Gender and Identity in a Globalizing World

Although gender disparities tend to manifest themselves in different manners, they exist from culture to culture across the entire globe. Consider Afghanistan, where society places a much higher value on having a son than having a daughter. Families unable to birth sons commonly choose one daughter to turn into a mock son of sorts—a practice known as bacha posh, which literally translates to “dressed as a boy”. While the daughter is young, she will function as a boy in society, from wearing a boy’s clothing to growing up with male friends. As you might expect, however, this could turn into a problem when the child reaches puberty and begins to develop more defined female characteristics. When this happens, the child’s gender is switched back to matching her biological sex, and she reenters society as a girl.

When I wrote my first article, I almost argued that it is in fact possible to be a completely objective human being. Not until I pondered what I wanted to say in this article did I realize how drastically wrong I was. Males and females are biologically hardwired differently. A male can never know what it’s like to be a female, how a female actually thinks and perceives life, and vice versa. When a child undergoes this process of bacha posh, does the child truly understand how to live as a boy? And what happens when the child becomes female again? What effect does this have on the child’s sense of self-identity? I don’t have any answers to these questions, and I don’t even have any hypotheses to make. I am merely fascinated by the thought of a person being forced to grow up as the opposite gender, and then switching back as quickly and suddenly as the snap of a finger. In my first article I focused heavily on the binary between the Self and the Other, and I also mentioned in future articles I would write about issues ranging in scale from personal to global. This is the perfect issue on which to perform such an exploration.

The initial transition from being a female to bacha posh can be very difficult on Afghan children because such a severe change causes major setbacks in senses of self-identity. And years later, when the child becomes female again, the same problem of understanding self-identity arises. On this personal level, one first needs to consider where this binary of Self vs. Other originates. An individual needs to have some sort of idea of identity to be able to distinguish between Self and Other. Now, consider the importance of gender in any sort of sense of self identity. How do you identify as you—would you be able to describe in detail who you are to someone without indicating your gender?

Let’s expand a bit to the national level. Society in Afghanistan has identified its Self as a male-dominated society, and views femaleness as an Other. To avoid this Otherness of femaleness, Afghans undergo bacha posh when they cannot have any sons. From economic needs to social pressures to the superstitious belief that the practice can lead to the birth of a biological male, Afghan society has perpetuated this binary between male-dominated and gender-neutral society through bacha posh for centuries now. Is bacha posh all that different from preferences to have sons in other societies, though? Or is it just a different manifestation of the same problem of gender disparity seen elsewhere around the world?

Let’s expand a bit more to the global level. I, as a Westerner, initially had a negative reaction when I first learned about bacha posh. I thought that it was extremely unfair to put children through such difficult changes. In Orientalism, Said focuses heavily on how the West controls and dominates perceptions of the East. I am determined to not fall into this trap of Orientalizing, in Said’s words, or Otherizing, in my own. Who am I to say that this practice is wrong? Who are we as a collective Self to judge this cultural practice, our collective Other, which none of us have ever experienced firsthand? What do the people who actually undergo the process think of it? Many have a hard time adapting after becoming female, but many look back to their days of bacha posh not spitefully but appreciatively, grateful for the opportunity to be as close to male as possible in such a male-dominated society.

This issue, like all interpersonal and cross-cultural issues in the world, must be looked at as objectively as possible. Reacting negatively to practices such as bacha posh only strengthens this binary of a global Self vs. Other. An individual can never know what it’s like to think and perceive life like another. Similarly, one society can never truly understand how another functions. In both cases, though, despite this similar impossibility, it is still not only possible but imperative that these differences be overcome (perhaps in this case by comparing bacha posh to examples of gender disparity in our own society, such as salary inequalities for males and females); that they not tear us apart but pull us together; that all of humanity not seek to Otherize but to acknowledge inconsistencies in order to come together into some sort of shared sense of We and Us.

I will leave it at that for now. In my next article, I will discuss national borders around the world, analyzing a particular few and the concept as a whole with respect to the ideas of my first article, similar to the analysis I have given here. I hope that this brief exploration into such a complex issue has left you wondering about cultural differences in general across the world or wanting to dig deeper into this concept of bacha posh, because obviously I have not come to any sort of conclusion or consensus. Feel free to contact me with your opinions, because I am always open to discussion. Or, better yet, go initiate a conversation on such matters with someone new, helping spread this idea of global awareness.