Editor’s Note: Special Issue: Gender and Social Change in Myanmar

Abstract

Editor’s NoteSpecial Issue: Gender and Social Change in Myanmar Jane M. Ferguson The Myanmar military’s 1 February 2021 coup d’etat of the elected government quickly provoked widespread protests, namely the Civil Disobedience Movement and the Spring Revolution. During the earliest days of these manifestations, people of various gender identities were at the forefront of the demands for political change. They made use of numerous creative tactics to fight the military’s political imposition and to bring their grievances to the public sphere. Following the government’s brutal suppression of the nonviolent protests emerged the organization of People’s Defense Forces. In the years since, fighting, repression, and resistance continue. Now, as ever, it is imperative to interrogate how gender—as produced, experienced, and mobilized—operates across cultural fields, and relates to social transformation in Myanmar. Using nuanced, dynamic methodologies, the four research articles in this special issue of The Journal of Burma Studies take up that challenge. They reconsider gender in varied contexts of social activism, everyday practices, identity politics, and religious histories. Gender discourses in Myanmar are reforged through the work of many different agents, from renunciants to punks, to revolutionaries, and to keyboard warriors. Powerful ideologies are confirmed, [End Page 1] reinvented, and modified in complex and often contradictory ways. Superstitious Fabrications? The Revolution’s Secret Weapon Two articles in this special issue foreground a seemingly anomalous protest strategy: using some pieces of cloth to fight an armed-to-the-hilt military. Through their creative use of women’s htamein (sarong-like skirts), protesters have drawn attention to—even weaponized—a specific gender taboo, a taboo which is sometimes considered particular to the region. In their article for this special issue, “Our Htamein, Our Flag, Our Victory: The Role of Young Women in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution,” Marlar, Justine Chambers, and Elena use an intersectional approach to explore how status is interrogated by other types of difference, namely those of gender, age, and class. They argue that during past decade, Myanmar has witnessed important shifts in gender roles, and these present new vistas for solidarity and ways to imagine a more democratic political future. As they argue, the movement’s use of htamein and menstrual pads were part of a public rallying strategy. Through these methods, protesters stand in defiance of the patriarchal and misogynist ideologies of the military. On a related vein, Aye Lei Tun’s article in this issue, “Deconstructing and Reinforcing Gender Norms and Cultural Taboos in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution,” offers experiential accounts from the movement and explores the use of htamein in the Spring Revolution. The article also pivots to analyze how some of the activists’ symbolic attacks mobilized a repertoire that included sexist ideologies as part of their strategies to shame high-status members of the government, as well [End Page 2] as their families and associates. In sum, social transformations are inextricably gendered, and these times of tremendous upheaval demand further questioning. Let’s not skirt the issue raised by both articles: what is special about these items of women’s clothing and absorbent plastic pads in Myanmar, and what makes them so powerful? The general explanation is as follows: mainstream culture in Myanmar, as with that of other societies in the region, treats women’s genitalia and menstrual blood as dirty and polluting. They are therefore considered disgusting, off-limits, and treated with disdain. By contact or even mere association, women’s skirts, nether garments, and menstrual pads carry this taboo as well. In Buddhist temple compounds’ stupa enclosures, posted signs explicitly prohibit women from entering; their bodies are deemed to have the nefarious power to harm sacred relics. Menstrual blood has a contemporary enemy vivant: men. Any contact with a man is perceived to obliterate his hpon, or his special masculine energy. According to anthropologist Melford Spiro (1991), Burmese society locates presence of hpon specifically on a combination of the “sexual anatomy” and a “psycho-spiritual entity”; in short, as argued, the penis is a noble golden flower whereas the vagina is an ignoble polluting organ (Spiro 1991:534). Floral stigma notwithstanding, ideas about hpon and its threats have a profound impact on everyday life...