The NYTimes reports on a continuing practice in Afghanistan that breaks one’s heart (complete with a slideshow):
KABUL, Afghanistan — Six-year-old Mehran Rafaat is like many girls her age. She likes to be the center of attention. She is often frustrated when things do not go her way. Like her three older sisters, she is eager to discover the world outside the family’s apartment in their middle-class neighborhood of Kabul.
But when their mother, Azita Rafaat, a member of Parliament, dresses the children for school in the morning, there is one important difference. Mehran’s sisters put on black dresses and head scarves, tied tightly over their ponytails. For Mehran, it’s green pants, a white shirt and a necktie, then a pat from her mother over her spiky, short black hair. After that, her daughter is out the door — as an Afghan boy.
There are no statistics about how many Afghan girls masquerade as boys. But when asked, Afghans of several generations can often tell a story of a female relative, friend, neighbor or co-worker who grew up disguised as a boy. To those who know, these children are often referred to as neither “daughter” nor “son” in conversation, but as “bacha posh,” which literally means “dressed up as a boy” in Dari. [NYTimes]
Anyone that caught the depressing 2003 film “Osama” (saddest ending ever) will be familiar with the practice of “bacha posh.”
Dan Rather also provides a short video segment on the story:
These countries need MTV and McDonalds asap seriously. In Freakonomics apparently the social indicators of rural north Indian villages (like female feticide and domestic abuse) dropped because of cable tv.
Immediately brought to mind:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/world/europe/25virgins.html Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man
Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.
The Sworn Virgins of Albania
Johan Spanner for The New York Times Pashe Keqi, 78, took an oath of virginity when she was 20 to become the family patriarch after her father’s death in a blood feud. More Photos » For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.
She says she would not do it today, now that sexual equality and modernity have come even to Albania, with Internet dating and MTV invading after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Girls here do not want to be boys anymore. With only Ms. Keqi and some 40 others remaining, the sworn virgin is dying off.
Boys don’t have it much better in Afghanistan. Google “bacha bazi.”
Robert, while that’s really tragic, I don’t think it’s as wide spread and endemic as the misogyny that faces little Afghan girls of every class, every day. Just sayin’.
That article was so sad on so many levels. I know it’s good that there’s some escape route for them, for sometime and the main picture was adorable, but . . . .gah.
Well. Little Afghan boys also have to deal with the endemic culture of pederasty in those parts.
There is that incredible movie called “Osama” about a young girl dressed up like a boy, so she can go out and work and feed her family, at the height of the Taliban reign, and the tragic outcome. It’s heartstoppingly sad.
and the main picture was adorable
yeah!
Osama was a pretty sad movie. Freaking messed up society.
mebee not best to get into an argument of whose oppression is bigger? also, my impression was that pederasty was particular endemic among pashtuns. am i buying into the tajik propaganda machine?
Yes, the pederasty seems to draw from the underlying Pashtun culture, rather than being attributable to Islam. Some attribute it to the period in which Afghanistan was Hellenized, but that may be a bit Eurocentric. As to the origins of the bitter misogyny, draw your own conclusions.
There is a–perhaps naive–part of me that wants to believe a cultural norm like institutionalized pederasty/pedophilia is fucked up enough that it couldn’t have developed independently in multiple places.
I mean, there are a lot of really awful things I can rationalize as having been necessary under some conditions are some point in time. Even dehumanizing misogyny I can kind of see as being a consequence of living in a cruel deathworld where bandits lurk outside every settlement and population death rates require high fertility to continue the society. I don’t like it, but I can see how decent people might be able to rationalize their way into thinking it’s something that must be done. But screwing children? Seriously? WTF!?
To be fair to the Pashtuns, pederastry is rampant in many martial communities of the world. Samurai Japan, ancient India (just read the Kama Sutras and temple depictions), Islamic cultures all do this. Ancient Romans used to do this. Young Caligula swam with his even younger “fishies”. But yes, the Pashtuns love their boys almost as much as they hate women’s empowerment.
Boston Mahesh,
There is, mercifully, no indication whatsoever of pederasty in the kamasutra and no documented rampancy in Ancient India. Criminals of this variety obviously existed in every society, but institutional rampancy and societal acceptance are a whole other matter.
Vatsyayana did mention same gender practices, as well as the existence of “the third gender”, under the Auparishtaka section, but there is no mention of anything approaching bacha baz, let alone any celebration of it. In fact, the entire purpose of his treatise was to prepare a young man for traditional married life, including the courting of a wife, appreciation of the act of love, and proper conduct during marriage.
However, pederasty was a widespread institution in medieval Japan, ancient Greece, and Persia (which was the likely origin point for its practice in Afghanistan).
As for the Pashtuns, it’s so mainstream as to utterly shock NATO forces into commissioning a Pentagon study: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/28/INF21F2Q9H.DTL . It was something that soldiers found reprehensible but were powerless to stop.
Institutional exploitation and trafficking of minors is astoundingly horrible–there is no greater crime than the robbing of innocence. It need not be viewed from the prism of cultural relativism, but rather as something that humanity as a whole must come together and bring to an end.
Prevention of girls education must come to an end as well. It is unfortunate that parents must go to such lengths in Afghanistan to ensure some semblance of opportunity for their daughters.
It seems somewhat tragic that these girls get a few years of freedom and mobility before it’s snatched away when puberty hits.
However, as per the mother of the cute kid, who was also dressed as a boy in her youth, the self-confidence gained from these years likely had a part to play in her efforts to expand the confines of her life, i.e. run for political office.
Are you conflating all homosexuality with pederasty?
Wow, that link shed light on some pretty disgusting behavior in Afghanistan. I heard of such stuff in afghanistan , but didn’t realize it was THAT prevalent.
I love how they rationalize stuff to justify contradictions in their edicts. Homosexuality is bad, but sleeping with boys is not the same because they do not love them??? So by that logic if a gay guy went to a male hooker, that is not a sin by their own standards? And women are not clean because they menstruate, but it is ok to bang a boy in the area where they defecate??? Amazing logic by these neanderthals.
hm. well, pederasty is a relatively well known phenomenon cross-culturally. it certainly has emerged independently many times. additionally, i think one has to admit that a modern western understanding of homosexual relationships between adults in a companionate bond is definitely not the historical norm, and afghans are closer to what ancient greeks would understand as non-heterosexual relations. many americans seem confused as to the idea that males who are only “active” in these relationships don’t think of themselves as gay, but this wouldn’t be strange at all in most societies over time, and even in many different societies today. this is not to say that i think pederasty is something i can countenance within my set of norms. slavery was also very common for most of human history. is does not entail ought.
back to the issue of girls and boys in afghanistan, i lean toward saheli’s assessment. if i had to pick, i’d rather be a boy than a girl in afghanistan. a boy may have a risk of being raped by an older man, especially if he’s poor, but what do you call a girl who is “married” off to a 35 year old man when she’s 12? a girl has less opportunity toward self-actualization in afghanistan than a boy. so i guess that’s how i come down, though it’s obviously colored by the fact that i’m a nerd and it seems that intellectual opportunities for afghan women are constrained.
And women are not clean because they menstruate, but it is ok to bang a boy in the area where they defecate???
i’m not meaning this with any offense, but are you not cognizant of the distinction between physical/literal cleanliness and spiritual/ritual cleanliness? i’m not a big fan of mumbo-jumbo obviously, but it seems from what i’ve seen and read south asians, like religious jews and muslims, have strong concepts of non-literal cleanliness. even the roma in europe do so. they consider non-roman “unclean,” even though in a plain reading that would be ludicrous judging how they present themselves in public in european cities.
Most people, in general, don’t get many opportunities for self-actualization. While the large majority of people that do get to live comfortably are male, that doesn’t mean being male is a sufficient condition for being fulfilled. While girls may be sequestered and abused, a fair amount of young-men are straight up shot or maimed for minor slights as well. This is a fundamentally dysfunctional society for everyone involved. This is the trouble with trying to draw lines around whole genders rather than individuals is that it tends to make people lean towards this sort of ecological fallacy.
” While girls may be sequestered and abused, a fair amount of young-men are straight up shot or maimed for minor slights as well.”
that’s a good point! i was just assuming implicitly that i’d be of the elite. have to think more on the issue, but i’ll retract my earlier assertion.