‘Balad Niswen-Hukum Niswen: The Perception of Gender Inversions Between Lebanon and Australia’
Nelia Hyndman-Rizik, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University
In this paper I will explore a perception amongst the first generation of Hadchit male immigrants to Australia that they had arrived in a 'Balad-Niswen-Hukum Niswem'– or a land of women ruled by women. This was a view they saw symbolised by the image of the Queen of England stamped upon the back side of the Australian currency. But what led them to develop such a perception of Australian society, and how did it resound with their memory of the 'order of things' in Lebanon? I will argue that their migration experience itself, as 'global yokels' – or migrating peasants from rural Lebanon, was experienced as an emasculating loss of status for them. This is true, in particular, for the ‘Jeil el Harb’ or war generation of men who fought in the militias during the Lebanese Civil War. What role did narratives of violence play in the construction of masculinity for Hadchit men in Lebanon and what role did its absence in Australia play in their reading of Australia as a feminizing environment governed by the rule of law? What were the results for the women in the Hadchit community? Did Australia present opportunities for Hadchit women to transform their status or did they find themselves, instead, in a migration lag which reinforced patriarchal male dominance within the Hadchit community and the rule of men as the head of the household? The expression ‘Hukum Niswen’ can also refer to a 'hen pecked husband', which is regarded as the ultimate insult or loss of status for a male in a household where the wife has grown too powerful and is 'seen by others' to rule over her husband and thus to rob him of his masculinity.
