Anyone see this in the Sunday Telegraph magazine yesterday? I found it fascinating.
www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11099367/The-Afghan-girls-who-live-as-boys.html
There's been quite a few comments recently on FWR threads about the nature/nurture debate and how much of the way girls and women act is down to socialisation.
I think this shows just how strong socialisation is in the way we act.
Families without sons in Afghanistan sometimes make a daughter into a son for a number of reasons, one being that a family needs a son for good standing and reputation (after all girls are pretty useless aren't they? - sarcasm alert). So they turn a girl child into a 'bacha posh' - a girl who lives and acts as a boy until the time they are ready to be married off, when they turn them back into a girl again. But of course that isn't always easy.
Zahra is a bacha posh who is of an age to be a girl again.
Excerpt: "By her age, girls are commonly taught to focus on being proper, shy and very quiet young women, to make for attractive marriage partners. But Zahra lacks most traditional feminine traits and speaks for herself right away.
"She has lived as a boy for as long as she can remember and has no intention of changing. 'People use bad words for girls. They scream at them on the streets,' she says. 'When I see that, I don't want to be a girl. When I am a boy, they don't speak to me like that.'….
"In impersonating a teenage boy Zahra has an exaggerated, clunky way of walking. With high, tense shoulders, and hands hanging by the thumbs in her pockets, she strides forward in broad duck-footed steps, in her preferred outfit of an oversize hooded shirt, jeans and flip-flops.
"Zahra is the one who moves around the most in her family. She runs all the errands, to the tailor and to the bazaar. She fills the gas canisters and carries them home. 'Boys are stronger than girls' she told me. They can do anything and they are free. When I was a child everyone was beating me and I cried. But now, if anyone tries to beat me I hit back.'"
It goes on to say how Zahra is resisting her family's attempts to turn her back into a girl.
I find this an interesting example of just how much we are socialised. For example, look how she says boys are stronger than girls - but she carries the gas canister because the simple illusion that she is a boy means she is strong. Another example, she hits back when she is attacked, again because of the illusion of being a boy means she doesn't put up with shit.
Total socialisation.
It also gave me a another thought. We know that education is the first step to equality. I'm thinking that the first step to education is a very simple one. Teach men in these cultures one simple truth - that is their sperm that determines sex, so shaming women for not having sons is useless. If having daughters is 'shameful' then it is men who are responsible for the shame. And as we know men who hold these beliefs couldn't possibly accept responsibility for anything 'shameful' as that is the burden they impose on women. Ergo, daughters would become something to be proud of as men have bred them. 