em situações nas quais a força, no lugar do consenso, se torna particularmente relevante.

INDEX

Palavras-chave: masculinidades, gênero, crise, poder, agência Keywords: masculinities, gender, crisis, power, agency

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AUTHORS

ADRIANA PISCITELLI

Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero – Pagu, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil [email protected]

VALERIO SIMONI

Department of Anthropology and Sociology of Development, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland [email protected]

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Porous masculinities: agential political bodies among male Hamas youth Masculinidades porosas: corpos políticos com agência entre jovens do Hamas

Maria Frederika Malmström

1 Why and how young men choose to join violent terrorist/military organisations – often using their bodies as deadly weapons – is a matter that continues to puzzle social scientists and the policy world, as well as society at large.1 This enduring question, which is ultimately about humanity and the allure of violence, has become particularly salient given the changing nature of the global landscape concerning security development. The character of contemporary danger, threat, uncertainty and belonging; the prevalence of terrorism as a seemingly viable political response to injustice; and the (US-led) global War on Terror that is being waged upon the personal lives of peoples in disparate sites all over the world – all render imperative readdressing this question in distinct and varied ways. However, despite a general consensus that understanding the call to violence is vital to mitigating its effects, there is surprisingly little research that explores the intimate and complex production of violent (male) subjects in militant organisations. This article discusses this overarching question in relation to young male Hamas members and the appeal of becoming soldiers in the context of the Hamas in the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. Yet the body does not always cope with inculcations of bodily violence and social expectations of fearless manhood. Therefore, this article explores constructions of masculinities in a complex interplay of violence, political Islam, suffering and loss. My account highlights the importance of analysing the body in such processes – both as agential and as victimised. To be able to move away from the sensationalist Western media that often portray Middle Eastern Muslim men as “violent,” and as terrorists, we need to understand the motivations and the meanings of violence.

2 The theoretical perspective combines generative theories of gender,2 embodiment and agency theory (McNay 2000, 2003; Mahmood 2001, 2005; Ortner 2006a, 2006b). I also

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draw upon earlier research on the constructions of violent militant masculinities (Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2008, 2009, 2010; Whitworth 2004; Enloe 1990; Higate and Hopton 2005).3 Theoretically, this approach means inquiring into lived experiences (cf. Bruner 1986) and embodied agency that offers a way to a better understanding of the complexity and appeal of violence. In order to grasp constructions of masculinities in a complex interplay of several factors, I specifically combine experience with representation through phenomenology and ethnography. Thus, I use a discourse- centred approach and an experience-near ethnography that begins with men’s own practices and attends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies are involved in this process, and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everyday lives. Thereby we are able to grasp how men’s realities and identities are interpreted, negotiated and constructed, and how the body is actively involved in these processes. This approach is relevant since it enables analysis of the singularity of experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts and uncertainties.

Why young men in Hamas?

3 Hamas is particularly interesting because of its unique positioning as a legal, democratic, legitimate political actor, as a terrorist organisation, as a paramilitary force, and as a social association. Hamas has used both suicide bombings and rocket attacks as part of its political struggle against Israelis, and has been classified as a terrorist organisation by the EU and the US, as well as by Russia, Israel, Japan and Canada. However, the Arabic “Islamist” party democratically won the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, with a political platform that underlines Shari’a as the basis of the law. Thereafter Hamas has reduced their “terrorist” activity. Additionally, Hamas plays an important role in providing social services in the area of health, education and welfare, all based on religious education and guidance from Islam. The main goal of Hamas, as a national and religious political movement, is to liberate Palestine, but also to Islamise Palestinian society (cf. Hroub 2006). The “Islamism” of Hamas is part of the larger Islamic revival of the Muslim world since the 1970s (cf. Malmström 2009b). Hamas developed as the first branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the major Islamist movement, outside the Egyptian borders.

4 The politics of Hamas and their proposition of social change promise their followers a sense of security, belonging and moral order, and this, arguably, helps restore people’s sense of confidence in the Palestinian nation. After the overwhelming victory that caused shockwaves not only in the region but also across the Western world, Hamas has experienced internal tensions as it tries to “balance the art of politics and the power of the gun” (Milton-Edwards 2008: 1598). 5 The weakening of political moderates within Hamas and the strengthening of more militant factions of the movement can be seen as a direct result of the EU/international boycott of Hamas (e. g. Hovdenak 2009). Hamas can thus be seen as an integral product of or actor in the global(ised) War on Terror, at the same time as it is an organisation that aims at state building through “legitimate” modern state mechanisms.

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Mohammed and the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades4

6 Mohammed was the first member of the militant wing of Hamas that I met, who openly told me about his former Qassam identity. Already he had been in prison for many years as a Qassam soldier and subsequently he had been forced to be passive and non- active by the Palestinian authority and Israel. I had conscious and unconscious presumptions about militants as explicitly tough, non-emotional, fearless and sometimes aggressive. I was therefore surprised to meet someone who was explicitly shy, warm hearted, well educated and well mannered, and who later on expressed a good sense of humour. Mohammed was very attentive in relation to my questions. He was courteous, even chivalrous. This young man was always respectful and he was also protective towards me when we walked around in the public area.

7 A lot of times thereafter, with him and with other Hamas men, I asked myself whether it was possible that I had been manipulated by the men’s engaging manners and personalities. Was I, then, an inexperienced and easily influenced researcher? These men willingly use violence and they legitimise it as political resistance. They resisted talking about their actions as acts of violence. Additionally, they had all killed in the name of God. And as Mohammed told me, “Of course, some of the men you have met are carrying weapons, but you will never know when, and who they are.” No, I do not think I was naïve; rather, I experienced the complexity of trying to understand violence on several levels at the same time. In the case of Mohammed, he had done what was expected of him by the local community, as a man, as a freedom fighter, and not least as a national hero. He was held in great respect in his neighbourhood, not only by Hamas members, but also by political actors living in other parts of the West Bank. I understood Mohammed as very proud of his Qassam soldier identity and of his experiences of prison. But I also read him as if he was relieved from duty. He explained that he could not actively work against the occupation in the same way today, but that he did it in other ways. It was now time for him to continue with his civil life: to find employment, to marry, to have children and to live as peacefully as he could. He underscored that his future children were to be part of the resistance. Mohammed was now able to accentuate other vital aspects of manhood, father and husband, which is necessary to be locally perceived as a proper adult male. Nonetheless, he was very clear that in his heart he was a member of the military wing of Hamas. Forever. 8 When Mohammed informed me about his experiences, including actions and lived experiences of violence, or resistance as he entitled it, he talked with pride about how the society around him respected him after his imprisonment. I understood that he was perceived as a hero in the local community, but he never showed off. He expressed that he was surprised that almost everybody in the West Bank had the knowledge of his Qassam identity and of his many years in jail, which must have felt strange compared to his secret years before prison as a Qassam soldier. Qassam men, as the chosen soldiers of Hamas’s independent militancy wing, maintain secret identities and positions in the group and operate on a model of independent cells. However, in line with the ideology of Hamas, warring includes activities not usually associated with violence: a high standard of education and the good health of the people are considered integral to the armed resistance. Therefore, being a Qassam soldier also may imply receiving an education. Qassam soldiers are renowned for carrying out complex attacks as well as for how they regenerate new cells after members’ deaths or incarceration.

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Locally, they enjoy the status of ultimate “manhood.” However, Qassam youths cultivate a hidden space for “forbidden” actions, including dating girls, while outwardly expressing seemingly progressive ideas in order to keep their secret identity. This means that young men are able to act independently of what is prescribed (and against local norms of morality and Islam) if they do so in order to protect their identity as soldiers. Through inhabiting and enacting Qassam identity, these men thus also destabilise ideologies of gender, family, faith, and even nation. 9 Mohammed talked in long narratives about his double identities, as a civil person in public and as a Qassam soldier underground, and about his experiences in jail. He underscored with respect the amount he had learnt from other older “high-status” prisoners, the intellectual fellowship and spirit of community, the friends he had met for life, but also the outstanding quality of the secular and religious education he had received in prison. 10 Nevertheless, at the same time as Mohammed claimed that he did not regret anything, his body language expressed that he had difficulties coping with his experiences of violence and imprisonment. He did not mention any severe symptoms, as many other men did, but he appeared very tired, stressed and drained, and unhealthy. He had dark rings under his eyes and his legs were constantly shaking. Could it be that Mohammed related one story while his body reported another?

Fear, fight and fieldwork in the West Bank

11 Before digging deeper into the ways in which these young West Bank men’s subjectivities and agency are informed by, and animated through, their desire to inhabit specific manhood, I would like to highlight some of the limitations encountered for this research as well as a number of reflections on the fieldwork and the political context. Fieldwork in the West Bank was carried out during the winter of 2009. Conducting research locally is not easy, in relation to ethics, access and security on different levels. I had many preconceptions of the difficulties involved.

12 Carrying out research among women and men as a Swedish woman and researcher had clearly affected my earlier research in Egypt. My own gender role did not permit me to speak to men about topics such as sexuality, body or femininities. In Palestine, however, my concerns that being identified as a “woman from the West” would inhibit my interaction turned out to be totally inapt. The interviewees, despite the risks or maybe also because of the risks we took, spoke willingly and at great length about political issues. However, we never touched on forbidden topics, such as sexuality or other gender-related inappropriate themes. 13 Naturally, due to the political situation in the West Bank in 2009, it was extremely dangerous for the individual to admit their Hamas membership. During my stay, I was expected to meet several men who had recently been released from Israeli prison. But before we had the chance to speak, several of the men were detained again by the Palestinian authorities. I was told that these men were imprisoned only because of their political affiliation to Hamas. Several men talked about the huge difference between how Fatah5 and Hamas members were treated in modern Palestinian jails. The men referred to the prison in Ramallah as the slaughterhouse, explaining that Hamas men were constantly killed inside, a story confirmed by others. They also pointed out that the situation in the West Bank was increasingly difficult for the faithful Muslim

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population. Religious men were the main target for suspicion. Men who went to the mosque for the morning prayers were considered too religious by the Palestinian authorities and were taken into custody. It was a Hamas “witch-hunt,” they emphasised. The men expressed that it had never been worse in the West Bank. People were afraid to talk to anybody. Hence, people often began their conversations by communicating not only the danger, but also the fear and the many risks they took by speaking with me about Hamas politics, such as withdrawing of licences, blacklists, beatings and detentions. One cold afternoon downtown in Hebron, I met Karim, who underlined that it was increasingly unsafe to speak about your political affiliation in the West Bank. In line with many other voices, he expressed that no one discussed their political affiliation anymore, since you would be put in prison if you expressed your political membership of Hamas. I never met him again, but he concluded our meeting with these words: “I have a good job, no black points. It is dangerous for me and for you. We have to meet in different places. I am doing this for my people. If you talk you will be imprisoned. Thereafter […] your career is over and then it will be problems if you need any juridical document. Black points […]. You will lose everything.” 14 Clearly, to conduct research about Hamas members in the West Bank is intricate in terms of ethics. Moreover, it is extraordinarily unsafe for the interviewees, since the researcher actually exposes the respondent to danger. During my limited field period, as mentioned, several of the men I was expected to interview were detained or imprisoned before we even had the chance to meet. I tried to take every precaution I could, and instead of focusing on one place I travelled around in every city of the West Bank. I interviewed mostly men and I met them in public and private spaces, in cities and in refugee camps. I was given the opportunity to meet them through various contacts. These initial persons had been contacted through different unknown individuals, who in turn had received their information through other persons, who did not know one another. The particular situation in the West Bank also meant that I had to stay alert, to constantly be on “stand by,” as well as ensuring I was prepared for meetings to be postponed on the spot or for several interviews to be held in a row. In the end, I completed 35 interviews, including focus-group interviews, along with casual conversations as well as observations concerning the surroundings.

15 The interviewees used different strategies to cope with the current political situation in the West Bank. Some expressed explicitly that they were Hamas members, while several did so implicitly. Other men began their narratives with taking up a stand against any membership, but admitted a positive response towards Hamas politics, despite their own political standpoints. A number of men had already been in prison as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (Qassam soldiers) and they could be more open because they were already known by the authorities and therefore were no longer able to perform as soldiers. These “former” or non-active Qassam men told me that both Palestinian and Israeli authorities had their eyes on them and they were forced to act passively. I met some men who claimed they had been imprisoned when they were only in their early teens. Many had been in prison between fifteen and twenty years. Additionally, a limited number told me that they were against Hamas politics. Some of the men said that it was impossible to be actively political in today’s West Bank.

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Creating proper men

16 In the West Bank idealised masculinity (rujulah) is closely linked to themes of brave actions, resistance, risk taking, assertiveness, toughness, virility, potency, sacrifice, self-control, paternity, generosity, sociality, respect, dignity and honour, the latter often used with respect to men’s duty to protect their family honour (sharaf) and face (wajh) (cf. Gren 2009; Hart 2008; Peteet 1994; Kanaaneh 2005). In the daily construction of a proper male self, taking risks seems to be a significant act. From my field experiences I could see that young men not yet imprisoned, especially if their brothers or father had been in jail, were more assertive and took many more risks than the former prisoners. One unmarried man in his thirties told me that his older brother – who had been imprisoned for several years, as had his deceased father – forbade him from going out after dark, because of the risk of detention and beatings, an order that he constantly disobeyed. Peteet, an anthropologist and author of the classic article “Male gender and rituals of resistance in the Palestinian intifada: a cultural politics of violence,” points out in another article that “violence does index masculinity […] but [masculinity] refer[s] more to the ability to protect, defend and sustain home and family, whether this protection demands militancy” (Peteet 1997: 107). Of course, identity is always a process of becoming and being, and in the Middle East region as elsewhere, masculinities diverge and are in constant transformation (Ouzgane 2006; Ghoussoub and Sinclair-Webb 2002; Massad 2007; Murray and Roscoe 1997; Peteet 2007).

17 As in many other parts of the Middle East and North Africa, “personhood” in Palestine is often defined in collective and relational terms. A person is always responsible for her or his actions in relation to collectivities, such as the family, the neighbourhood or the state. Although the socio-centric self is accentuated in the Arab world, this does not preclude people from acting individually too. Therefore, I distinguish analytically between the private self and the public honourable self as these are defined by the family, the group and the state. Constructions of personhood are related to honour and shame, though not in the way that these terms have formerly been understood in social science literature (e.g. Gilmore 1987). Honour ideologies have to do with appropriate conduct and they shape interactions between men and women with various identities and selves – that is, they embrace both individual and collective selves. Honour may also be analysed at the national level, where the group sharing in honour is not the family but the whole nation, which is of particular importance in relation to external aggression by the occupying power and global political boycotts. However, an honour code is not a uniform scheme of rules and guidelines but is dynamic and multi-stranded (Baxter 2007). Notions of honour are always in flux and they are influenced by historical, political, economic and socio-cultural change. Viewing honour from this perspective expands earlier, more static viewpoints. It makes room for understanding agency by taking into consideration the power, vulnerabilities, rights and responsibilities of both women and men (Malmström 2009a, 2009b, 2012; Baxter 2007). Additionally, what must be understood concerning the current situation of the West Bank is that these young men live in a specific setting of Israeli occupation, Palestinian disruption, and escalation of political violence, where they continually seek out different strategies to cope with the unpredictable demands of life.

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Imagining the icon? Imagining the terrorist?

18 Colonial thoughts have through rhetoric played an active role in constructing violence as part of manhood in the Middle East (Peteet 2005). Today’s changing political landscape, including the aftermath of 9/11 and the US-led global War on Terror, implies a continuation and acceleration of this discursive production of an aggressive Muslim male subject. The prevalent image of a terrorist today is someone with a violent extremist ideology (of Islam) who, as the UK government posits, “follow(s) a broadly similar ideology as Al Qa’ida but [who may] have their own identity and regional agenda” (HM Government 2009: 12). This image is rarely nuanced or contextualised, despite the widespread recognition that “identity” and “agendas” may be distinct and important (cf. Stern 2003; Lutz and Lutz 2008). Appadurai suggests that the intensity of today’s global processes produces a world of social uncertainty and incompleteness. He suggests that, when these forms of uncertainties “come into play, violence can create a macabre form of certainty” (Appadurai 2006: 6). This must be understood in relation to constructions of male identity, including aspects of dignity. Following Appadurai, these Palestinian male youths also respond to the global politics of insecurity. However, the politics of Hamas and Islamisation in general are of course not only a reaction to national and global politics. Islamic movements are also part of the global system and of globalisation (cf. Beyer 2007).6 The religious identification of many young men forms part of a process in which they are making themselves subjects of modernity. This religious modernity is not a “false version” of the Western modern project. Rather, it represents a modernisation with other moral signatures. Hamas offers alternative approaches of coping with global dynamics. Thus, the interpretations of what modernity entails are diverse and exist simultaneously with other alternatives. Hamas is part of the modernisation process in Palestine and part of the global order. Its discourse proposes a modern project embedded in its religious faith, in contrast with Western notions of modernity with its emphasis on secularisation (cf. Malmström 2009b).

19 For Palestinians, Israelis and the global community, the acts of violence are closely linked to especially young men but in different ways. For many Israelis, “the young male is a metonym for Palestinian opposition and struggle against domination, the idea and symbols of which must be rooted out and silenced” (Peteet 1994: 36).7 For powerful actors of the global community, the image of a terrorist is most often that of the young violent dedicated Muslim man. On the other hand, during my fieldwork, I discovered that the young men were seen as the actors in whom the local society had their only confidence – where young Qassam soldiers were, by many, perceived as the “icon” of struggle.8 The trust in the military wing of Hamas was something that children in refugee camps expressed also, through particular role plays. The boys acted out as Qassam soldiers against Israeli soldiers on the streets (cf. Wiles 2010). However, the negotiations of manhood occur among adult men filled with ambivalences and ambiguities that affect the cultivation of a proper modern manhood among younger men. Common and frequent for several young Hamas men was the feeling of solitude, which of course affected the men and their well-being in many ways. One man I met, who was extremely nervous and in bad health, described to me the great loneliness that he constantly felt. He explained that he could not tell anybody, not even his own family, about his activities (and about his true identity as an active Hamas member). It

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was too dangerous for them and for him. He had to protect them from this knowledge. The result was that he felt totally dissociated from the people he loved. He lived two lives at the same time, as he said, as so many other Hamas members in the West Bank were forced to do. The eventual agential space these men receive through political membership of Hamas had a very high price. 20 Another difference between Palestinians and Israelis is that they have different concepts of violence, which also imply different meanings. The men whom I interviewed referred to “violence” only when speaking about domestic violence, scuffles amid the upbringing of children. In fact, the Palestinian men I talked with never ever used the term “violence,” but argued that such actions formed resistance to occupation against a colonial power and a well-armed state. “Acts of violence” as well as “endurance of violence” are in this sense locally encouraged and interpreted as political resistance and as a struggle for independence. Mohammed underscored that violence should in any context be used only as the last resort. However, resistance, by way of contrast, he expressed, is the right of every Palestinian citizen. To resist is to be political, which (I was often told) is a must for a proper Palestinian man. The total opposite is a non-political man. These men are perceived by the men I talked with as total failures, as frail creatures, as “faggots,” as one young man, Nawal, expressed. He explained that these men did not care about anything. These non-political men were even perceived as having a particular look: “long hair and sickly-sweet style of dressing.” Nuur told me about one of his neighbours. He had made a journey – from a “gay” to a real man. He had changed his mind and life after what had happened with his older brother, who had been killed by the occupation’s destruction of his house. At last, Nuur concluded, the neighbour had eventually joined the political and violent struggle. For the government of Israel, all these actions are probably perceived as terrorism and nothing else. In order to understand how the male subject is formed in the West Bank, one must pay much more attention to the complicity and dynamics of global forces in the making of Palestinian masculinities, even in the creation of suicide bombers or martyrs (cf. Massad 2006; Araj 2008; Linos 2010). Knowledge of the body and of embodied memories is crucial in the ongoing making of the male subject.

Lived and embodied experiences of violence

21 The understanding of the Palestinian male body is manifested in local discourses of manhood. It suggests and signifies, among other things, as mentioned earlier, generosity, fearlessness and self-control. However, it is not enough to examine the body as a sign: we need also to explore the experiences of the body in relation to the current dynamics and the ambivalent cultural meanings of violence. For a deeper and more complex analysis, it is vital to grasp how the men’s bodies are involved in processes of becoming a subject and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everyday lives. The political occupation in Palestine is intensively embodied. As Pitcher (1998) in her research about the practice of martyrdom in Palestine points out, the Palestinian body is written on by others, while at the same time the Palestinian body strives to speak. Furthermore, violence seems to be naturalised in the occupied territories, probably due to the daily repeated various experiences of war, where people try to make an everyday life (cf. Gren 2009). Often it has been very difficult for me to listen to people’s experiences of violence. Many of the narratives and testimonies

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about attacks, sudden deaths and explosions (including bodies of relatives, neighbours and friends) were for me horrifying and overwhelming, but were retold as part of the everyday by my respondents.

22 However, lived experiences of beatings and imprisonment in the West Bank are, in my understanding, not rites of passage into manhood, as Peteet (1994) suggests in her well- known article about masculinity and agency in the West Bank. My argument is that these experiences are life-long, embodied processes rather than a ritual and a single event. The experiences of jail and its suffering obtain meaning and legitimacy through mutual effort and shared imagination (cf. Malmström 2009a). Even painful sensory experiences may become meaningful a long time after jail, when shared repeatedly and interpreted as purposeful. During the focus-group interviews, the men articulated most frequently the experiences of imprisonment: even if I did not ask them, they talked about jail experiences together or with my male field assistants. The men spoke about their prison experiences with dignity and pride. Many men spoke about the prison as the university, including both religious and secular education. As Peteet (1994) points out too, the men emerged from the prisons as academics, with stature to lead and with power to resist – and, as the men told me, with increased religious knowledge and confidence. The men I spoke to told me that there is a strict spatial separation between the different political factions inside the jails, where they met friends, mentors and brothers for life. Several men expressed that it is in prison a man will transform into a true Hamas (cf. Wiles 2010). The individual experience of suffering may here be transformed into a social meaning and social memory (cf. Davis 1992). Daily life in the West Bank is infused with references to violence/resistance through which its meaning is communicated and it is confirmed as unavoidable. The meaning of violence should therefore be analysed as an integral part of the daily making of masculinity, where the subject is moulded and gendered through the lived experience of violence, both as victims and as actors (cf. Dahl 2009). 23 In the case under study, in the daily construction of an adult moral male self in the occupied territories, not only being imprisoned, but enduring of beatings seems to be central (cf. Peteet 1994). However, body marking is only one moment in an incomplete process of learning how to be a person. Male gender identity is also continually created and re-created through a number of other everyday practices. Yet the body clearly learns the lessons of pain, lessons that are reiterated. It is also a strategy to approach resistance to domination. Peteet suggests that the male Palestinian body in fact signifies contradictions. The body in this specific context both reaffirms and transforms internal Palestinian forms of domination. The Palestinian body may have the power to reverse power structures, in the sense that “political agency [is] designed [through acts of endurance] to reverse relations of domination between occupied and occupier” (Peteet 1994: 31). She suggests that enduring torture (and being imprisoned) is a strategy to approach resistance to domination and in fact inscribes power on the body. Furthermore, the occupation, the political belonging of Hamas, the internal struggle between Hamas and Fatah, by the use of violence, sculpts the individual body at the same time as it regulates the social body (Linos 2010). Men learn, but they also actively and consciously develop and maintain proper masculinity, through the lived experiences of both violence and captivity. In this way, if they endure, these men become respectable Muslim men. Stoicism and self-control are key values for

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developing a proper male identity, especially among Hamas, and they are essential for endurance and the control of emotions. 24 My informants talked about the daily humiliation at the checkpoints as one of many difficult everyday experiences where self-control and endurance were crucial; this was something I could see also through personal observation during my stay in the West Bank.9 I provide the following short account as an example of what men often experience. One young man had been on his way to his final exams at the university. At the first checkpoint (of several checkpoints on his way to the school), he had been caught by the young soldiers. At last, after several hours, after forcing him to climb up on a stone in the sun, in a body position of standing on one leg, and after singing children’s songs, he could continue to walk to the university, but way too late for the scheduled exams. These common experiences in young men’s lives are of course active steps in the ongoing process of attaining manhood. 25 Detention, prison and occupation, as part of the apparatus of domination, imply many sorts of violence, both physical and psychological beatings (including torture – also by the Palestinian Fatah authorities, according to the men). As one of many examples, one man retold his experiences of detention. In the middle of the night, the soldiers forced him out of his cell, put him in a car and drove him to the highway. They told him to thoroughly clean the highway with the help of a toothbrush. He was scrubbing for hours. In this case, we can use Linos’s (2010) analysis of biopower violence in the occupation of Palestine and see how the individual Palestinian is psychologically tortured simultaneously as all Palestinians are disgraced by the same act. 26 The experiences of beatings, torture and daily humiliations are all part of “the education of endurance,” important within (political) Islam. Furthermore, their own violent military actions in their resistance against occupation, as Hamas soldiers, are at the same time part of “the education of fearlessness and self-control.” As soldiers especially, these men use their collective self for national identity and sacrifice their individual identity, which is – currently – expected and as part of the route to becoming an appropriate man in the local community as well as on the political level of Hamas. As both Massad (1995) and Kanaaneh (2005) point out, Palestinian national masculinity is a new type of masculinity. Kanaaneh underscores that the agency of Palestinian men in Israel, for example, must be understood within the limits set by the Israeli state and the colonial powers: “The experiences of these soldiers, how they negotiate their relationships to their communities and to the state, and the ways in which they are accepted, integrated, and marginalized form a powerful vantage point from which to view the workings of citizenship and gender in Israel” (2005: 261). 27 Moreover, men are taught morality through the endurance of pain and through the body’s capacity to feel; the body actively experiences and remembers how to be a moral man in daily life, in accordance with the norms of manhood. The norms and cultural models of pain are embodied (cf. Talle 2007). These men are moulded into men via the senses and within the local framework of meaning; they learn through the body how to be masculine. Men’s embodied memories of endured ordeals are compulsory in the creation of the fearless Muslim subject, since endurance is a key virtue within Islam (cf. Malmström 2009a, 2009b). The body feels God. Intense painful experience produces self-awareness and teaches lessons that are unforgettable (Morinis 1985). 28 In the worst-case scenario, these men sacrifice and use the most intimate tool – their own body – as martyrs (shaheed). Martyrdom has since the first (1987-1993) and the

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second (2000-2005) Al-Aqsa intifada increasingly been associated with manhood and political agency (cf. Linos 2010; Abufarha 2009; Asad 2007; Reuter 2002).10 Based on my fieldwork experiences, I recognised the need and the importance of a sensitised understanding of the concept on different levels. What is considered “terrorism” for someone is deemed “resistance” for somebody else. In the West Bank, the notion of violence is linked to the domestic/local sphere. However, the fight against what is considered Israeli occupation is seen as resistance. Understanding the appeal of violence entails grasping the ways in which violence is understood, experienced. In this article, I have tried to highlight some aspects of how violence applies from my interviews and observations. Yet additional research will be needed to further these insights on how violence in relation to manhood is learnt and how its values play out in the everyday lives of boys and young men in the West Bank. Acts of sacrifice may also be emically understood, as Linos (2010) in her work of terrorism and embodiment suggests, not as an act of self-destruction, but actually as an act of construction with political significance for both the individual and the wider Palestinian community. She argues, “when political and structural violence threatens the identity of both individual and group, suicide violence may be considered an extreme form of reclaiming the violated body – a force that ultimately rejects oppression and allows the individual to reclaim the body through self-directed violence” (Linos 2010: 8). She points out, “if the discipline of the body can be both externally imposed (in the way Foucault might suggest) and also self-inflicted in an effort to effect autonomy, then similarly, when violence on the body is used by an external power to claim authority over the individual’s life, self-directed violence may be used as a symbolic reclaiming of the body” (2010: 10). In other words, according to Linos, these men reclaim the physical space through actions of self-destruction by the help of the polluting power of their bodies. Abufarha (2009) discusses the performances of martyrdom as forms of social resistance, where the martyr turns into an agent, but never acts as an individual, only as a social person – that is to say, as the Palestinian people. He puts forward also that martyrdom simultaneously may be understood as an alternative life, since it “becomes a form of living in and by the death” (2009: 233). Both Abufarha’s and Linos’s analyses are “good to think with” in trying to understand not only the young men’s actions, but also the expectations from the local community that these young Palestinian men face every single day.11 A former Qassam soldier, Ahmed, confessed to me that some men could not handle the actual military operations, including martyrdom, as Qassam soldiers. These men had to give up their duties as soldiers immediately, since they exposed the other men in the military cell for futile missions and immediate danger. According to Ahmed, there were no other consequences. However, to be forced to give up one’s identity as a member of the military wing of Hamas because of lack of courage must be the ultimate failure and indeed a punishment in itself. 29 To conclude, my argument in this section is that the violation of the body, on different levels, is vital in the making of a moral agential masculine self. The body is acted upon by others and by a conscious self, through the techniques and practices of learning how to be a man. Thus, the body is formed through experiences. In the context of Hamas youths, the body senses God through enduring bodily violence. Endurance gives religious merits (cf. Meyer 2012). This article has shown some examples of such processes. I am referring firstly to the unreflected, sensory memories and responses generated by the various ordeals and subsequent painful bodily procedures enacted upon men’s bodies that cannot be recalled; I discuss these below against discourses of

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proper masculinity, for example through torture from detention and prison experiences or from beatings at checkpoints, and furthermore, concerning the unreflective way in which men learn about manhood and re-create themselves as men through sight, hearing, touch, scent and flavour. Secondly, I am referring to how the body is acted upon by a conscious self. Mahmood’s (2005) notion of embodied agency as intention and desire is fruitful in this regard.12 In contrast with Bourdieu’s (1990) focus on the unconscious power of habitus, Mahmood uses the concept to cover the formation of self as a conscious process and the bodily procedures whereby a moral self is shaped. This notion of embodied agency is useful in exploring the ways young men consciously cultivate themselves (intention and desire) to be proper militant Hamas men – that is, enduring torture, prison and humiliation. 30 However, even if the male Palestinian body is taught and normatively expected to bear hardship and to show uncomplaining patience and endurance, my findings reveal that the body is not always capable of fulfilling these demands. All the men I talked to showed symptoms of illness. Many men had bodily symptoms such as constant pain, stomach problems, balance disturbance and impaired hearing, while some men spoke of plethoric faeces. Several of the young men talked openly about tiredness, feebleness, despair and depression. During the interviews, I observed that the bodies of the men were never relaxed and their legs were constantly moving, bounding, vibrating, while the air was thick with stress and with smoke from the constant chain-smoking. The illness symptoms, stress and psychological lack of balance of those I interviewed may be bodily responses to what they have experienced. The body speaks, but it is also marked. Linos (2010) asserts that, since the skin is the most visible of all organs, it has the ability to act. The skin tells a larger story; it can comprise evidence, while as the first layer of our bodies it has the ability to be both de-formed and re-formed. Additionally, the skin has the ability to resist (cf. Scheper-Hughes 2004). Johansen (2002) and Talle (2007) have also discussed the body’s ability to act in relation to the pain of infibulation, and Good (1992) in relation to chronic pain. Talle claims that extreme, intense and unbearable pain is the body’s indirect way of protesting against cultural hegemony through physical agency and intentionality. The agency of the body in relation to intolerable pain has, as Johansen (2002) suggests, the potential to “explode” the cultural universe. The body makes sense of the various acts of violence through a conscious self, but it also reacts against overwhelming and traumatic experiences. The body in the occupied West Bank continuously experiences the physical and psychological beatings and humiliations. Furthermore, the body senses everyday stress, anxiety, anger, frustration, uncertainty and suspicion in relation to other political factions, eventual collaborators in the home community, the occupation power and the global community. I have argued that the body is acted upon by the unconscious and the conscious self. However, when the body resists norms of violence, because the sufferings are unendurable, and rejects them as part of becoming appropriate Palestinian Muslim Hamas man, and where the meaningful becomes meaningless, the reactions work against an idealised male gender identity. Experiences of violence that is devoid of meaning will not be part of the process of becoming a respectable Muslim man in contrast to lived experiences of violence that the body can bear. Instead, violence inscribes the body and self with illness, incompleteness, loss and maybe also with chronic disease. Good suggests in his analysis of chronic pain that, “as locus of pain, the body takes on agency over and against the self” (Good 1992: 39). Hence, the body of pain becomes distinct from the self.

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Conclusion: layers of agencies

31 This article has dealt with particular aspects of making masculinity. I have given some brief examples of how men are taught to conduct themselves and their bodies, a process in which values and norms are incorporated through the reiteration of bodily and verbal practices. The text has also exposed men’s conscious struggle for a male respectable identity, but also in relation to existential matters – being in the world. In line with Eriksson Baaz and Stern (2008, 2009, 2010; cf. Nordstrom 1998, Enloe 2000), who point out in their research into constructions of violent militant masculinities the very importance of attention to the complex interplay between individuals and the discourses that (in part) produce them, this helps us to see how very fragile even seemingly solid constructions of subjectivity are.

32 I have shown also that the male Palestinian body is both agential and victimised – it does not always cope with the inscription of bodily violence and social expectations of manhood. Values and norms are incorporated through the recurrence of bodily and verbal practices, but the body sometimes resists and sometimes reacts in various ways against dominant discourses and inculcations of norms. Instead of merely discussing the notions of agent and victim, we may analyse them as different sorts of agency, at the same time as this latter kind of agency is victimised since the masculinising part is absent. The first agency resonates with Mahmood’s embodied agency – where the subject consciously uses the bodily practices whereby the moral self is created. The other agency refers to the agency of the body – where the body is not submissive, but clearly protests against intolerable pain and suffering, and thereby also against the norms and discourses of violence and masculinity. As we can see, it is impossible to talk exclusively about agency or victimhood or to draw rigid lines between these categories – they are blurred. To bring back victimhood into the analysis of gender is also important on an analytical and a political level (cf. Dahl 2009). A more fruitful analysis of Hamas youth is possible if we try to understand the production of masculinities as a process of making uncertain masculinities, where aspects of both agency and victimhood are active parts. 33 My contribution to the analysis of violence in relation to agency, victimhood and constructions of gender is to affirm the role of embodiment. By doing this, I highlight the role of bodies in subjective and intersubjective meaning-making of violence. Understanding the appeal of violence also entails grasping the ways in which violence is understood, experienced, as well as what it does for and to us. Therefore, the anthropology of violence has a lot to offer the research field, since it explores violence as a meaningful relational social act (see e. g. Das 2007; Coulter 2006; Nordstrom 2010). I have shown how experiences of violence are intensely embodied. Violence shapes and makes the male body in a complex way. In this specific context of the West Bank, the making of masculinities is in a constant dialogue with violence, pain and suffering. 34 Finally, the production and reproduction of discourses of violence and agency in relation to moral masculinities must be understood against the backdrop of the global War on Terror and post-colonial politics that may also transform ideals of gender. As Linos suggests, “The body can thus be seen as a stage upon which local and global conflicts are played out, and where agency over the body is contested” (2010: 9). Consequently, the continual process of becoming a male subject in the West Bank

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results from a complex interplay between the phenomenal immediacy of lived experience and social structures/discourses of power and inequality (McNay 2003, 2004; cf. Malmström 2009a, 2009b, 2013).

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NOTES

1. After being accepted for publication in Etnográfica as part of the dossier “Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change,” a complementary version of this article was included in Frerks, Ypeij and König (2014). 2. I base my framing of these questions in the conceptualisation of subjectivity as a process of becoming – through relations of difference and power and in line with Butler’s (1990) notion of reiteration as a means of constructing identity. See also Hall (1996). 3. For an overview of the literature on the military and the reproduction of violent masculinities, see Ackerly, Stern and True (2006); Stern and Nystrand (2006); Stern and Zalewski (2009). 4. Or the abbreviation Qassam (Brigades), the military wing of Palestinian socio-political organisation Hamas. The soldiers cannot choose to be soldiers on a voluntary basis but are carefully selected by Hamas after their “secret” assessments of the individual. 5. Fatah, the left wing of Palestinian politics, is the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Fatah retains control of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank, even since Fatah lost its majority in the Palestinian parliament to Hamas in the 2006 parliamentary election. For further reading about the Palestinian authorities (PA), politics and history, see e.g. Beinin and Stein (2006) or Pappe (2004). 6. See also Meyer’s (2011) article about media, religion and senses within a Ghanaian setting, where she argues that the negotiation of newly available media technologies is key to the transformation of religion. 7. See Kanaaneh (2005) for an analysis of Palestinian soldiers in the Israeli military, where she discusses two sorts of masculinities: the family-centered provider masculinity, and the immature, pubescent masculinity in relation to nationalism and agency. 8. For further reading about gender and nationalism, see Katz (2003), who discusses Jewish and Palestinian early nationalism as linked to images of masculinity that excluded or marginalised women. See also Kanafani (2008) for a discussion of mutual dependency between nationalism and hegemonic Palestinian masculinity (cf. Amireh 2003; Massad 2006; and Hart 2008). See Bowman (2003) for a discussion of imagined violence of a national enemy and nationalism. 9. See Sasson-Levy (2008) for a discussion on how the individualised body and senses of the Israeli soldiers reinforce hegemonic masculinity and Israeli militarism and thereby, at the same time, serve the state.

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10. Female martyrs inserted themselves into the political arena in 2002. Thereby, these women challenged the earlier male political space and links to proper manhood (Hasso 2005; cf. Ness 2008; Berko and Erez 2007; Schweitzer 2006; Naaman 2007; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2009). Hasso (2005) argues that the female martyrs both reproduce and undermine local discourses of gender in relation to violence and politics. The Palestinian female martyrs represent national identity and honour. However, Palestinian men continue to be perceived as the subjects and agents of the struggle. On the other hand, the women gain attributes of Arab masculinity. 11. Inculcation of the local society’s discourses concerning ideal manhood is naturally created and re-created daily through various actors and institutions. One of the key groups of actors here is the mothers, according to both the men and the mothers I spoke to. The mothers teach core values of stoicism and resistance. However, mothers’ ambivalence towards their duty of creating brave and fearless sons seems to be common as well. As one mother respondent expressed, even if it was the Palestinian mothers who were the most important actors in educating the young men to be good soldiers, she did not want her own sons to be a Qassam soldier. She told me that of course she did not want her sons to die, and being a Qassam soldier “is the highway to death.” The majority of men verbally underscored the importance of strong mothers in the process of becoming fearless, but they also expressed that women were not as political as men, since women stayed in their homes all day long and did not have the same access to political life. Many men perceived women as more afraid and therefore in need of protection. At the same time, these gender ideologies are ambivalent, and other images of women as political actors were often given. One male interviewee told me that, when he and his brother were sent to prison, his mother had told the whole neighbourhood that God had given her many gifts in life. She had brought up her sons to be warriors. The prison was proof that she had succeeded with her hard work. This same informant expressed that his mother was extraordinarily strong. He had never seen her cry. 12. Mahmood (2005) followed the women’s mosque movement in Cairo from 1995 to 1997, focusing on how female agency is formed by the conscious subject in a specific historical context with the help of bodily practices.

ABSTRACTS

Constructions of gender, embodiment and agency among male Hamas youths in the West Bank are discussed in this article through the prism of violence. It focuses on the constructions of uncertain masculinities in a complex interplay of violence, political Islam, suffering and loss, and the importance of analyzing the body in such processes – both as agential and as victimized – is highlighted. To be able to move away from the sensationalist Western media that often portray Middle Eastern Muslim men as “violent,” and as terrorists, we need to understand the motivations and the meanings of violence. The method of analysis is to use a discourse-centered approach and to use experience-near ethnography that begins with men’s own practices and attends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies are involved, and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everyday lives. Thereby we are able to understand how men’s realities and identities are interpreted, negotiated and constructed and how the body is actively involved in these processes. This approach is relevant since it is possible to analyze the singularity of experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties.

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O artigo trata as construções de género, encorporamento (embodiment) e agência entre jovens de sexo masculino do Hamas da Cisjordânia, através do prisma da violência. A construção de masculinidades incertas numa articulação complexa de violência, Islão político, sofrimento e perda é analisada destacando a importância do corpo nesses processos, como veículo de agência e como alvo de vitimização. Para nos distanciarmos do sensacionalismo mediático do Ocidente, que frequentemente retrata os homens muçulmanos do Médio Oriente como “violentos” e terroristas, é preciso compreender as motivações e os significados da violência. A abordagem centra-se no discurso e numa etnografia próxima da experiência, que começa com as próprias práticas dos homens e leva em conta a maneira como eles se compreendem a si mesmos, como o corpo participa e como as normas e ideologias são elaboradas nas suas vivências quotidianas. Assim se compreende como são interpretadas, negociadas e construídas as realidades e identidades destes homens, e como o corpo é ativamente envolvido nesses processos. Esta abordagem permite analisar a singularidade da experiência, não apenas como forma de interação social, mas na sua relação com discursos e estruturas sociais, o que implica a negociação de tensões, conflitos e incertezas.

INDEX

Palavras-chave: violência, género, masculinidades, agência, encorporamento, Médio Oriente Keywords: violence, gender, masculinities, agency, embodiment, Middle East

AUTHOR

MARIA FREDERIKA MALMSTRÖM

Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden; Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, USA [email protected]

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The Pentecostal reworking of male identities in Brussels: producing moral masculinities Reconfigurações pentecostais de identidades masculinas em Bruxelas: a produção de masculinidades morais

Maïté Maskens

Introduction

1 Over the past 30 years, Pentecostal churches, mostly composed by followers from Subsaharan Africa and Latin America, have blossomed in Brussels.1 Their presence and growing success have gone hand in hand with the intensification of the migratory flows, in the last three decades, from these two continents. In my work, I investigate the relationship between the religious experience and the migratory route of the Euro- African and Euro-Latin-American Pentecostal actors in Brussels (Maskens 2012, 2013). My fieldwork consisted of spending time with followers of mainly (but not exclusively) two different Pentecostals churches in Brussels. The first, La Parole Vivante, is a foothold in a big US transnational Pentecostal denomination (the Church of God, of Cleveland) and gathers around 3000 followers in Brussels. The majority are Congolese but there is also a wide range of other Africans, Latin-Americans and European nationalities (cults are mostly given in French); the second is the Centro Jesús, a local church of the Assemblies of God which gathers around 60 believers from different countries of South and Central America and is located near the South Station in Brussels; their cults are given in Spanish.

2 In these meeting spaces, the converts work collectively to realize the transformation process encouraged by this religious scenario, which consists of applying the “perfect plan of God” to their lives. Carriers of missionary ambitions, the believers give new contents to their position by redefining the place that is assigned to them in the context of post-colonial Belgium. The religious membership operates as a marker of

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distinction, a process particularly striking in the field of gender and sexuality within the assemblies. 3 Conversion to Pentecostalism may also lead to gender conversions. Gender is understood here according to the definition of the American historian Joan Wallach Scott (1988: 42), as “a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between sexes.” The historian adds that “gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power,” as the specific ground of Pentecostals masculinities will testify. Ideologies and religious practices contribute to, define, and more specifically produce particular sexual identities. 4 During my immersion in these religious settings, my attention was first drawn to women’s experiences and their social status in churches. The large female presence at these congregations – even if women’s submission to men, as called for by Saint Paul, continues today – could be surprising. This has led me to ask what advantages Pentecostal affiliation brings to the women of the assembly given the apparently oppressive and patriarchal character of this religious ideology. Moreover, this “emotional” Protestantism is often associated with a feminine religiosity, characterized by concepts still thought of in the contemporary western secular world as typically feminine: spontaneity and the expression of one’s emotions. 5 This interest in the condition of women in churches falls within the scope of the rupture with the “triple marginalities” these women generally suffer as described by Nancy Eiesland (1997). First, women are commonly excluded from leadership in religious spaces. Moreover, until recently in the scientific field, women have often been absent from analyses which consider men’s experience as illustrative of the whole religious experience. Finally, these pious women are excluded from feminist studies. Indeed, feminists suggest that they are “mystified” by themselves, in other words, they have a “false consciousness” (Eiesland 1997: 100). Absent or marginalized, viewed as vulnerable or eternal victims of men, women have been “saved” in socio- anthropological research by the concept of agency, a notion born in the wake of feminist and gender studies to theorize the way women resist, subvert, negotiate or still inhabit the patriarchal gender norms (Butler 1993; McNay 2000; Hollywood 2004; Mahmood 2005; Bracke 2008). As Adriaan Van Klinken (2011: 123) put it, men, as gendered beings, were excluded of the analytical benefits of the concept of agency because of the trajectory at first “feminist” of the term. 6 When examining the abundant literature on gender and religion (Campiche 1996; Voyé 1996; Eiesland 1997; Lawless 2003; Mate 2002; Hallum 2003; Fancello 2005; Sackey 2006), I realize that, in the studies focusing on religious women’s experiences, men appear not so much as dynamic subjects but as a given, an unchanged and independent variable always holding the same role in different gender scenarios, in particular that of the oppressor. It is precisely this fixed, reductive aspect of this description of religious masculinities that fostered me to investigate this field. I concur here with Adriaan Van Klinken (2011) on the fact that male power is simply assumed and contested rather than explored. This attention to religious men’s agency also matches with Björn Krondorfer’s (2009) work, where he investigates “critical men’s studies in religion” and states the existing risk of reverting to a “long tradition” of repetition of male dominance in the field of religion. 7 My own interaction with male followers through what is commonly called “fieldwork” also prompts me to question forms of masculinity in these religious spaces. As time

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passes, I realize followers engage with me according to their own gender conception. Ethnographic relations are hybrid, an experience that doesn’t fit very well with the form of interaction in these religious spaces, especially as a female meeting with male individuals. Some men clearly shun my company, apparently uneasy by my inquisitive or even adventurous behaviour. Indeed, I didn’t have any male referents (a father, brother or husband) during my visits at these religious gatherings. I share this very same situation with other female followers but, unlike them, my scientific approach forces me to adopt a proactive posture. My conduct deviates radically from the way women are supposed to behave in this religious setting: as a discrete, modest and devoted agent, although some degree of feminine exuberance is tolerated if the woman has a high charismatic capital. 8 Barbara Rose Lange, American anthropologist and violinist, lived through a similar experience when she tried to integrate into a group of gypsy musicians in a Hungarian Pentecostal church in the 1990s. Within the framework of the musical performance of the cult, her attempts at participation were ignored. The musicians even expressed their tension through specific physical movements. These marks of resistance inform the anthropologist that her presence as a woman in the group of male musicians was not welcome. Indeed, in a general way, the public exchanges between men and women (married or not members of the same family) in these cults are seen in a suspicious light, entering rather quickly into the category of “fornication” (Lange 1996: 68). In a broad sense, religious believers see themselves as the last bastion of morality in a Europe viewed as “decadent.” The domain of sexual practices is then the object of profound criticism. Setting the scene as such, faithful Pentecostals construct their differences in the register of sexuality. Attempting to make order out of transformation and pursuing an ideal of distinction, these religious actors (mainly women) need therefore to be unlike the locals, whom pastors have denounced for their permissiveness and “lax” sexual practices (partially legal prostitution, lack of public “decency,” legality of same-sex marriage, pornography accessible to young people, STD prevention campaigns in the schools…) (Maskens 2011). 9 This paper is guided by the desire to answer two questions. The first one is articulated around the specificity of male experience in the church: what is the definition these men give to their masculinity? What I mean here is masculinity as a range of “norms, values and behavioural patterns expressing explicit and implicit expectations of how men should act and represent themselves to others” (Miescher and Lindsay 2003: 4). The second question deals with the normative religious injunction to “live in the difference,” and how this translates at the level of masculine identities; in other words, I want to understand why these men perceive themselves as different from those they deem to be non-religious men.

From “old man” to “new man” narratives

10 Conversion in Pentecostal Churches is a central and structural theme of religious thought and concrete organization. As such, the concepts of transformation, change and rupture are crucial in understanding the Pentecostal work on gender identities. Indeed, conversion is thought as a moment of rupture between a past life and a “new” life. Specific narrative tools are used in order to ritualize this religious change. To publicly and regularly testify to this change is at the heart of the religious missionary

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apparatus and constitutes a keystone in the worldwide diffusion of the movement. Religious models guide the performance of sexual identities. For the men, this transformation implies a behavioural change.2

11 For Jean-Jacques, a Congolese pastor responsible for a small assembly of about 50 people situated in a precarious neighbourhood of Brussels (Molenbeek), this imperative for transformation requires a phase of “breaking.” He warns his believers during the cult: “The seed that God puts in you does not avoid that your personality remains!” 12 His expression is testimony to the effort of self-development that new male converts must do; far from the presumed spontaneity of the transformations assumed in most conversion narratives. It is thus necessary to fight, by means of prayers, to tame the male chauvinist or rebel character of some believers (“philanderers”/“womanizers,” “fighters,” “disobedient”). The discourse of Jean-Jacques calls for certain adjustments of the personality of male converts. He explains how to sort out diverse features of the Christian personality: “Because when the Bible says ‘it is necessary to crush the flesh,’ the first thing which it is necessary to crush, is the character that you have. If you are a philanderer, a womanizer, it is necessary to break it because that is a part of your emotional features. If you are a disobedient person, who does not yet accept the obedience due to your own parents, there is a problem. Because to serve the Lord does not exclude this propensity of the character to rebel. Thus, often, we say that a good pastor has to pass by the stage of breaking; that means he has to break with all the education he received which is opposite to the ethics and the morality. Because there are always people who support the idea that it is good to hurt somebody. In our Congolese societies for example, we tell you: ‘fetch this child and hit him hard’ and it is normal, that doesn’t shock anybody. But to serve the Lord, if you are a fighter for example, or emotionally disturbed, or if at every slightest problem you are going to dash into the fight, it is necessary to avoid all these behaviours by the prayer, we will break that.” [Jean-Jacques, pastor in Molenbeek.] 13 This quote illustrates the ideal figure of Christian men: male converts must swap their seductive ambitions for the cultivation of peace and dialogue. The male believers are encouraged to “fight” against what is sometimes presented as their deeper “nature,” or in other words, to work on their behaviour and actions so that these start resonating with the peaceful figure of Christ. In this religious context, the “strong man” is quiet, moderate, and obedient; he never gets angry, masters his physical strength and shows a constant loyalty to his wife. The “stage of breaking,” this “crushing of the flesh” involves the repression of certain features of the “hegemonic masculinity” that are contrary to the Christian ethos.

14 In another assembly, the Spanish-speaking Centro Jesús, a couple from Ecuador who were carrying out missionary work in Europe were received by pastor Diego in the autumn of 2007 in Brussels to testify, in front of the Assembly, God’s action in their lives: “Wednesday, 7:12 pm. The Peruvian pastor thanks the members of the assembly for being there and numerous this evening for the ‘special worship for families.’ Without transition, he intones a song entitled To Jump as Kids, accompanied by an electric guitar and drums. In every chorus, the believers jump up as if they were children to express, according to the words of the song, ‘the enjoyment of the Lord.’ Pastor Diego then asks us to welcome a couple of ‘children of God,’ Hugo and Alfonsina, who have specially come to give their testimony for us this evening in Brussels. He asks the Lord to bless them and to bless the ‘words that will come from their mouths.’ The Ecuadorian couple rise then to the altar. Their four daughters sit

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in the front row; the youngest gives the full room a sweeping glance and she seems satisfied. Pastor Hugo speaks by presenting his wife: ‘I present you my wife, Alfonsina, she is the woman who stole my heart.’ He hands us over to her, and she pursues this by preaching in two voices, asking the assembly ‘to fasten their seatbelts,’ to get ready to receive words ‘which are nothing but God’s words.’ She continues by warning the assembly: ‘Good intentions alone are not God’s will.’ That is why, according to her, it is urgent ‘to cut family ties because dependence on your family prevents you from being a member of God’s family.’ The woman pastor then illustrates her comment with the lives of a series of biblical characters and gives a kind of tree points recipe to insure a successful and ‘harmonious’ family life. Then, Pastor Hugo adds a fourth point to those expressed by his wife; it is, he says, ‘about something which has already stolen many blessings from families! It is [about] the lack of forgiveness. When we do not forgive, on both sides [he mimes a pyramid of conflicts growing with his hands], it is the higher sin, I am going to give you a technique, a thermometer, to know if we forgave the other one: if things that previously made us angry, we do not speak about them anymore, then we know that forgiveness is in the home.’ He addresses then the assembly and asks: ‘Who has never had problems in his marriage? The one who gets up, pray for him, for he is a liar!’ [The believers laugh]. He continues: ‘The victory is in the management of the conflicts.’ He turns to elements in his personal life: ‘Before, my life was a life of vice, of lust. I drank a lot, I liked parties, I went out. In the village, I had several girlfriends and my wife knew it, but she did not want to see, so she closed her eyes. [His wife, who is held next to him, agrees sadly]. Then we accepted Jesus and in two nights, all our defects were erased. At first, the first night, I apologized to her, several times. I approached her to speak to her, but my wife was irritated, because she did not want to speak to me anymore. She rejected me. I, for my part, was resigned to losing the woman of my life. I wanted to become better. When you look for God, he changes even the tone of your voice. Then, the next day, my wife came to apologize to me. She had a dream and she had seen Jesus writing my name in a book, like that, in the hand, he wrote ‘Hugo’ in his book. Then she knew and she forgave me.’ The South American pastor moves on to the necessity of changing our homes, since ‘we live [during] the ultimate time, the evil increases in the world… If we look around, we see how the enemy is inclined to destroy our families. Eight out of ten classmates of our daughters have divorced parents. Figures are alarming and people find it normal. But we are not going to let go, by means of God, we can achieve everything!’ He concludes his preaching by recalling the main qualities of the Christian husband: loving, affectionate, attentive, generous and responsible. He reminds those wives who walk in ‘the steps of Jesus.’ Then he asks the couples present in the room to come to the front of the assembly. The couples get up and stand in front of the stage. He asks them to hold hands and to embrace. The pastor encourages them: ‘Go, you can make it. Don’t be afraid of being ridiculous, we never miss a little romanticism in this world!’ And he asks the husbands to pronounce a sentence to their wives: ‘My love, I apologize to you.’ Then he suggests changing the roles and it is women’s turn to apologize to their husbands. The believers are looking straight in each other’s eyes. Some cry openly, others are very discreet. The children, the teenagers and the single members of the assembly contemplate this spectacle from the audience.” [Author’s fieldnotes.] 15 In this rhetorical account, the conversion is presented as a radical rupture with an “old” macho way of life with its specific virile behaviours, geographies and temporalities. Hugo multiplies “guilty” experiences in the village, his wife knowing about his infidelities. The encounter with God changes his masculinity. God changes him even to the “tone” of his voice. The new Hugo realizes that he is losing the “woman of his life” and in his narrative, he becomes faithful, loyal, attentive and affectionate. He encourages believers to connect with their “romantic partner.” From a mujeriego, 3 Hugo becomes an affectionate husband. Seduction has no more “power” over his life.

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His preoccupations have been refocused into the domestic sphere. His life is no longer outside but inside the home, close to his family.

16 The figure of the “macho man,” because of the Mexican origin of the term, has a particular relevance in the Latin-American religious context.4 In the Churches composed by followers from African sub-Saharan countries, this figure is not so prominent. What seems obvious, in these transnational universes which bring together people from different backgrounds, is that there is a plurality of masculinity models coexisting in these assemblies. Indeed, these religious spaces are dense with people from diverse ethno-national origins implying great diversity. If we were to focus only on the story of African masculinity, which has been called by some commentators a “patchwork of patriarchies” (Bozzoli 1983), we would have to analyze in detail the masculinity models integrated by each follower according to their socialization in a particular African socio-historical context. We would also have to look at the colonial situation in which the West, by imposing its masculinity norms, has caused disruptions in the varieties of gender regimes in current use.5 As a matter of fact, it would also be useful to sort out the continuities, to describe the contradictions, to search for concordances, conflicts or resonance of these different norms. 17 Masculinity studies show that there is not one model of masculinity, but a lot of masculinities, a multiplicity of forms of “being a man” in a society and at a given historical moment. This masculinity is multiple, historic and contingent but also relational and contradictory (Hodgson 2001). The male actors are thus confronted with several competitive or contradictory alternatives and their way of being a man is constituted by their commitment to, their resistance against, or their subversion of the various male models proposed by their social worlds. It is in this space of negotiated gender standards that Adriaan Van Klinken (2011) sees the possibility of reading male agency. These various models don’t have the same weight in a social setting, since they are not valued in the same way, and this is what permits the distinction of a dominant model, which Bob Connell called the “hegemonic masculinity.” This is the form of masculinity which prescribes the image of the “real man” in a given society. This hegemonic form stands out as a model throughout the daily socialization of boys and girls, and other forms of masculinities are subordinated, collusive or marginal to it. The dominant model does not exclude the existence of alternatives but it distinguishes itself because it enjoys a wide social adhesion. The author takes then the hegemonic north-American masculinity as an example: “Few men are Bogarts or Stallones, many collaborate in sustaining those images” (Connell 2002: 61). 18 This complex heterogeneity constitutes the major reason for largely focusing on male contemporary religious experience, given such a diachronic view of the phenomenon: the process of religious homogenization of masculinities and the implications of these “transformations” on the process of “being men” in the assembly. What then does the Pentecostal reworking of masculinities consist of? What are the possibilities of redefining the ways of being a man in the assembly? How do men understand and appropriate these new gender norms? We will see that it is again ambiguity that is at the heart of Pentecostal transformations of gender identities. 19 On the one hand, the religious discourse on masculinity comes to strengthen, to support, to consolidate, to biblically legitimize male domination, the ascendancy of men over women, patriarchy, the primary power of the men in and outside the assembly. I resume those processes by the emic expression of “strong men,” this

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strengthening taking quite a particular acceptance in the migratory context as we will see in what follows. On the other hand, the Pentecostal work on masculinities also breaks with the dominant cultural model of masculinity, the local “hegemonic” masculinity. The Pentecostal man distinguishes himself from the “ordinary” man because he is projecting himself as sensitive, communicative and responsible, an exemplary father, whose concerns are concentrated on the well-being of his family. Collectively such attributes are for “men of heart.” 20 After all, the Pentecostal work of masculinity such as it is practiced in Brussels (but also in other European capitals and in other continents) is characterized by the polarized and paradoxical power to challenge and to adapt itself at the same time – to be both “strong men” and “men of heart” –, to produce breaks in continuity (Willaime 1999).

Religious “strong men”

21 Christendom, as a view of the world, contributes generally to the definition of a gendered morality. This sexual ideology draws upon, in the discourses of the Pentecostal pastors, frequently quoted biblical references. One of them, concerning the legitimate form of the relations between men and women, is Saint Paul’s famous order which encourages Christian women to be subjected to their husbands (Ephesians, 5: 22-24). Such references justify ways in which inequality between the sexes structures gender interaction, and this encouragement is representative of a kind of patriarchal heteronormativity which is present in religious writing (Delaney 1998). This one patriarchal norm is put into practice during religious activities through a preferential association between the men of the assembly and positions of power. The idea of “gender justice” is absent here in the religious ideology of male transformation. As Cucchiari (1990: 691) showed, the Pentecostal experience follows differentiated outlines: the women are more inclined to live religious experiences in connection with the Holy Spirit, while the religious experience of the men of the assembly is more associated with the words, writings and the formal power of definition.

22 However, contrary to the Catholic model which automatically excludes women from Ministry (Voyé 1996), the Protestant churches eventually admitted women pastors during the second half of the 20th century for the Reformed and Lutheran Churches (Willaime 1996: 30). This evolution has been the result of a series of social-cultural changes to which Protestantism was not insensitive. In the Pentecostal worlds, it thus happens that women speak and step upon the altar or become pastors even if these events are rare. Whatever their status, their voice is more conditioned than that of the men. When women take the floor, their discourse is full of oral cautions and they have to refer to God ceaselessly to guarantee their legitimacy. This entity appears as an indispensable part of women’s religious agency (Hollywood 2004). When women rise to the altar, it is sometimes to remind their sisters of the imperative of intrinsic submission in gender relations, as did “Maman” Jessica, a Congolese representative of the group of the women, in a presentation where she performed a public act of submission during a convention, April 15th, 2006: “I want to speak to my sisters. The church begins at home, there is no use to come to the church if we leave the house in a mess. To me, my husband is my witness, before coming to church, I take care of the house, cook, I must be subjected to Dad, Roger, [everybody applauds and shows approval by chanting ‘Alleluias!’ ‘Amen!’] I must be subjected to my mother-in-law. God said, ‘If you want that I use you, you

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have to be subjected.’ I regret, my sisters. I preach God’s word. My sisters, juvenile delinquency begins at home. In this country, we have to respect husbands. Applaud the brothers! You the dads, pastors, you are leaders. Take your responsibilities! [The assembly applauds] God does not need omelettes.” 6 23 In this extract, “Maman” Jessica recalls the major principle valorising certain forms of gender relations in these religious spaces. She recalls the imperatives of submission and the domestic role of women (the house as their kingdom) and, correlatively, the role of men as heads of family. This message, carried by “Maman” Jessica’s feminine voice, is one of male precedence. It is the domination of women by men that is highlighted here in spite of the “regrets” expressed.

Weakened migrant men

24 In the migratory context that has seen the emergence of these churches, the discourse of strengthening the male power, illustrated through its biblical roots, takes particular meaning.

25 First, for the vast majority of the followers, masculinity seems to have been shattered during diverse migratory experiences. As Abdelmayek Sayad (1999) has shown for the case of three generations of Algerian men migrating to France, the social cost of migration is considerable. In his exploration of the dimensions of suffering brought about by migration, the uneasiness takes on various forms and intensities: from culpability generated by a sentiment of abandon to the problem of absence or oblivion, in the country of origin, towards different pathologies of exile (melancholia, excessive pessimism or mutism). For the French-Algerian sociologist, the capacity of the migrant to counter this social cost of migration resides in his ability to give a deep meaning to his existence marked by mobility. In this context, a strong religious affiliation can provide migrants with a particular perspective on the meaning of their lives as this contribution exemplifies. Pentecostal affiliation seems to temper the difficulties faced by migrant men. At the beginning, the resettlement of migrant men often constitutes a self-reflexive starting point – by effect of contrast – on the appropriate forms of gender relations. In this Western European country where these men try to settle, gender standards are different and sometimes contrast with the norms they have incorporated during their former periods of socialization, the form that appears “normal” to them. Often, taken aback by the type of relationship between men and women in this new context, male followers refer to the religious message to criticize this specific configuration. Similarly, other researches, such that of Sharon Suh (2003), show how Korean Buddhists in America use religion to understand the relationship to the homeland which happens, in part, in gendered ways. Men assert an identity through religious activities that construct distinctively male spaces in the temple, in response to the degrading aspects of the male immigrant experience (Suh 2003). 26 The discourse of many current believers in Brussels is close to a reaction against various “modern” changes in the sexual field, as a result of several years of the feminist struggle that has contributed to “erode masculine authority in the household” (Illouz 2012: 125). In a certain sense, Pentecostal churches in Brussels are keeping with a broader movement of protest against a universal tendency of women participating in the “globalized” world and market economy (Brouwer, Gifford and Rose 1996: 219).

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27 Therefore, in this context, a lot of male followers take up arms against gender relations as they are represented in Belgium. The issue of equality and leadership are questioned. According to Félix, a follower of about 30 years from the DRC, women’s role in Belgian society is not appropriate: “When I get together with white people here, there is some stuff I cannot tolerate, or I cannot accept. When [in quotation marks] ‘women take up authority over men and decide everything,’ I find it hard. I can’t help thinking something is wrong!” 28 The migratory situation and the resulting new economic order influences gender to a great extent. The loss of economic status changes gender interaction. Various scholars have underlined the challenge to men’s authority in migratory contexts (Hirsch 2007; Kibria 1993; Pessar 1995). In Belgium, this loss of masculine privilege is expressed also through the denunciation by men of the “favouring” of women in the local economy. Men say they suffer from this preferential treatment given to women in which their own professional opportunities are fewer. Speaking about job opportunities in Belgium, Martin, a young Congolese-Belgian explains that, “women find work more easily here because Belgium favours women.” According to him, this situation is “unbalanced” because women are the only breadwinners and this seems to germinate future conflicts. Indeed, the differential status these men mostly suffer from in a migratory context deprives them, in some cases, from part of the functions and responsibilities they used to have, such as providing food, or more generally taking financial care of the family. In such cases, economic dependence of these men upon their spouses brings their power into question. Some men confess they feel that their identity is at stake, that they are no longer able to control their wives as they did in their native country. This is maybe why a great emphasis is put on the spiritual responsibility of men in the family. 29 The contestation of power in gender relations and the tensions which ensue from it in the migratory context resonate with other debates and challenges to patriarchy that are taking place in Africa. Here also, numerous women assume an economic role within the family unit. Indeed, in the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the role of breadwinner associated with the Congolese masculinities (Jewsiewicki 2004; Kuyu Mwissa 2008) is more and more assumed by the women because of the delicate and generalized socioeconomic condition. In her study of the God of Maman Olangi in Congo-Kinshasa and in the Congolese diaspora, Bénédicte Meiers (2013) shows how transformations and economic crises made women’s money a necessity to household survival, a change men found hard to accept and thus at the root of a lot of gender tensions. The association between the breadwinner and male skill becomes the object of a competition between men, women and children. In light of this, Meiers explains how the religious ideology of the Church of Maman Olangi contributes – as in the case of Pentecostal churches – to the recovery of male authority. 30 In Belgium, when men of the assembly do not complain of being victims of discrimination in the hiring process, and when they have access to the realm of work, they regret very often that their occupation is below their skill set. These work experiences are lived as degrading ones (which is very often also the case for their wives). This disqualification in the professional world is not without consequences for the way they think about themselves as men. The migratory context is a continuation of colonial history (Bancel et al. 2010), since the racism of that time contributed to the denigration of the power of African men (Fanon 1967). The religious sphere constitutes

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a place in the margins of this daily depreciation where the power of men is reaffirmed and celebrated. Pentecostal affiliation seems to temper the difficulties of migrant men by formally claiming the precedence of men over women and by recognizing in the same discursive movement the quality and importance of the “female workers of the Lord.” 31 These spaces also constitute places of debate, contest, negotiation around the morality or lack thereof of local practices, and sites of evaluation of recent sexual evolutions. In a very general way, the western laxness in terms of customs and sexual practices is the object of deep criticisms during religious meetings. The image or, in certain cases, the caricature of the sexual practices of others serves then to consolidate the sexual orthodoxy of the members of the assembly. The religious condemnation of homosexuality and the legislative advances with regard to these sexual minorities is recurring (in particular, same-sex marriage which has been permitted in Belgium since 2003). Pastors warn their flock in the following terms: these illegitimate practices bring only the destruction of the individual. The transgression of the moral standards has a price. They quote then the first letter to the Corinthians: “Do not you know that the inequitable will not inherit from the Kingdom of God? Do not get lost. Distracted, admirers of statuettes, adulteries, liabilities, sodomites, thieves, grasping, drunkards, insulters, birds of prey will not inherit from God’s reign” (Corinthians I, 6: 9-10). 32 Certain ministers qualify homosexual practices as ignominies. They use metaphors structured around the nature/culture dichotomy in order to relegate these practices to the animal kingdom, to savagery, to bestiality. 33 For a pastor native of DRC, homosexual practice is comparable to the act of eating one’s own excrement. One pastor admitted to having already dealt with homosexuals in his church, where he proceeded to organize sessions of special prayers to free them from this vice. He concluded by narrating a story with a “happy ending” as he said, in which one of these believers, by means of prayer, was stopped from being homosexual. This way, the masculinity valued in these spaces joins the hegemonic masculinity in the sense of privileging the virility of men to the detriment of homosexual identities, perceived as deviant.

Producing men of heart

34 If male dominance is confirmed by this religious reading, other processes in the margins of this valorisation come to moderate the strictly patriarchal aspect of gendered relations. Indeed, the Pentecostal reworking of masculinity also implies a subversion of the hegemonic masculinity. Male domination is thus established, yet this is limited and redirected towards a model of masculinity that we could qualify as alternative. Indeed, Pentecostal affiliation proposes to break with certain dominant cultural values.

35 Two processes contribute to new directions for religious masculinity: on the one hand, men are “domesticated,” to use the expression of Elisabeth Brusco (1995), and on the other hand, we observe the “feminization of masculinity” in these spaces (Mansilla Agüero 2007).

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The male domestication

36 As I expand upon below, gender is a game played by both male and female individuals; masculinity and femininity as structural patterns are “worked on” by the same religious principles. The first process being summed up is the one of domesticity. Indeed, this concept is not exclusively meant as a study of women’s issues! If the domestic sphere is, above all, the “kingdom” of women, and if this sphere is extended to the religious space by taking care of children and housekeeping, men are also “domesticated” in a way. They have to be ideal husbands, caring and loving fathers: faithful, loyal and responsible like the model of Jesus.

37 Their concerns are refocused within the household, the domestic unit. In this sphere, the man has a position of head but his aspirations have changed to correspond closer to those of his wife (Brusco 1995: 148). If we re-examine the speech of “Maman” Jessica above, we can see that after having exhorted her “sisters in Christ” to submit to their husbands, Jessica orders the men, those whom she describes as the “leaders,” to take their “responsibilities.” “We do not want omelettes” she ends with a touch of humour. If the incitement of submission for the women is very clear, it does not go without the counterpoint for the men of the assembly, whom the women expressly ask to shoulder their responsibilities. 38 It is as if the compensation for the repetitive call for female submission is that women expect a certain type of masculinity. To a certain extent, women say: “OK, we will submit to you men but you will have to live up to our requirements.” As Melanie Heath puts it: “by helping ‘men to be men,’ the wives promote a hegemonic masculinity that allows men to be involved husbands and fathers while maintaining their privilege as men” (2003: 436). This gender configuration is confirmed by other studies about evangelicals that have shown how women restore the precedence of men to sustain the harmony of the domestic unit (Gallagher and Smith 1999; Stacey and Gerard 1990). 39 In this context, women do not aim to directly oppose the current patriarchy; they rather hope that God will moderate the hearts of the men of the assembly (Mate 2002: 566). Their Pentecostal affiliation allows them to formulate, in a specific biblical language, certain requirements about the way to be men. The contents of this masculinity are thus redefined according to a new structure of power. As explained by one of the Zimbabwean Pentecostal interlocutors of Rekopantswe Mate, the male authority rests on the bible: “male headship is ordained in the Scriptures and […] it is not about tyranny because a man who follows the Bible knows better than to be dictatorial, abusive or otherwise ‘unfair’ to his wife and children” (2002: 554). 40 What this means is that the man has to show an enlightened usage of his power based on the consultation with those for whom he is responsible. Submission, power and responsibility are invested with particular meanings in these spaces: they constitute the trio of normative orders in the heart of the relations between Pentecostal men and women. It is the reason for which Bernice Martin (2001) asserts that these movements, qualified as “regressive,” “patriarchal,” or as “fundamentalists,” have nevertheless contributed to the emancipation of millions of women in or from “the South.” The author adds that the signs of emancipation are difficult to perceive for the western observers influenced by the Age of Enlightenments for whom Pentecostalism is above all marked by a lack of intellectual sophistication (2001: 57).

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41 This domestication also extends to sexual issues. Pentecostal men and women want to distance themselves from the rest of the world by a sexual moral order. Women have to be calm and thoughtful of their husbands’ desires, and the assembly expects them to be beyond reproach as far as being a vehicle of temptation. Sensuality in Pentecostal rhetoric is understood as a tool of Satan, a trap inscribed in women’s bodies, often without her knowing it, set to ensnare men. The result of this association is that great attention is paid to the sexuality of young girls. As mentioned elsewhere (Maskens 2011), young girls constitute the purity “potential” of a congregation. Pastors are concerned with female sexuality in the everyday life of their church. Young women are the real target of concerned sermons. Young men are generally spared such sermons because of the shared common assumption about their sexuality, understood as indomitable, uncontrollable. For young men, masculinity is an aggressive one, a “virile” masculinity. So, without entering into more detail here, this leads us to this point: if we can notice the coexistence of a plurality of masculinities, reworked by the same religious process and differently inhabited by the sexes, there is also a kind of temporality affecting the authorized definition of masculinities. There are different masculinities embedded in different stages of the life cycle.

The feminization of masculinity

42 The second process at the heart of the Pentecostal reworking of the masculinity, namely the “feminization of masculinity,” also breaks with the dominant cultural values. Indeed, as Almeida admirably showed in his study of a village in Southern Europe, the hegemonic masculinity, as an ideal cultural model, exercises control over all the men by incorporating a specific sociability to the everyday life and through discourses which exclude the emotional dimension of existence by its identification as feminine (Almeida 1995: 17). The men build themselves then in opposition to this feminine counterpart. The expression of feelings, to cry for example, is reserved for the women only. The religious spaces take the opposite view of this gender standard and the emotion and its manifestations are not only the privilege of women.

43 The domestication of male followers goes hand in hand with the shaping of their personality. Men are encouraged to “be connected” with their nuclear and spiritual circle – they must try every day to be connected with God. Men have to feed the family literally as well as morally by bringing peace and serenity to the household. Gentleness and affection in these spaces become masculine attributes. Demonstrating this attribute, Mario, a Guatemalan follower for more than 40 years, living in Belgium for about 12 years and attending the biggest Congolese Church in Brussels, said, after a long prayer during which tears were running down his face: “Society says you cannot cry, you cannot be sensitive otherwise you are considered gay. But for God, men can cry, be sensitive, love […]. You’re also told that you have to fuck to be a man otherwise we say you’re homosexual, but it is wrong too.” 44 If, in the majority of social worlds, a man crying or showing his fragility doesn’t fit with what is generally expected of the “stronger sex” and such men run the risk of seeing their masculinity disqualified, in religious spaces men can “be connected” safely. This kind of alternative masculinity rejects some patterns of a “virile” masculinity, those that don’t fit with their role as good fathers, for example, but stays in touch with this

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model on questions such as authority, heterosexuality, and the evidence of “natural” dissimilarities between men and women. 45 To illustrate this alternative masculinity, the comments of Octave are relevant. He is a young Belgo-Congolese man under 30, who described himself as “born in the church” and with whom I had an enlivened conversation at his home about what it is to be a Christian man in the twenty-first century: “Well, we have to put things in their context. It’s true that in the Bible, it’s like that: a woman is submissive to her husband. But, if you’re a gallant man and you know that there is a woman God has given to you, you have to do everything possible to take care of her and she too has to do everything to treat you well. And if she has to prepare meals and so on to treat you well, she will do it but only if she has enough time. Because you should not be fooled… we are in Europe in 2006! I have some female friends that have little kids: it’s killing them! If you have four, you have a head like that. You have to have a heart: if men have to take a vacuum cleaner to help cleaning, they should do it! You see, it’s you and your wife that know and it will stay in the family circle. My father, he has vacuumed before because my mother’s back was hurting or whatever… Or to do the washing-up for example, my father has also done the washing-up.” 46 During this discussion, Octave mentions gallantry, common sense and compassion, all qualities that men of the Lord have to demonstrate towards their spouses. A Christian man could develop his sensitivity – without running the risk of emasculation because his status as head of the family household is guaranteed – and as such, they are able to adopt behaviours suitable for the context (“we are in Europe,” “we are in 2006”) and call for compassion. Similar discourses emerge from the analyses of Jacinthe Mazzocchetti in her study on the students of Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso, the country of origin of certain pastors and other Pentecostal believers in Brussels. The anthropologist describes two believers in the Assemblies of God, a young couple called Michel and Christine who also testify to the tendency of a more egalitarian reformulation of the strict distribution of housework. Indeed, the couple agrees to assume a distribution of the tasks less centred on the work of women. Michel speaks about the fact that he is not hampered by the outsiders’ opinions because he is committed to showing a good attitude. Christine denounces the negative view of wider society which places a man in flagrante delicto of domestic cleaning, and Mazzocchetti concludes: “if the relationships of domination are reaffirmed within these Churches, relations between men and women in the Protestant couples distance themselves from present observed norms” (2009: 215).

47 In our example above, Octave doesn’t question the model of strict separation of tasks: it’s clear that women take charge of domestic and child-care tasks (they are the ones that “naturally” prepare meals, vacuum and do the washing-up), but men have to relieve them if they are suffering. His revelation concerning the cleaning actions of his father reinforces the exceptional nature of such acts and consolidates the idea of a strict separation of tasks. This ambiguity is thus at the heart of the Pentecostal redefinition of masculinity. There is a duality of detachment and proximity. Male followers try to distance themselves from the culturally dominant form of masculinity as formulated by society but, at the same time, they reinforce and consolidate some patterns of it by using its religious legitimacy.

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Failed domestication

48 If this article deals first and foremost with the discursive production of normativity and consequently authority, it is not to be said that the concrete and daily transformation of masculinity is beyond its scope. Indeed, the young men who do not show a change of behaviour expected in the religious space can be the objects of closer control by the pastoral authorities. The figure of the “seducer” does not enter within the framework of Pentecostal masculinity and is thus deeply “disputed.” Anything resembling sexual predation is firmly repressed in these spaces. In certain cases, it happens that the religious authorities of the church intervene directly during the hook-up scene of certain believers. This is particularly the case when a male believer’s attempts to approach girls or women are made in a visible way within the cult, in front of other members of the assembly. This was the case with a young faithful Peruvian, who systematically sat next to me during the cults and suggested that we participate together in diverse activities. The pastor of this Hispanic Church came regularly to interrupt him and to present me to the other persons of the church, especially the women, and by doing so showed me the procedure. During a conversation, the Peruvian pastor shared his disapproval regarding the behaviour of the same believer towards me, referring to the latter as a “philanderer.” Obviously irritated, the pastor explained to me: “Certain believers look at all the new persons who arrive at the church and try to seduce them. They ‘declare’ themselves to all new believers, then the girls do not give them importance. They are not mature, nor responsible, they are not persevering, they are not sincere. We have to fight against it.”

49 In Latin American spaces, the figure of the “macho man” – part of the hegemonic masculinity par excellence of this continent – is more thematised and fought for than in the church composed for the greater part of native of Sub-Saharan Africans. The Mexican origin and the history of the term explain this ascendancy. In the literature on the South-American Pentecostalism, there are many authors who bring to light how much the religious affiliation breaks with this crucial character in the history of masculinities (see e. g. Hallum 2003; Austin-Broos 1997; Chesnut 1997; Brusco 1995). 50 It is also worth noting that male interlocutors, according to their own perception of my position in the church (as a member for some, as a non-member for others) constructed their desire differently.7 For Ernest, a male in his thirties, recently arrived from Niger and frequenting La Parole Vivante, the fact that I was part of the church was something really valuable. So, additionally to the fact that I was Belgian, young, and unmarried, he perceived me as a Christian. When I explained that I already had a boyfriend, he responded: “It’s a pity because I have feelings for you and furthermore, somebody like you who live in prayers…” In contrast, in my encounter with the young Belgo- Congolese Octave, in his late twenties, it was precisely my position of externality to the church that made me desirable. Two weeks after having done a formal and recorded interview, he called me so that I could give him the audio tape back because he was uneasy with such comments and wanted to destroy the evidence. I accepted and he came to my home to pick me up in his car and took me to a park in the neighbourhood. He stopped the car and grabbed the beers hidden beneath the back seat. Then he began to talk about the difficulties in a relationship with a girl from the church. They were living together but the parents of his girlfriend were really upset with such relations outside marriage. He proposed then to have sex in an almost unveiled way and justified

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himself in this way: “because you know, a young Christian girl cannot anymore, it’s a chore, while you…” He associated non-Christian women as readily available women sexually speaking. 51 Such situations highlight the tacit dimension of masculinity, far from the discursive performance of cults, public testimonies or formal presentation of the Pentecostal self to non-converted people. Sometimes I could witness how those churches’ messages were put into practice. After a cult where the pastor had talked again about the fact that women have to be submitted to men, giving concrete examples, Paul, the Rwandese guitarist of the assembly, asked to Simone, a single Congolese in her thirties, to clean up the table in the hall and he added “you are a women, you have to submit!” Simone accomplished this task without flinching. In this scene of power, we can see how the practical application of being a man in the church depends strongly on the context and could follow multiple lines and intensities of power.

Conclusion

52 The Pentecostal reworking of masculinity takes place as a rupture or transformation from the “old man” to the “new man” through a non-linear process of purification. The man is domesticated: his concerns are refocused around the needs and well-being of the household. He is also feminized in a way. These normative processes are articulated alongside notions of change, but it should not allow us to forget the weight of individual appropriation in these phenomena. The process of transformation will not be imprinted in the same way on every believer who conducts a sorting of the multiplicity of discourses on masculinities according to his or her biographic echoes. The religious proposition constitutes one possibility among other available stocks.

53 In a dialectic which associates distance and closeness, men of the assembly appear as “new” by distancing themselves from the dominant cultural hegemonic form of masculinity, so answering the imperative of distinction of the religious gathering, and yet, by dressing in the “new clothes of the male domination” (De Singly 1993), they strengthen certain dominant tendencies – the precedence of the male component in the social organization – by leaning on the legitimacy of the religious register. 54 The ambiguity is thus at the heart of the Pentecostal redefining of masculinity. The men of the assembly, particularly those in the age bracket of 35-50 years, seem to feel their privileges threatened, and this feeling exceeds the borders of the religious or migratory spaces because it is shared by numerous non-migrant western and non- western men (Welzer-Lang and Filiod 1992). However, the threats pressing on the privilege of men seem to become intensified in the migration towards Europe. Migrant men experience greater challenges to their capacity as providers, and are at the same time confronted with other gender ideologies. This potential destabilization of their status finds an answer in the religious affiliation to Pentecostalism(s). This religious ideology, which redefines the male role by establishing a “biblical” male precedence is thus one way, among others, to understand male resistance in the contemporary transformations affecting gendered norms.

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NOTES

1. I would like to warmly thank Ruy Blanes, Annelin Eriksen and Rijk Van Dijk for their insightful and generous comments on a previous presentation of this text in Bergen, Norway, in March 2014. I thank also Kate Nialla Fayers-Kerr for her support. 2. The religious speech has no monopoly of the imperative of men’s transformation – we think here of the feminist movements, the speech of certain NGO or still some masculinist movements, for example. 3. Mujeriego is a pejorative Spanish terms that means “womaniser.” 4. The term “macho man” emerges during the Mexican revolution of 1910 and will know its peak thanks to the cinema and to the nationalist literature of the 1930s. Afterwards, this term will take negative connotations which will concentrate in the figure of the “male chauvinist” (Machillot 2011). 5. Numerous historians underlined the gender dimension of colonialism and of imperialism more broadly. They observe how masculinities of the colonized were weakened by its loser’s status. This loss of power moves the colonized man closer to the world of the women according to the definitions imposed by the colonizer (see Mackenzie 1989; Sinha 1995; Joly 2011). 6. In this French-speaking context, the use of omelette takes a particular significance. French speakers use the suffix -ette to form nouns with an idea of smallness (example: camion is a truck and camionette is a small truck). In the preaching of “Maman” Jessica, the use of the expression omelette is a pun to refer to “reduced” men. 7. For a discussion of the erotic subjectivity of the anthropologist, see Kulick (1995).

ABSTRACTS

Addressing the paradoxes of gender in Pentecostal churches attended by converts of African or Latin-American origin in Brussels, it is argued that religious and migratory experiences are intimately intermingled in these spaces and that, in most cases, the geographical shift experienced by male believers has led to questions regarding their “traditional” masculinity. Their capacity to hold the role of breadwinner has often been undermined and they experience a kind of vulnerability against which religious gendered ideology often provides assurance and self-esteem by affirming men as heads of the religious space and chiefs of the household unit. Pentecostal masculinity, although adhering to a model of hegemonic patriarchal masculinity regarding the sexual division of domestic tasks, the recognition of men’s formal authority, and an exclusive focus on young women as the purity “capital” of churches, also reveals significant ruptures with that model: religious discourse values domestic involvement, sensibility and gentleness, encouraged and valorised as masculine characteristics. This hybrid posture of Pentecostal masculinity appears as a contrasted gender repertoire allowing men of the church to oscillate between various identifications and social locations according to specific situations and different contexts of enunciation.

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O artigo trata os paradoxos de género nas igrejas pentecostais com fiéis africanos e latino- americanos em Bruxelas, argumentando que as experiências migratória e religiosa estão intimamente ligadas nestes espaços e que, na maioria dos casos, a mudança geográfica vivida pelos homens crentes conduziu a que questionassem a sua masculinidade “tradicional”. Estes homens veem muitas vezes ameaçada a sua capacidade para assegurar o sustento da família e experimentam por isso alguma vulnerabilidade, que a ideologia de género da sua religião contraria dando-lhes maior segurança e autoestima, ao afirmá-los como dirigentes do espaço religioso e chefes de família. Se bem que a masculinidade pentecostal adira a um modelo de masculinidade patriarcal hegemónica no que respeita à divisão sexual das tarefas domésticas, ao reconhecimento da autoridade formal dos homens e à visão das jovens mulheres como detendo a exclusividade do capital de “pureza” destas igrejas, ela revela também ruturas significativas relativamente a esse modelo: o discurso religioso valoriza o envolvimento doméstico, a sensibilidade e a brandura, encorajados como características masculinas. A masculinidade pentecostal torna-se assim um repertório de género variado, permitindo aos homens a oscilação entre várias identificações e posicionamentos sociais em função das situações específicas e dos diferentes contextos de enunciação.

INDEX

Keywords: masculinity, Pentecostal churches, migration, agency, gender, hegemonic masculinity Palavras-chave: masculinidade, igrejas pentecostais, migração, agência, género, masculinidade hegemónica

AUTHOR

MAÏTÉ MASKENS

Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium [email protected]

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Masculinity in crisis: effeminate men, loss of manhood, and the nation-state in postsocialist China Masculinidade em crise: homens efeminados, a perda de virilidade e o Estado- nação na China pós-socialista

Tiantian Zheng

1 In the 2010 National Happy Men’s Singing Contest in China, Liu Zhu – a teenage boy dressed as a woman – participated in the event.1 Wearing a rainbow blouse and blue skinny jeans, Liu appeared as a beautiful woman. Due to his strikingly feminine voice and his own stylish long hair, Liu’s performance was interrupted three times by the judges who questioned his gender and even threatened him with a strip search. In spite of the setbacks, Liu’s performance of the song he had composed conquered the audience and made him famous overnight. Pictures of him as a woman abound in the online media.

2 This “phenomenon of fake women” (weiniangxianxiang) – effeminate men who look more feminine and alluring than real women – sparked indignant discourses chastising it as an epitome of the loss of Chinese manhood and a threat to the nation-state.2 Experts, counselors, and educators called for “saving boys” through revamping the education system and underscoring gender-difference education in schools and families. As I will show in this paper, effeminate men have become a scapegoat upon which anxiety over the current social problems such as dissolved marriages is displaced. While a dissolved family is pinpointed as one of the key factors that can lead to a child’s effeminacy and gender misrecognition, the media also portrays the lack of manhood not only as a public menace and a threat to the family, but also as a metaphor for passive masculinity and national crisis. 3 Studies on man and masculinity have grown ever since the early 1980s. These studies have largely approached masculinity from a Western perspective and attended to peripheral masculinities such as gay or black (see Kimmel 2005; Connell 2001, 2009; Bordo 1999). David Gilmore’s (1990) cross-cultural study of various masculinities and

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Connell’s (2001) call for both international and local approaches to the study of masculinity have generated much interest in research on a wide array of masculinities across different cultures and geographic regions (see Louie 2002). 4 In China studies, little research was conducted to shed light on the contemporary issue of effeminacy or crisis of masculinity and its intrinsic link to the Chinese state. China scholars Xueping Zhong (2000) and Kam Louie (2002) have examined masculinity through in-depth readings and intricate analysis of Chinese films and literary works produced throughout the crucial historical junctures in China. While Xueping Zhong utilizes a feminist psychoanalytic lens that Chinese men feel “besieged” in post-Mao China and attempt to negotiate an image of strong men vis-à-vis women and the state as a part of the effort to create a geopolitically strong Chinese nation, Kam Louie traces the historical changes of the dyad wen / wu (cultural attainment / martial valor) and argues that this dyad is an analytical tool and theoretical construct facilitating the conceptualization of the Chinese masculinities. Also, Brownell and Wasserstrom’s (2002) edited book takes an anthropological and historical approach to evoke how femininity and masculinity in China are mutually constructed and have changed over time. As such, previous researchers approached the issue of masculinity through a historical analysis, but to date, no research has been conducted to illuminate the intersection between a crisis of manhood and the postsocialist Chinese state in contemporary globalizing China. 5 Drawing on my research of online websites, newspaper and magazine articles, TV and electronic media in current China, this paper seeks to fill this lacuna and enlighten the inextricably intertwined relationships between a lack of manhood and the strength of the state in the globalizing era of China. I argue that the crisis of masculinity in effeminate men is considered a peril to the security of the nation because it reflects powerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity, and social deterioration, reminiscent of the colonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the “sick man” of East Asia. A multitude of agents and experts are determined to revive and strengthen the nation through building a strong manhood and sharpening proper male gender roles.3 6 This paper comprises five sections. In the first section, I will historicize masculinities in China and provide a historical context for this paper. In the second section, I will discuss the issue of effeminate men in the media. I will then explore the intersection between masculinity in crisis and the nation-state. In the fourth section, I will analyze the ways in which experts and educators depict the root causes of the lack of manhood in effeminate men. In the fifth section, I will explore the devised solutions to the problem of masculinity in crisis. Finally, I will conclude with insights and illuminations about masculinity, gender roles, rising professionals, and the nation-state in the changing era of postsocialist China.

Historicizing masculinities in China

7 The meanings of masculinity evolved throughout Chinese history. Before the May Fourth Movement in 1919, the courtesan house was a site that produced an elite masculinity of self-control and cool demeanor. Elite masculinities had to be validated by the courtesans, the arbiters of their masculinity, as worldly, urbane, knowledgeable, sophisticated, and refined (Henriot 2001; Van Gulik 2003). 4

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8 Concerns about masculine identity at this secure time of “culturalism” (Fitzgerald 1996) have to do with social class. “Culturalism” entailed a universal superiority that Chinese people felt at that time, considering themselves the “Middle Kingdom” – the center of the world and universal superiority. Fairbank (1973: 178) states that China embraced an attitude of being the large ethnocentric universe which “remained quite sure of its cultural superiority even when relatively inferior in military power to fringe elements of its universe.” 9 With the Western intrusion into China, Chinese male insecurity was linked to the perceived decline of China and contributed to the growth of Chinese nationalism. Elite masculinity was attacked because it was identified with the elite cultural tradition (Larson 2002). Nationalism produced a new model of masculinity. For the first time in Chinese history, the sexual ability of Chinese men was not measured internally as a means to establish social class but came to be measured against the outside predators whose military prowess identified them as more sexually potent (see Brownell 2000). 10 Later on, the Maoist state, with its emphasis on gender equality, attempted to control men’s sexuality by suppressing female sexuality (T. Zheng 2009).5 Many men remembered this era as an era of male emasculation. In the 1990s, masculinity and marital stability were seen as dependent on women’s enjoyment of sex. This radical notion that women should enjoy sex was not out of a concern for the happiness of women, but rather reflected the new competitive capitalist economic model where men proved themselves through entrepreneurial activity. Chinese entrepreneurs, instead of taking offense against the Taiwanese and Japanese businessmen who had taken Chinese mistresses, simply emulated them and took mistresses themselves (Brownell 2000). While young entrepreneurial men recovered their economic and sexual potency, older retired cadres were faced with impotence (Brownell 2000). So devastated was this group that there was an upsurge in the market for tonics to reinvigorate their sexual life. Here, the link between politics, economics, and sexuality is drawn. Men with economic and political power become sexually potent, whereas men who have lost such power feel emasculated by the market reforms. 11 Entrepreneurial masculinity has been analyzed as inextricably linked to economic and state power (see Connell 2001; Gilmore 1990; Louie 2002; X. Zhong 2000; Brownell 1999; Brownell and Wasserstrom 2002; Chen 2002; Jankowiak 2002; T. Zheng 2006, 2009). Men were judged not by birth status or even education but by their competitive abilities. “Masculinity is related to state power, nationalist ideology, the free market, and the marriage / sex markets. The current situation has unleashed an entrepreneurial masculinity that is apparently proceeding hand in hand with the return of male privilege and female disadvantage” (Brownell 2000: 230). Their subjugation of women represented the recovery of their manhood in postsocialist China.

“Effeminate men” in the media in postsocialist China

12 Effeminate men, contrary to the ideal entrepreneurial masculinity in postsocialist China, were given the name “fake women” in the media. The expression “fake women” stemmed from roles created in Japanese animation and comic games, where male actors displayed feminine beauty, and after extensive use of make-up, possibly equaled or at times exceeded feminine beauty (Xia 2010).6 News reports portrayed these

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effeminate men not only appearing in outlandish, ostentatious clothes, but also harboring feminine personalities (Ying 2009; Ju 2009; Ony 2007; Ai 2007; D. Qiao 2005).

13 Effeminate men became a comic spectacle in the media portrayal. For instance, in a visit to a bar, a reporter categorized the effeminate male clients as ecstatic when you called them “sisters” (Ying 2009). The report called them “female customers” and depicted them as slender “fake women,” wearing make-up and women’s clothes, speaking in a feminine voice, having undergone cosmetic surgeries, addressing each other as “sisters,” and extolling each other as “beautiful” (Ying 2009). 14 Another newspaper reporter also paid a visit to this kind of a bar and described these men as effeminate “fake women” who either underwent or pursued breast augmentation surgery and “looked more beautiful than ordinary women” (Ai 2007). These men, according to the report, appeared as men during the daytime but as women at night. As the reporter wrote, “MengMeng who had had breast augmentation surgery wore a low-cut dress to show off her cleavage. Xiao Yu was tall, slender, white-skinned, with long and beautiful hair. I would have never believed that he was a man” (Ai 2007). A host of other media reports also focused on how these effeminate men utilized thick facial powder and make-up to make them look like women (D. Qiao 2005). 15 Effeminate men’s feminine personalities were also underscored in addition to their exterior (Lan 2008). It was reported that effeminate men’s energy level was lower than “ordinary men” and they rarely liked outdoor activities or body building, probably because “they tried to protect their skin” (Lan 2008). It was said that they only relished singing songs and playing musical instruments, and that they were more emotional than “ordinary men” but they rarely displayed their true emotions (Lan 2008).7 Like women, as reports denoted, they also enjoyed eating snacks (Sheng 2009). 16 One report was written by a female college student who was in dismay that male students in her college liked eating snacks. One summer when she was riding the train home, two male students sat opposite to her, carrying two huge paper bags. They took out a huge amount of snacks from the bags and were eating them for one hour straight without rest. She exclaimed: “How womanly these male students have become! Men nowadays – why are you all turning into women?” (Sheng 2009) Due to their “feminine traits and personalities,” media reports stated that it was not surprising that their typical work was as hair stylists and make-up specialists (Ju 2009; Xia 2010), although many were not able to land a job due to their effeminate persona (Zhuang 2008).8 17 Demeaning and mocking commentaries about effeminate men proliferated in the media (Bao 2008; Da 2008; C. Qiao 2005; D. Qiao 2005; Lan 2008). Juxtaposed to “normal men,” effeminate men were described as “despicable,” “whining,” and “swinging hips while walking (yiniuyiniu)” (Bao 2008). A reporter wrote that he was so petrified that his hair stood up when he saw an effeminate man dressed up like a woman, raising his pinky finger, and calling another man “husband” with a coquettish voice (Da 2008).

“Masculinity in crisis” and the national State

18 While the phenomenon of “fake women” was utilized by special interest groups to sell products (Liu 2012; Xia 2010), worries about the loss of manhood abound in the media. The anti-feminized men discourse represented a serious issue and suggested a crisis of manhood and a crisis of the nation-state. “A China with too many ‘fake women’ is in

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peril,” as the discourse bellowed (Yue 2012). Feminization of men was castigated as a symptom of social degeneration, ultimately a trope denoting a nation-state in danger because of a dysfunctional Chinese manhood. Experts, educators, and counselors argued that the feminization of males in the past had led to the colonial domination of China.

19 The lack of manhood was repeatedly linked to the crisis of the nation-state. “The future of our nation is worrisome with the disappearance of manly heroism and masculine spirit,” as the discourse lamented (Yue 2012). Authors contended that a harmonious nation should have men who behave like men and women who behave like women, otherwise the nation would cease to be harmonious (Zhang 2012). To save the nation, men’s gender-appropriate code of conduct was underscored and reasserted. 20 The ideal code of conduct for men was defined as fearless, heroic, and militaristic – a vital component of the national spirit. Yuan Luo, General of the Chinese Military Council, published an article that was posted, cited, and expanded throughout the internet (Luo 2010). For China to become the strongest nation in the world, he contended, men’s militaristic, fearless, heroic spirit was imperative. Luo traced the problem back to China’s humiliating past when military backwardness caused China to descend into a semi-colonized nation after losing the Opium War and being forced to pay war debts to colonial nations. Military power, according to Luo, reflected national integration and economic power. Now that China’s dream to become a strong nation was finally realized, it had to be supported by a strong military (Luo 2010). 21 The “bad phenomenon” of effeminate men according to Luo was an imminent disaster to the nation-state (guonanlintou), especially when China was still not unified and separatists constituted a threat (Luo 2010).9 He lamented that this phenomenon of “yin waxing and yang waning” (ascending female role and descending male role) would destroy national integration and vitality (Luo 2010). “A nation that does not valorize heroes will have no heroes” (Luo 2010). 22 Luo’s indignant diatribe about the phenomenon of feminized men was shared by many (Chong 2010). They articulated men’s proper code of conduct: “A man should be like a man. A man needs to be strong and resilient. Men are born to protect and care for women” (Bao 2008; Sheng 2009). “The true meaning of masculinity lies in the spirit of exploring nature, challenging physical limits, and having an unyielding will, rather than sissy clothing and outlook” (Yue 2012). Many people formed anti-“fake-women” groups. A C-block (sissy-block) group appeared at the 2010 Happy Men’s Singing Contest, waving a flag that read “Protect pure men. Eliminate fake-women folks” (Chong 2010). An online Anti Fake-Women League with the banner of “Real Chinese Men” was also formed (Chong 2010).10 23 “When the youth are strong, the country is strong. When the youth dominate the earth, the country dominates the earth” (Chong 2010). Invoking the self-strengthening movement at the turn of the twentieth century, the initiator of the Anti Fake-Women League castigated fake women for damaging the image of Chinese men in his article titled “Protect Our Testosterone!” Deploring fake women who had robbed Chinese youth of their testosterone, he asked: “How do youth without testosterone make the country dominate the earth?” (Chong 2010). 24 Many people joined him in the league, declaring that “At this juncture of the dearth of pure, real men, a man should live like a man” (Chong 2010). Effeminate men, according

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to them, suffered psychological perversion and biological regression. Self-defined as “pure men” (chunyemen) and “real men,” members claimed that they loved sports and outdoor activities, did Wushu (kungfu), performed sword play, revered real men such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Alain Delon, and worshipped brotherhood and army troops (Chong 2010). The initiator of the league spent ten thousand yuan on a heavy Tang Dynasty Sword and waved the sword every night imagining himself as a hero rescuing the good and combating the evil. An ex-soldier member went through survival training in the woods with little sustenance for seven days during which time he drank spring water, ate snakes, rats and birds. Members believed that men should be strong and tough. They convened online every night to discuss strategies to fight against the phenomenon of effeminate men (Chong 2010).

“Root causes” of masculinity in crisis

25 In the wake of the phenomenon of effeminate men, experts were eager to identify the root causes of effeminate men. According to the experts, family and schools should be regulated and reconfigured to resolve the issue of the crisis of manhood in postsocialist China.

26 Family and schools were identified as the source of gender misrecognition. The current education system, exam system, and parents’ guidance, as the experts contended, were conducive to the phenomenon of effeminate men (Yue 2012; Luo 2010). Yunxiao Sun, editor-in-chief of Youth Studies and board director of the Chinese Family Education Council, published a book entitled Saving Boys (Sun 2009). Sun believed that the education system centered on entrance exams was the most violent killer of manhood (Sun 2009). He stated that boys’ testosterone level was 15 times more than girls’, which determined the difference between boys and girls upon birth and led to boys’ sports- oriented, adventurous, and competitive traits. He argued that because schools planned no outside activities, provided no sports equipment, and prohibited students from running between classrooms, boys, whose biology required extracurricular activities, believed that schools were set up against them. Boys’ natural advantage in sports and visual and spatial competence was not recognized. Girls, he stated, could sit still, but boys tended to jump around, which was incompatible with the school system and led to boys’ lower grades than girls’. The educational model that lacked game-play and enslaved students with books, repressed boys, and the lack of positive feedback in schools also damaged boys severely (Sun 2009).11 27 Sun’s criticism of the education system reverberated throughout the media. The stringent education system, as the experts argued, rewarded obedience and docility as the only criteria of a good student, thus robbing children of ingenuity and creativity, extinguishing their personalities, and turning them into domesticated cats (Yue 2012; Lu 2012; Mu 2012). They also affirmed Sun’s argument that a lack of outdoor activities and the enclosed school-home environment hindered the development of masculinity (Lu 2012; Mu 2012). 28 The education system was berated for generating a “yin waxing and yang waning” phenomenon, as stated above. In this system, the experts argued, because girls were more meticulous than boys with better self-control and better memorizing skills, their grades tended to be higher than those of boys and allowed them to enter better schools, putting boys at a disadvantage (Lu 2012). In a junior high school, it was said that only

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three of the 26 leaders were male (Mu 2012). Women also eclipsed men in professional performance and exam grades for government work, as authors noted (Mu 2012). Science majors in universities used to be dominated by males, but are now equally divided between males and females; equal admission of women into medical schools also ended the era of male domination (Mu 2012). 29 Others such as Shao Yiming, Committee Member of the Chinese Political Association, also pointed out that the ratio of male to female teachers resembled an inverted pyramid. Almost no male teachers could be found in nurseries, and very few taught in elementary schools (Gu 2012). Shao Yiming concluded that the lack of contact with male models led to the lack of “manhood education.” Almost exclusively female teachers bred delicate boys who lacked manhood (Lu 2012; Gu 2012; Mu 2012).12 30 Family was identified as the other source of mistaken gender (Lu 2012).13 First, parents were blamed on two grounds. They were castigated for making too much demand on boys to study and for fostering an “excessive timid and weak” personality in boys (Yue 2012). They were also chastised for doting on only children, prohibiting boys from climbing trees, climbing mountains, or getting into water, and preventing boys from being independent, adventurous, and taking challenges, thus robbing boys of strong wills and sharp edges (Gu 2012; Mu 2012).14 Boys were described as “little emperors,” enjoying the love and care of both parents and four grandparents (Lu 2012). They were also depicted as seedlings in a greenhouse that could not withstand any wind or sunshine (Lu 2012; Mu 2012). In an enclosed environment, as authors stated, it was natural for boys to “degrade” into fake-women (Lu 2012; Mu 2012). 31 Second, fathers were blamed for failing in their role. In his book Saving Boys, Sun (2009) identified the father as the key to nurturing manhood in his son. When fathers were busy advancing their careers, as Sun stated, they deprived the boys of an opportunity to learn to be a man.15 Hence Sun argued that the lack of the father’s role led to the lack of manhood in boys. 32 Third, mothers were criticized for being domineering in families. Authors pointed out that in too many families, mothers were dominant and fathers were submissive-like lambs (Lu 2012; Xi 2012). Domineering mothers, according to authors, affected sons in a negative way (Lu 2012). Sun’s book intimated that mothers should safeguard fathers’ images in front of boys, which would stimulate boys’ yearning to assume a man’s role (Sun 2009). According to the rhetoric of psychologists in the media, in normal situations, daughters were closer to their fathers and sons were closer to their mothers. A disruption of this normal situation of a bullying mother and a weak father and child abuse by the opposite-sex parent could cause boys to feel fearful of women and embarrassed by their father’s humiliation and consequently, develop a mistaken gender recognition (He 2012).16 33 Sociologist Yinhe Li’s analysis of the relationship between gender misrecognition and child rearing was cited on many online websites. Li argued that her research demonstrated that the underlying reasons for gender misrecognition were the lack of the fathers’ love and child rearing (Li and Wang 1992). First, the missing father’s role led to the son’s attachment to the mother and distance to the father. As a result, the son self-recognized as a female rather than a male, exhibiting timid and submissive sensibilities and displaying a female posture, female mannerism and female disposition. In addition, their mother-worship either caused their inability to feel attracted to a woman who was seen as far inferior to their mother, or made them revere all women as

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holy, inaccessible mothers.17 Second, parents who raised their boys as girls requiring them to wear girls’ clothes and teaching them female-specific work such as knitting and embroidery were also an issue. Third, effeminate looks and a weak physique made some boys want to play with girls and miss their male-role education. Due to their lack of courage and decisiveness, these boys sought protection from strong men and attachment to strong lovers.18 Fourth, abuse by women in childhood led to their disgust towards women (Li and Wang 1992). 34 In consonance with Li’s theory, the theory of “abnormal gender misrecognition” stemmed from poor parenting was repeatedly reported throughout the media (Lun 2005; You 2005; Pin 2004; Z. Zhong 2006). Parents’ prohibition of opposite sex interactions was also blamed for yielding effeminate boys (Pan 2009; Zi 2010; Zuo 2006; Du 2007; Lin 2012).19 Parents were urged to visit a counselor’s website and consult with the counselor (Zhuang 2008). Dr. Kong Fanyu, a counselor for the Nanguan Counselor’s Center, was cited as an expert who stated that gender education from the age of 2 to 6 was crucial and that it was extremely important and imperative that parents teach kids gender roles. He noted that this problem was difficult to resolve, and that through counseling, he had discovered that this problem was caused by the parents (Zhuang 2008).20 35 According to the psychiatrists, the most crucial time for intervention of gender misrecognition was between 1 and 3, and certainly before the age of 12. Parents were urged to look for preliminary “symptoms” to “diagnose” whether their children had developed a “gender recognition impediment.” These “symptoms” in children were deemed discernible between the ages of 2 and 4. Symptoms included the child wishing to become the other gender, wanting to wear the opposite gender’s clothes, imagining the self as a different gender, aspiring to participate in the opposite sex’s entertainment or games, and yearning to become playing partners with the opposite sex. It was noted that boys’ feminine behaviors would lead to homosexuality when they grew up. Upon discovery of these issues, parents were advised to work together to solve the problems or seek guidance from counseling centers (Bo 2012). 36 In a nutshell, disorder is not only denoted a result of gender misrecognition, but also a cause of gender misrecognition and a crisis of manhood.

Solution of the crisis of masculinity: revamping the education system and reinforcing gender-difference education

37 Educators around the country criticized the phenomenon of feminized men and declared that China was facing “a crisis of manhood” and losing a generation of men (Gu 2012; Sun 2009). In the 2012 National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, Ronghua Wang, the head of National People’s Representatives and Shanghai Education Development Council, called on the nation to pay attention to the “crisis of manhood” and recommended gender-difference education (yinxingshijiao) (Gu 2012; Sun 2009).

38 To correct this situation, as educators and media discourse argued, the education system had to change (Yue 2012). Ronghua Wang, board director of Shanghai Education Development and head of Shanghai Social Science Academy, stated that many measures

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should be taken to solve the “crisis of manhood” (L. Zheng 2012). He contended that the crisis of manhood was inextricably linked to problems in the education system as the exam system and evaluation standards failed to advance boys’ advantages and led to their setbacks in study. He argued that a gender-difference education should be carried out nationally and “men’s junior high” schools should be established to provide boys with multi-dimensional educational choices (L. Zheng 2012). The lack of coherence in the strategies to fight the feminization of boys is made clear in the decision to create men’s junior high schools where boys would be separated from girls during the critical period of their development. As we saw earlier, encouraging heterosexual dating was seen as the solution to gender misrecognition and the crisis of manhood in China. 39 The new men’s junior high schools would establish an agenda to reverse what was perceived as a trend toward the feminization of Chinese men. First, national educators and leaders, following the lead of General Yuan at the Chinese Military Council, argued that a militaristic, patriotic, heroic, and fearless spirit-training should be incorporated in the national education system (Luo 2010; Yue 2012; Lu 2012).21 40 Second, gender-difference education was underscored as urgent and pressing (Sun 2009). In his book Saving Boys, Sun argued that gender difference should be amplified in childhood years and that gender-difference education could combat the phenomenon of feminized boys and gender ambiguity, and create a new generation of real men (Sun 2009). 41 Sun agreed that boys and girls should be placed in segregated classes and that the education system should apply different evaluation standards to each gender (Sun 2009). Evaluation of boys should emphasize their sporting and adventurous nature, whereas the evaluation of girls should be based on their superior memory and language skills. Since sports was in boys’ nature, Sun argued, a sports-oriented education would sharpen boys’ will and increase their ability to withstand setbacks (Sun 2009). 42 Third, parents, especially fathers, were called on to assume the prominent role in educating boys (Sun 2009). Parents, as authors argued, should encourage boys to accept challenges in life, provide boys with personality training, and inculcate in boys the meaning of manhood (Gu 2012; Wang 2012; L. Zheng 2012).22 43 Following national educators’ call to battle the phenomenon of feminized men, some schools have already started to change. For instance, in Zhengzhou city, the 18th Junior High School stipulated 28 evaluation standards for boys and 20 evaluation standards for girls, requiring boys to be masculine and girls to be demure (Gu 2012). 44 In Shanghai, East China Normal University signed a contract with Huangpu District Government to turn Shanghai’s 8th Junior High School into a “men’s junior high school” (Mu 2012; L. Zheng 2012). The headmaster Lu Qisheng clearly stated that the primary purpose of establishing the men’s junior high school was to combat “the crisis of manhood” and solve the problem of “yin waxing and yang waning” (Mu 2012, Gu 2012). The goal was to instill in boys a sense of manhood and terminate the phenomenon of feminized men. 45 In this “men’s junior high school,” as reported, boys’ needs would no longer be ignored, nor would their advantages be undercut as in co-education schools (L. Zheng 2012). As noted by the headmaster, this school would tap into experts’ resources and employ a model of boy’s education to mould boys’ personalities and advance their latent talents (L. Zheng 2012). This personality education was intended to take advantage of boys’

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perceived logical superiority, and target their disadvantages of weak will and poor planning. The “masculine” curriculum would include boxing, Chinese chess, and male music bands. Schools, as noted by the headmaster, would continuously adjust and perfect teaching techniques to increase boys’ self-confidence and make up for their disadvantages (L. Zheng 2012). 46 Although the Shanghai Huangpu government, the Education Bureau, and East China Normal University supported the establishment of this school and believed that this environment would benefit boys and ensure their growth as real men, some expressed worries that a few qualified, real men trained by the men’s junior high schools were not enough to change the entire society’s problem of feminized men (L. Zheng 2012; Mu 2012). To completely eliminate the problem of gender misrecognition, authors argued that both schools and parents, especially the father, should indoctrinate boys with male gender roles and girls with female gender roles (Zhang 2012).

Conclusion

47 Reactions to the phenomenon of effeminate men in postsocialist China are responsive to the broad cultural changes produced by market reforms. More specifically, it reflects the anxieties about gender, social security, and the nation-state. In this article, I argue that underpinning the discursive debate about effeminate men and a crisis of masculinity is the need to strengthen the nation-state. Indeed, it is believed that to revive and strengthen the nation requires building a strong manhood and sharpening proper male gender roles.

48 Distinctive gender roles are considered crucial in safeguarding the security of the nation, and are supported and controlled through media discourse. Sexuality is appropriated to control gender in the same way that gender is utilized to control sexuality. The central concern of media discourse is gender behavior, rather than sexual behavior. As illustrated, media articles focus on effeminate men’s mistaken gender behaviors and a lack of understanding of gender distinction. The characteristics ascribed to these men as passive and weak are considered deviant. Their mistaken gender identities and misrecognition of gender is not only depicted as creating a crisis of manhood in the nation, but also portrayed as an indicator of poor parenting and a problematic education system. As shown in this paper, educators, psychiatrists, and psychologists have prescribed a myriad of preventive strategies involving parenting and the education system to strengthen socialization and education of proper gender roles and thus combat “the crisis of manhood.” As such, gender deviance is governed and controlled in order to prevent and control sexual deviance. 49 In exploring the root cause of effeminate men and methods to avoid gender misrecognition, the scientific expertise of doctors is sought. The authority of doctors is emphasized when media articles tend to end each story with doctors’ comments and appraisals. The kind of power and authority media bestows upon doctors’ “scientific” narratives exerts far-reaching impact in the social milieu. This resonates with Foucault’s (1978) theorization of governance operated through professional discourse by experts and scientists. 50 The attitudes of medical professionals reflect the social mores of postsocialist China. As demonstrated in this paper, the rising middle-class medical professionals in contemporary China subscribe to the mainstream sexual morality and advocate cures

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for and prevention of gender misrecognition. In an effort to advance their profession and procure influence, medical professionals have a vested interest in producing narratives that do not counter cultural norms. This will not only ensure their prestige and influence, but also draw more income to their profession, as parents and effeminate men continuously pay fees to seek their professional, invaluable advice.

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NOTES

1. I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments and advice by Valerio Simoni and Adriana Piscitelli that have improved the quality of the paper. 2. “Fake women” is a role created by Japanese ACG (animation, comics, and games). 3. The question arises as to why this masculine narrative is so popular in China. To understand that we have to look at Chinese history through the last century (T. Zheng 2009). In traditional China, a self-contained culture that paid little attention to outside opinion, there was a masculine ideal that gave prestige to those who were not particularly physically masculine. The mandarins, who represented the highest social ideal in China, were people who worked with their minds rather than their bodies. The symbol of this was long robes that today we would consider feminine clothing and the practice of allowing the fingernails to grow into extraordinary lengths

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of six inches or more, making the hands unfit for physical labor. This was a powerful symbol of status that rejected physical activity as a defining factor of masculinity. When China, finally in the twentieth century, succumbed to Western aggression after stubbornly clinging to this traditional culture, traditional culture was rejected in favor of what was called a New Culture Movement. The New Culture Movement accepted Western culture and with it, Western definitions of masculinity as sexually potent and aggressive. Implied in this was great shame about China’s past and a belief that male feminine nature was the cause of China’s troubles in the twentieth century. In spite of Mao’s rejection of the “Four Olds” – his attack upon traditional Chinese cultures –, in many ways his standings represented a return to traditional China. Mao represented himself as an all-knowing Emperor whose wisdom brooked no challenge and required complete conformity with his values. Mao’s emasculation of men certainly did not follow the traditional lines but nerveless was very effective, even though ironically using the Western ideology of Marxism. The rejection of Marxism in 1978 and the affirmation of the need for a new culture and a new economy led, once again, to a rejection of the traditional view of masculinity as emasculated and feminized and to an affirmation of a macho, Western-style masculinity in its place. The powerful driving force in the post-Mao reaffirmation of a Western style masculinity was a new capitalist economy that emphasized a masculine entrepreneurial spirit. 4. Courtesan houses or public places where courtesans were summoned as professional entertainers formed an integral part of the official and business routine where social relations of officials, literati, artists, and merchants were conducted. Every official entertained his close colleagues – superiors and inferiors and merchants – to conclude or to negotiate deals. An official could ensure his promotion by introducing his superior or an influential politician to a discreetly chosen courtesan, and by the same means, a merchant could obtain a much-needed credit or an important order. 5. Before liberation, men could gain economic and political power, but in the Maoist society, they were stuck in socialist work units earning the same meager wages as women. The party-state constantly watched over them, stifling their personal ambitions and prohibiting them from speaking their own minds. That led to men’s feminization and lack of initiative and creativity. It was believed that the Maoist state’s alliance with liberated women stifled men’s ability to discover their own strength and led to their feminization. 6. A Japanese movie, Born for Myself, recounted a story of a man with “gender impediment” who was in love with his boyfriend and after painful struggles, decided to go through a transgendered surgery (Xia 2010). Chongqing counselor Hu Hui told the reporter that this movie had a negative impact on kids in serving as an encouraging movie for them (Xia 2010). 7. This article attributes gender misrecognition to sexual liberation and material desires. 8. According to a news report about an effeminate man, LvTu, he came out to reporters at a newspaper agency (Zhuang 2008) and pointed out that many male students could not find a job appropriate for them because of their feminine images. 9. Luo defined the future mainstream society as a society with a sound legal system, a masculine and militaristic spirit, and a patriotic and heroic sentiment. Luo stated that without a strong military, the country can never be a strong nation. “A country is not strong until we retrieve the land neighbor countries have plundered from us.” Luo reminded people that Communist founding generals sacrificed their lives for this land and this kind of militaristic spirit should be advocated (Luo 2010). 10. The report read that “The initiator was originally silent about the rampant fake-women disaster, but was dismayed at the sight of several fake-women high school students and finally decided to act” (Chong 2010). 11. Sun (2009) pointed out that boys’ grades were lower, boys’ advantage was not advanced, and boy’s development was not guided.

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12. The author (Mu 2012) stated that feminized education started in nurseries and it is too late to start saving the boys in junior high. 13. Authors claimed that the criminal was family education (Lu 2012). 14. Author Mu (2012) pointed out that parents doted on boys and followed the boys everywhere until they screamed in terror at the sight of a roach. This kind of boys, according to the author, could only be tender leaves in green houses and would easily degrade into “fake women.” 15. Sun (2009) pointed out that boys needed the discipline and supervision from fathers about how to be a man. 16. It was noted that the boy would yearn for a masculine man and assume a female role in a homosexual relationship. The weak father led to the boy’s mistaken gender; and the imperfect mother affected the boy’s understanding of the opposite sex – such setbacks led the boy to pursue same sex partners (He 2012). 17. Li pointed out that many effeminate men could get along with older women but could not like young and beautiful women because they felt in awe before these (Li and Wang 1992). 18. Li contended that the reason that the youngest son tended to be an effeminate homosexual was because he usually did not like boys’ activities that were risky and wild. It was difficult for a loner boy to relate with other boys (Li and Wang 1992). 19. Pan (2009) contended that the little resistance of making same-sex friends led kids to transplant their emotional needs to same-sex friends and mistake themselves as homosexuals. According to counselors and health educators, the prohibition of heterosexual contact at an early age made kids fear the opposite sex. Parents’ rejection of early heterosexual relationships caused children to seek intimacy and emotional needs through homosexual relationships. 20. Dr. Kong noted that many visitors were parents (Zhuang 2008). 21. Authors argued that setback education should be instilled in boys too (Lu 2012). 22. Authors also argued that more male teachers should be equipped in nurseries (Gu 2012).

ABSTRACTS

The phenomenon of “fake women” sparked indignant discourses chastising it as an epitome of the loss of Chinese manhood and a threat to the nation-state. Experts, counselors, and educators called for “saving boys” through revamping the education system and underscoring gender- difference education in schools and families. Effeminate men have become a scapegoat upon which anxiety over the current social problems such as dissolved marriages is displaced. While a dissolved family is pinpointed as one of the key factors that can lead to a child’s effeminacy and gender misrecognition, the media also portrays the lack of manhood not only as a public menace and a threat to the family, but also as a metaphor for passive masculinity and national crisis. Drawing on research of print and electronic media in China from 2010 to 2012, this paper enlightens the inextricably intertwined relationships between a lack of manhood and the strength of the state in the globalizing era of China. It is argued that the crisis of masculinity in effeminate men is considered a peril to the security of the nation because it reflects powerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity, and social deterioration, reminiscent of the colonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the “sick man” of East Asia.

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O fenómeno das “falsas mulheres” gera discursos indignados que o condenam como epítome da perda da virilidade chinesa e uma ameaça ao Estado-nação. Especialistas, conselheiros e educadores apelam ao “salvamento dos rapazes” por meio da renovação do sistema educativo e do reforço da educação sobre as diferenças de género nas escolas e nas famílias. Os homens efeminados tornam-se bodes expiatórios para os quais é transferida a ansiedade a respeito dos problemas sociais atuais, como a dissolução de casamentos. Ao mesmo tempo que aponta a dissolução das famílias como um dos principais fatores que conduzem a que uma criança seja efeminada e não distinga os géneros, a comunicação social retrata a falta de masculinidade como uma ameaça pública e um perigo para a família, e também como metáfora para a masculinidade passiva e a crise nacional. Com base numa investigação realizada em 2010-2012 a partir da imprensa e recursos eletrónicos chineses, o artigo explora a relação inextrincável que interliga uma carência de masculinidade e a força do Estado na era da globalização da China. Argumenta- se que a crise de masculinidade dos homens efeminados é considerada uma ameaça à segurança da nação porque reflete impotência, inferioridade, passividade feminizada e deterioração social, aspetos que remetem para o passado colonial em que a China foi derrotada pelo Ocidente colonizador e assolada pela sua imagem de “doente” da Ásia oriental.

INDEX

Keywords: masculinity, effeminacy, gender roles, state, China Palavras-chave: masculinidade, efeminação, papéis de género, Estado, China

AUTHOR

TIANTIAN ZHENG

State University of New York, USA [email protected]

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Negotiating desirability and material resources: changing expectations on men in post-Soviet Havana Negociação da desejabilidade e recursos materiais: mudanças das expetativas acerca dos homens na Havana pós-soviética

Heidi Härkönen

Introduction

1 One day my Cuban friend Yanay found herself a new man whom she considered to be a real catch: “— He makes 1200 [Cuban] pesos [about 52 USD] in a day because [at his work] they divide the tip and share the money between them. He is not good-looking, a very skinny […] guy. And he had a perfume Issi Miya… — Issey Miyake?, I suggested. — Yes, the one that costs 30 dollars [CUC] and I put it on and it lasted on me all the way until the next day! And he bought lots of beer, we went to a disco in 10 de Octubre [a neighbourhood in Havana] and it was packed with people, expensive beer that costs 1,25 [CUC] and [Heineken] of 1.50 [CUC].” 1 2 Money has become increasingly linked with attraction in contemporary Havana.2 Women in particular pay considerable attention to a man’s material resources in their views about a desirable partner. Women expect men to have the money to court them, to take them out to restaurants and discos, to indulge them with little gifts and to provide them regularly with funds to tend their personal needs. While money is not the only factor linked to a man’s attractiveness, it does play a significant role in a man’s ability to create relationships with women. No one wants to be with a muerto-de-hambre (someone who is starving to death).3

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3 Cuban gender and family relations are in general characterised by very similar tendencies to those described by many of the classical works (e. g. Clarke 1974 [1957]; Smith 1988, 1996) on Caribbean matrifocal kinship: the bond between mothers and children is exceptionally strong, legal marriages are rare and men are seen as relatively marginal to family relations in their role as fathers.4 Moreover, gender relations can often be fragile and change rapidly. It is common that some of such relationships result in children, who are deeply cherished by all Cubans. The attainment of parenthood is a fundamental factor in gaining full adulthood for both men and women. 4 Although money played a role in social relations already before the 1990s (see Rosendahl 1997: 61-62), the current importance of money to gender relations seems to be something new that is closely related to wider transformations that have taken place in Cuban society in the post-Soviet period. The severe economic crisis that Cuba encountered in the 1990s due to the collapse of the Soviet Union forced the state to make several concessions to the socialist ideology, such as allowing the formation of small private enterprises, legalising the use of double currency and opening the country to international tourism (e. g. Eckstein 1994: 88-127; Azicri 2000). The 1990s also witnessed the increasing monetisation of Cuban society and since this “dollarization” (Eckstein 1994: 125), most material items have become available to Cubans only through money – whether in the official state shops or in the informal economy – as opposed to the previous possibility to receive them as state contributions. This has emphasised the significance of personal social relations in providing Cubans with the needed material contributions in the context of day-to-day life. 5 Many scholars argue these changes to be connected to social changes such as increased differences of wealth (e.g. Azicri 2000: 71-99; Roland 2006; Porter 2008; Weinreb 2008; Cabezas 2009; Hamilton 2012: 75-80, 113-116, 214-231), greater significance of markers of wealth and privilege (Holbraad 2004: 649-651; Porter 2008; Allen 2011: 37-38; Lundgren 2011), intensified desires of consumption (Holbraad 2004; Porter 2008; Allen 2011), increased significance of racialised differences (de la Fuente 2001a, 2001b; Roland 2006, 2011; Weinreb 2008; Cabezas 2009; Fernandez 2010: 7, 47-48, 128-130; Allen 2011; Hamilton 2012: 47, 75-80, 113-116, 214-231), as well as the new importance of the body as the site where such privileges are marked and expressed (Lundgren 2011). 6 Several of these changes in social relations since the 1990s conform to Susan Gal and Gail Kligman’s (2000a, 2000b) observations on the transformations that have taken place in Eastern Europe during the post-socialist period. They connect such large-scale social, political and economic transformations to increasing class differentiation, a decline in state subsidies and changes in the possibilities for social mobility. Gal and Kligman emphasise the gendered nature of such large-scale transformations. 7 In a similar vein, Jennifer Cole and Lynn M. Thomas (2009: 6) argue that social and economic transformations may bring changes to grassroots intimate relations of love. Monetisation in particular has been noted to bring transformations to gender relations in different parts of the world. Even though economic changes are experienced and enacted drawing on long-term notions of gender and kinship, they still transform the logic of intimate relationships in complex ways (e. g. Wardlow 2006; Hirsch and Wardlow 2006; Cole and Thomas 2009). 8 I suggest that the transformative processes that have taken place in Cuba in the post- Soviet period and the types of changes that they may have brought to social relations should be examined as gendered. My ethnography shows that such processes as the

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increased monetisation of exchanges or the new significance of consumption take shape as gendered and are experienced through local conceptualisations of gender difference – simultaneously as they also transform social relations. While these tendencies represent changes in comparison to social relations in the Soviet-era, they at times seem to reproduce situations reminiscent of the colonial era in terms of their gendered, racial and economic implications, when beautiful mulatas partner with men who are visibly lighter-skinned and wealthier than them. In Cuba (Martinez-Alier 1974), as elsewhere in the Caribbean (e. g. Newman 2010), since the colonial era, sexual relations have offered non-white women in particular a way to seek socioeconomic ascendance by maintaining relationships with wealthier or “racially” higher-status partners. 9 In the increasingly monetised post-Soviet Cuba, this situation has the power to produce gendered marginalisations. Maurice Godelier (1999: 2-3) argues that in a monetised economy, income is crucial in maintaining a social life, as money is needed for all types of activities from the most everyday to the more ritualised. Thereby, when undergoing liberalist re-structuring, states also indispensably exclude certain groups of people from society as not everyone has the means to access a sufficient income. 10 While the changes that continue to take place in Cuba’s economic, political, and social climate affect the lives of both men and women, this article examines the ways in which these larger transformations influence the lives of men. Despite the current interest in masculinity studies, men are often relatively neglected in studies on Caribbean kinship, sexuality, and gender relations (see also Hamilton 2012: 102). Through an exploration of how men negotiate their relationships and women’s increasing expectations by drawing on distinct local notions of masculinity in post- Soviet Havana, this article complements the discussion on diverse masculinities and the ethnographic study of Caribbean gender and sexual relations.

Men’s attractiveness and material resources

11 Drawing on Marilyn Strathern’s (1988: ix-x) insight that gender can only be understood as a difference, Matthew C. Gutmann (1997: 843) argues that in studying masculinity, we should pay attention to the accounts that women give on men, because “women’s involvement [is] central and invaluable to any ethnography of men.” He states that masculinities can only be understood in relation to meanings and practices connected to women.5 This is why it is useful to pay attention to the hopes and expectations that women place on men, as these play their own part in shaping gendered relationship dynamics and consequently men’s experiences of love and sexuality.

12 Yanay’s statement is exemplary of the views that my female respondents had about desirable partners: a man’s attractiveness is deeply intertwined with his material possessions. No matter how good-looking my female respondents would find a man, he was out of the question if he was perceived by them as being completely without money. While most women were not as successful as Yanay in hooking up with wealthy men, many, however, had partners who provided them with regular contributions of small sums of money and material gifts (such as food, beer, and clothes). A good man has the ability and desire to pay for diverse things and outings and he frequently provides his partner with food and commodities.

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13 Consumption is thereby closely connected to a man’s possibilities to create relationships with women.6 Both men and women told me that a Cuban woman does not take any money with her when she goes out on a date with a man. While women tend to spend their money most importantly on their children, other kin, and (more rarely) on themselves, men’s money goes significantly to the women with whom they are, or wish to be, romantically involved. In the context of many Cubans’ low level of income and the country’s high prices, such gendered courting practices place a big strain on a man’s income: a night out in a disco may take up an entire month’s wage, even more. 14 When first meeting up with a new man, my female respondents assessed his material resources by paying close attention to his clothes and to the way in which he used money. Drinking foreign beer, wearing Nike trainers and gold chains, as well as sharing his money generously are all valued as signs of desirable qualities in a man. A man with money is expected to share it and use it on providing for women and male friends (see also Rosendahl 1997: 61-62; Holbraad 2004: 649-651). These are examples of the extension of global notions of consumption to Cuba in particular since the 1990s, showing how wealth must be worn and consumed (Allen 2011: 37-38; see also Porter 2008: 142-143), the new importance of the body as a site for expressing privileges (Lundgren 2011: 121-125), and the intertwining of such practices with conceptualisations of masculinity. 15 Mark Hunter (2009: 146-152) describes similar views on desirable masculinity in South Africa, where in the midst of economic difficulties since the 1980s the ability to consume and shower girlfriends with gifts became the qualities that women found the most attractive in men. Cole and Thomas (2009: 22) connect this with a shift from an economy of production towards an economy of consumption. While there are great differences between the Cuban context and the South African situation described by Hunter, his material is similar to the ways in which my female respondents emphasised a man’s ability to spend as evidence of his desirability as a partner. While Cuba can hardly be seen to represent an economy of consumption as such (compared to many places, there is little to consume), this does suggest that Cubans’ intensified desires for consumption (Porter 2008) intertwine importantly with gendered expectations in love and sexual relations, at the same time exemplifying the continuing importance of generosity to Cuban notions of masculinity (see Rosendahl 1997: 61-62). In a transformed situation, more long-term conceptualisations of masculinity are reworked by women to place new demands on men (Hunter 2009: 148). 16 Women may sometimes be very straightforward in their expectations of men’s material contributions, making claims that men struggle to meet. Yet men often find it hard to deny women’s requests of spending. For a man to deny his money to his partner raises suspicions of stinginess, a characterisation that most men would prefer to avoid. Moreover, being very tight with his money might also question his personal ability to make a living, leading at the worst case to a description of him as a muerto-de-hambre – another feature that all my research participants found highly despicable. Finding ways to make money, knowing how to survive and resolver (resolve problems), are all qualities that connect with notions of desirable masculinity. Such resourcefulness intertwines complexly with a man’s material assets: good skills in resolving problems become visible in a man’s access to diverse possessions, showing that he is able to get hold of money and commodities and is willing to share his resources with his partner.

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At the same time, money in itself matters. When Xiomara’s sister changed her young, handsome and resourceful boyfriend for a significantly older and wealthier, but bad- mannered man, Xiomara stated: “Yes, but Yonkiel [the sister’s ex-boyfriend] didn’t have money, this one has money!” 17 Possessing other forms of material resources also gives a man advantage in his relationships: having access to a car or decent housing conditions increases his attractiveness to women. The lack of adequate housing has been a constant problem in Havana throughout the revolution (and even before; see Butterworth 1980; Hamilton 2012: 218-229) and the city continues to be full of deteriorating, overcrowded flats. Carrie Hamilton notes that since pre-revolutionary times, heterosexual relationships have provided women with a way to acquire housing (2012: 220, 224-226, 229). This increases the importance that having access to (decent) housing has to a man’s ability to attract partners. While Anna Pertierra (2008) argues that during the post-Soviet era the house has increased in symbolic value for women, I suggest that housing also holds central value to men. As the idea of family and home/house (casa) often merge (Pertierra 2008: 753-754), housing (as the family home) becomes connected to notions of security, stability and kinship continuity. Owning an apartment places a man in the position of a well-established man mature enough to start a family. Although in practice Havana’s on-going housing crisis often forces Cubans to negotiate this ideal, providing housing for his partner forms part of local conceptualisations of responsible masculinity. 18 Material contributions from men to women connect with the idea that the man is supposed to be the breadwinner who brings resources to the household. While the state has tried to discourage such gendered practices by promoting women’s extensive participation in the workforce and even though the huge majority of women do work, some type of a cultural ideal of a man who provides for his family lives in Cuba – despite the fact that in some households the majority of income may in practice be provided by women.7 The Caribbean has a long history of non-white, lower-income women working outside the home, although this has been connected more profoundly with the English-speaking Caribbean (see Wong 1996; Freeman 2001). Virtually all my female interlocutors were engaged in some type of an employment that generated for them some income of their own. Yet, at the same time, if a woman is romantically involved with a man, there is a strong expectation on him to provide her with some money and food. 19 Although there are men who have relationships with women in such arrangements that money flows from the woman to the man, this is, however, an inversion of how things “should” go. Some of my male respondents felt uncomfortable with such gendered exchanges. While for women, to receive money and material support from their partner confirms their femininity, for men such behaviour risks questioning their “proper” masculinity. 20 If a man started to show signs of stinginess, my female research participants were quick to lose interest. In a relationship, a man’s inability or unwillingness to give money and material contributions to his partner is closely connected to many women’s desire to end the relationship. A man who neglects his material contributions to his partner, quickly risks losing her since women interpret this as a lack of interest from the man’s part – concluding that he no longer desires to continue the relationship – or as an indication that he is sharing his material resources with another woman.8

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21 Notions of responsible masculinity thereby intertwine importantly with a man’s material possessions and his ability to provide economically for his partner and children. While this gendered connection between material resources and responsibility is significant to a man’s social relations throughout his life course, it becomes particularly highlighted in the context of fatherhood.

Fatherhood and material wealth

22 Parenthood is fundamentally tied to notions of mature, gendered adulthood in Cuba.9 Having children is seen as a crucial part of the normal life cycle for both men and women. This way, fatherhood is closely connected to notions of masculinity.

23 Pregnancy, birth and childcare are considered very strongly as women’s issues. Deciding whether to have a child is seen as entirely a woman’s choice. It is up to a man to convince a woman of his suitability as a father. 24 Material conditions play a particularly important role in women’s views and decisions about pregnancy. When reflecting on a particular man’s suitability to fatherhood, women often assess a man’s material resources and likelihood to provide for his child. Having access to a car, housing, or having a job in the – by Cuban standards lucrative – tourist industry, are all issues that make a man desirable as a potential father. Even though my respondents paid some attention to a man’s character in the sense that they did not want to have children with a “bad” man who “doesn’t care about” his children or who “hits you,” considerations over a man’s possessions tended to weigh more heavily than other concerns. 25 Women often say that they want the father of their child to be “responsible,” but a man’s responsibility is largely tied to his material contributions to his partner and child. A responsible man is one who provides for his family. Since love is thought to be unreliable and relationships may break suddenly, wealthier men are seen as more likely to continue providing for the child even if the relationship with the mother ends. Thus, while love and sexual relations constantly bear the risk of turning sour, quantity in material resources is seen as creating a form of security. A man with plenty of possessions is seen as a more reliable partner than someone with fewer assets, who may stop providing for his children from a previous partner when he finds a new love. This further highlights the importance of material resources to a man’s possibilities of embracing responsible masculinity. 26 The notion of responsible masculinity as closely connected to material security is shared by both men and women. This is exemplified in the way men often emphasise that they want to “have the conditions” (tener las condiciones) before having a child, to be able to provide their partner and child with proper material contributions and a decent home (although in practice, such plans may often go unfulfilled). 27 When a woman has a child “alone,” without a male partner, the problem is not seen to be in the raising of the child without the father or in the woman coping with the pregnancy on her own, but rather in how the mother will raise a child without the money supplied by the father (or another male partner). Hamilton states that families without the presence of a husband/father often experience aggravated patterns of poverty (2012: 75-80, 89, 105). While I want to point out that men’s material contributions to their partners do not depend on cohabitation nor on legal marriage, it

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is true that mothers who receive no male contributions easily struggle with making ends meet. 28 While in practice not all men provide money to the mother(s) of their children, they are strongly expected to do so and frowned upon if they do not fulfil this responsibility. Both men and women emphasise that responsible fatherhood entails giving money and/or other material items to female partners and children. Since material contributions connect with responsible, caring fatherhood, I see contributions of money and other material items as a crucial form of male care in Cuba. This closely intertwines views about (ideal) fatherhood, masculinity and material contributions. 29 Cole and Thomas (2009: 20-21) argue that material exchanges may both reflect and produce emotionally charged relationships. In discussing gender relations in Madagascar, Cole (2009) describes a long-term local conceptualisation of love as simultaneously material and moral/emotional, enacted in reciprocal exchanges of goods and labour distributed across social networks. This is very similar to how I understand the role of Cuban men’s material contributions to their partners and children. 30 In the context of contemporary relationships, money is importantly gendered; it is something that men are expected to contribute to women in a system of reciprocal exchange where women respond with nurture, sexual access and children. This does not mean that women would not desire sexual relationships with men if it were not for the money, but rather that money is an object that allows men to create relationships, both sexual and non-sexual. While women also have their own money, money is importantly the means through which a man expresses an interest towards a woman, giving her small material gifts and taking her out to eat, for drinks or dancing. It is through his material contributions to her that she assesses whether he is a responsible man and someone who can help her in life. A man’s provision of material support thereby becomes evidence of his emotional commitment and responsible masculinity. 31 Despite the fact that women tend to emphasise rather pragmatic views of men’s material resources and highlight their ability to contribute, this gendered intertwining of money, material resources and a man’s desirability cannot be understood as mere economic rationality. Rather, the emphasis is on the social relationship enabled by money and material resources as objects of exchange. 32 Caribbean men are frequently described as marginal and absent in their fatherhood; being indifferent towards their children and emphasising rather the physical ability to impregnate a woman (e.g. Clarke 1974 [1957]: 96, 161-164; Wilson 1973: 149-151; Smith 1988: 147, 1996: 83-84; Gussler 1996 [1980]: 129; Andaya 2007: 201-248; Hamilton 2012: 101-109). This connects with a strong focus on the mother-child relationship and matrilateral bonds in the kinship system. While a mother’s bond to the child is seen as natural, a father needs to affirm his connection to his child through material contributions. Biogenetic conceptualisations of fatherhood/kinship are not sufficient by themselves, but relations need to be affirmed through active practices of care. 33 In the gendered practices of reciprocal care through which Cubans create, maintain and negotiate their social bonds, money and material contributions enable men to create and continue their relationships. Material resources become a way for men to keep gendered care flowing between themselves, women and children and emphasise their commitment to specific relationships.

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34 Although not all men take up the opportunity to create bonds with their children by giving material help to the child’s mother, I argue that such contributions may express a strong desire from the part of the man to be a proper, caring parent for his child. This way, men’s material contributions should be seen as important in their quality of installing a social relation between the baby’s mother and father and between the father and the baby. However, in Cuba’s difficult economic situation, sometimes even small contributions may require considerable effort from the man’s part and not all men are able to access wealth for sharing it around. This creates a situation where those without money and material resources often struggle to create relations. When material contributions come to represent a man’s emotional commitment to his partner and child, access to money or other material items becomes important to a man’s ability to become a parent.

Post-Soviet Havana and gendered monetisation

35 I connect the strong importance of money for men’s ability to create and maintain relationships to the overall tendency towards monetisation that has characterised Cuban society since the country’s severe economic crisis in the 1990s.

36 Ideally, the socialist “new man” initially envisioned by the revolution was supposed to be devoid of bourgeois vices such as materialism (see Guevara 2005 [1965]). Drawing on Engels’ (2004 [1884]) views on socialist gender relations, the early revolutionary government laid its hopes on women’s employment as a way to create love relations devoid of material interests, governed by the true equality of men and women. Since everybody would be equally engaged in the labour force, earning their own money, material wealth would not create dependencies between people. The aim was to create a society without inequalities; a society where socialist love relationships would be embraced by people across the earlier divisions of wealth, race, age and place of residence, leading to a full egalitarianism (see e. g. Díaz Tenorio 1993; Hamilton 2012). 37 The importance that women currently grant to a man’s position as a material provider goes against this ideal, despite the fact that none of my female interlocutors could be comfortably described as a “housewife.” Since most salaries earned from official work are insufficient for living in contemporary Havana, socialist ideals are undermined by the constant economic shortage. 38 Since the 1990s, the state has been seriously struggling to provide goods and services to the population, as the loss of its most important political ally and trading partner, the Soviet Union, plunged the Cuban economy into severe shortages. The state was forced to cut down many of its earlier contributions and services to the population, initially designed to provide individuals with nurture from cradle to grave, following socialist state ideals. These economic problems brought ruptures to the earlier ideals of egalitarianism, as the opening of the country to tourism, more possibilities for private business and the heightened role of remittances all played their role in increasing the old divides of wealth and race amongst the population (see e. g. de la Fuente 2001a, 2001b; Cabezas 2009: 57, 64, 79-81; Allen 2011; Roland 2011). As the state continues to retreat from more and more aspects of society, day-to-day existence has become increasingly monetised, since many goods and services that used to be provided by the state can now be acquired only in the cash economy. Moreover, material gifts have become an important way to cultivate relationships that guarantee an access to distinct

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state (and other) services (see Brotherton 2005, 2008; Andaya 2009a; Kath 2010). At the same time, most items in Cuba’s new economy are extremely expensive for individuals and nearly all Cubans work second jobs in the informal economy as a way to make ends meet. While material issues have undoubtedly played a role in social relations during the Soviet era, they seem to have become particularly highlighted during the post- Soviet era as state services continue to crumble. 39 With the transformations in post-Soviet socialism, the dismantling of many state services has brought intensified pressure to Cubans’ personal social relations to compensate for state deficits. Along with the growing differences of wealth and the increased monetisation of the economy, the significance of men’s material contributions to women takes on an increased importance. While the post-Soviet period has seen an increase in the feminisation of nurturance (Andaya 2009b), there has also been an increase in the masculinisation of material care, shifting to a greater emphasis on individual men as suppliers of material security instead of the state than during the more prosperous years of Cuban socialism. 40 Moreover, the post-Soviet period has seen an increase in Cubans’ possibilities and desires for consumption (see Porter 2008; Allen 2011). Despite the fact that shop offerings continue to be meagre and highly over-priced for average wages, consumption has emerged as site of displaying distinctions of wealth that are significant in the local context – as Yanay stated, it makes a difference whether someone drinks a local beer or a Heineken, or wears a perfume that lasts. At the same time, accustomed with the notion of socialist egalitarianism (see Verdery 1996: 28), many Cubans have a strong feeling of entitlement expressed in that everybody should be able to possess such commodities as DVD players, Nike trainers and fancy cell phones. Amy L. Porter (2008) argues that differential access to consumption fragments Cubans’ ideas of citizenship and national belonging and undermines a previous revolutionary focus on needs, replacing it with an atmosphere that cultivates the creation of wants and desires and dreams of their fulfilment. 41 While the material deficiencies and dissatisfactions of the post-Soviet period have intensified Cubans’ desires for migration, heavy state investment in the tourism industry has brought to the island plenty of foreigners – attractive in their ability to provide answers to many Cubans’ longings for a better life. While both men and women may enter into relationships with tourists and seize the opportunities of migration and social mobility that this may offer, due to the importance of money and other material contributions especially to men’s possibilities to build relationships, the threat of losing their partner to someone wealthier was felt more intensely by male respondents. 42 Even though material resources have played a part in women’s views of a desirable partner also in the past, their significance to men’s ability to attract partners seems to have gained far more prominence since the 1990s. In her account on 1980’s east Cuba, Mona Rosendahl (1997: 69) states that a man’s wealth was not particularly relevant to his attractiveness to women; women stressed instead the importance of finding a “good” man who takes care of them and respects them. Nevertheless, in contemporary Havana, regular contributions of money to his partner are what makes a man “good.” A good man cares for his partner by giving her money and supplying her with food and commodities. This suggests that while the importance of a man’s material possessions to his attractiveness to women may not be anything new as such, its significance has

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intensified in the post-Soviet era in the context of declining state contributions and the heightened monetisation of day-to-day life. 43 These changes in Cuba’s economic and political climate also relate to the island’s low fertility numbers. Elise Andaya (2007: 170) connects Cuba’s current very low fertility rates with the country’s economic difficulties, as state failures to provide women with the needed nurture combine with men’s frequent indifference towards children and push women to exert responsible motherhood via abortion in a situation where contraceptives are poorly available and it is difficult to provide even for one child. Pertierra (2008: 748 ff.), on the other hand, sees the declined fertility in the post-Soviet era as connected to women’s desire to wait until they are able to provide economically for the children they intend to have. In this context, responsible motherhood may also be practiced through trying to secure a child as much material resources as possible by choosing a wealthy father. 44 Since women’s personal kin and sexual relations are of primary significance in coping with the state’s material deficiencies, wealthier men become more desirable as partners and fathers. This way the change that seems to be occurring in Cuban fertility, as women have fewer children than before, may also have the gendered consequence of leaving some men childless. 45 Due to the central role traditionally played by forms of redistribution in creating socialist state legitimacy (Verdery 1996: 23, 61-69), such practices may undermine the overall political legitimacy of the state as people come to depend more and more on their personal relations in providing them with distinct goods and services instead of the state. Nevertheless, my material suggests that instead of being expressed as a direct critique towards the state, often such deficiencies in state services just make women expect more contributions from the men in their lives.

How do men negotiate women’s expectations?

46 All of these state-level transformations are connected to the types of desires and expectations that Cubans set on each other. For many of my male respondents, women’s expectations of money, gifts and consumption were hard to fulfil. They used different ways in coping with the transformations that the post-Soviet period has brought to their lives and negotiated women’s expectations how they best could, drawing on distinct cultural notions of masculinity at different moments.

47 In his efforts to court Sulema, a beautiful mulata in her mid-thirties, Armando, a 30- year-old black man drew on ideas of responsible masculinity. Working as a chef in a five star hotel, he brought Sulema food from the hotel kitchen almost daily. He also gave her small sums of money several times per week and took her out to discos and bars. Sulema was pleased with Armando, stating that he was “very good” (muy bueno) – a good man – and Armando had no complaints, even though at times he responded to Sulema’s requests of material contributions by putting them off to a later occasion. 48 Reinaldo, on the other hand, was even better positioned to embrace the characteristics associated with responsible masculinity. He was white, in his late forties and employed in a high position that allowed him access to a car and a relatively good salary. Moreover, he received regular remittances from kin in Miami and owned a house equipped with air conditioning and running water.10 He charmed Rosa, a 29-year-old

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attractive mulata, by showering her with money and gifts, such as a laptop. Reinaldo was successful in his courting: Rosa gave up her job, moved into his house and soon became pregnant with her first child. Reinaldo fitted perfectly with the types of expectations of material resources and responsibility women place on desirable partners and possible father candidates. 49 However, not all men are capable or willing to fulfil women’s expectations of material contributions as successfully. José, a white man in his late thirties, was interested in Flor, another pretty mulata. 11 Nevertheless, he rejected what he saw as her excessive desire for leisurely outings, stressing that he did not have money for such trivialities as discos, bars and restaurant dinners. However, even in resisting such gendered practices on the use of money, he drew on notions of responsible masculinity to turn down Flor’s requests. He emphasised that money must be used on the house, for improving one’s home, on something lasting instead of amusements. This, however, did not land well with Flor, who interpreted his unwillingness to take her out as a lack of interest, and – for worse – started to suspect that he was only looking for ways to move into her house, as she lived alone. Whatever the reason for José’s interest in Flor, his tactic of resisting the usual courting practices resulted in his failure to create the relationship he wanted. 50 Especially when having problems with their partner, several of my male respondents sought to handle the situation by resorting to practices that can be connected to local notions of machismo.12 This was particularly likely to take place when men were struggling to fulfil their partner’s expectations. 51 When Armando lost his job, he became unable to continue his contributions to Sulema and her interest started to fade. Armando sought to fix the situation by starting to supervise Sulema’s movements, tortured by jealousy for suspecting her to be seeing some other man. One night, he followed Sulema to her home and tried to force his entry into her house. This, however, led to a further cooling down of their relationship and eventually to its ending. 52 Luis, a mulato man in his early thirties, on the other hand, had all the time kept a strict watch on his partner Rosa. One day he caught her maintaining a friendship with a Canadian man by email. Luis got angry, since for him it was clear that Rosa was planning to migrate out of Cuba by entering into a romantic relationship with the Canadian man. After a while, however, things settled down between Luis and Rosa and the relationship continued. Nevertheless, soon after, Luis caught Rosa in a café with another man, got furious and slapped her. He was hoping this would put her back at bay, but in fact it had the opposite effect, with Luis ending up losing Rosa to another man. The man – indeed – was Reinaldo, who was wealthier and better positioned to fulfil Rosa’s aspirations of a more prosperous life. Luis knew he could not compete with the Canadian man for Rosa’s affections since he did not have the means to offer her what a foreigner could: migration out of the country. Nor could he compete with what Reinaldo could offer Rosa. Luis had a monthly income of approximately 20 dollars, no car and no house. He was good-looking, well-educated, smart and (most of the time) very good mannered but he lacked money. 53 The troubles that Luis had in his relationship with Rosa exemplify particularly well the new uncertainties and demands that many men have come to encounter in the post- Soviet period, competing for women’s affections with foreigners – advantaged by their offerings of migration – and with the newly wealthy Cubans, who can afford cars, laptops, and air conditioned flats.

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54 Recently, Cubans’ relationships with foreigners have received particularly abundant attention from researchers. With the emergence of the mass sex tourism to Cuba during the post-Soviet era, research on sex work in Cuba has shown that many Cubans place expectations of more long-term relationships on the foreigners with whom they enter into contact, blurring the line between ideas of commoditisation and bonds of affect and friendship (Cabezas 2004, 2009; Simoni 2008, 2009, 2012; Alcázar Campos 2009; Fernandez 2010: 130-133; Allen 2011; Roland 2011; Daigle 2013). None of the people with whom I worked was engaged in sex work so my data is limited in this regard. Some women, however, had had relationships with foreign men and the great majority of my female interlocutors expressed desires to find a foreign partner due to the material resources, luxuries and possibilities of migration, travel and leisure that such men were thought to offer. Many of my research participants imagined most foreigners who come to Cuba to be millionaires (how could they otherwise afford to travel so far on a holiday?). At the same time, similar dreams and expectations of social mobility and improved material resources characterised women’s expectations of wealthy Cuban men, although in a more moderate form. Those with plenty of material resources are expected to share them with their kin, partners and friends and because foreign men are thought to be considerably richer, the expectations placed on them are greater.13 55 Although most of my male interlocutors situate themselves somewhere in between of extreme forms of wealth and poverty, they all had to come to terms with the type of close intertwining of material resources and attraction that characterises sexual relations in contemporary Havana. In this, they drew on different aspects of local masculinities. Often, a full embracing of the position of a “provider” – showering their partners with gifts and money – helped them to create the relationships that they sought. The situations where they embraced machismo brought them possibly the worst results, with many women rejecting their partner’s efforts to control them. 56 Both of these aspects of masculinity entail their own difficulties. Embracing aspects of responsible masculinity and providing his partner with money and gifts contains the constant possibility that someone may appear offering more, no matter how hard a man tries to provide for his partner. But then again practices that women see as excessive machismo easily lead to the opposite result of that desired by the man – of alienating his partner instead of bringing her closer. Gender relations thus require continuous, often complicated negotiations. Embracing the gendered practices connected to responsible masculinity in many cases goes hand in hand with machismo. So I do not argue that different men would embrace different notions of masculinities but rather that at distinct moments and situations, men draw on different aspects of the local meanings of how to be a man.

Monetisation as transforming the expectations of gendered reciprocity

57 As we have seen, the post-Soviet era has seen the emergence of new complexities in love and sexual relations that have the gendered consequence of increasing women’s demands of material contributions on men, making access to money and material resources an indispensable part of desirable masculinity.

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58 While both men and women see money as a male form of care and connect it with the way in which a responsible man should behave in a relationship, sometimes men may start to feel more ambiguous about such gendered exchanges. 59 My male interlocutors sometimes expressed annoyance about the amount of claims that their partners made on them, or complained about how much money they had spent for the benefit of a woman in a relationship. However, this usually took place when a relationship was also flawed by other problems or after a woman had ended the relationship. At the same time, even when expressing such views my respondents never outright denied women’s rights to make material claims on them. Rather, they complained about the amount of these claims, that women expect too much. Thus love, care and material contributions intertwine also in men’s conceptualisations of romantic relationships, but what becomes the issue is the negotiation of the (imaginary of a) properly balanced reciprocity in a relationship. 60 Since cultural conceptualisations of a desirable masculinity closely connect men with money and material contributions, for a man to start suggesting that his partner is cultivating a relationship with him primarily for material interests leads to several moral ambiguities. 61 To propose that his partner is a greedy abusadora who exploits his material contributions raises suspicions of a man’s ability to fulfil his position as a real man, one who does not take abuse from anyone. In the light of notions of machismo, this relates to the question of respect in social relations, of whether a person knows how to command respect for himself or instead lets others walk all over him. A person who lets others take advantage of him is not worthy of others’ respect since he does not know how to earn respect himself.14 Thereby, for a man to imply that a woman is taking advantage of him easily evokes an image that it is his own fault for being such a fool that he lets himself be abused by cunning women, leading to a perception of him as weak and lacking masculinity. While men may sometimes complain about women’s greediness, at the end it is not in their interest to portray their relationship with women in this way, since this would imply that their relationships are not based on any type of proper reciprocity. This would suggest that they let themselves be used by women, risking to give the appearance of being a “come-mierda” (a shit-eater; a very despising insult). 62 Moreover, emphasising a man’s single-sided material contributions in a relationship may suggest that a man is so unattractive that he may only attract women with money. This would deny any emotional attraction from the woman’s part, which again has the potential to question his masculinity, since Cuban conceptualisations of gender involve importantly a notion of mutual heterosexual desirability (see also Lundgren 2011; Härkönen 2014: 120-161). 63 Thus, in practice it is often difficult to differentiate between a man’s heterosexual desirability and his possessions. While in the beginning of my fieldwork, I kept on pressing my female respondents with questions about whether they liked a man or were mainly interested in what he had to offer, most of the time it was impossible to tease the two apart. This way, having access to material resources gives a man erotic agency, which Holly Wardlow (2006: 232) defines as “the power and delight of being desired.”

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64 This close intertwining of material resources and erotic agency is not only connected to transformations and inequalities in sexual relationships between men and women; it also highlights differences between men, in particular when it comes to fatherhood. While some men – like Rosa’s white partner Reinaldo – easily attract partners and have several children with various different women (in this case, four children with three different women), others – such as my very poor, black, artist friend Osmael – risk remaining childless, as they struggle to find a woman who would be willing to maintain a relationship with a man who is constantly broke, let alone to have a child with such a partner. With white or lighter-skinned men more likely to have an advantageous access to money and other forms of material resources (see de la Fuente 2001a, 2001b; Allen 2011: 119-120), such views about desirable masculinity carry the potential to make the inequalities of the post-Soviet period particularly poignant, emphasising their racialised and gendered characteristics. 65 This way, Cuba’s new economy puts some men in a particular risk of remaining childless, a great tragedy because parenthood is of crucial significance to the normal life course and full adulthood for both men and women. Moreover, remaining childless is not just an emotional tragedy, it risks marginalising a person more thoroughly (if there is no further family around), because in contemporary Cuba, the nurturing support provided by an individual’s family relations plays a central role in surviving the pragmatics of everyday life (see also Andaya 2007). 66 Moreover, the fact that such practices and views about desirable masculinity and ideal fatherhood easily evoke colonial-era memories (see Martinez-Alier 1974) of wealthy white men entering into relationships with beautiful mulatas – often in highly unequal conditions – fits uneasily with larger discourses of the socialist nation, claiming to make a clear break with its colonial past. If racialised inequalities of wealth become materialised at grassroots-level intimate attachments and reproductive practices as my material suggests, this strikes at the heart of state egalitarianism, when poverty becomes a significant factor inhibiting individuals from creating relationships and seeking continuity for their lives through children. Inequality is not just a question of economic marginalisation, but comes to threaten a man’s whole social being.

Conclusion

67 The transformations of Cuban society in the post-Soviet era have had importantly gendered consequences, transforming differently the lives of men and women. In their ways to deal with such large-scale changes as monetisation and declining state subsidies, men and women draw on local gendered practices and meanings. For women in particular, love and sexual relations are an important way to generate income and gain social mobility; simultaneously, they continue to maintain greater responsibility for dependent family members than men. In making their demands on men, women can draw on longer-standing conceptualisations of masculinity. Many men, on the other hand, struggle with women’s expectations of material resources, gifts and lucrative consumption. Currently getting by economically is highly difficult for many Cubans, at the same time as the island has become flooded with new desires and dreams of a better life.

68 My ethnographic evidence shows that men cope with women’s intensified demands by embracing distinct aspects of cultural conceptualisations of how to be a man, drawing

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at times on notions of responsible masculinity, at times on machismo. The increased importance of material resources to men’s ability to create relationships, however, puts some men at a considerable disadvantage. Because money has become to significantly represent something that allows a man to create relationships, the men who are unable or unwilling to make material contributions to women may struggle to establish relations. At worst, this may mean that they remain childless, as women lay particular emphasis on the material resources of potential father candidates, being highly committed to provide for their child as favourable material conditions as possible. Cuba’s large-scale transformations in the post-Soviet era not only have gendered consequences, but they also highlight differences and inequalities between men, as money, material resources and attractiveness intertwine and connect with gendered meanings and practices in contemporary intimate relationships.

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NOTES

1. Two different currencies are in circulation in Cuba: the Cuban peso (CUP, moneda nacional), and the convertible peso (CUC), which is close in value to the USD. One CUC / USD equals 23-24 CUP. The average monthly salary is currently about 20 USD (Anonymous 2008). At the time, the normal price for a beer was 1 CUC. 2. This article is based on research material collected in Havana through ethnographic fieldwork amongst relatively low-income, racially mixed (ranging from black to all shades of brown to white) Cubans in 2007-2008. My research participants can be characterised in many ways as “ordinary people.” Unlike the research subjects of many contemporary studies on Cuba, my respondents did not engage in sex work, they did not make a living on tourism (or jineterismo), they were not marginalised politically or sexually, nor were they in a specifically advantaged position either. All the names of the research subjects have been changed and I have blurred some biographical details in order to better preserve their anonymity. I am using local racial categorisations and all translations from Spanish to English are my own. 3. This is a popular Cuban expression used to refer to poverty. 4. There are also certain differences between these descriptions on Caribbean matrifocality that draw on the Anglophone Caribbean and contemporary Cuban gender and kinship relations. In the Anglophone Caribbean, even though legal marriages are rare especially among low-income Afro-Caribbean people, legal marriage still holds value as an important status symbol (cf. Clarke 1974 [1957]; Smith 1988, 1996; Barrow 1996; Freeman 2000). Amongst my Cuban interlocutors,

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legal marriage was not valued in such a way. Nevertheless, my ethnographic material points to the significant relevance of matrifocality amongst my research participants (Härkönen 2014); Jean Stubbs (1997), Helen Safa (2005), Elise Andaya (2007: 219-220) and Anna Pertierra (2008), all see contemporary Cuban kinship relations as characterised by bonds very similar to notions of Caribbean matrifocality. There is little ethnographic information on Cuban gender and kinship relations apart from these works so it is not possible to provide a detailed historical account on the subject (see however Martinez-Alier 1974: 124-130). 5. Carrie Hamilton (2012: 112) makes a similar point in her discussion on Cuban sexual history: “Just as women’s narratives of love, marriage, and missing men provide clues to both dominant values of masculinity and the diversity of men’s expectations and experiences, so, too, male narrators’ stories about their female partners point to ways of thinking about changing Cuban femininities.” 6. See also Porter (2008: 144), who in discussing a female respondent’s ideas about relaxing, points out that they all involve acts of consumption. 7. For the official employment statistics, see data from Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas de Cuba (ONEC 2010). At the same time, women who are not included in such official statistics are often also engaged in various forms of income-generating work (see Pertierra 2008). Safa (2005) and Pertierra (2008) both argue that the post-Soviet era has seen an increase in the position of women as the primary providers for their households. Stubbs (1997: 255), however, points out that since the 1990s, Cuban women “appear to be retreating back into a family survival role.” Moreover, amongst my research subjects, a considerable part of the money and goods that women had access to actually came to them from their partners or admirers. This highlights the importance of paying attention to day-to-day gendered exchanges. In the case of Pertierra’s material, such dissimilarities may of course also reflect differences between Havana and Santiago. 8. Both male and female infidelity were rather common occurrences amongst my research participants, although male infidelity was much more culturally permitted. 9. For similar notions from other parts of the Caribbean, see Clarke (1974 [1957]: 96); Barrow (1996: 397); Gussler (1996 [1980]: 129). 10. Reinaldo was in quite a good position in the state hierarchy so in that sense he could perhaps be seen as displaying some of the characteristics of desirable revolutionary masculinity. Nevertheless, his comparatively high income, the fact that he had kin in Miami and such qualities as his lack of athleticism, sharply differentiate him from the exemplary humble, fit, hard- working and committed revolutionary that Che Guevara (2005 [1965]) wrote about in his views on the socialist “new man.” 11. The fact that, in all of these cases, my male respondents were trying to court mulatas exemplifies the position of la mulata as the object of desire in Cuba (see Kutzinski 1993). 12. I am aware of the critique (e. g. Gutmann 2005 [1996]) towards the concept of machismo, but Cubans themselves (men, women and the state discourse) use this concept for discussing gender relations (for instance, “Here the men are very machistas”). The term can be used to refer to a number of practices ranging from the gendered aspects of domestic labour to sexual jealousy. The positive and negative aspects of machismo form a continuum that displays some ambiguity and the meanings of the same practice may vary from one situation to another. 13. My female interlocutors also saw foreign men often lacking in such factors of attraction as dancing skills and being a machote. 14. A similar notion of respect concerns women, but to a lesser degree.

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ABSTRACTS

In post-Soviet Havana, material resources emerge as a factor in terms of which women assess a man’s desirability as a potential partner. These tendencies in current gender relations relate to the larger transformations in Cuba’s political and economic context. The fall of Eastern European and Soviet state socialisms seriously diminished the Cuban state’s ability to provide social services. Remittances generated through transnational kin ties and recent liberalistic changes in labour politics intensify the disparities of wealth. Moreover, Cuba’s dependence on tourism as a source of national income has brought about changes to the possibilities for social mobility available through the promises of migration and affluence that relationships with foreigners can offer. This article focuses on the gendered consequences of these large-scale transformations, experienced as the increasing intertwining of material resources and desirability, especially when it comes to men’s attractiveness. Coping with increasing demands from women, men draw on local notions of masculinity that include elements both of machismo and responsible manhood. Men thereby at times comply and at times resist women’s expectations on them.

No contexto pós-soviético em Havana, os recursos materiais são critério para a mulher avaliar a desejabilidade de um homem como potencial parceiro. Tais práticas nas relações de género estão ligadas às transformações políticas e económicas mais vastas. A queda do socialismo soviético e no Leste da Europa diminuiu drasticamente a capacidade do Estado cubano para prestar serviços sociais. As remessas geradas através de redes transnacionais de parentesco e a liberalização recente das políticas laborais intensificaram as disparidades na distribuição da riqueza. A dependência do turismo como fonte de rendimento nacional gerou novas possibilidades de mobilidade social através do relacionamento com estrangeiros, pela promessa de migração e prosperidade. O artigo centra-se nas consequências destas transformações em termos de género, concretizadas numa maior interligação entre os recursos materiais e o que torna os homens desejáveis. Em resposta à exigência crescente das mulheres, os homens ativam noções locais de masculinidade que incluem elementos de machismo e responsabilidade masculina, por vezes correspondendo e outras vezes resistindo às expetativas das mulheres que sobre eles recaem.

INDEX

Keywords: Cuba, masculinity, gender, monetisation, love, sexuality Palavras-chave: Cuba, masculinidade, género, monetarização, amor, sexualidade

AUTHOR

HEIDI HÄRKÖNEN

Independent researcher, Helsinki, Finland [email protected]

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Breadwinners, sex machines and romantic lovers: entangling masculinities, moralities, and pragmatic concerns in touristic Cuba Provedores de sustento, máquinas sexuais e amantes românticos: masculinidades, moralidades e preocupações pragmáticas interligadas na Cuba turística

Valerio Simoni

1 In this article, I wish to show how experiences of sexual and love relationships with tourist women led Cuban men to articulate and act upon different – often contradictory – models of masculinity.1 To understand such situated enactments of masculinity, I argue that one must pay attention to the moral and pragmatic concerns to which they responded, and in which they were entangled. Cuban men’s purposeful alignments as “breadwinners,” “sex machines,” and “romantic lovers” afforded different relational possibilities and expressions of masculinity as people moved in and out of the tourism realm. It is by taking seriously these relational possibilities and the demands they generated that transformations of masculinity can be productively illuminated, and that tourism’s potential to amplify and subvert (stereo)-typical configurations of “being a man” in present-day Cuba can be assessed.

2 Tourism in Cuba developed in earnest after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1990 president Fidel Castro declared the beginning of a Special Period in Time of Peace, a period of austerity, reforms, and economic restructuring which has been credited for the island’s progressive but unsteady integration to a “larger global, neoliberal framework” (Cabezas 2009: 22). The key implications of the Special Period in its relation with the development of international tourism have been recently assessed by Cabezas (2009), who emphasizes how the crisis and the way the Cuban government

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coped with it resulted in the amplification of gender and racial inequalities and the emergence of new sexual formations that found expression in the tourism realm. Following the massive arrival of people from abroad, a wide range of tourism-related activities escaping state regulation flourished on the island, a place where interactions with foreigners had the potential of being more beneficial and gratifying than many other professional activities. Indeed, in spite of governmental efforts to control tourism, Cuban men and women found ways to avoid governmental restrictions and create opportunities to engage with tourists, offering their services as guides or companions, seeking foreign friendships, selling cigars, providing private taxis, accommodation or food, and – central to my concerns here – engaging in sex and romance with foreigners. This was the world of jineterismo – from the Spanish jinete (rider) – a contested term evoking the “riding” of tourists for instrumental purposes and often equated with notions of tourism hustling and prostitution. 3 Several authors have outlined the porosity (Argyriadis 2005: 47), the ambiguities (Berg 2004; Cabezas 2004; Fernandez 1999; Palmié 2004), and the kaleidoscopic character (Kummels 2005: 24) of jineterismo and other related phenomena and categories in Cuba – sex work, prostitution, and partnership for instance. Scholars have emphasized how jineterismo is a complex phenomenon, one which brings issues of morality, nation, race, class and gender into play (Berg 2004; Cabezas 2004; Fernandez 1999; Simoni 2008). One of the most tenacious and controversial lines of distinction in narratives of jineterismo related to gender, with the activities of women often acquiring a different connotation than those of men. Several authors have remarked that jineteros are less stigmatized in Cuban society than jineteras (Allen 2007; Alcázar Campos 2009; Berg 2004; Cabezas 2004; Palmié 2004). Whereas their activities are considered to pertain to a much more variegated and heterogeneous spectrum, which can include sex and romance with foreigners but is more broadly related to tourist-hustling (selling cigars, act as brokers, tourist guides, etc.), the activities of jineteras are more readily equated with prostitution and commercialized sex. 4 A consideration of gender and of the sexual dimensions of informal tourism-oriented activities in Cuba’s Special Period also point to the emergence of other sexual identifications that complicate any heterosexist reading (Allen 2007; Couceiro Rodríguez 2006; Fosado 2005; Hodge 2001; Sierra Madero 2006; Stout 2007). Among them is that of the pinguero (from a slang term for penis, pinga), a neologism designating men whose activity had to do with their pinga. According to Cabezas, “while some pingueros identify themselves as straight, they tend to provide sexual services mainly to gay tourists because male-to-male practices are more lucrative than straight sex” (2004: 994). By contrast, the men considered in this article emphasized their distance from the world of pingueros, displaying rather homophobic attitudes and stressing their exclusively heterosexual orientation. They mostly saw themselves as being in a “line of women” (línea de mujeres), viewing their own activities as specifically tailored to the development of sexual/romantic relationships with female tourists, often with the stated goal of marrying one and being able to travel abroad. As the article shows, monetary transactions between these foreign women and Cuban men were fraught with controversy as they interfered with ideals of masculinity that saw men as women’s providers. These findings may provide important clues for contemporary debates on “sex tourism” and the commoditization of sexuality in

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tourism settings, a line of analysis that will, however, remain largely out of the scope of this article, but which is nevertheless worth mentioning briefly here. 5 In the academic literature, much debate has been going on to ascertain whether women traveling to poorer countries, notably in the Caribbean, engage in “sex tourism” “as men do” (itself a problematic assumption, see Simoni 2014), or if the term “romance tourism” (Pruitt and LaFont 1995) or “companionship tourism” (Herold, Garcia and DeMoya 2001) would be more appropriate to describe these relationships. According to Jeffreys, the matter often revolves around whether researchers “privilege the oppressions of class and race over that of gender in their analyses” (2003: 234), or vice versa. In a more nuanced way, Frohlick has recently argued that “[w]ithin the global economy, women from First World countries can and do exert their relative economic power over local lovers and others in the communities to which they travel in Third World countries, but power associated with masculinity complicates this schema” (2007: 141). Regarding the behavior of tourist women – which I will not be able to address in this article – my conversations indicated that none of them was straightforwardly paying for sex with Cuban men.2 My findings converge here with the researches of Pruitt and LaFont (1995) and Frohlick (2007), which suggest that tourist women engaging with local men in the Caribbean may be looking for more than “just sex” – namely romance and intimacy. In line with these authors, my examination of the men’s perspective in this article also shows that Cubans did not simply adapt to the foreigner’s tastes and desires, but that different vectors of power could inform their relationships, among which gender played an important role. Taking into account the local men’s negotiations of masculinity enriches our understanding of intimate encounters and their power dimensions in these tourism settings, shedding light on relational dynamics that may otherwise be neglected, particularly when relying on reductive readings in terms of sex tourism and prostitution. 6 The Cuban men that appear in the following pages were all of very humble origins, and had often migrated to tourism centers from less privileged areas of the country. I met them mainly through my frequentation of tourist sites in the city of Havana, the rural town of Viñales (200 kilometers west of the capital), and the beach resort of Playas del Este (half an hour drive east of Havana) – the places where I carried out 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2005 and 2014. With some of them, I developed very strong ties, and was thus able to follow their engagements in and out of tourism settings, observing and participating in the different realms of interaction that characterized their everyday lives. It is this multiplicity of perspectives and ways of being that interests me here (see also Simoni 2013). More than pointing out differences between Cuban people, my analysis aims to account for heterogeneity within the lives of the subjects of my investigation – the multiple and paradoxical positionings and subjectivities they inhabited as they worked over different models of masculinity. Accordingly, what is important to consider is the situational dimension of such enactments of masculinity. As Vale de Almeida put it, “masculinities are situationally negotiated” (1997: 147), and such negotiations may be fruitfully highlighted once we acknowledge “that the answer to what constitutes proper manhood shifts not only with time, but also according to immediate variations in social situations and contexts in the lives of specific men” (Oxlund 2012: 32). It is this situational dimension that I want to retain in considering how my research participants enacted the “sex machine,” the

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“breadwinner,” and the “romantic lover” categories. Let me start with the first of these axes of masculinity, the one emphasizing sexual potency.

“Sex machine”

7 As a fruitful entry point into this vector of masculinity and the alignments it generated, let me start from a brief extract from a conversation I had with Umberto, an Afro- Cuban Rasta in his thirties with whom I spent several evenings discussing about relationships with tourist women.3 Like many other men in his circle, Umberto talked with pride of his sexual feats, his numerous girlfriends, and his skills in seducing foreign women: “It’s been years now that I am in this. I know how to work the woman [trabajar la mujer], I don’t fail [yo no fallo, i. e. in the seduction enterprise]!” 4 And indeed, while not infallible, Umberto was quite successful in establishing intimate relationships with female tourists, and would not hesitate to boast about his latest adventures when talking with his friends and peers.

8 The moments in which sexual conquests of foreign women were much talked about and exalted were moments of male sociability, which saw my informants engage in boastful exchanges to assert their virile reputation and establish masculinity-grounded standings. Such situations resonate with notions of “homosociality” or “homosociability” (Almeida 1997) describing the (often leisure-oriented) spaces of men to men interaction, helping consolidate male bonding and heterosexual identities, and whose importance in constructions of masculinity has been highlighted by scholars (Gutmann 1997), notably in the context of Latin America (Vigoya 2001), and also in Cuba (Lundgren 2011; Morel 2012). My research participants’ inclination to talk among themselves about their sexual feats may be read as expressing a value system based on “reputation,” as theorized by Wilson (1969) for the Caribbean context, described “as a lower-class and masculine sphere of public performance, enacted in such venues as street corners, the political platform, the rum shop, and the market, and on the musical stage” and “demonstrated through sexual prowess, verbal wit, and economic guile” (Freeman 2007: 5). 9 It was precisely in moments of homosociability that the importance of sexual behavior in the enactment of masculinity became paramount. Sexual feats became something to be proud of, to boast about, and could come to exemplify one’s excellence at being a man.5 While this is not unique to Cuba, the view that men have by their very own nature “inherent uncontrollable sexual drives” (Lundgren 2011: 55; Alcázar Campos 2009) seems very widespread in this Caribbean country. According to Alcázar Campos (2009), this is also what helps explain why any provision of sexual services to foreign women could be framed and normalized within an hegemonic view of masculinity that valued sexual exploits and promiscuity as marks of virility. 10 The men’s tales of sexual feats with foreign women actualized an hyper-sexualization whose roots may be traced back to the colonial past of the island, to which such enactments of masculinity seem inexorably entangled. Several scholars writing about the recent developments of tourism in Cuba underline continuities between the sexualized images of “hot” Cuban people and the slavery and colonial past of the island (Fusco 1997; Kneese 2005; Kummels 2005; Sanchez Taylor 2000). While these considerations have mainly regarded the eroticization of the “mulatta” (la mulata) and black women, “white stereotypes of primitive black male potency” (De Albuquerque

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1998: 50), and colonial, sexualized racist fantasies of “the ‘big black dick’” (Sanchez Taylor 2000: 49) are also said to lure female (sex) tourists to Caribbean countries like Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic (De Albuquerque 1998; Kempadoo 2004; Sanchez Taylor 2000). In her research on the negotiation of intimacy between tourist women and local men in Caribbean Costa Rica, Frohlick (2007: 150) shows how “racial stereotypes and ethnosexual dynamics of mutual desire (that is, the desire for black men by white foreign women and desire for white foreign women by black men) play out such that the men imagine themselves as hypersexual black men because in part this is how they are imagined by the tourists.” For Frohlick, “[m]en’s sexual subjectivities, complicated by their hybrid identities as Afro-Caribbean-Costa Rican, are forged through encounters with foreign women” (2007: 150), something that leads her to consider that “[m]asculinity is learned, negotiated, and performed within this specific context and political economy of mutual interracial erotic heterosexual desire” (2007: 151). 11 What my research suggests (Simoni 2011, 2013) is that besides continuities in the racialization of sexuality – most notably in the (hyper)sexualization of Afro-Cubans (see Allen 2007; Fernandez 1999, 2010) – the stereotype of the caliente (“hot”) Cuban could also be re-actualized in a more culturalist/nationalist vein in specific tourism contexts, and applied to Cubans with little regard to their racial attribution. In her study of interracial couples in contemporary Cuba, Fernandez (2010: 126) notes that while “racist ideology supported ample stereotypes of black males’ primitive, animalistic, and uncontrollable sexuality […] notions of potent sexuality were not exclusively associated with black and mulatto Cubans.” Accordingly, “perceptions of Cubanness, in general, were closely linked with sexuality, and there was a sort of national pride about Cuban’s mythical sexuality and ardency” whereby “Cuban men and women were seen to possess an uncontrollable ‘latino passion,’ particularly in comparison to Europeans and North Americans” (Forrest 1999, quoted in Fernandez 2010: 126). It was precisely such comparison and relational opposition that acquired salience in the tourism contexts where I worked, and that helps explain the overarching characterization of Cuban people as “hot,” or at least “hotter” than the foreigners visiting the tropical island.6 “No one fucks like Cubans!” maintained my friend Manuel, a white Cuban in his late twenties, when comparing the sexual abilities of Cuban people to those of foreigners. It was not the physical size of the penis that mattered here – as the “big black dick” myth (Sanchez Taylor 2000: 49) would have it – but Cubans’ sexual prowess, which was deemed exceptional, unique, and cast as a national trait. What is worth noting in this case is also how masculinity became entangled in wider difference-producing processes (Strathern 1988, as discussed in Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994: 40-41), in this case the us-Cubans/them-foreigners divide. 12 Beyond one’s exploits in sexual intercourse, what mattered was also the ability to seduce foreign women. In conversations about their adventures with tourists, my Cuban research participants liked to emphasize their seduction skills and talent. “He is confused” (El está mareado), “he is not going to do anything [with the girl]” (no va a hacer nada), “he doesn’t know!” (no sabe) – was Umberto’s critique as he closely scrutinized one of his colleagues’ clumsy attempts to seduce a young Norwegian girl that he himself coveted. This he contrasted with his subtler moves and flirting abilities. In the course of several lengthy conversations we had about his and his peers’ ways of relating with tourists, Juan – a young Afro-Cuban man in his twenties that frequented the Rasta clique in Havana – told me about the importance of one’s ability to “vibrate” (vibrar), to

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“have a good vibration,” one that would lead tourists to stick to you as to a magnet. This meant “knowing how to talk” (saber hablar), how to capture her attention, how to care for details, sensing her weak spots, and “killing her” (matarla) with one’s wit and seductive power.7 13 In the course of fieldwork, I was often confronted with heated debates which saw Cuban men arguing about one’s knowledge of foreign women, and how best to deal with and seduce them. In his late twenties, Rodrigo was a white Cuban man who had been engaging with foreign women for about eight years. He was widely recognized by his peers, often with palpable envy, as someone who never failed to get the women he liked, and he didn’t hesitate to boost about such “infallibility.” In the course of the evenings I spent with him and his friends in tourist bars and clubs, the conversation often revolved around the best tactics one should employ for flirting. This led to constant bickering, controversy as well as more practical exemplifications of one’s skills via concrete attempts to seduce one of the tourists that were present. Much like for the Cuban practice of piropos – a term translated as “compliment” or “flattery” that “generally refers to verbal comments by men to women in street interaction,” according to Lundgren (2011: 97) – we are here in situations where men’s public performances were not just directed at the woman at stake – whose reaction to the advances could even fall into second plan – but at the other men who were present, and who were assessing one’s seduction skills. Following Lundgren, we can argue that these were situations in which “the woman became a necessary instrument through which the man could gain a position as brave and daring in relation to this homosocial environment” (2011: 106). As argued also by González Pagés “the construction of hegemonic masculinity in Cuba” does indeed include “ingredients such as the demand to constantly demonstrate virility and bravery in front of other men” (quoted in Lundgren 2011: 102). 14 In his advances to tourist women, Rodrigo exemplified braveness in front of his peers. His witty, playful, and daring attitude seemed to bring him much success in relationships with foreigners. Proud of his seductive power, Rodrigo told me that whenever he went out in tourist venues at night, he was almost certain to end up with some foreign girl, in a way that was almost beyond his control (note once again the “uncontrollable sexuality” trope). That was why, while he waited for his more “official” girlfriend and soon-to-be wife to visit him from Austria, he preferred to spend most of his nights at home, calm (tranquilo), so as to avoid the spread of potentially harmful, envy motivated gossiping that could reach the ears of his Austrian partner, with disastrous consequences for Rodrigo’s marriage plans. As was rather common among Cuban men who entertained several simultaneous affairs with foreign women, Rodrigo was afraid that the gossip (chisme) of envious people could impact negatively on his ongoing relationships. This had happened to his friend Emilio (see below), who saw the “love of his life” with a Swedish woman destroyed by malicious rumors on his simultaneous affair (trivial in Emilio’s eyes) with a German lady, rumors that had intentionally reached the Swedish woman in question. While at home, however, Rodrigo’s exuberant sex life was not to be put on hold, as he enjoyed the company of a teenage Cuban girlfriend that could satiate his professed sexual appetite. 15 While speaking to me rather openly about the fact that in the last eight years he had lived off his foreign girlfriends’ financial help, Rodrigo’s narratives emphasized the fact that it was him who had chosen the women in question, and that it was him who set the

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terms of their engagement. Illustrative in this sense was the story of a Dutch girlfriend who, wanting to make him a surprise, had sent Rodrigo a parcel containing everything he would have required to visit her in Holland – including visa and plane ticket. In the milieu of jineterismo in which Rodrigo evolved, this was arguably one of the most valued prizes one could hope for. As he proudly put it, however, and contrary to everyone’s expectations, Rodrigo had refused his girlfriend offer, and even chastised her for taking the initiative without discussing the plan with him beforehand: “I like things to be talked through. Who told you [the Dutch woman] that I wanted to come [to Holland] now? Perhaps I wanted us to get to know each other a bit more, don’t you think? I don’t like things to be done this way, I don’t like to be manipulated! [no me gusta que me manipulen]” This was his reprimand. Rodrigo told me that “everyone else” – i. e. his peers – had judged him crazy to refuse such offer. On the other hand, by distinguishing himself this way, he had set himself out as a man who had his own life in his hands, who didn’t let women make patronizing assumptions about his needs and desires and make decisions for him. Following the same logic, and contributing to similar enactments of masculinity, was my informants’ emphasis on the fact that it was them, as men, who had seduced their foreign partners and won them over with their manly skills and abilities. A particular configuration of agency and power relations was thus actualized, which put the men clearly above their female partners in terms of decision making, an important issue to which I shall return below. 16 Rodrigo’s narrative directs our attention to the different vectors of power (Simoni 2008) that took shape in these gendered relationships between Cuban men and foreign women, most notably the contentious power dynamics associated with striking economic asymmetries (see also Frohlick 2007, and Pruitt and LaFont 1995). Indeed, tensions could quickly arise once this other axis of Cuban-foreigner differentiation was brought to the fore: that of economic resources, which carried its own effects and implications as to what being good at being a man amounted to, not on sexual grounds this time, but in terms of economic agency.

“Breadwinner”

17 Grounded in the reification of a radical asymmetry of resources, jineterismo could embody for my Cuban informants a just struggle, a redistributive tactic in an unequal world in which wealthy tourists visited a developing country like Cuba. In line with what many believed the government was itself doing – “squeezing” foreign visitors to bring in as much hard currency as possible – jineterismo became a rightful way for them to get their slice of the tourism cake, part of a nation’s cunning tactics to siphon capitalist wealth. If some deception at the tourists’ expenses was involved, it could be easily justified via the adoption of an us-Cubans versus them-tourists approach. In this frame of legibility, national belonging and political-economic considerations seemed to take precedence over gendered lines of differentiation. In other words, a Cuban man could reasonably justify profiting from a foreign women once the Cuban-foreign divide was given precedence over the man-woman one. According to this scenario, Cubans were luring tourists into sexual/romantic relationships with the aim of gaining economic resources or migrating aboard via marriages and tourist-sponsored invitations. These were the sort of narratives that my Cuban informants could activate when talking among peers about their relationships with foreign tourists. In these

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contexts of interaction, their tendency was to objectify tourists, referring for instance to them as piezas (“pieces”), and to avoid delving on the emotions one felt for a foreign partner – something that could make you look foolishly vulnerable and naïve. Instead, people could align to the semantic registers and moral discourse of jineterismo, becoming “tourist-riders” who had conquered their foreign “victims” for essentially instrumental purposes, to provide for their socio-economic needs and desires and those of their family.

18 This was the kind of narrative that Rodrigo was likely to mobilize when explaining to his Cuban girlfriend Raquel what his relationships with foreign women were all about. Raquel was aware of his on-going affairs, and went along Rodrigo’s scheming to obtain financial help from the foreigners. That was among the reasons Rodrigo liked her, because she “tolerated,” because she had lived la calle (the street) and knew how to adapt to this rather unusual scenario. Coming from a very humble family – much like Rodrigo himself – Raquel seemed happy to be living with him. She liked him and felt comfortable in his house, where she was also benefiting from his tourist-sponsored wealth and had a steady supply of gifts, good food and drinks, enjoying the exceptional use of a PC, an extensive DVD collection, and a range of other household appliances she had no prior access to. As other stories I gathered during fieldwork seemed to indicate, what was earned by Cuban men through informal engagements with tourists could become an appealing resource to seduce and nourish relationships with Cuban women, thus enabling the enactment of a breadwinner ideal of masculinity. It was precisely while reflecting on this state of affairs that my friend Ernesto – a young Afro-Cuban Rasta in his mid-twenties – told me, for instance, that once they realized that he was dealing with tourists, Cuban girls felt more attracted to him, as they expected he would have a steady influx of hard currency. 19 In regards to his relation with Raquel, Rodrigo was fulfilling an ideal of masculinity that seems to hold currency in Cuba. According to Gonzales Pagés (2004: 6), the archetype of the good provider of the household still informs gender relations in this Caribbean island. For a man to perform well as man, he is expected to be able to obtain material goods and achieve economically. Thus the anxiety experienced by Cuban men living through the current economic crisis, struggling to get cash (Gonzales Pagés 2004: 6), to successfully prove themselves in relation to such ideal. Research on masculinity in other parts of the world where men are similarly affected by economic crises or disadvantaged economic conditions, and where the breadwinner ideal remains strong – like the one of Aboim in Mozambique – suggests that “the lack of money or other material goods is compensated […] by complex practices and discourses on sex and sexuality” (Aboim 2012: 82). This leads Aboim to argue that “sex comes into view as a capital that stands in distinct opposition to money, the last resort for those who lack other capitals” (2012: 80). While this may find some resonance with the Cuban case, my material suggests that the economic resources that people like Rodrigo drew from their tourist partners could also help them act as breadwinners in their relationships with Cuban women, preserving to some extent this moral configuration of their way of being a man. 20 At the same time, after living through eight years of relationships with foreign women who didn’t expect him to provide for them, Rodrigo had also grown more and more detached, in his everyday practices, from such breadwinner ideal, and felt a certain anxiety in having to respond all of a sudden to its’ moral demands in relation to Raquel:

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“You know, it’s about eight years that I have been living from the money of foreign women, it’s about eight years I have not been working, and with her [Raquel] the other night, well, we watched a movie, we had sex, and then when I am half asleep, almost in the middle of the night, she tells me: ‘Hey, listen, be aware that for tomorrow there is no rice [i.e. there’s no food].’ Fuck! It brought me this overwhelming feeling [expressing anxiety, as if having breathing problems], I had to go out of the house and take a walk [to recover]. It was about eight years that no one had told me that. Fuck, this gives you such a responsibility, you can’t imagine.” 21 In spite of the pressure he had felt, Rodrigo claimed that he wouldn’t mind to provide for Raquel for the rest of her life, if she wished so. He would even “give her” a child, if that’s what she wanted, and take financial care of the two, while at the same time being married and living abroad with one of his foreign girlfriends. As far as his aspirations for a “proper” marriage and family life were concerned, Rodrigo remained determined to fulfill them with a foreign woman, a woman he could love and feel comfortable with: “It’s been eight years now that I have had this objective, and I am going to succeed,” he maintained. Thus preserved were two different systems of value and models of masculinity, which we could illuminate through the notions of reputation and respectability (Freeman 2007: 5) and their on-going effects “as a living dialectic of dynamic sentiments, cultural forces of production that are constitutive of social actors themselves” (2007: 6). I have already referred above to Wilson’s (1969) take on reputation. In regards to the other, “middle class ideological framework” of “respectability,” Freeman notes that it encodes, by way of contrast, “ideals of domesticity, propriety, enacted through formal marriage” (2007: 5). Much like in the Barbadian case examined by Freeman, the example of Rodrigo considered here can similarly illustrate how “the two cultural dynamics” could be simultaneously embraced by the same person.

22 The pressure and anxiety experienced by Rodrigo for meeting the moral demands placed upon him as breadwinner were shared by several other Cuban men I engaged with during fieldwork. It was precisely in connection to this preoccupation of having to provide that Ernesto, for instance, felt he would not be up for the task, a scenario that informed his pessimist stance on his chances of entertaining any long-term relationship with a Cuban woman: “It may be OK at the beginning you know, but then she may start to ask you for this and that, to buy such and such thing for the house, and so on and so forth. And I feel bad not being able to do it, not to be able to make her happy […] If you go out with a Cuban woman, she expects you to buy at least a couple of beers, and how do I do that?” 23 What I sensed in this conversation we had was Ernesto’s worry of disappointing a Cuban girlfriend on the economic side, and his ensuing reluctance in even trying to establish such a relationship. As he put it, he liked Cuban women more than foreign ones, but right now the latter were the ones that were up for him (“las que me tocan”).

24 Ernesto’s friend Aurelio, a white complexioned neighbor of his, still in his early twenties and rather unfamiliar with the world of jineterismo, had a more trenchant assessment of Cuban women: all of them were interesadas, interested in what you had, in your money. As a result, it was nowadays impossible to have a normal relationship with them. “Love doesn’t exist anymore” (El amor ya no existe), maintained Aurelio, and this was why he now felt attracted to foreign women. With foreign women, he argued, you could still have a normal love relation. He illustrated this with the story of a brief affair he had just had with a young Spanish girl, an experience he had really enjoyed:

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“She wanted nothing more than love, and to feel good together. […] European women are good; they only want love and sentiment. Cuban women have much wickedness [maldad],” he added. As we discussed the issue further, Aurelio clarified that it was the fault of the system (“es el sistema”), in Cuba, that everything was now por interés. “Everyone is in need” [tiene necesidades], and needs “deform everything,” confirmed Ernesto. In this context, Ernesto went on arguing: “Love becomes a secondary preoccupation. When your belly is empty, love may as well work the first days, but if you [the man] keep bringing back home boiled yam [boniato hervido], love gets lost, and goes screw itself [se va a la mierda]… It’s obvious that the woman wants first of all to have the things she needs, and this [the present context] has changed things. Also, if a woman can chose between a rough man who beats her [un bruto que le da golpes, hinting at a typical Cuban man], and one [a foreigner] that takes her out for dinner, makes her happy, treats her well and cares for her, she will go with a foreigner… Imagine that the kitchen breaks down, and one [Cuban man] tells her to sort it out and repair it herself, while the other [foreigner] buys her a new one. In this system, where people have needs [necesidades], it’s normal, women are forced to look for these things in the first place. [They have to] think about the child they may want to have, and about who is going to help them.” 25 While Ernesto and Aurelio articulated here a very widespread critique in contemporary Cuba about the generalization and increasing predominance of “relations for interest” (relaciones de interés, i. e. instrumentally motivated) – as opposed to normal, “real” relationships (Fosado 2005) and “true love” (Lundgren 2011) – they were also explaining this negative trend with the present situation of economic crisis, normalizing it via a contextualization in the current exceptional circumstances.8 Insofar the Cuban context was judged responsible for “deforming” how things should have “normally” been, we are confronted here with a discourse of exception, a “normative politics” (Povinelli 2006: 208) that did not tarnish the ideal of pure love, but simply displaced it elsewhere, in other places or other times. For Aurelio and Ernesto, such “regulatory ideal” (Povinelli 2006: 208) ought to inform people’s practices under normal conditions, but since these conditions were now lacking in the Cuban milieu, the two of them were looking toward relationships with foreigners as a possible ground for its realization. Indeed, Ernesto and Aurelio aspired to something more than a life dominated by economic needs and responsibilities, and were hoping for emotional fulfillment in true love and intimacy, ideals that they valued highly. In contrast to the bleak prospects they projected on relationships with Cuban women, intimacy with foreign women appeared in this sense as the realm in which true love was still possible.

26 As Umberto once put it to me, rather provocatively: “Cuban women want sex, and you have to pay, tourist woman want sex, and love!” (¡Las cubanas quieren sexo, y hay que pagar; las turistas quieren sexo, y amor!). This contrastive vision, not uncommon among my Cuban research informants, ended up constituting two relationally opposed and rather purified versions of intimacy: sex for money on the one hand, and sex and love on the other. But how did such trope of love find expression, once we consider that the economic could also intervene in relationships between Cuban men and tourist women, and how did it articulate with notions of masculinity?

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“Romantic lover”

27 When talking about his aspirations in regards to relationships with tourist women, Umberto repeatedly told me that love was what he hoped for, to find a nice woman he felt comfortable with and could set up a family together, possibly have some kids, no matter in which country, abroad. Umberto was regularly getting money and gifts from his European girlfriends, and when I asked him why he kept looking for new partners and wasn’t content with the ones he had, he replied with an ironic, almost guilty smile – as if acknowledging his internal struggles and contradictions – that “money doesn’t fall from the sky” (el dinero no cae del cielo). He was referring to the fact that his relationships had ups and downs, and didn’t provide any stable emotional and economic rewards that could appease him and enable him to stay put and satisfied with what he had. Therefore, he kept doing what he did best, moving forward with his everyday struggle (lucha). Umberto had several Cuban girlfriends too, relations that he cultivated also thanks to the resources that he got from tourists. He explained that in his neighborhood, a marginal and relatively poor area of Havana, if you had 5 CUC (approximately 5 USD) you could “fuck the best young mangoes” (beautiful girls) that were around. But to move from a relation with these “fun girls” (chicas divertidas, girls to have a good time with) – as Aurelio once put it referring to a similar deal – to a relationship with a “serious girl” (chica seria), was not so easy. Drawing again on Wilson (1969), we may argue that what was at stake here was also one’s ability to move from a value system based on reputation (a lot of sexual feats with many chicas divertidas) to one of respectability (a married family life with a chica seria). As Umberto told me, the good, serious relationship he once had with a Cuban woman had been damaged when her family started complaining and criticizing Umberto’s lifestyle, and more particularly his promiscuous relationships with foreign women.

28 After more than a decade relating with tourist women, Umberto was now in search of a “serious person” (una persona seria), a foreigner who would take seriously the possibility of having a long term, love relationship with him. Opposed to the persona seria was the bandolera (litt. bandit): someone who was just looking for sex, fun, and short-term gratification in the exceptional frame of one’s holiday without taking any longer-term commitment – as many tourists seemed more and more inclined to do nowadays, or so the criticism went. The bandolera critique was quite widespread among the men I frequented, who occasionally went as far as qualifying some tourist women as sexual exploiters. This reproach could converge with resentment towards the privileged economic position of the visitors. In relation to this last point, my informants tended to retort that whatever tourists might think of their economic power and what it could afford them, all their money could not buy them, nor direct their decisions and choices. 29 Proudly telling a friend why he had broken his promising relationship with a Spanish woman, Manuel, who often boasted about his macho qualities, was lapidary in his remarks: “Because they have some money, they think they can do what they want: go to hell I tell them! You know I am rough [soy un bruto].” Similarly defiant were the remarks of Carlos, a Rasta in his early sixties who had been on and off in a relation with a very rich German woman for more than a decade, and had finally parted with her, apparently also due to conflicts over his spending too much time and money with his Cuban friends. As he unburdened all his frustration and boasted his intransigent manly attitude, he told Ernesto and me:

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“This German woman, always trying to control me, to put herself above me. I told her, go to hell! Who gives a shit if you are a millionaire? Look I prefer to stay here on the street and sell maní [roasted peanuts], than to have to do what you tell me, to stay under your control. I have my friends and when I want to stay with them I do what I want!” 30 Here we see surfacing again the tension and the dilemmas occasioned by the asymmetric positionings of tourist women and Cuban men, as economic vectors of power clashed with gendered ones.

31 To have a woman openly paying for a man, particularly when this was done under public scrutiny, was widely considered as “ugly” (feo) and humiliating by my informants. In the realm of the street, of cafes and bars, and setting aside perhaps those tourism contexts where jinetismo was most normalized and accepted, this notion was to be kept at bay, as it threatened the men’s self-esteem and situated sense of self. Sometimes, very practical arrangements could be found to avoid exposing such shameful dependency on the women. This appeared in the story that Rodrigo and Emilio – another white Cuban man in his mid-thirties – recounted me about the amazing journey they once took across the island with their tourist girlfriends, a holiday that was entirely sponsored by the two young Europeans in question. On that occasion, to avoid that the women could be seen paying for the men – be it for drinks, food, or transportation – Emilio and Rodrigo had asked their girlfriends to let them carry the cash. This way, they could be seen by others as the ones taking out the money from their wallets and settling bills. With this move, the two men were also “taking care” of the women, ensuring no one would cheat them on prices. 32 In this and other similar other stories I heard, the Cuban men would try to take the lead, relying on their legitimacy as insiders to guide their tourist girlfriends around, activating their power-knowledge of local customs and circumstances and encouraging the foreigners to do things the “Cuban way” (as opposed to the “tourist” one) so as to live the “real” Cuba and save money at the same time. In a way, this could be seen as a contribution that ultimately benefitted the tourist’s wallet too. “Right from the start I tell them: ‘Look, I am poor. How much did you intend to spend for your holiday here? Well, give this to me, let me be in charge, and you will see [how much you will save]’.” This is how Yoanni, a young Rasta in his mid-twenties, put it, to highlight his material input to the relations he had with tourists. He abhorred seeing his partners waste money in the allegedly overcharged bad quality food and drinks served in tourism locations, and was not going to let this happen, having “his woman” cheated this way. Yoanni was also very adamant about the fact that, while poor and with very limited resources compared to the tourists, he was not a prostituto, and would never wait passively for women to do things for him. One had to show initiative, do his part. As much as possible, one had to strive to be the man that took care of his woman. At the same time, by openly manifesting their being in charge of their foreign partners, people like Yoanni were also clearly signalling to other potential Cuban male competitors that these women were off-limits and under their control (see Pruitt and LaFont 1995 for a Jamaican parallel). 33 Via the relational idioms of care (cuidado), affection (cariño), and love (amor), relationships between Cuban men and tourist women took on essential qualities that could also enable people to obviate to economic asymmetries and the tensions they generated, or at least to recast the uneven economic transactions taking place in a different light. Umberto’s looking for a persona seria and for love relationships was

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echoed in the discourses of other research participants. Some of these men had enjoyed in their younger age a lot of on-off relationships with tourist women, accumulating a wealth of sexual experiences that had certainly accrued their reputation among peers, but were now looking for something else – and the reputation-respectability lens may once again be fruitfully deployed here. For my friend Emilio, the prospect of being in love with his tourist partner, of settling down with her and building a family together, was now all that mattered. In his early thirties, Emilio had been promised marriage by his German lover, and had travelled to Germany only to find himself “used for sex” during two months – as he put it – and with no wedding prospect in sight. “I am not a sex machine” was his outraged reaction, as he complained about the tourists’ misrecognition of his ability to love and need for love. In the course of our long and repeated discussion about such issues, Emilio acknowledged that the peak of his success with tourist women had passed. He was getting “old and boring” (viejo y pesado), had lost his freshness and appeal, and in his gloomiest mood told me it was now almost impossible for him to find a partner at all, be it tourist or Cuban, apart perhaps some old foreign “granny” thirsty for sex and desperately looking for a younger man. His chances with Cuban women were presently very low, he maintained, not only due to his age and worsening looks, but mainly because he had no interesting job or income that would make him an appealing candidate for a long term relationship. That was the depressing scenario worrying Emilio. 34 His critique of the “sex machine” paradigm was simultaneously a plea for being recognized as more than that, as capable, and in need of, deeper sentiments too. The self that was taking shape in these narratives was more in tune with romantic ideals of love than with sexual prowess and promiscuity. The emphasis was on one’s emotional interiority, and on worth that was to be measured according to the same moral standards people tended to ascribe to tourists. A self that was not defined by penury and economic necessity – the exceptional conditions of generalized necesidad Ernesto and Aurelio told me about – but by universal principles of what it meant to be a full- fledged human being, in need of sentiments and affects as any other. We may draw here on Elizabeth Povinelli, who argues that it is precisely in love that one may “locate the hegemonic home of liberal logics and aspirations” (2006: 17). According to this view, “the ability to ‘love’ in an ‘enlightened’ way becomes the basis (the ‘foundational event’) for constituting free and self-governing subjects and, thus, ‘humanity’ ” (Povinelli 2004, quoted in Faier 2007: 153). 35 Rather than being viewed as naïve complaints, self-victimization discourses, or tactically instrumental moves to entice guilt, compassion, and help from the foreigner, I consider that these discourses on love, need for love, and lack of love should be taken seriously and appreciated in their aspirational qualities too (Moore 2011), as claims to belong to a wider world from which many of my Cuban informants felt excluded, and to a universal way of being a respectable person in such world. What many of them aspired to was indeed to be able to live under “normal conditions of existence”– as opposed to the context of exceptionalism, enduring crisis, scarcity, and isolation they associated with Cuba, and which they wished to overcome.9 36 What is also important to consider here is what these claims and professions of love could afford, enable and achieve at a more pragmatic level too. Itself an “ethical demand” (Zigon 2013), love called for a certain commitment and continuity in the relationship, bringing to the fore a range of moral responsibilities and obligations. The

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ideal at play was that lovers surrender to one another with no calculation whatsoever, and help each other when required. For the Cuban men at stake, this could mean being sent a monthly allowance to face the hardships of life in Cuba, or being able to marry their tourist partner and join them abroad to set up a family together. What was extremely important in preserving this moral configuration of love was for these responsibilities and obligations to be experienced not as love’s defining motive, but rather as a sentiment-driven outcome of it. In other words, people first loved each other, and subsequently, simply naturally, helped each other out as much as they could. While we may object that this was a rather abstract and purified idealization of romantic love, it was the one to which many of the Cuban men I engaged with seemed to aspire, or at least to claim as something they were willing and able to achieve. 37 The form of “subjectification” and “self-stylization” (Moore 2011) emerging from such idiom of love was strikingly at odds with the one that Cubans tended to deploy when boasting about their sexual conquests with their peers. It was not grounded on the sexual potency and prowess, nor on the breadwinner ideal of masculinity. Rather, love here seemed to bring into play the notion of equally sentient human beings, and a less polarized gendered power configuration.

Conclusion

38 Throughout this article, I have adopted an approach to masculinities that calls for a situated and multidimensional understanding of Cuban men’s affective, moral, and pragmatic concerns, as they moved in and out of the world of tourism in their everyday lives. From interactions taking place between peers to tourist-Cuban ones, from globally circulating discourses that reiterate colonial sexual stereotypes to street- corner gossiping and confidential self-reflection, I have highlighted the criss-crossing traffic of different models and vectors of masculinity, their contrastive deployments in a variety of contexts and scalar levels. Such deployments could alternatively generate unity and fracture, consistency and contradiction, harmonization and friction within the lives of Cuban men, who found themselves having to respond to different needs and aspirations, and were enmeshed in different lines of belonging. Part of the successes or failures of these men seemed to depend on their skills and proficiency in enacting a variety of masculinities, integrating and feeling comfortable with them all as equally functioning – albeit potentially contradictory – “embodied moral dispositions” (Zigon 2010).

39 It is possible to tease out some of the key (dis)continuities between the different situational enactments of masculinity I have examined. Images of sexual potency could easily traverse all situations, but could become an uncomfortable burden hampering the enactment of the romantic lover (as exemplified by Emilio’s critique of the “sex machine” view; see also Simoni 2013). Such romantic lover, on the other hand, had to be kept in check when discussing with Cuban peers, so as not to appear too foolish and naïve in front of them. The breadwinner ideal could be played out with Cuban girlfriends, but its’ relevance tended to be silenced when interacting with female tourists, only to come up as a reactive element when the tourist’s economic-driven power made people feel uncomfortable and retort with pride that “no money can buy me!” Besides the task of mapping these various articulations, and retrace the possible configurations and (in)commensurabilities between different models and vectors of

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masculinity, what can be retained here at a more general level is the idea of dynamic, situated, tentative, and often paradoxical enactments of masculinity. 40 In the last section, I have emphasized the importance of recognizing Cuban men’s aspiration to love, and of paying attention to the emotional, moral, and pragmatic possibilities this opened up both for them and for their tourist partners. Touristic encounters thus seemed to provide new venues for subjectification and self-stylization, leading people to attune masculinities to globally circulating ideals of romance and the loving partner. This, however, should not silence the fact that the very same Cuban people, in other contexts of interaction where other models of masculinity and moral imperatives prevailed – like when gossiping with peers – could dispassionately brag about their rough macho attitude and exclusively sexual feats with tourists. Instead of trying to resolve such contradictions, one of my aims here has been to engage in an “ethnography of moral reasoning” to provide “specific accounts of how people negotiate paradoxes in their daily lives” (Sykes 2009: 15; see Simoni 2013). Responding to competing demands and aspirations, Cuban men’s purposeful alignments as “breadwinners,” “sex machines,” and “romantic lovers” afforded different relational possibilities and expressions of masculinity. It is by closely scrutinizing these possibilities that we can illuminate the transformations of masculinities that tourism engenders, and thus assess its potential to amplify and subvert (stereo)-typical configurations of “being a man” in present-day Cuba. 41 Through their experiences of intimacy with tourist women, Cuban men worked over their masculinities while also reassessing their relationships and ways of being with Cuban women. In this sense, tourism acted as a laboratory to rework one’s sense of self and modes of relating to others inside and outside of the tourism realm itself. We are dealing here with a context – that of life in the tourism margins of a crisis-ridden Cuba – in which changing living conditions shed doubts on and came to question normative ideals of masculinity, calling for other “tactical alternatives” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005: 847) to emerge. The men I worked with seemed often at pains to compose with the contrasting affective, moral, and pragmatic demands they were called to respond to “as men” in the different milieus in which they evolved, and strived to maintain a sense of worthiness in this intricate terrain. As Vale de Almeida puts it, “[t]he experience of men and women is a difficult dialogue between the polymorphous complexity of their feelings and the simplicity of social patterns” (1997: 142). Confronted with such simplicity, with limited frames of legibility and justification, the protagonists in this article strived to situationally align their selves to the models of masculinity they found available, while at the same time re-actualizing and re- working them.

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NOTES

1. I would like to thank the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for supporting my research and writing with their Post-Doctoral Grant program (SFRH / BPD / 66483 / 2009). The last stages of the publication process benefited from the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (Ambizione Fellowship, PZ00P1_147946). Many thanks also to an anonymous reviewer for the useful suggestions and critiques on an earlier version of the article. Last but not

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least, this article would not have been possible without the collaboration of the Cuban men I worked with in Cuba, and my deepest gratitude goes to them. 2. Elsewhere (Simoni 2014), I have shown that monetary exchanges could become problematic also in relationships between tourist men and Cuban women, and that even in this case the “sex tourism” designation could silence a range of differences and nuances that were very important to my research participants. 3. All personal names of research participants appearing in the article are fictional. Those I got to know as “Rasta” in tourism milieus in Havana were mainly Afro-Cuban men adopting a subculture style that may be summarily characterized as valorising blackness and Afro-related cultural expressions, sporting dreadlocks and Rastafari-inspired accessories and clothing, and privileging a laid-back approach to tourists. These people generally self-identified, and were seen by others, as Rasta. See the research of Hansing (2006) for more on the Rastafari movement in socialist Cuba and what this author categorizes as “Rasta jineteros.” For more scholarly considerations on the success, and the controversial adoption of a Rasta style by local men willing to seduce foreign women in tourism destinations – from Jamaica’s “rent-a-dread” to Indonesia’s “Kuta cowboys” – see in particular the works of Pruitt and LaFont (1995) and Dahles (1997). 4. All the quotes from research participants that appear in the article have been translated into English by the author, and are based on recollections after the events took place. 5. Discussing Herzfeld’s work on manhood among Glendiot Cretan villagers, Zigon (2008) considers that what is important and counts as masculinity in this case is not simply to act as men are supposed to do, according to the norm, but to act “in such a way that it is recognized as beyond the norm,” to show excellence and virtuosity in one’s enactment of being a man. This would explain why among the Glendiot “there is less focus on ‘being a good man’ than on ‘being good at being a man’”– “a virtue theory of masculinity” (Herzfeld 1985: 16, quoted in Zigon 2008: 94) that resonates quite well with the Cuban material discussed here. 6. An interesting parallel may be drawn here with Piscitelli’s work on sex travel in Fortaleza (in Brazil’s Northeastern coast), and her reflections on “the production of the idea of a ‘Brazilian sexual culture’” (2014: 280). 7. Drawing on their Jamaican case, Pruitt and LaFont (1995: 427) refer more generally to Caribbean men’s valuing of “proficiency at ‘sweet talk’ (Abrahams 1983, Wilson 1973),” and argue that “ardent declarations of love, praises of beauty, and the like […] are a common part of a Jamaican man’s repertoire.” 8. Alcázar Campos (2009) Lundgren (2011), and Härkönen (2015, this issue) discuss this question further, showing how gendered normativities and couple relationships are being affected by economic instability and crisis in contemporary Cuba. 9. A fruitful parallel may be drawn here with Patico’s (2009) reflections on how international matchmaking provides Russian women and American men a way to seek “normalcy” in their personal lives. To illuminate the Cuban case, equally pertinent lines of interpretation can be found in recent anthropological research on love and intimacy (see Cole and Thomas 2009; Constable 2009; Padilla et al. 2007; Povinelli 2006; Venkatesan et al. 2011; Zelizer 2005), and more particularly in the approach adopted by Faier (2007) in considering the professions of love of Filipina migrants in rural Japan, as this author productively draws together the emotional, moral, and pragmatic affordances of such transnational relationships across difference and inequality.

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ABSTRACTS

Experiences of sexual and love relationships with tourist women lead Cuban men to articulate and act upon different – often contradictory – models of masculinity. Gossiping among peers, it is common to brag about one’s sexual conquests and exploits with tourist women; in contrast, when interacting with foreigners, men tend to insist on their allegiance to a romantic lover ideal. Intimate experiences with tourist partners also lead to reassess relationships with Cuban women, in which the men’s wealth is portrayed as the key for accessing (just) sex. These contradictory enactments of masculinity call for a situated and multilayered understanding of Cuban men’s affective, moral, and pragmatic concerns as they move in and out of the world of tourism. Important dimensions of their paradoxical enactments of masculinities can thus be highlighted and explained. What emerges is that in struggling to respond to competing demands, aspirations, and vectors of power, Cuban men’s purposeful alignments as “breadwinners,” “sex machines,” and “romantic lovers” afford different relational possibilities and expressions of masculinity. By taking seriously these possibilities, the article illuminates the transformations of masculinities that tourism engenders, assessing its potential to amplify and subvert (stereo)-typical configurations of “being a man” in present-day Cuba.

A experiência de relações sexuais e amorosas com turistas do sexo feminino leva os homens cubanos a articular diferentes modelos de masculinidade, frequentemente contraditórios entre si. Entre pares, esses homens gabam-se das suas conquistas sexuais entre as turistas, mas na interação com as estrangeiras insistem na lealdade ao ideal de amante romântico. A intimidade com turistas conduz também à reapreciação das relações com as mulheres cubanas, nas quais a riqueza do homem é vista como a chave de acesso ao sexo (apenas). Estas performances contraditórias da masculinidade convidam a uma compreensão situada e multidimensional das preocupações afetivas, morais e pragmáticas dos homens cubanos na sua relação com o mundo do turismo, o que permite esclarecer e explicar dimensões importantes dessas atuações paradoxais. Para dar resposta a exigências, aspirações e vetores de poder conflituais entre si, o alinhamento intencional dos homens cubanos com as categorias de “provedores de sustento”, “máquinas sexuais” e “amantes românticos” abre diferentes possibilidades de relacionamento e expressões da masculinidade. Encarando com seriedade tais possibilidades, o artigo contribui para a compreensão das transformações da masculinidade geradas pelo turismo, avaliando o seu potencial para ampliar e subverter configurações (estereo)típicas do que é hoje “ser um homem” em Cuba.

INDEX

Palavras-chave: masculinidades, turismo, moralidades, sexo, amor, Cuba Keywords: masculinities, tourism, moralities, sex, love, Cuba

AUTHOR

VALERIO SIMONI

Department of Anthropology and Sociology of Development, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland [email protected]

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