The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan and Sexual Sensationalism

Bacha Bazi, a taboo cultural practice in some Central Asian communities, has become a marginal feature in Western news media as a result of a PBS Frontline story"The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan." This practice is, as the story attempts to suggest, extremely problematic. It is a complicated intersection of culture, moral relativism, and economic insecurity, all issues that the story, to varying degrees, wrestles with. However, major components of this discourse are shoved into the periphery: sexuality, crossdressing, and psychosexual development. The story fails to develop these issues and to analyze Bacha Bazi both historically and culturally. Instead, pathos and inherent infantalizationa are utilized to make the material explicitly disgusting for both Western audiences and audiences that prefer sexual repression and normativity.

I will first comment on some of the quotes from the video and the text below the video. The narrator, describing Shafiq, says that, though he was said to be 11, he "looked no older than 9." This is precisely what I mean by infantalization. Representing the boys as younger than they are through this type of exaggeration allows the narrative to be structured around a sexual ethos that negates any broad evaluation of the sexual dynamic involved in Bacha Bazi. Nine presupposes prepubescense, whereas eleven is the beginning of sexual maturity. Sex itself is subordinated to an inappropriate age dynamic, a subversive restructuring of the Western "nuclear" family. Sex is often a footnote, repressed by "research": "According to our research, the boys are used for sex by powerful men."

Crossdressing, pederasty, and Central Asia are all topics that will illicit a uniform response from Western audiences. Sex doesn't need to be investigated, the social and individual functions of Bacha Bazi don't need to be expanded or understood. Cultural and sexual otherness are enough to frighten and disgust. The problem with the piece is that it relies to much on these factors, representing cultural and sexual practices unfamiliar to audiences, and doesn't examine the more familiar roots of the problem: sociopolitical hierarchies expanded by military power and drugs. Not to say these factors aren't mentioned, but their roles in investigating Bacha Bazi are minimized. Sexual taboos, cross dressing and sodomy, are exploited in order to take a relatively bottom-up analysis of the issue. The story of Shafiq seems to suggest that a minimalist approach, the charity of one individual, may partially solve the issue. That a separation of sexual object and sexual master will dissolve the intricate power balance. This is simply not the case. This may, at least for a while, work in Shafiq's case, but complete dissolution of the system requires us to transcend Bacha Bazzi itself, and its transgressive appeal, and to focus on a system that condones economic, political and social subordination (and in this regard, Western civilizations themselves can improve, suggesting the moral relativist and moral absolutist debate).

The "dissolution" of the system, as I have termed it, requires us, however, to investigate more complicated issues. The cultural issues that it raises should be well known. Bacha Bazi is intrinsic to (certain) cultures in the region, and shouldn't be regarded as inherently evil. That this Frontline episode is appealing to a Western gaze is obvious, and the function and ethics of that gaze should always be recognized. Psychosexual development, and "proper" social and sexual relationships, aren't constructed by modern "Western" institutions.

This brings us to historical examples. The major examples, which are ironically part of the Western tradition, are ancient Greece and Rome. Greece is now famous for its pederasty, and Rome is known to have been involved in similar practices (though they were more heavily regulated), and other forms of sexual "deviance." Bacha Bazi is similar to some practices in both cultures. However, in Greece and Rome, like Bacha Bazi circles, these practices were mostly identified as healthy social relationships. This isn't to say that subordination and rape did not occur. However, the compass by which to interpret such terms is shifted. The text under the video suggests that the men were smug, unaware of what they were doing. This is supposed to function as a mechanism through which to produce disgust for the man. It points, however, to these deeper cultural issues, the difficulties of penetrating cultural "Others" with external gazes.

This all suggests an even broader question, a question of philosophy: how does free will exist within a cultural context, and is there a morally absolute "free will? The latter question involves social power dynamics. Society inherently forces individuals to conform to certain moral and social codes. Is free will, then, a viable possibility? Well, within the cultural context, yes, because any system produces individuals within that system that are compliant to the system's demands. Free will is a function of the moral and societal mechanism. There is no "absolute" free will, no ability to do "what you please"; there are merely relative free wills, codes of acceptable and necessary behavior that emerge from the power structures and institutions of any given society.

These issues are often not recognized when one culture interprets another. This brings me to a video by The Young Turks in which they analyze "The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan."



The Young Turks do a good job of summing up some of the sexual issues implicit to the Frontline episode. They also talk a bit about religious hypocrisy, a central feature of many issues relating to sexuality. However, they give in to the "disgust" that allows the intricacies of the sexual issues to be evaluated (and, in that regard, are a microcosm of most of the audience). The disgust is utilized, in a way, to conflate the dancing itself with sex. The dance stands in for the act of sex, and a perfectly harmless cultural tradition becomes associated with a sexual taboo. Blame is displaced, and therefore any question of why the practice is problematic, or what it means for psychosexual development is subordinated to pathos and Western idealizations of "childhood."

One last note that has to do with culture is the way in which Ana Kasparian states that the boys are "forced" to dance. This force goes back to the function of moral and social systems on free will. In the United States, children are almost universally "forced" into school. Like the Bacha, some enjoy it, and some do not. The argument would then be that US schools provide the service of educating children so they have the possibility of economic mobility. We can, however, relate this to Bacha Bazi. Economic mobility is almost nonexistence for many people in the regions that practice Bacha Bazi. A bacha, therefore, is able to provide a means of economic stability for their family. Also, a Bacha learns a type of "profession," a subversive education, that provides a social function (however disgusting to an external gaze). This isn't to say that traditional Western education and Bacha education have similar goals or outcomes, but the free will issue is analogous.

It is not also to say that I am defending either system, as the Bacha system certainly has major problems, mostly stemming from individual identity. Bacha education also unfortunately categorizes the boys in a certain way, making it difficult for them to move into a new profession or lifestyle (which the documentary does, fortunately, examine). However, economic and social mobility is, inevitably, also a Western capitalist ideal, further demonstrating the complexity of this issue. Ultimately, it is most important to note that the possible sexual implications of Bacha Bazi are still relatively ambiguous, and psychosexual philosophy and cultural/historical analysis should be separated from the pathos and cultural absolutism that is prevalent in this highly contentious, and difficult, issue.