Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on how men's feelings of emasculation in Egypt led many to support the Islamic camp in post-Mubarak Egypt. The 2011 revolution opened a space for certain men to aspire for imposing new moral codes to boost their position while marginalizing women and depriving them of their rights.

Paper long abstract:

This papers tackles male experiences of powerlessness and emasculation in Egypt that led many to support an Islamic regime led by the Muslim brotherhood post the January 2011 revolution. For decades, men in Egypt have been suffering the shift to neo-liberal economy, which has affected many aspects of their life: socially, economically, politically, etc. In this regard, I argue that the implications of these circumstances have influenced men's choices after the revolution and led many of them to favor the Islamic camp while seeing religion as a possible solution to their problems. Hence, the rise of Islamists and their control of power after the revolution could be connected to the crisis of masculinity that Egyptian men have been facing for several decades. In a changing Egyptian society after the revolution, many men pled for ruling in the name of religion, which they hoped would lead to restoring their position in society after undergoing a process of emasculation and feelings of marginalization for several decades under the Mubarak's regime. In this process, women and their hard won gains under previous regimes since 1952 appeared as a vivid target to this emerging masculinity. In this context, the transformations in which Egyptian society has been going through opened new horizons for certain men to think about their masculinity in different terms based on a moral order that allowed them to imagine a new society dominantly controlled by men while denying women the right and the space to actively participate in Egyptian public life.