Re-feminizing the post-soviet women: identity, politics and virginity ceremonies in contemporary Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper analyses complex linkages between gender, nationalism and body politics in post-socialist Kyrgyzstan through an exploration of social practices centred on female virginity. Drawing on ethnographic material, I illustrate how virginity is glorified and fetishised in ceremonies and rituals within practices recognised as re-constituted national traditions. I problematise such performances for their desexualising and dehumanising features and associated physical and sexual violence, torture and forced marriage inflicted upon young women. It is argued that these controversial practices have gained specific political significance after collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and have become inherent to the post-independence concept of Kyrgyz citizenship. State national identity politics has endorsed traditionalising of social norms utilising the rhetoric of restoring pre-Soviet authentic Kyrgyz lifestyle. The discourse promoting traditional women’s features such as chastity, purity and domesticity became central to national identity politics and practices emerged to uphold these narratives and protect these qualities. Virginity ceremonies are one such practice, which by the virtue of its link to post-independence concepts of ethnicity, gender identity and national identity receive much of their legitimacy.