Seminar - Sexual Contract, Honor and Masculinity in the Ottoman Society

In English

Hybrid Event

Online Registration

Registration in person (before 2:00 pm on January 14 ) 

Organised by Şeyma Afacan (Kırklareli University, Asst. Prof. / IFEA)

Başak Tuğ (Bilgi University)

Sexual Contract, Honor and Masculinity in the Ottoman Society

This talk is going to concentrate on honor in legal discourse and practice as a sexual contract between the Ottoman state and male subjects. Gender hierarchies knitted with age and class hierarchies in patriarchal societies make the female body and her sexuality the repository of honor for the male family and community members. Thus, restoring honor becomes a matter of “self-defense” for male members of society, generally in the form of private restoration. there has been an increasing claim of the Ottoman political power on protecting its subjects’ honor concerning sexual violence in the petitionary correspondence between the state and the subjects since the eighteenth century. Yet, the modern state, in fact, served as the gatekeeper of the patriarchal moral order in its attempt to create a superior and legitimate position over the other powerholders. What we see in the nineteenth century is the codification of a new constitutional relationship between the state and the male subjects with a heavy stamp of honor over women’s sexuality.