Abstract
This paper questions how the state sets a moral code on the bodies of minor girls by incarcerating those who divert away from the constructed ethical body image. The paper unravels the hidden world of an underage, all girls, governmental, close-door shelter in Cairo, which only “shelters,” or as I argue “confines,” girls who have been proven to be non-virgins. This is done through a mandatory virginity test conducted at their entry to the shelter. In this paper, I combine ethnographic encounters with girls at the shelter, unstructured interviews, and archival research of legal cases, detailing the daily routine of minor girls in confinement. The shelter operates as the spatial technology in the legal prosecution of the incarcerated girls. The girls, ranging between 11- and 18-years old, are held in the shelter under the public prosecutor’s orders for incitement of immorality, sexual perversion, prostitution, underage marriage, and rape/abuse. The paper argues that the incarcerated bodies of minor girls in the Kasserat shelter reveal the depth of the state’s construction of a certain moral and righteous body image, and how those who do not fit the criteria are confined, punished, and “fixed”. Informed by the intersection of theories about the gendered body, punishment, and incarceration, I narrate the stories of the girls tracing how they endure incarceration, and how they position themselves vis a vis their bodies and the confinement space.
In this paper I ask: How could bodies of minors that are constructed as immoral for their lack of virginity, become entangled in webs of meaning making , first from the view of, the girls who lack the capacity to physically see their bodies (due to the lack of mirrors in the shelter), the shelter management which needs to maintain the moral social order, and the state which mandates which bodies are deemed unruly if lacking of virginity? Through this research, I look at the more systematic ways female bodies are monitored and disciplined starting from the young age of minors. The paper looks at the modes of disciplining and the mechanisms of violence that are used in maintaining women’s bodies as moral and desirable. Focusing particularly on the inculcation of these norms from a young age and the various modes of governmentality used, the paper highlights the visceral and interconnected ways female bodies are deemed immoral in Egypt and the moral codes reinforced by the state.
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