Diaspora och sexualitet

Förhandlingar om kön och sexualitet i ett föränderligt iransk-svenskt kulturellt landskap

Abstract

This article is about diaspora. Through an analysis of the narratives of first generation Iranian women living in Sweden, I demonstrate how migratory experiences impact sexuality and how and in what ways sexuality is constitutive to the migratory process. By discussing some of the key subjects raised by the interviewees, such as intimacy in the diasporic space, contradictory gender discourses, the dominating impacts of existing Orientalist stereotypes, and their sense of (be)longing or lack of (be)longing, I examine how the women experience their sexuality through the intersecting and sometimes contradictory discourses. By focusing on entangled issues involving subjectivity, sameness, difference, otherness, domination, agency, and marginality, I destabilize essentialist approaches of identity. With gender and sexuality as the main subjects of the analysis, I discuss how moral values of the women regarding (in)appropriate sexual behaviour undergo various transformations. They take part in multiple (Iranian and Swedish) discourses and discard others while striving to make space for themselves ’inside’ these constraining norms. The women experience a discrepancy as a result of being thwarted by two seemingly different cultures – while both cultures construct discourses filled with stereotypes of so-called natives and outsiders. However, living in Sweden, where intersecting racist and sexist discourses come to life on a daily basis, it is actually not a thwarting by ’two cultures.’ It is, in fact, a merger of Swedishness with Iranianness (with all their complexities), along with other characteristics. It is a complexity within the culture(s) in which the women live.