Male Masculinity : The Mysterious Disappearance Of Mustafa Ouda

Women today are still battling with the stereotypes given to them many years ago. Women are seen as less than men, they are expected to stay home and take care of the children and absolutely never be more successful than a man. They are not supposed to be seen as the hero in a situation because heroes are seen as masculine men, not women. More shows and movies are starting to fight back against these stereotypes. One show in particular, NCIS or the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, portrays women as strong and successful. It gives women a chance to show how confident they can be in themselves and that they can also be considered the hero. NCIS shows through Abby and Ziva that women can be successful and the hero, which provides women with a strong and heroic role model to emulate.

The authors explore topics such as proving masculinity when made to, not showing your emotions such as depression or pain, and the perception of masculinity. The authors refer to literary devices

‘A Separate Peace’ by John Knowles centers on a group of boys who focus on demonstrating their masculinity and playing sport. Gene Forrester, a typical teenage boy of his time, and Phineas, an adventurous assured individual also known as Finny, are two friends that demonstrate two different ideas about what it means to be masculine in their period of time. This causes a tension between Phineas and Gene and it leads to their relationship to deteriorate. ‘A Separate Peace’ demonstrates divergent ideas about masculinity through several incidents and events throughout the story.

Throughout the novel, the author discusses how the ideal man is viewed in Palestinian culture. After the war, in 1972 Nablus, the status quo for both Israeli and Palestinian men changed. For example, radicals such as Basil, Usama, and the rest of his guerrilla fighters believe that the ideal man defends his honor and dignity, and he refuses to tolerate a dictatorship and submission despite the consequences. On the other hand, men like Adil and Zuhdi stand firm in their belief in which men tend to their family, their priority; they soon become indifferent towards the resistance movement against the Israeli regime.

They loosed a dog on him that went for his genitals.” Khalifeh deftly includes this grotesque imagery to open our eyes to the common brutality they now endure in Palestine under the Israeli’s and make us aware of the barbarity of the situation. It evokes not only a sense of poignancy in us, but outrage as well because his human decency has been violated with such nonchalance. As the audience, we grow to sympathize with the conquered Palestinians and support Usama in his quest to reclaim freedom for Palestine.

Edward James Olmos did a great job at bringing attention to the dangers of gangs and prison and life. As I was watching the film I felt extremely empathetic towards the individuals that were apart the gangs especially, since most of them joined because they felt like the other gang members were their second or only family. Olmos describes friendships as something disposable an easily broken. Although there seemed to be a strong bond in the relationships among the gang members, they were almost always destroyed by the need to maintain the other gang member’s masculinity and power. The extremes that they went through to preserve their identity as the tough guys came at deadly costs. The members had to prove their masculinity by killing their friends and in the case of

To read Babio without recognizing the gender politics at work in the play would disregard much of how the play itself creates meaning. So much of the play’s plot and character dynamics are related to the way gender functions in this play. One major theme of Babio is the idea of masculinity and how masculinity is defined. Through the portrayal of Babio as an effeminate character, Babio is able to define masculinity through absences in Babio’s Character. Consequently, Babio makes the additional point that lovesickness is not an intrinsic aspect of medieval masculinity, despite the fact that love sickness is often attributed to men.

Sarma , Mriganka Sekhar. “Masculinity,War and the Politics of Ethnic Identity: A Study of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.” Masculinity,War and the Politics of Ethnic Identity: A Study of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, vol. 6, no. 4, 2015, pp. 41–46. Sarma evaluates the connection between masculinity and race in a society that is dominated by war.

Suleiman’s overall growth from a young boy into a man is entirely different from Western traditions, as he follows Baba, Moosa and others traditions in the story where Libyan society has turned them into ones who fight for respect and dignity, rather than earn it. These arguments created are fully based on situations written by Matar which are observed by myself in an effort to point out the unjustly situations. However, the title of the novel, In the Country of Men, likely gave the readers the impression that most of the story would be based on manhood and what being a man really means in a country like Libya. In the novel, men who have earned the respect of others have solidified their primary status of being in complete and total control, where having some sort of ‘power’ entails commanding all women and children affiliated with him. In the story, women had no choice but to serve the men, seeming almost customary, proving that in this instance, gender domination is evident.

Throughout human history, gender equality and representation has been a prominent issue. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the unnamed protagonist struggles to find a sense of belonging or identity, as he is repeatedly rejected by the communities and organizations he attempts to join. However, while the novel is mainly centered on the experiences of an African-American black man, it offers glimpses into the lives of the female characters he comes into contact with during his misadventures. The women the protagonist meets do not take an active role in shaping the events of the novel, are one-note and devoid of complexities, and are often subjected to sexual injustices. Ralph Ellison uses a lack of meaning characterization in his female characters

Hisham Matar’s strikingly expressive and poetic debut novel In the Country of Men is very much a coming of age novel documenting the life of Suleiman as he strives to discover who he is. As per the title of the text, Matar explores through the searching and often naïve eyes of Suleiman, the types of men present within Libyan society. Although mid-twentieth century Libya presented an ideal of the ‘Libyan man’ as strong and authoritative, Readers, through various interactions between Suleiman and the men he encounters, uncover that in reality, the ideal man isn’t necessarily all that society has to offer. As such, it is ultimately Suleiman’s role to determine which man he truly is amidst the “madness” of living under the regime.

The year 1948 witnessed the national independence for Israelis and “Al-Nakbah the disaster” (Sa'di 177) for Palestinian Arabs. Jewish Holocaust, Zionist movement, British interference, Arab awakening, religious conflict and disputes over territory built up into this catastrophic war. In consequence, on the one hand, millions of Palestinian Arabs fled into neighboring Arab countries, refugee camps and western countries (Mattar 395). On the other hand, militarization and securitization in Israel disrupted the normal life of its citizens (Éigeartaigh and Getty 18).

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land explores modernism, specifically focusing on the troubling of binaries and the breakdown of the traditional. The boundaries between life and death, wet and dry, male and female, and more are called into question in Eliot’s conception of modernity and the waste land. The blurring of gender boundaries—significantly through Tiresias and the hooded figure scene in “What the Thunder Said”— in the poem lends itself to Eliot’s suggestion that traditional masculinity breaks down and decays in the waste land. Traditional masculinity is further challenged through Eliot’s criticism of hyper-masculinity and heterosexual relations in the modern era through allusions to the myth of Philomela and the “young man carbuncular” scene in “The Fire Sermon.” Along with this, Eliot stages scenes charged with homoeroticism to further challenge ideas of traditional masculinity. Homoerotic scenes such as the “hyacinth girl” scene in “The Burial of the Dead” and the Mr. Eugenides scene in “The Fire Sermon” suggest an intensity and enticement towards male-male relations, while also offering a different depiction of masculinity than is laid out in the heterosexual romance scenes. Through scenes depicting queer desire and homosexual behavior, Eliot suggests that masculinity in the modern era does not need to be marked by aggression and

The fictional accounts of women’s experiences in Fadia Faqir’s, Pillars of Salt, illustrate issues articulated by women’s rights activists in the Middle East. Traditional roles of women and men and a mythology of femininity and masculinity are juxtaposed with the disparate realities of the characters. The damaging forces of colonial rule, war, and Westernization are also exposed.

In The Sand Child, Tahar Ben Jelloun composes a multi-layered tale about Ahmed, a woman socialized as a man, who struggles to reclaim her sexuality. Ben Jelloun contrasts gender and sexual orientation to suggest that a person’s characteristics can be shaped and changed by will, but his sexuality is predisposed and will be the deciding factor of how he will act and identify himself within his community.