The Shield of "Boyhood"
Today’s New York Times has a fascinating and rather sad article by Jenny Nordberg about families in Afghanistan raising a daughter as a son to cope with the pressures of a society in which boy children are incomparably prized. The reasons for raising a girl as a boy differ – in some cases, the “boy” is the only one who can work in the world, providing support for a family of females who are not allowed to earn their keep; in others, it is to provide some protection from the rebuke and ill fortune deemed the lot of a family solely of daughters. The selected girl (usually a youngest daughter, chosen when hope of a boy child wears thin) is raised as a boy till puberty or beyond (sometimes even till marriage) , despite the risk of the girl’s body betraying her. The “change back” to traditional female comes as a brutal shock to women who have been used to the freedom–societal, mental, and physical–that only “boyhood” allows. Such women have difficulty not only in assuming their circumscribed feminine lives, but also in relating to other women.
How do you regurgitate a taste of freedom? Some women (such as one of the main mothers interviewed) hope that that the experience of boyhood will enlarge the ambitions of their daughters, empowering them even after they are forced to revert.
Obviously, the article–the phenomenon–raises lots of questions, many of which can be summed up by the word “how”? But one obvious point is simply the difference in Afghani culture from the mainstream West. This is the stuff of fantasy in the West (setting aside transgender girls and boys, which are a somewhat different phenomenon). Alanna! The wonderful/horrible series of children’s fantasies by Tamara Pierce about the girl who disguises herself as a boy to train as a knight.
It’s also the stuff of history–those ages in which women could not own or manage property. (In the children’s book area, this territory has been beautifully mapped by Phillip Pullman in the Sally Lockhart series.)
Okay, I’m not saying that everything is so clear and straightforward for girls in the West now. Factors in Western culture push girls to all kinds of self-distortions–i.e. anorexia, cosmetic surgery. I recently received an Urban Outfitters catalogue in which all the female models look like underage prostitutes on quaaludes.
Oddly, many of these distorted means to power have a stereotypically feminine aspect in the West. Girls who can only roam with relative freedom when they can pretend to be boys? Girls who shield their whole families through such conduct? This is something apart.
ManicDDaily 
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