A joint initiative between the University of Bergen
and CMI – Chr. Michelsen Institute
Gender and power relations, and Islamic understanding of marital and sexual politics in Malaysian Islam, have significantly changed in the past few decades.
Photo: empirisis.me on Unsplash In this talk, Patricia Sloane-White argues that joking relations between adult Malay men and women prior to Islamization in Malaysia were symmetrical, and reflected an acknowledgement of women’s sexual and marital powers. Such banter allowed women to publicly diminish male prowess and the male privilege of polygamy.
But gender and power relations and Islamic understanding of marital and sexual politics in Malaysian Islam have significantly changed in the past few decades. Sloane-White demonstrates how these changes have registered in today’s Islamic “public space”— that is, in office-based joking relations and in public life where sexualised banter (like polygamy itself) is easily accepted as a male privilege against which women can no longer talk back.
Patricia Sloane-White is a professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Women and Gender Studies with joint appointments in Asian Studies and Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware, USA.
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