Unveiling Men: Modern Masculinities in Twentieth-Century Iran. Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East. By Wendy DeSouza. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2019. Pp. xv, 190, with bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 9780815636038.
Wendy DeSouza is a lecturer in Iranian Studies in the Middle East/South Asia Program at the University of California, Davis. She received her M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from UCLA in Modern Middle East History.
DeSouza addresses an important topic of gender and sexuality in Iran between the two world wars. She argues that although the political situation in Iran was going through a transition, the male identity was targeted and forced to change. She argues that the purpose of her book is to “examine subordinated masculinities, not simply to explain the rise of hegemonic masculinity” (p. 5). DeSouza believes that often the extent to which men were subjects of gender reforms had great impact on modern Iranian society.
The book, insightfully, is divided in three parts. Part one, Iranian transformation, includes three topics: photography and the erotics of power, unveiling men, and Sayyid Hasan Taqizadah and the making of bourgeois morality. Part two, transnational masculinities and sexualities, incorporates two topics: who is the lover, and love without lovers. The third section is the epilogue: queering Iranian masculinities.
Using a well-researched bibliography, DeSouza takes the challenge to describe how the Qajar king Nasir al-Din Shah (1831–1896) was using photography as a powerful tool for displaying female eroticism. In these photographs the king usually has a secondary role, and women have “asserted their presence” in a more prominent role. Nasir al-Din Shah’s portraits of court women show that women had visibility and power. Nasir al-Din Shah believed this was the key to a successful reign: a show of a balance of power with the image of the Shah sidelined by standing on the side while women occupy a central location. The images of women and the male beloved were connected with pleasure. Photographs of hunting expeditions were demonstrations of power: the idea of “razm va bazm” (fight and feast) (p. 27). However, the situation changed under the succeeding dynasty of Riza Shah Pahlavi (1925–1979). The role of women was marginalized; in place of Qajar-era photographs of harems and women, the photographs during Riza Shah Pahlavi’s reign were more about the modernization of military structures and technologies. This was a reaction to the perceived “semi-colonial status” of Iran during the last years of the Qajar dynasty.
DeSouza discusses in detail the unveiling of men in Iran which took place during the 1920s and 1930s. Iranian males were forced to change their traditional clothes to Western-style clothing and had to shave. They were humiliated in public by being forcefully “unveiled.” This was a solution to the modernization of Iranian society implemented by Riza Shah Pahlavi. The great propaganda machine used the press to push for a policy for the united appearance of the population that began in 1928. The other policy was for a single dress code, an anti-tribal dress code. There was an intent to create a gender policy as an integral part of Riza Shah’s government. Men “should be protectors of women” (p. 39). During this time women were sidelined and the image of a strong masculine male figure was promoted. Ethnicity and traditionalism were marginalized and state secularism enforced. Part of the unified appearance policy was the Persian language. It was promoted as the dominant and pure language of the country. Primary schools were ordered to chiefly teach Persian, opening the way for the disappearance of other languages from schools.
National decline was associated with “lower-class men, whose bodies had become corrupted through tradition and could not meet the urgent need of social regeneration” (p. 61). DeSouza notes that “the urgent needs of production and militarization intensified the policing of sexual dissidents and criminalized same-sex practices, and homosexuality was designated an affront to national duty” (p. 86). There was a great fear of a population decrease, as this would be dangerous for Riza Shah’s ambitions to create a strong Persian nation and country. In Iranian society “the love of youth” was not unusual, although it was criticized. The author states that a lack of sexual restraint and not having a sexual preference was seen as the cause of unmanliness. The editor of the journal Kavah, Taqizadah, was essential in molding social opinion and practices in Iran. Sexuality was linked to survival of the Iranian race. For the Iranian male, reproduction should be the “patriotic duty” (p. 71). Taqizadah created a vision “of modern manhood in which male bodies were defined by their usefulness to industrial production and sexual reproduction” (p. 77), which was the cure to Persia’s economic and demographic decline. Nevertheless, this view was not accepted by all and there were critics of these policies.
It is interesting that DeSouza only briefly glances at the geopolitical situation in the beginning of the twentieth century in the Middle East. Many countries in the Middle East were going through “modernization” and purification of nations. It would have been helpful to place Iran within the framework of these political and forced social changes.
DeSouza discusses the writings of Louis Massignon (1883–1962) in the context of sexuality and gender. The author shows “how gender and sexuality can mediate our understanding of the field of mysticism and vice versa” (p. 84). DeSouza thinks Massignon was a man in conflict with colonial models of masculinity and heteronormativity and he finds “transcendence through the intervention of Sufi saints” (p. 84). Massignon was homosexual, but he struggled with his sexuality and later in his life he denounce his sexual orientation. His writings molded the future teachings about pure societies.
The author articulates her objective for writing this book: “Queering these texts ultimately allows us to reframe masculinity as an unresolved yet urgent and multifaceted question of the early to mid-twentieth century” (p. 5) DeSouza’s book is an interesting and less-researched topic upon she has produced an extremely well-researched book with an ample amount of references that could be very useful for libraries, especially academic libraries that have Middle East-related collections. This book will be of particular interest to scholars in modern Iranian studies as well as gender studies specialists.
NORA AVETYAN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES