Deploying Masculinity in the Transphobic Framework of the Islamic Middle-East
Deploying Masculinity in the Transphobic Framework of the Islamic Middle-East

Summary/Abstract: Transgender identity poses a threat to the well-established gender roles in the Islamic Middle East, where the acquisition of masculinity, the initial and essential criterion for a man’s configuration and deployment in patriarchal discourses, has not become a major concern for academic studies. The Man, enjoying his reified superiority to the Woman granted by religious and cultural discourses, does not question his subjugated position in the heteronormative system he is constituted in. The deployment of masculinity is of great significance in the outbreak of transphobia in the Islamic framework of Turkey and Iran and this paper intends to examine the role of masculinity and the traditional binary of Man/Woman in the harassment, insult, hate murders, persecutions, victimisations, and obligatory sex change surgeries LGBT individuals in the Islamic context are exposed to, focusing on two countries, the former being a country in the process of its EU accession negotiations and the latter being one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations. Deployment of masculinity and the Man/Woman binary is of importance to this study since in patriarchal heteronormative discourses dominant in these two countries a man is expected to be manly and effeminacy is considered offensive, as a result of which effeminate men are harassed in these heteronormative societies, seen in the case of the Transwoman, while manliness is an admired characteristic for women and masculine women, ironically, are encouraged and flattered.

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