Iranian homosexuals; social identity formation and question of femininity

Abstract

Homosexuality and homosexual subjects have been oppressed during the sociocultural transformations of contemporary Iran while femiphobic attitudes have been central to this marginalization. Notwithstanding the profound distortion of the concepts of femininity and masculinity in the course of the modernization and islamization of the country, defeminization of the public space and prioritization of the masculinity in gender discourses have been crucial to all social transitions that intend to feed their desired social-ideal identity. Iranian homosexuals, who are condemned both for their sexuality and nonconformist gender effeminacy, have recently formed fictive kinships and backstage friendship groups in order to negotiate and attain a new social identity. In this paper I will examine the basic reasons behind the rejection of homosexuality in Iran and the ventures of the Iranian gays into cyberspace and back to society, while struggling to construct a new feminine-admissive social identity. The final part of this study is devoted to the discussion of the seat of femininity, particularly effeminacy, among Iranians. The paper concludes with demonstrating the incomplete social identity formation of gays, but also envisages a rising divergence in Iranian youths’ gender behaviors which grants the likelihood of negotiating the newly developed social identity to homosexuals.