Sensitive Men, and Masculine Women

Our parents taught boys to become men, and girls to become women. It was greatly unacceptable for one to act like the other gender, and if parents find out that their son, or their daughter is gay they would do anything to stop this as soon as possible, or end up kicking them out of the house.

The backbone of culture in Qatar is the religion: Islam. It is forbidden in Islam to imitate a women in action, dress and/or behavior, and similarly prohibits women from imitating men in their way of talking, dress and behavior. Before the Internet and television, it was easier for parents to raise their children and teach them about their gender roles. Parents saw the media as a threat to their children. With the Television and Internet around children it gives them a chance to adapt the gender-specific norms from the other gender. (Leaving aside the psychological or birth-deformations factors). Source.

People in Qatar believe that this is nature: Men are supposed to be masculine, and women should be sensitive and feminine. Even religions believe and encourage the same thing, in Islam and even in Christianity.

However, some people are starting to let go of these values and it became acceptable for men to be sensitive and feminine, and women to be masculine. Jawad AlAli was negatively sanctioned and disrespected by men when he first came out in 1998 because of his “sensitive” songs and the way that he was singing that was very “feminine”; women however liked his songs because they wanted men who were a bit sensitive and actually care about them. This is similar to what happened to Justin Bieber when he came out.



Then came Abdulqadir AlHadhood, who was also very sensitive and feminine in his songs, and was negatively sanctioned and made fun of because of his feminism. Both of these singers were made fun of in tv shows, and on the internet, however, they both became famous of their GOOD songs that people started to like eventually.



Original Song: Thbt Ashkra (I know I'm in love!) - Lyrics in English



Hassan AlBallam, parody: saying that he is doing the housework and is the housewife of the house, while she is watching the news, in a program called "WiFi" that was broadcast on MBC.


Parody Song: Dkht Ashkara (I know I'm confused!)



Not only sensitive men were negatively sanctioned, in fact, masculine women were even greatly sanctioned by both men and women! Therefore we have more people hating and sanctioning masculine women. Shamma Hamdan, an adolescent who participated in the Arabs Got Talent show on MBC, shocked the people from all over the Arabic countries because of her first appearance in the show, where she showed up dressed, styled and acting like a man.



People voted for her, because she was a good singer, but she dressed differently in the latter episodes, where she had some make up and wearing female clothes.




I respect all of the artists I mentioned above, and don’t want this post to be a negative critique about them, but I’m trying to show how some people has changed their opinions about acting like the other gender.