CHAPTER NINE: COMPETING AND
COMPLEMENTARY AGENCY IN THE DISCOURSES OF WOMEN’S SEXUAL AGENCY
The fatwas analysed in this study revealed competing and complementary webs of discourses in relation to women’s sexual agency. Using feminist post structural discourse analysis and the analytical frameworks drawn from the adab-al-mufti treatises as described by Masud, Messick and Powers (1996), four main discourses were identified. These were male sexual rights, female sexual satisfaction, mutuality, and health and wellbeing.
In response to the first research question on the discourses on sexual agency in the fatwas, sections one and two of this chapter present a brief methodological commentary and key findings, noting how both petitioners and muftis engage with the identified discourses. Complementarity, tensions, and disruptions in the interplay between these discourses are exposed. Section three addresses the second research objective, namely to gauge the extent to which the fatwas enabled the negotiations of women’s sexual health, revealing varying approaches to the different health dimensions by both petitioners and muftis. Finally, section four details additional prominent discourses which were identified in the fatwas and which played a significant role, pointing to the need for further research.
It is further evident that the discourses of male need and female availability do not operate independently. They interact with other discourses, which may in some situations allow a woman 105 to locate herself in a strong position in the discourse of male sexual rights using ideas of fairness, which she may also apply to both herself and her husband. In doing so a wife may disrupt her ordinary position of powerlessness and prioritise her personal desires and expectations of mutual consent, values characteristic of contemporary understandings of marriage.
Importantly for this study, women also use the health and well-being discourse as a means to acquire agency within the sexual realm. A woman may use the discourse of male sexual rights to argue for an annulment to release her from a marriage where she cannot fulfil a husband’s rights because of her emotional and mental state, in this way positioning herself strongly within the discourse of health and well-being.106 In yet another situation where a woman’s physical health is affected due to excessive sexual demands as a newly-wed, a female petitioner positions herself as powerless within the male sexual rights discourse,107 but simultaneously also positions herself as powerful using a discourse of health and well-being. This suggests that a powerful position within the discourse of male sexual rights does not necessarily guarantee that male sexual need is always prioritised by both wives and muftis in the fatwas in this study.
In some fatwas,108 wives were themselves powerful in their refusal to engage in sexual intimacy while in others, as in chapter six, both men and women positioned wives strongly within competing discourses of male and female sexual rights discourse to which was added the complementary discourses of mutuality and of health and well-being.
105 Refer to the analysis of fatwa E and F in chapter five and seven.
106 In the face of severe physical, emotional, and psychological suffering, the female petitioner in fatwas E and F locates herself both as powerless and powerful within the health and well-being discourse. In fatwa F she assumes power within this discourse when she uses her emotional and psychological state to argue for a legal mechanism to exit the marriage.
107 See fatwa G in appendix 2.
108 Referring to fatwas A and C in chapters five and seven respectively.
In some situations a link is forged between the male and female sexual rights discourses and the portrayal of female sexuality as negative and dangerous.109 In these cases, both male and female petitioners position the wife as simultaneously powerful and powerless by relying on the normative gendered view of a dangerous female sexuality that is a man’s responsibility to control. In fatwa M for instance, where the couple are having marital problems and the husband chooses not to have sex with his wife, she uses the potential danger of her unmet sexual need as a coercive measure to argue for her right to sexual intimacy and his duty to fulfil that right.
Lastly, the analysis in chapter eight revealed that petitioners also link suffering and affliction in all facets of health and well-being to pietistic considerations.110 Thus, petitioners position themselves strongly within the discourse of health and well-being and the complementary discourse of mutuality in their appeals to muftis to alleviate their suffering and facilitate agency within the sexual realm.
9.1.1 Key Findings – Petitioners
Askimam.org petitioners demonstrate how contemporary women and men are making choices in the sexual arena with regard to their “desires pleasures and experiences“
(Lesch & Kruger 2005: 481), exploring possibilities for sexual satisfaction and intimacy and how these are weighed against pietistic concerns.
Determined by life experiences and an internalized ethical voice, and consistent with observations in the scholarship,111 women in the fatwas negotiate the pragmatic legal aspects of sexuality by negotiating, resisting or rejecting the discourse of female responsibility to fulfil male sexual need and instead enact their agency in a variety of ways, amongst these the capacity to refuse.
109 Referring to fatwas B and M. Also refer to section 9.4 for further extrapolation on the discourse of sin in relation to the view of a dangerous female sexuality.
110 Chapter eight included an analysis of all the fatwas in the study. This tendency was demonstrated particularly in the analysis of the second enquiry in fatwa C and the petition in fatwa E.
111 As already noted, Ahmed (1992: 66) refers to women’s negotiations of the ethical and pragmatic voices. Building on Ahmed’s thesis, Hoel and Shaikh’s (2013) study on negotiations of sex amongst South African women demonstrate this trend too. See chapter two section 2.2
Male and female arguments in the fatwas prioritise female sexual need and resist hierarchical and normative gender constructs, which integrate male desire with female subservience and obedience. Some women in the fatwas shape powerful subjective positions for themselves, by locating themselves boldly within discourses that otherwise render them powerless. Women also identify positions of power within discourses of mutuality and health and well-being, and prioritise ideas of mutuality and reciprocity in modern Muslim marriages particularly those in minority Muslim contexts.
But they simultaneously display a pietistic commitment to the classical Islamic tradition. This aligns with Ali’s thesis that many Muslims remain thus committed, but experience a tension between traditional marital norms which prioritise male need and female availability and the stress on “consent and mutuality in contemporary Muslim discourses on marriage and gender relations” (2006: xxiii). In this regard, the petitioners in the online fatwas on askimam.org are much like Muslim petitioners in Europe who
…seek fatwas as authoritative legal and religious opinions that can help them navigate the tensions and conflicts arising from the new realities of their marriages and family lives. They are aware of the traditional norms regulating gender relations, but their daily experiences of their marital roles diverges from these norms” (Larsen 2015: 215).