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ACADEMIA Letters
Hegemonic Masculinity, Oppressed Femininity and the
(Un)Gendered Loss of Identities in a Dystopia
 MS. SHRADDHA JHA, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar
Dr. Amrita Satapathy, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar
The idea of hegemonic masculinity is not new. In a society that is itself oppressed under au-
thoritarian governments, it is disturbing because everyone in such a society could be going
through a crisis of identity. For example, in a dystopian setup, it is disturbing to see humans
oppressing humans based on their gender. In fact, ‘alterity’ or loss of identity, is an indis-
tinguishable feature of a postmodern dystopian society. The question then arises is, do men
establish their identities in such societies by oppressing whom they consider the ‘weaker sex’?
Because the man’s identity is precarious too, one can hypothesize that in a society ruled by
fear and dehumanization, women also face this ‘double despotism’ (from the government, and
from their patriarchal head).
The precariousness is because the government in a dystopian setup exercises its power
under the garb of religion. They stop recreational activities, all forms of socializing, ownership
of businesses, destroying the peace and order around. They own or possess the bodies of
people, mentally, physically, socially, and politically. To quote Foucault, this control exercised
over people’s bodies can be called ‘Biopower’, a practice of the postmodern nations through
“an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies
and the control of populations” (Jayathilake, p.1). When the dystopian state owns something
as personal as the body of its citizens, how then can the latter find their identity in such a
society?
Dystopian societies have their roots in civil wars and in the totalitarianism of govern-
ments, where the loss of identity is faced not just by the female gender, but also by the male.
Considering post-war Europe to be a dystopia then, Septimus Smith in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.
Dalloway (1925), or Stanley in Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1959), or the Captain
Academia Letters, August 2021
Corresponding Author:  MS. SHRADDHA JHA, s21hs09005@iitbbs.ac.in
Citation: Jha,  .S., Satapathy, D.A. (2021). Hegemonic Masculinity, Oppressed Femininity and the
(Un)Gendered Loss of Identities in a Dystopia. Academia Letters, Article 2854.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2854.
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©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
in D. H. Lawrence’s The Prussian Officer (1914), are afflicted by shell-shock, validate that
trauma is gender-neutral. In a dystopia, we can say that the greatest trauma is that of being
under perpetual surveillance, of losing one’s personal identity and freedom. We have come
across dystopian settings in some of the classic fictional works like Aldous Huxley’s Brave
New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel (1949), and we have
seen through these depictions, how man has been in an endless search for identity. This loss
of identity is faced by the entire population (regardless of gender) residing in a dystopian state.
In a postmodern dystopia, the human body becomes the center of all control exercised by
the authoritarian government. When the government has to foist its fanaticism on its people,
they start by putting constraints on what one wears, what one eats, what one does for leisure,
where one goes, who or what one worships, and essentially, every single and otherwise mun-
dane activity of life that one performs. The concept of “bare life” by Agamben is offered as
an ideal explanation of “biopolitical power”, i.e., in a bio-politically governed society, the
biological existence of life is all that really matters, as against the way life is to be lived (Jay-
athilake, p.1). Similarly, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) is analysed as an attempt to
depict how the female body can become a “political vessel and an object to promote/impose
a patriarchal, conservative and repressive authority” (Di Minico, p.12).
Women are often perceived as the ‘other’ gender; no matter which race, culture, colour, or
class they come from – women are always marginalized. They remain subjects of oppression,
despite the demand for equality wave-after-wave in the feminist movements. In a dystopian
society, they are doubly oppressed - “women can suffer two times: first, because of politi-
cal/authoritarian power, secondly through a male/sexist oppression” (Di Minico, p.71).
The arguments stated above make it evident that there is also the prevalence of trauma in
people living in such societies. A dystopian society strips its citizens of their fundamental
‘human’ rights, and the word ‘human’ connotes every gender (or no gender at all). Having
said that, we can also say that men in such societies are equally at a loss of freedom and a
loss of identity. They may not be oppressed in the true sense of the term, but they lose their
free will, just like all others in society. They have no recreation, the least control over their
businesses, and the uncertainty of having the right to life hovers above them as much as any
other human in society.
Jesutofunmi E. Somade in her blog cites instances of bacha bazi, which “…is an Afghan
custom that involves boys as young as nine being forced to dress as women and to dance se-
ductively for an audience of older men”, which have been recorded in Afghanistan, especially
during the Civil War Years (1996-2001). It is a heinous crime involving sexual abuse, hu-
man trafficking, and the disruption of human life, from a very tender age. The other term for
bacha bazi is bacha bareesh, i.e., beardless boys. The usage of this term in a derogatory man-
Academia Letters, August 2021
Corresponding Author:  MS. SHRADDHA JHA, s21hs09005@iitbbs.ac.in
Citation: Jha,  .S., Satapathy, D.A. (2021). Hegemonic Masculinity, Oppressed Femininity and the
(Un)Gendered Loss of Identities in a Dystopia. Academia Letters, Article 2854.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2854.
2
©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
ner coerces the victims of such societies to believe that “beardless” is feminine, and feminine
is derogatory. The idea of masculinity, we can hence say, is perhaps also rooted in the scorn
levelled against femininity.
Paternal laws form the basis of all cultural relations and hence the subjugation of women
by men. Shirley Neuman in her paper, ’Just a Backlash’: Margaret Atwood, Feminism,
and The Handmaid’s Tale (2006) trace the functioning of a state with “strict theocracy” in a
dystopian novel. Hirschkind and Mahmood in Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counter-
Insurgency (2002) opine that the burqa or head-scarves were the symbols of the so-called
Islamic fundamentalism, which was considered as generally oppressive of women. It has
also been observed in Politics of the Female Body: Postcolonial Women Writers of the Third
World (2006) by Ketu H. Katrak that in highly conservative Hindu societies, customs like
the pativrata implying the husband as equivalent to God or the kanyadan where the kanya or
virgin is treated as dan or gift to the husband have been the stimulus of domination by men.
The misuse of religion and the oppression of women in the name of religion is only further
proof of how men impose their patriarchy over women only to establish their identities. The
only identity they are left with is that of their “performed” masculinity, an act that liberates
them, and reassures them of their status in society. Simply put, it can be perceived that men
find their liberation in totalitarian societies, by establishing their identities as husbands, or
fathers of male children, or simply, as patriarchs.
The institution of dowry in India like any other dystopian institution, puts both the man
and the woman, in a position of precarity, socially and psychologically. The groom’s edu-
cational qualifications, his socio-economic status, are made the benchmarks to assess whatamount has to be paid by the bride as dowry. Interestingly the fact that such ‘assessments’
lead to a reductive idea of masculinity is something that is starkly overlooked. The society
has somehow failed to realise that while it is commodifying the woman through such customs
and rituals it is also simultaneously propagating an ambiguous idea of man and masculinity.
This accelerates the problems of hegemonic masculinity, oppressed femininity, and the idea
of (un)gendered loss of identities in a dystopic set-up. Such customs have been oppressing
the females since their very inception, but it is time we critique it from a perspective of not
just women empowerment but gender equity.
Social trends, movies, advertisements, and art, as the imitation of reality, reduce men
to mono-dimensional entities, rendering a shallower concept of gender. Cinema has always
glorified the idea of alpha male characters that are macho, virile, and masochistic, who lack
emotions. Advertisements of products for men depict that a certain body type, a certain skin
tone, a certain deodorant, will be the x-factor that will attract women towards them. These
advertisements do not just raise questions about irrelevant stereotypes of women in the non-
Academia Letters, August 2021
Corresponding Author:  MS. SHRADDHA JHA, s21hs09005@iitbbs.ac.in
Citation: Jha,  .S., Satapathy, D.A. (2021). Hegemonic Masculinity, Oppressed Femininity and the
(Un)Gendered Loss of Identities in a Dystopia. Academia Letters, Article 2854.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2854.
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©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
binary postmodern scenario, but also raise questions about what is it a man should do to be a
man. Most importantly, it triggers the question, why gender stereotypes at all?
It is therefore important to understand that binary systems and rigid gender constructs
cause wastage of human potential, and a great deal of hardship to those who do not conform
to these systems and constructs, in order to be accepted by society. However, if we know
why patriarchs are patriarchs if we know why masculinity has the stereotypical definition it
has, and if we know how these masculinities can really hinder the process of bringing gender
equity, then we will be able to find the root cause of the problems of females in all societies at
large. When we challenge the existing notions of masculinity, we are also presenting an alter-
native form of masculinity. An alternative idea of masculinity will give rise to men who are
comfortable with not having unquestionable dominance over others in society. An alternative
masculinity will inspire men to be emotional, concerned, expressive, empathetic and hence
able to handle grief. Men who will be inspired thus will also understand how gender equity
will benefit not only women but also men themselves.
The dystopian representations of femininity and masculinity have now become the reality
of our societies. Dystopia is no more the setting of a far-fetched fantastical science fiction,
but a society ruled by fanatics, and a power-mongering government, that categorises humans
based on race, culture, gender, and class. Therefore, dystopia is everywhere today. Studying
a dystopian society, studying what it does to people, and what methods it uses to reign over
them, is going to give us the tools to battle it. In conclusion, we can say that the man who is
himself precarious is but the oppressor of the woman in a dystopian society. Once a man is
not a husband, neither the father of a male child nor simply the patriarchal head of a family,
he is stripped of all his possible identities. Hence, it is plausible that he assumes these con-
formational roles which are symbolic of the classic hegemonic masculine traits. This gives
him the legitimacy to carry out domestic oppression, which cements his identity as a man and
liberates him from the social and political oppression of a dystopian existence.
Works Cited
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doi:10.3390/h8010038.
Academia Letters, August 2021
Corresponding Author:  MS. SHRADDHA JHA, s21hs09005@iitbbs.ac.in
Citation: Jha,  .S., Satapathy, D.A. (2021). Hegemonic Masculinity, Oppressed Femininity and the
(Un)Gendered Loss of Identities in a Dystopia. Academia Letters, Article 2854.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2854.
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©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Hirschkind, Charles, and Saba Mahmood. “Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counter-
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Academia Letters, August 2021
Corresponding Author:  MS. SHRADDHA JHA, s21hs09005@iitbbs.ac.in
Citation: Jha,  .S., Satapathy, D.A. (2021). Hegemonic Masculinity, Oppressed Femininity and the
(Un)Gendered Loss of Identities in a Dystopia. Academia Letters, Article 2854.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2854.
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©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0