In the Grey Zone: The Invisible Conflict of a Gendered Colonized Mind

Mariam Rabah

Mariam Rabah is a graduating senior at the American University in Cairo, majoring in integrated marketing communication and double minoring in writing and anthropology. While trying to discover her passions and interests for the last year, anthropology has offered her the opportunity to try and grasp the world, view it differently, and confront her ideologies, social norms, and values. Mariam looks forward to what the future holds for her career, but a master’s degree in anthropology is indeed in her plan!

Abstract

After my relatively short journey studying gender, cultures, and power dynamics, I am writing this paper to encapsulate my internal conflict to identify myself. I am a young Egyptian Muslim woman studying at the American University in Cairo. I am in constant confrontation with my beliefs, values, feelings, and thoughts. Gender, for me, was at first merely how society defined our roles based on biological sex at birth. Now, it has become how the world is structured. Everything is gendered, categorized, and boxed in binary categories. That realization has increased the level of tension I face in defining myself. Religion and traditions also play a role in this tension. I have come to question and critique my beliefs, leaving me in a battle between my mind (knowledge) and soul (belief). Am I conservative or liberal? Modern or traditional? Am I living up to the expectations of society (my privileged society)? All of these are questions I raise without having a clear answer. Moreover, I am directly confessing that I am colonized. Not only do I (among others) validate my existence through Western values, trends, practices, and lifestyle, but I am also colonized by the national state regulating my body and structuring the boxes we should all conform to or be punished. Hence, in an attempt to deconstruct the factors behind the tensions I face as a woman, I am writing this essay to describe how, in a black-and-white world, I am willingly choosing to be in the grey area or, in other words, stand neutral without subscribing to any extremes.

In the Grey Zone: The Invisible Conflict of a Gendered Colonized Mind

An attempt to describe my colonized mind:

I am under attack.

I am demanding my sanity back.

Voices are getting louder

Filling my mind like gunpowder

Lock and load

Oh my, it’s going to explode

My vision is blurry

I am filled with fury.

Trapped in a tiring loop

Questions attacking me

What a merciless troop!

Crippled by my own fight

Voices are screaming inside

I am about to lose my mind.

“Wear some makeup. You are a girl.”

“Don’t dress up that much; take care.”

“Did you ever consider wearing the veil?”

“Hug him. You are just friends.”

“Don’t, dear; there is hell to fear.”

“The choice is yours. It’s clear.”

It is so hard to write,

My internal conflict is not easy to describe

Words are not enough to inscribe.

What is my reality?

I can no longer accept normality

How should I build my personality?

Is questioning my life an act of war?

Maybe. But it’s a fight I can’t ignore

Clarity and peace are all I ask for.

Life is complicated.

This is not exaggerated.

Lately, poetry has become a method I use to express myself and clear my mind. I wrote this poem believing it would be the best way to begin this essay and turn my conflicting thoughts about finding who I am into explicit feelings.

“Curiosity killed the cat" is a well-known proverb used to warn people about the danger they might face due to needless investigation. I have always considered myself a curious person. I crave knowledge and enjoy exposing myself to different opinions, thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions. I like the idea of putting myself in others' places and viewing the world from their perspective. Accordingly, I have willingly chosen to see life as a journey. While that may seem ordinary or even clichéd, that decision has led me to confront my inner self. Curiosity didn't kill me; instead, it is complicating my life. I am lost in my own mind. Who am I? How can I define myself? These are normal questions that I grew up suffering to answer. I am a twenty-two-year-old girl, a graduating senior at the American University in Cairo (AUC), majoring in integrated marketing communication and minoring in anthropology and writing. I am a Muslim Egyptian from the upper middle class. This is who I am. Is this information enough to understand oneself? Is this data the answer to my existential questions? My answer is no. However, my gender, citizenship, religion, social class, family, and the education system I enrolled in are all factors that shaped the person I am now. I can't be divorced from these systems; we are intricately connected. They are the reason for my internal conflict and the tension I face in identifying myself. I am writing this essay to encapsulate my attempt to deconstruct this conflict and reflect on my constant confrontations with my beliefs, values, thoughts, morals, and feelings. In this journey of deconstructing the most intimate recesses of myself, I will principally tackle notions like gender, religion, traditions, and the colonization of one's mind.

Gender is at the core of the tensions I encounter daily. Gender, for me, used to be how society defined our roles based on biological sex. This is what I briefly studied in school and in some introductory classes in sociology. After being intrigued by anthropology, I realized that gender is much more profound. Not only are ideas about gender integral to how the world is structured, but they also shape how we are constructed as gendered selves. Everything is gendered, starting from how we dress, talk, choose hobbies, study majors, and pursue professions, to what we are allowed or not allowed to do according to laws, religious beliefs, and social conventions. Three years ago, in May 2020, I came to face my beliefs and views about gender. To kill time during the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I coincidently watched a video on TikTok. It was a video of a group of Asian men singing and dancing in a live concert. Captured by the music, choreography, and energy of the thousands of fans attending the concert, I learned about the existence of the Korean boy band BTS. Nearly three years later, I am a member of the BTS ARMY (the name of their fandom).

"Are these boys or girls?" "They don't look like men; they are so feminine." "They wear makeup and accessories!" "Why are you watching these gays?" "Are you straight?" "Are you encouraging homosexuality?" These are some samples of comments and questions I have heard and still receive from my parents, friends, or colleagues. I am often socially criticized for loving BTS or sharing their music with others. Assumptions are repeatedly made about their sexuality and, in some cases, mine as well. I encountered people asking me whether I am heterosexual after learning I am a BTS fan. In the beginning, I didn't understand the correlation, but I discovered later that, according to them, the members of BTS are gay people and their fans are most probably like them. I was also asked how I view them as men with their makeup, outfits, and cuteness; I was even told once that they are more feminine than I am. This specific experience of facing society's expectations about how men should present themselves and being questioned about my sexuality and femininity was a turning point in my life. In AUC, there is a common belief that students are "open-minded," whatever that means; they are tolerant of differences and accepting of "others." In this case, I was only confronted by judgmental people who led me to question my views about masculinity and femininity and try to understand why they wouldn't accept the variance between cultures.

As a result, I faced the tensions created by religion and tradition. The knowledge I am acquiring from studying anthropology causes me distress. I am shackled by my mind, the knowledge I am willingly exposing myself to, and my beliefs about nearly everything. Am I conservative or liberal? Modern or traditional? Must I be one of the extremes? Society expects clear-cut convictions; however, my comfort zone always lies in a third space, i.e., an in-between space. While I come from a privileged background, my parents and upbringing are flavored by the traditional patriarchal Egyptian society. Accordingly, it is natural for me to face difficulty finding myself as a student at AUC while getting exposed to various cultures and perceptions. I am left to validate my existence through Western values, trends, practices, and lifestyle, but at the same time, I maintain my cultural and religious values. If that is not the crisis of globalization and its effect on identity, I don't know what is.

The problem is not only about the cliché of the world being literally a button away, but it's how my national identity as Egyptian Muslim is defined through Western ideas about how I should dress, what language I should speak (not Arabic, of course), the music I should listen to, the trends I should subscribe to (transmitted thanks to social media), and my daily practices in my university. Language is an essential factor causing identity crises; when an Egyptian person can't even speak or fully understand their mother tongue, it is problematic. I spent months as a teenager eager to keep up with my peers' trends and to learn to chat using Franco. Franco is neither an English nor Arabic writing style, but an invented one that combines the Latin alphabet with numbers that substitute for specific Arabic letters in order to write what Arabic words sound like phonetically. When I can no longer express my feelings and thoughts in my mother tongue and find it more comfortable to use English, it is a problem. I can't imagine writing a paper in Arabic, for instance. I don't think I would be capable of doing it. It's a problem that I can no longer use Arabic in texting, even when the person I am texting is using it. It's even more problematic when "Arabic texters" are viewed among many of my social circles as "less than" and "weird," and it's internalized or assumed that these texters come from a "different" (lower) social, economic, and educational background. It's like English is only limited to the elite, and Arabic has become degraded. I am not proud to say that these associations occur to me sometimes, but I actively keep myself in check when I delve into those assumptions and general thinking patterns.

I use English and Franco because spelling Arabic words and typing quickly is challenging. I have always been very good at Arabic and can read and write using it; I did that perfectly before going into AUC. After all, I was in a national school where all subjects were taught in Arabic except for math and science, and English was a significant part of my education. At the end of the day, it was the best-known private school in my district. Now, I am detached from the language. Even in my everyday conversations, English is unintentionally integrated into each sentence to the extent that when dealing with my parents, it is a problem to translate every single word I introduce into the conversation. Sometimes, I don't even know which Arabic words mean what I am saying in English, which is terrible for me because, after a short while, I will get out of the AUC bubble where everyone understands English and Franco and face the real "outside" world in which Arabic is frequently used in both oral and written communication. What am I going to do then? I will just figure it out.

Other than language, I grew up knowing it is "haram" for a Muslim woman to be physically close to boys, hugging or kissing them (not even mentioning sex). Nonetheless, I live in a social circle where it's normal to be physically close to boys. I find myself saying, "So what? My intentions are not bad, I am just being friendly, and it is normal." I have come to doubt my values and beliefs. With all that, I now need to balance the equation between being modern enough to fit in and succeed in society while preserving the traditionalistic part of me that was constructed mainly by my parents.

That said, I confess that I am colonized by all the factors that bind my body, mind, and whole existence, whether through exposure to Western views or my Eastern background. Accordingly, to explore my colonized mind and the factors generating my internal conflict, I will critique concepts and arguments made by prominent anthropologists about gender. I will use an intersectional lens exemplifying how women are subordinate to men (Ortner, 1974), and gender becomes a performative construct (Butler, 2004).

To begin with, sex is how we are identified by biology, while gender is society's input defining the roles of each sex, shaping the notions we now have of masculine men and feminine women. This is the repeated comparison I was taught to know in order to understand the difference between sex and gender. Numerous scholars have highlighted how biology is the key factor imposing the universality of female subordination (Ortner, 1974). The variance of each gender role in society is displayed in gender power relations, which are simply the standards a culture establishes for the roles, obligations, and identities of men and women to deal with one another.

As a woman living in 2022, I still face the notion of “biological determinism” arguing that males are "naturally" the dominant sex and that there is "something" that females lack [having a penis] (Ortner, 1974, p. 9). "Biologically speaking, we (males) are stronger than you," said Nashat. "I disagree with you. Our pain tolerance is higher than yours; we tolerate period pain, pregnancy, and giving birth," replied Amal. This was the first debate topic on the 30th of September in an AUC students' podcast called One On One DEBATES. Theoretically, females' biological functions, such as menstruation, often symbolize a threat, taboo, and contamination. They are even used to justify the inferiority imposed on women (Ortner, 1974). This inferiority is also associated with "nature" and superiority with "culture," as Ortner explained by showcasing how women are seen as close to nature (because of their bodies and functions), in contrast to men, who are perceived as closer to culture and associated with social roles related to labor. Thus, culture tends to intervene in nature to control it and help "socialize" it, similar to the agenda of colonization to control and socialize others in order to enable them to be modern. Culture colonizes nature and the most intimate bits of one's existence.

As a woman, I am stigmatized, mistreated, and not taken seriously when menstruating. I am considered moody and temporarily irrational, which keeps me baffled as to why our bodies are not just accepted as they are. The biological processes of our bodies are constantly causing controversy. For giving life, we are cherished and valued in society, and for the same reason, we are devalued and seen as subordinates to men. I have been labeled as a woman since birth, and with that socially constructed label, there are rules and expectations that I need to follow. Science has paved the way for the creation of gender along with the expectations and opportunities for boys and girls (Fausto-Sterling, 2000). Thus, I am interrogating “Truth” in my journey of questioning. Fausto-Sterling introduced the idea that what we know as true is constructed and should be revisited; scientists produce the truth about our bodies, and these truths are incorporated in the social sphere in which they practice their profession (Fausto-Sterling, 2000). They created the boxes of males and females, and then masculinity and femininity emerged. These binaries are dualisms (pairs of opposing concepts, objects, or belief systems). According to Fausto-Sterling, they are used to maintain gender divisions by clarifying the borders between both genders and avoiding blurring the lines between them.

According to Judith Butler, one needs "to be" someone. One's self-identity is associated with an identifiable category (Butler, 2004). I "am" a woman, Egyptian, Muslim, daughter, sister, and student. However, "Identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes normalizing categories of oppressive structures" (Butler, 2004, p. 121). Consequently, I choose to disassociate myself from those categories and live in a grey zone, attempting to define myself without conforming to these structured categories. I do not want to be restricted to either/or, and I refuse to be boxed into categories that, based on Butler's arguments, were created to oppress women. This idea can be used to illustrate what Gayle Rubin has called the "sex/gender system" that also played a role in oppressing women. The sex/gender system "is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied” (Rubin, 1975, p. 159). Hence, extending the conversation between nature and culture, women are not naturally domesticated nor oppressed but are socially and culturally turned into objects or treated as products.

"We live in a patriarchal society." This is a statement I grew up hearing my female kin or women in movies and on social media saying. I never really understood it; all I knew was that in this patriarchal society, there is a "clear" division of roles between men and women "to complete one another." Another common statement by men and older women is "El Regal kawamon alaa el nesa" [a verse in the Holy Quran that translates to: men are superior to women]. Maturing through age and experiences, I acknowledge the pattern of repeating such statements that transforms into beliefs and values shaping one's character. This pattern can be an illustration of Butler's theory of "gender performativity," which states that discourse generates the so-called “gender effect” through a protracted and recurrent process, not a single act (Butler, 2004). This repetition is a method of normalization; it is normal for women to have a secondary position, normal for men to lead and control the household, and normal that male blood is considered purer to transport identity (through paternity), unlike females’ impure, polluted blood (Joseph, 1999).

Our kin identify who we are, our beliefs, morals, and norms; I took that for granted because it is just a "biological fact." Am I not the daughter, and in the future, the wife, the mother, the grandmother of my kin? Kinship is a regulatory body that dictates our existence, and it's empowered by other institutions like religion and the law (Foucault, 1978). The law, for example, sides with men committing crimes of honor; these men are often glorified and celebrated as they prove their manliness (Joseph, 1999). Thus, violence becomes a characteristic and rule of masculinity. These characteristics can be used to describe the division of labor and personality highlighted by Rubin. Traditionally, women are associated with domestic labor; "food must be cooked, clothes cleaned, beds made, and wood chopped" (Rubin, 1975, p. 162). Rubin tackled that norm from an economic perspective. However, here I am merely trying to explain how it has been normalized in society, limiting that characteristic to women and assuming its requirement in religion. After some research, I discovered that in Islam, domestic labor is not a required behavior for a Muslim woman, but a favor by a woman to her husband and children. Still, in society, it is a must and a norm. This is the effect of the "historical and moral element" Butler argues to be submersed in the entire domain of sex, sexuality, and sex oppression that created what we know as fragile or toxic masculinity (Butler, 2004).

Building on these theories, it is no surprise that breaking the norms or being caught in the blurry lines between binaries can be threatening. Masculine men have certain features, and any divergence from these features makes a male less manly or even effeminate; this explains why BTS, for example, are not considered "man enough" in my social circle. Makeup and accessories are "naturally for women." Moreover, homosexuality comes into the equation, as heterosexuality is the standard and accepted sexuality, especially in the Middle East and Arab Muslim countries. Homosexuality, as I know it, is a sin in Islam, prohibited, and a moral taboo in society. However, my understanding changed after reading El-Rouayehb's study of how males' homosexual behavior and feelings were viewed in the Arab Islamic Middle East between 1500 and 1800. Referring to Michel Foucault, El-Rouayehb explained that the concepts of "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" are relatively new, developed in Europe in the late nineteenth century and overlapping with earlier concepts such as sodomite or invert (El-Rouayehb, 2005). El-Rouayehb argued that the idea of same-sex love was prevalent in the Arab Islamic world and accepted. It can be traced to Arabic literature and poetry about profane love. El-Rouayehb explained that there is a distinction between committing sodomy and expressing passionate love for a youth; both cannot be described as homosexuality. Furthermore, through his discussion, I was exposed to the double standards of some Islamic scholars who condemned homosexuality but wrote homoerotic poetry because only intercourse between men was condemned and punished, not love (El-Rouayehb 2005). Loving a boy did not define who men were back then, but it does now. Extending the binaries found in society, sexuality was also identified through binaries: active vs. passive partners, permissible vs. prohibited sexual acts, masculine vs. feminine, dominant vs. subordinate, and male penetrators vs. female penetrated.

Hence, I firmly believe we are colonized. Colonization is not about invading one's land, but about conquering the individual, their bodies, minds, and beliefs. Unlike the type of colonization Frantz Fanon depicted in "Algeria Unveiled," we are not being invaded physically, but psychologically. Being in a Westernized and modernized community, I must dress and look a specific way to conform to this modernity. Exemplifying the psychological colonization Fanon discussed, I am encountering social pressure, internal guilt, and shame (Fanon, 1965). My inner self is fighting the urge to normalize the social expectations set on me and the urge to follow the rules of my religion. This culture of fear and guilt is embodied in me, crawling under my skin and forcing me to remodel my mind and body. Nearly 60 years after Fanon’s work, unveiled women walking the streets are blamed for attracting attention and still blamed for getting harassed or raped (Fanon, 1965). That leaves me wondering how I should resist the tensions I have been expressing. Where should I stand? Should I be with the extremist feminists Rubin described who would recommend exterminating men and capitalism (if they are the reason for female oppression) and demand a sexually egalitarian society? Should I agree with Levi Strauss's recommendation that the aim should be to eliminate the social system which creates sexism and gender, like the patriarchal society Joseph described (Rubin, 1975; Joseph, 1999)?

The meaning of "agency" had long eluded me. Do I possess it? How do I exercise it? I am aware of my privilege to control many things in my life. For instance, I have the freedom to share my beliefs and thoughts, and my parents did not force me to wear a veil as a Muslim woman. I have enough control over my agency. Writing this essay is proof; I am exercising the power of self-expression. I believe there is no ultimate truth, and critical thinking is a necessity in finding oneself. I agree with Chandra Mohanty that truth is subjective and changes from one viewpoint to another. I also agree that the binaries and categories imposed by institutions are unstable and can be deconstructed to understand how they were formed (Mohanty, 1988). How am I resisting? By being aware of the complexity of our existence and the role of power (mentioned by Foucault) in shaping our lives. I am resisting by acknowledging that the world is not white and black and accepting the blurry lines between categories as well as the power of labels to determine these categories.

I do not believe resistance should be limited to participating in a political or religious movement like the mosque movement (Mahmood, 2001). Is resistance fighting violence by violence? Is it revolting against the system? Or creating a trending hashtag? All are valid methods to resist, but for me, it is more straightforward. I am choosing neutrality as my method of resisting my internal conflict; I do not want to be categorized within resistance as active or passive. I accept my state of conflict to find myself and will continue questioning until I find a satisfactory answer. I willingly choose to be in the grey zone of life, remaining outside any box.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. (2004). “Imitation and gender insubordination.” In S Salih & J Butler (Eds.), The Judith Butler Reader (pp. 119-37). Blackwell Pub.

Frantz, Fanon. (1965). "Algeria Unveiled." In A Dying colonialism (pp. 35-6). Grove Press.

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. (2000). “Dueling dualisms.” In Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (pp. 1-29)., Basic Books.

Foucault, Michel. (1978). The History of Sexuality. Vintage Books.

El-Rouayheb, Khaled. (2005). Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800. University of Chicago Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/aucegypt/detail.action?docID=471853

Joseph, Suad. (1999). "Descent of the Nation: Kinship and Citizenship in Lebanon." Citizenship Studies, 3(3), 295-318.

Mahmood, Saba. (2001). "Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival." In Cultural Anthropology, 16(2), 202-236.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. (1988). “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Feminist Review, 30, 61-88.

Ortner, Sherry B. (1974): “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” Feminist Studies, 1(2),  5–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/3177638.

Rubin, Gayle. (1975). “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy of Sex.” In R. Reiter (Ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women (pp. 211-234). Monthly Review Press.