Oskuld och klätterträd

Om livsberättelser och livsrum

Abstract

Through a Foucauldian discursive analysis of the recorded interviews of some of the first generation Iranian immigrant women living in Sweden, the intent of this research is to study sexuality as gendered, historicized, and culturally constructed. I will examine the impact of contemporary Iranian Islamic cultural and legal practices, as well as the influence of the multi-faceted experience of migration and displacement in the construction and production of women's sexuality, and what they consider to be shifting across multiple and disjunctive socio-cultural relations. In this paper I focus on one of the notions that were raised by all the research participants, namely virginity. By deconstructing the virginity notion I aimed to show how virginity, as a physical technicality, not only govern women's sexuality but also shape all their movements and lives. The importance of preservation of virginity has also enormous impact on female movement and (female) childhood plays and further on their dreams and future plans. In these settings, virginity is the most significant and valuable gift a woman can offer to her husband. All other valuable qualifications such as her personality, beauty, education and wealth are regarded to be less valuable capital in comparison to her untouched body.