SOC 0851 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Arab Culture, Arab Nationalism, Sexualization
10 Jun 2018
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• Super Girl Fan Fiction in China
o Fan fiction that imagines relationships between boys is especially popular in
many Asian countries like Japan and China
o Much of the fan fiction in China is written by young women between the ages of
14 and 25
o Super Girl is an annual television show contest broadcast in mainland China,
sometimes referred to as the Chinese version of American Idol
o Super Girl fan fiction focuses on imagining relationships between the women
contestants of the show, so its fan fiction that centers on real people
o Academic fans have argued that these stories have the potential to challenge
sexual taboos, rebel against heterosexual norms, and turn women from the
objects of the male gaze into active gazers at male objects
o Girls and women are still largely absent from these narratives
o Veeratio of loe etee e i fa fitio does’t alays traslate ito
tolerance or acceptance of real-life homosexuality
• The struggle over images
o Much of the power of the media as an institution lies in the ability to create a
particular vision of reality
o Whe e’re oarded ith ertai iages ad stories aout ay partiular
group – like transgender individuals – the images and stories depicted begin to
take on the force of reality
o Harems and Terrorists: Depictions of Arabs in the Media
▪ the media creates a view of Arab men as extremist terrorists
▪ for much of the Anglo-European world, women in the Middle East have
been viewed as exotic others, as the other half of the division between
the West and the Oriental world, which originally encompassed
everything that was not European
▪ using the image of the harem as the primary lens through which to view
Middle Eastern women led to an emphasis on the sensuality and
submissiveness of Arab women
▪ a harem is, after all, associated with sexuality, and the concept of women
being confined within the physical space of the harem implies women
who are passive by nature
▪ images of Middle Eastern women as oversexualized and submissive are
similar to the way in which those within Western culture have often
depicted Asian women, particularly through the stereotype of the geisha
▪ the view of the Arab women from the outside differs considerably from
the portrayals of Arab women from within the Arab world
▪ although the outside world may view Arab women in general as
sexualized and passive, from the perspective of many individuals within
Arab culture, women are the moral gauge for the rest of society,
including Arab men
• this is because of the connection in places like Egypt between
women and nationalism, where women are considered to be the
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