Association For Iranian Studies (AIS)
12th Biennial Conference at UC Irvine (Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture):
Iranian Men and Masculinities
Proposal:
The topic of Iranian men and masculinities has been significantly understudied, as others concentrate on Iranian women and femininities we lack the knowledge of understanding men, masculinities and the roles of men in bringing about gender equality. My paper addresses the issue of the interplay between ethnicity and masculinity while also addressing masculinity within Iranian culture, tradition and the arts. Masculinity like other kinds of social identity, is an ongoing construction between one’s self image and other perceptions of one. What many people fail to understand is how different types of socio-cultural norms influence how societies view what it means to be a man of which vary, and often include sexual identity, family life, as well as religious and culture beliefs. I will be looking at different types of masculinity, such as hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities, marginalized masculinities, resistant masculinities, newly emergent forms of masculinity, and ethnic/ radicalized/ class-based masculinities. By describing the different types of masculinity, I’ll be able to reveal the misunderstood connections between the motives and the cause for their behavior of Iranian men among women in Iran. I argue that Iranian men are displaced from being a topic for research, from having the position of dominance, it caused Iranian women into a position of being a topic for the gaze of others. In conclusion, this project, by closely examining men and their masculinity, patriarchy, culture and tradition, it will be able to shed a new light on gender systems with the rarely acknowledge topic of Iranian men within Iranian studies.
