Deconstructing sexuality in the Middle East

Academic discourse pertaining to sexuality in the Middle East has long faced social taboos, making ethnographic data collection on this topic increasingly challenging. In Deconstructing sexuality in the Middle East, Pinar Ilkkaracan and her colleagues have filled an important void in the discourse about highly sensitive topics such as honour crimes, virginity, homosexuality, rape and impotence in the Middle East. As Ilkkaracan notes in her introduction, ‘sexuality and gender equality, matters that are inextricably linked, have been highly politicised issues in almost all Middle Eastern nations ever since reforms towards modernisation and/or Westernisation were initiated in the nineteenth century’ (page 1). Indeed, the body and sexuality have been the battleground for governments and their citizens, civil society, religious organisations and feminist groups in the Middle East. Regulating bodies (especially women’s bodies) is a major part of moralist rhetoric emerging from various Middle Eastern regimes and has also become a part of national legal codes in many of these countries (where policies are based on moralistic rather than pragmatic approaches to societal infrastructure). In this edited volume, the authors draw on highly original ethnographic fieldwork to tackle challenging topics including adultery in Turkey (Chapter 3), honour crimes in Jordan (Chapter 4), rape in Palestinian communities (Chapter 9), sex work and trafficking in Turkey (Chapter 10), sex education in Lebanon (Chapter 5) and sexual identity and self-help in Iran (Chapter 6). Each of the topics explored in this volume address complex areas of discourse around which there have been only silences up to the present. The authors come from a variety of cultural, disciplinary and professional backgrounds including anthropology, social psychology, activism, psychotherapy, political science, sociology, criminology and programmatic policy making. Deconstructing sexuality in the Middle East has arrived at a particularly pertinent time in the geopolitical sphere, given the ways in which sexual liberation and gender equality have been positioned as major fault lines between ‘Islam’ and the ‘West’ and at a moment in history that has drawn increasing media attention to the questions of sexual politics in the modern Middle East. Some of the common themes that weave the chapters of the book together include: an analysis of penal codes and current laws as ways to assess cultural perceptions of gender and sexuality; the use of public discourse and media as key activist strategies; anxieties about ‘loosening moral values’ as a threat to the nation and cultural identity; and the theme of the body as both a metaphor for the nation as well as a site of violence, militarisation and statehood. The first, third and last chapters of the book, written by Ilkkaracan herself, provide an excellent overview of major challenges and pitfalls in the discussion of sexuality and politics in the Middle East, with a focus on Turkey as a case study. She is uniquely positioned as both an academic and an activist who has been part of national struggles to reform laws and penal codes seeking to regulate gender and sexuality not only in Turkey but throughout the Muslim world. As such, Ilkkaracan Culture, Health & Sexuality Vol. 11, No. 4, May 2009, 481–483