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Reconceiving Middle Eastern Manhood: Islam, Assisted Reproduction, and Emergent Masculinities
Abstract
Since September 11th, 2001, Middle Eastern Muslim men have been particularly vilified as terrorists, religious zealots, and brutal oppressors of women. Against this backdrop of neo-Orientalist representation, this paper presents a humanizing portrayal of ordinary Middle Eastern men as they struggle to overcome their infertility and childlessness. Based on ethnographic research with more than 300 Middle Eastern men from multiple nations, this paper examines Middle Eastern men’s changing manhood through the lens of male infertility and assisted reproduction. Through an “emergent masculinities” approach that challenges the concept of “hegemonic masculinity, Middle Eastern-style,” the paper highlights emerging masculine subjectivities, marital commitments, and family formations. “New Arab men” are quite different from their forefathers, self-consciously rethinking the four notorious P’s—patriarchy, patrilineality, patrilocality, and polygyny—which are said to characterize family life across the Middle Eastern region. Instead, Middle Eastern men from a variety of social classes and religious backgrounds are unseating received wisdoms. This is especially true in childless marriages where, contrary to popular expectation, male infertility is more common than female infertility, and many men and women are devoted to their infertile spouses. Through in-depth ethnography undertaken in assisted reproductive technology (ART) clinics in four countries, the paper captures the marital, moral, and material commitments of infertile Middle Eastern couples undergoing assisted reproduction. Emerging technologies—particularly intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to overcome male infertility and egg donation to overcome age-related female infertility—are changing Middle Eastern couples’ lives and religious moralities. Although Islamic authorities have condoned assisted reproduction as a solution to human suffering, third-party reproductive assistance (sperm donation, egg donation, embryo donation, surrogacy) is still widely banned across the Sunni Muslim world from Morocco to Malaysia. However, recent Shia Muslim fatwas have challenged this ban, leading to a thriving donor technology industry in both Iran and Lebanon, the only two Muslim countries to allow this practice. In today’s Middle East, men are rethinking their “Islamic masculinities” as they undertake transnational “egg quests” out of devotion to the infertile wives they love. Their quests for conception—set against the backdrop of war and economic uncertainty—suggest that we must question many taken-for-granted assumptions about Middle Eastern men as men in an era of emerging science and technology.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
None