Being a Coptic Man: Masculinity,Class,and Social Change among Egyptian Copts

New Coptic Men

Inspired by Inhorn’s work, this article will focus on young Coptic men in contemporary Egypt and their search for their own answers to what it “means to be a man.” Based on fieldwork among Copts in the city of Alexandria, this article will be structured around three main points.

First, young Coptic men make personal priorities and face social expectations that differ from those facing earlier generations, particularly within the family sphere.

Second, these young men ascribe to themselves a distinct set of masculine norms and ideals, including a focus on conjugal connectivity and attention to the needs and concerns of their wives and children. In doing so, they define themselves in contrast to Muslim men of rural origin and lower socioeconomic status, who are construed as their “masculine others,” representing a polar opposite to the kind of manhood that they themselves aspire to.

Finally, these young Coptic men ascribe to forms of masculinity that do not seem to reinforce patriarchal power relations, nor lend themselves to hierarchical placement in relation to otherwise dominant forms of masculinity within a predominantly Muslim society. They embrace masculine ideals and identities that rely on social validation within their own community rather than within a broader Egyptian society. As such, they constitute forms of masculinity that are parallel, but not subordinate, to a “hegemonic masculinity,” challenging some of the central premises on which that notion is commonly based.

In pursuing these arguments, I will build on Inhorn’s notion of emergent masculinities and look at how ideals of manhood among young Copts intersect with generational, class-based, and sectarian divides. Further on, I follow Joseph (1993) in understanding patriarchy as “the privileging of males and seniors and the mobilization of kinship structures, morality, and idioms to legitimate and institutionalize gendered and aged domination” (p. 453). On an everyday basis, patriarchy can be made manifest through learned behaviors and social practices that privilege not only the authority but also the personal needs and concerns of males and seniors, often at the expense of females and juniors.

The case of urban, middle-class Coptic men shows that, under some circumstances, resourceful, self-assertive men can challenge or at least decenter patriarchy as a defining aspect of their masculinity. They can do so by adopting masculine ideals and practices that emphasize conjugal connectivity and that place the needs and concerns of their partners and children before other social commitments and personal concerns.

Hegemonic Masculinity

Since the late 1980s, Connell’s (1987, 2000) concept of hegemonic masculinity has been a central point of reference in masculinity studies. The term refers to a set of practices that, in a given society, constitutes “the currently most honored way of being a man” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 832), a form of masculinity that becomes “culturally exalted above all other” (Connell 1995, 77). Based on research among male adolescents in an Australian high school, Cornell (1987) describes a hierarchy of competing masculinities in which hegemonic masculinity represents an ideal that “all other men must position themselves in relation to” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 533) and that he distinguish from “subordinate” and “complicit masculinities.” The concept was created to grasp men’s patriarchal dominance over women and the hegemony of some masculinities over others, as two interrelated and mutually constitutive relations of domination.

The link between the two forms of hegemony has been celebrated, but also criticized, for seemingly dismissing the idea that some masculinities may attain hegemonic status without also upholding patriarchal power relations (Christensen and Jensen 2014, 63). Inhorn (2012) argues that, in a Middle Eastern context, a focus on hegemonic masculinity tends to favor a reification of orientalist stereotypes, in which men are invariably portrayed as patriarchal, misogynist, religious zealots (pp. 49–50). In its place, Inhorn introduces the term “emergent masculinities” to account for the change in and multiplicity of masculine practices found in the Middle East today.

Inhorn’s work is a central contribution to a small, but growing, field of masculinity studies in the Middle East. In recent years, she has been joined by Ghannam (2013), Naguib (2015), and other scholars (Schielke 2015; Kreil 2016a) in providing ethnographic accounts that add nuance, complexity, and dynamism to the portrayal of Muslim men in the Middle East. Some focus primarily on men’s relationships with and responsibilities toward their families and the women in their lives, and the importance of these relationships in shaping masculine subjectivities. Much of this research seeks to challenge negative stereotypes and monolithic descriptions of Arab men, and, in particular, Muslim men in the Middle East. However, negative stereotypes are not only found in Western representations of Arab men. They are also found in the Arab world itself where they serve to justify and reinforce social divides based on class, regional identities, and other criteria. As will be addressed in this article, they also provide some direction for the formation of an urban, middle-class masculinity in opposition to a rural and working class masculine other.

Emergent Masculinities

Inhorn (2012) describes the emergence of new and less patriarchal forms of masculinity among men in the Arab world. She follows men who, when confronted with fertility problems in their marriages, defy family pressure and patriarchal expectations by sticking with their wives, and going through great trials and sometimes humiliating medical procedures in order to have a child or, together, coming to terms with having a life without children. In Inhorn’s (2012) analysis, these men represent new forms of masculinity in that they “do not want to be perceived as domineering patriarchs; they do not view fatherhood as the be-all and end-all of masculinity; they value conjugal intimacy and privacy, sometimes at the expense of larger familial commitments; and they often adore their wives as friends and lovers” (p. 2). She describes men who place their commitment to and emotional connection with their wives above everything else, sometimes to the disapproval of their own families. In this, she argues, they are challenging traditional notions of manhood and, quite possibly, carving the way for what, in time, may become new hegemonic ways of being men, ways that may involve, if not a rejection, at least a decentering of patriarchy (Inhorn 2012, 15). Seeking to explain the reproduction of patriarchal family structures, Joseph (1993) introduced the concept of “connectivity,” referring to “relationships in which a person’s boundaries are relatively fluid, so that persons feel a part of significant others” (p. 452). Based on fieldwork among Arab families in Lebanon, she argued that connectivity is intertwined with patriarchy to produce “patriarchal connectivity,” allowing for the crafting of “males and seniors prepared to direct the lives of females and juniors, and females and juniors prepared to respond to the direction of males and seniors” (Joseph 1999, 13). Building on Joseph’s work, Inhorn applied the term “conjugal connectivity” as referring to a relational bond between spouses that can challenge the traditional primacy of patriarchal family relations. This experience, and embrace of deep emotional bonds with their spouses, is a central feature of the new emergent masculinities described by Inhorn.

The concept of emergent masculinities builds on Williams’s (1977) concept of “emergence” as “new meanings and values, new practices and kinds of relationships that are continually being created” (p. 123). In Inhorn’s (2012) work, emergent masculinities encompass three areas of masculine change: change over the male life course as men age, change across generations, and change in the social history that involves men in transformative processes (p. 60). These three areas come together in the transition from bachelors to family men, where men find themselves confronted with different expectations, responding to new social and economic conditions, and identifying with norms that differ from those of earlier generations.

Thus, this article will focus on young Coptic men who have recently established their own families or are in the process of doing so. After a brief presentation of Egypt’s Coptic community, I will focus on a few young Coptic men in order to explore their perceptions of changing masculine ideals and practices within their community. I will then look at how broader developments in Egyptian society—including their precarious position as Copts in Egypt—inform their ideals and conceptions of masculine responsibilities.

The arguments presented in this article are based on fieldwork conducted in Alexandria in three different periods: first in April to July 2014, in October to November 2014, and then in February to March 2015. Through prior connections, I was introduced to members of one of the biggest Coptic congregations in Alexandria. After introducing myself and explaining my project, I spent a lot of time in the local church and its social gathering points. Here, I interviewed several clerics, and lay members working as volunteers in the church, as well as young Copts, both boys and girls, aged fifteen to twenty-five, some of whose social lives were strongly centered on the church, and some for whom the church held a peripheral role. In addition, I got to know a number of Coptic men aged between twenty-five and fifty, who were all married or at least engaged to be married, and most of whom also had children. I interviewed some of these men two or three times, and a few of them I got to know more closely and spend more time with. Broadly speaking, most of these men could be characterized as being of middle-class background. They would proudly self-identify as middle-class men, they came from families of some means, had been able to attend church run private schools, ³ obtain a university degree, and for the most part—and often through family connections—landed jobs that enabled them to provide for their own families.

As a North European of Protestant background, I was very much an outsider, but as a married man in my late thirties, and a father of two small children, I could connect with these men on the basis of some shared concerns and experiences, allowing me to learn more about their personal concerns and aspirations as husbands/fiancés and as fathers. Spending time with them in more private settings, such as at their homes, improvised coffee-stands in their neighborhoods, or coffee shops, I could observe how they interacted among themselves and in relation to other men who were neither Copts, nor part of their own social circle. These observations, and the conversations I had with these men, constitute the primary basis for this article.

Egypt’s Coptic Community

The Orthodox Coptic Church represents one of the oldest, ⁴ and by far the largest, Christian communities in the Middle East. Their members are commonly believed to make up 6–12 percent of Egypt’s population and more than 95 percent of Egypt’s Christians (Mahmood 2012a, 430). They live throughout Egypt but have their largest communities in Upper Egypt. They are well represented in Egypt’s financial elites, but also among its landless peasantry in poor, rural parts of the country (Sedra 1999, 221–22). The Coptic communities of central Alexandria largely see themselves as belonging to the Egyptian middle class. ⁵

The Coptic community is characterized by highly patriarchal family structures and relations of authority. Traditionally, man is recognized as the head of the household and its primary breadwinner, with a social authority and set of privileges widely unattainable by women. In line with Egyptian society at large, traditional notions of manhood emphasize qualities such as strength, courage, and the ability to protect, control, and provide for one’s family. In particular, ideals of patriarchal authority and female chastity and subservience hold significant force among Egyptian Copts (Armanios and Amstutz 2013, 513). The Coptic Orthodox Church plays a central part in upholding a patriarchal family structure and is a fierce defender of the sanctity of marriage, viewed as an unbreakable pact made before God (Armanios and Amstutz 2013, 518–19). ⁶

Since the early 1970s, the church has led a social and cultural revival within the Coptic community. This has involved an expansion of its own social institutions and the establishment of numerous nonclerical services catering to its lay members (Delhaye 2011, 76–77). The Church organizes nursing homes, kindergartens, primary schools, scout troops, sport clubs for young people, and computer and language courses for adults. The church also organizes discussion groups for engaged couples and newlyweds, as well as counseling for couples who struggle in their marriages. Bigger churches often have a cafeteria where members of the congregation can meet in the afternoon. ⁷ In addition, the Coptic Church provides funding and support for Coptic media institutions, including three TV and several radio channels that broadcast sermons, programs offering spiritual guidance, TV series designed to boost the Coptic faith and family values, and news coverage that focuses on the Coptic community, in Egypt and abroad, and on broader events seen through a distinctly Coptic lens.

All this creates small, transparent worlds where Coptic boys and girls, from preadolescence until well into their twenties, can get to know each other and cultivate friendships within exclusively Coptic spaces, under the guidance and monitoring of church clergy and lay volunteers. Among young Copts who have a close relationship with their church, the church youth and sport clubs, often located within the premises of their local churches, constitute the center of their social lives outside the family home. ⁸ This is where they spend their free time, and this is where young Copts in their teens and early twenties, especially young women, are allowed to spend time outside home. As such, the churches and the social venues associated with them constitute “safe zones” where young Copts are shielded from the social and moral dangers of a bustling city like Alexandria: drugs and alcohol, street violence, sexual harassment, and morally dubious subcultures that advocate atheism, homosexuality, or left-wing politics. ⁹

Being a Coptic Man—Today

Within this Coptic universe, young Copts learn what is expected of them and what kind of gendered norms apply to them at different stages of their lives. The church itself is strongly committed to assuring continuity in family and gender norms. Nonetheless, young Coptic men argue that there are stark changes in the kinds of social priorities they develop and the social expectations they face compared to their father’s generation. In a society where social and economic divides have grown starker, middle-class Coptic men who have grown up in families with a steady economic base face a very clear set of economic expectations when looking to get married and settle down. As potential grooms, they also face new social expectations from women of their own generation—expectations that are communicated through popular culture, television, and, more directly, through social media. Ideals about men being more communicative, emotionally available, and more present as husbands and fathers, are presented through personal Facebook postings, commercials, and Arabic pop music and soap operas, setting new parameters for the kind of behavior expected of young men. ¹⁰ Informed by these changes, young Coptic men adopt masculine ideals and practices that differ from those of their father’s generation.

When talking about changing masculine practices, they point to courtship and early family life as areas where the generational differences are most noticeable. In particular, they point to how young Coptic family men use their free time. Young fathers, especially when they have small children, live hectic lives. Those who have jobs often work long hours, with only a few waking hours at the end of the day. Thus, if they want to spend any time with their families, they have little time to meet friends outside their homes.

The Coffee Shop

Traditionally, Arab masculinity centered on the ability to provide for, and be in command of, one’s wife and children, while at the same time being generous to friends. The local qahwe or coffee shop has long been the main area for men of all ages to meet in the evening. It is not uncommon for young men to spend several hours at the coffee shop, drinking coffee, playing cards, and socializing with their friends (Schielke 2009, 2015). Alexandria is known for its bustling coffee shop scene, with a number of large coffee houses—those facing the Cornish and the Mediterranean being especially popular. According to my interlocutors, these coffee houses are frequented by working and middle-class men, while men of upper- and upper-middle-class backgrounds opt for pricier, more exclusive establishments. The coffee shop is an important arena in which to assert masculine authority, directly through social interaction with other men and indirectly in the sense that, by spending time at the coffee shop, a man demonstrates that he is “in control of his house” without being physically present at home all the time.

These ideals are being challenged by young men who want to stay in control of their own homes but who also wish to make their wives happy and be a central part of their children’s lives. Among Coptic men on the brink of starting their own families, this requires a careful consideration of their own priorities: as husbands, as fathers, and as young men with a circle of good friends.

This seems to be reflected in sharply decreasing attendance at the coffee shop as young bachelors become family men. While doing fieldwork, I got to know Egyptian men of various backgrounds and at different coffee shops. I also got in touch with Copts who could spend several hours at their local qahwe. But those I met were mostly young bachelors or middle-aged men whose children had grown up. Coptic men who were newlywed or had small children were largely absent.

Coptic men who have recently established their own families also have a less active presence in the Church and in church-related activities. However, this change in priorities often occurred long before the arrival of their first child. In many cases, it started when they got engaged.

Communicative Demands

Copts of different generations point out that young men—and women—have expectations about romantic relations and about married life that differ from those of their parents’ generation. The forms and level of interaction taking place before marriage have changed considerably, partly due to the rapid development of social media. Young people get in touch, communicate, and court each other through channels like Facebook, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, all of which have come into existence only in the last ten years. Unlike direct personal interaction, these forms of communication are not as easily monitored by family and the local community. In Egypt, tech-savvy teenagers can initiate and cultivate relations through social media without their families knowing about it. While this gives some space for maneuvering, many young men also find this rather stressful. When getting in touch with young women, they feel that they are expected to communicate through social media and demonstrate wit, affection, and romantic instincts while doing so. Once they are engaged, or on the path toward getting engaged, they are expected to connect with their chosen one on an emotional level and verbally express their affection. This is an area where many young men feel they fall short.

Fadi

Fadi, who is twenty-nine years old, has started to feel this pressure in relation to his fiancée. In the spring of 2014, he got engaged to a young woman who was his best friend’s younger sister. As a regular guest in her family’s house, he had gotten to know her over a period of many years, gradually falling in love with her, and spent what he describes as an “unreasonable amount of time” building up the nerve to express his feelings. This is something he gets teased about by his friends and fiancée. When they got engaged, they knew each other quite well and already had a strong personal connection. In spite of this, Fadi confesses that he still struggles to verbalize his feelings and open up to his fiancée to the extent that she wants him to. In this, Fadi is in good company. Many of his friends, including his two elder brothers, have experienced similar difficulties in opening up and confiding in their fiancées and wives. They feel they have little training in talking about their emotions—even with each other.

Talking to Fadi in late February 2015, he highlights Valentine’s Day, on February 14, as the ultimate nightmare. It is a day when men are supposed to express their romantic affections—ideally with a romantic card, accompanied by flowers, chocolate, and a nice dinner at a restaurant. Valentine’s Day is a fairly new phenomenon in Egypt and new social norms centered on it have emerged rather quickly, pushed by commercial interests. ¹¹ If you are in a relationship, or courting someone, it is simply something you cannot opt out of. For Fadi, it was a day he approached with dread:

I hate Valentine’s Day! I had been panicking about the day for weeks. I didn’t know what to do. But I managed to buy some flowers and a box of chocolates, and I even wrote a brief greeting on a card before handing it to my fiancé. She understood how difficult this was for me, so she really appreciated my efforts.

Expectation of greater emotional openness extends to the earlier phase of getting in touch with a potential partner. Fadi got to know his fiancée over time. But, within more conservative families, a young woman is still expected to have little, if any, contact with a man until a formal engagement has been agreed upon; an engagement traditionally initiated by the parents. However, among young Copts in Alexandria today, it is common that the two have met and gotten to know each other a little before an engagement takes place.

Rami

Rami, who is twenty-nine years old, works as a taxi driver and comes from a conservative lower middle-class family in Sidi Bish. ¹² When he first saw his future bride, he sought to do things in the traditional way. At the age of twenty-five, he saw a young woman at a Coptic wedding in his neighborhood and was completely smitten. The next day he told his mother about the young woman and asked her to get in touch with the family to ask on his behalf for her hand in marriage.

When his mother visited her family and made their intentions clear, the young woman’s family was positive, but the young woman herself was more skeptical. She took issue with the fact that he sent his mother instead of showing up himself. She demanded that he show up on his own and state his intentions to her directly. She demanded to meet and talk to him before she would even consider a proposal. Rami’s mother was offended by the young woman’s self-assertiveness but conveyed her message to Rami, who then got his act together, contacted her father, and arranged to show up in person, in her family’s presence. At the time, Rami was surprised by her demand, but he has since realized that young men are increasingly expected to make their romantic interests known in person. Today, it is both more accepted and increasingly expected that young people spend time together to try to establish a personal connection before getting engaged and certainly before getting married.

Within some circles, it is growing more acceptable for young women to leave their family home accompanied only by their fiancés. Along with this loosening of norms comes the expectation that young men prioritize spending time in the evenings with their fiancées.

Later on, as they get married and start having children, young Coptic men face new and different challenges to their masculinity. Many Coptic men who have recently married spend more of their time at home or at least out with their wives. Once they have children, they find themselves even more tied to the house and less out and about with their friends.

Rami completed a four-year bachelor degree in social work at a college in Alexandria while working as a taxi driver on the side, thus avoiding taking on a student loan. After finishing his studies, he couldn’t find a job as a social worker, and he ended up driving taxi full time. ¹³ He has worked hard, and done well for himself, even during the most turbulent period between 2011 and 2013. Through hard work, Rami managed to save enough money for an apartment, proving his own capability to provide for a family of his own. He got married in 2012, and, in October 2013, his wife gave birth to a little boy. Since then, Rami has worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, usually from eight in the morning until eight or nine in the evening, before going home to spend time with his wife and son. On Fridays, he takes the day off or works only half the day. He had the same working hours before getting married but spent his evenings visiting friends or in coffee shops with friends. However, since getting married, and especially since the birth of his son, he has had no time to be with his friends. Whatever time he has free, he wants to spend at home. He wants to be with his son and play with him as much as he can. At this point, he says “my life is all about my son and my wife.”

Rami’s home-oriented priorities are also motivated by a strong desire to keep his wife happy. If she is left by herself all day, and if he only comes home to sleep, he knows that she will be unhappy.

Before I married, I spent a lot of time with my friends. Almost every evening. When I got married, I said goodbye to all my friends…I knew I would not be able to see them anymore. Now I get to see my best friends a few times in a year.

Saed

Saed is thirty-four and has two daughters, aged four and six. He worships his daughters but has a miserable marriage with their mother. They married eight years ago, both yielding to family pressure, but they never really connected. According to Saed, they came to grow fond of each other, but there were never any real romantic feelings. Although they managed to have two daughters, the first few years, when their girls were small, really tested their relationship. By the time their youngest daughter turned two, they were constantly bickering. Living in a miserable marriage, Saed has chosen to stay away from home in the evening. He finishes work at eight in the evening, but, instead of going straight home, he prefers to meet some bachelor friends who still go to the coffee shop somewhere between his work and home. Sometime around midnight, when the rest of the family is asleep, he sneaks into the house and goes to bed. For him, this worked for a while. He did not get to see his girls that much, but he avoided being at home and feeling the constant tension between himself and his wife. She, on the other hand, was less pleased (according to Saed). Since she could not move around much on her own, she was stuck in the house, left to look after their girls in the evening. While Saed felt bad about this, he was able to live with it. He leaned on the fact that this is how his father and uncle handled their family lives. He and his two brothers grew up with their father mostly out of the house, and they and their mother survived it.

A year later, Saed has had a turning point. He no longer stays out with his friends until late every night. Instead, he tries to get back to his family home as soon as possible. A few months earlier, one of his brothers had implored him to spend more time with his family rather than leaving his wife all alone with the children. Saed took offense and was unswayed by his brother’s interference. A month later, however, he had an experience that got him thinking.

One night, I sneak into the house after a late night at the qahwe. In the hallway I find Mary (his youngest daughter) walking back and forth because she can’t sleep. I carry her back to bed, tuck her in, and kiss her good night. Then she looks at me and says: “Papa, don’t you love us anymore?” Because I was never at home….

Many Coptic men with small children see it as their duty to spend some time with the family on an everyday basis. ¹⁴ However, for those who do so, it is important to set some boundaries at home. Men like Rami, Fadi, and Saed all believe that a man should make an effort to make his wife happy, and be a stable, loving presence in their children’s lives, but they also stress that there are certain things “real men” simply should not do.

Setting Boundaries at Home

Rami is confident about his own priorities and insists that, on an everyday basis, he prefers staying at home with his wife and child rather than staying out late with his old friends. However, when his wife is exhausted or they are pressed for time, he has found himself pushed into doing household chores usually done by his wife, and he is not happy about that. He is very clear on what are their respective tasks in the house.

I was made aware of one of these boundaries when talking to Sami, another young man who has a toddler son, whom he worships above all else. Sami comes across as a “soft” and very affectionate family man. He works for an international organization based in Alexandria, but leaves the office at 5 p.m., and goes straight home to be with his wife and child. When talking about his family, he describes one episode that traumatized him:

My wife had to visit a sick aunt who lived fifteen minutes from our house. She was picked up by her cousin, and said she would be back within an hour, so she left me alone with our boy. Then on her way back, she was stuck in traffic and it took more than two hours before she was home. Then while I was alone, our son had a poo. At first, I thought I could wait until she came back, so that she could change his diaper. But she didn’t come! It took too long. And after a while, he started crying more and more, and I had to do it. I had to change his diaper…it was messy, there was poo everywhere! But that wasn’t the worst. I’m a man! (Ana ragel!) I’m not supposed to be changing diapers!

When asked if he changes his son’s diapers, Rami laughs and balks at the question. When Youssef was born, Rami’s father told him: “It is her (the boy’s mother) job to change his diapers, and to feed him. That is her job. Always!” On this issue, Rami took his father’s words to heart. He stresses that he does not change diapers, and he never will, unless the situation really, really demands it. This sentiment was echoed by other young Coptic men who had small children. While they spend most of their free time with their families, they expressed a similar need to set firm boundaries at home and not engage in tasks that would undermine their masculinity. Such tasks could include changing diapers, dressing and feeding small children, cleaning the house and doing laundry, and in some cases, cooking. ¹⁵ While some men were more relaxed about taking on some chores around the house, almost everyone stressed that changing diapers was a red line for them.

Reflecting on these challenges, young men who spend time at home claim that their fathers rarely needed to demarcate these same boundaries. Rami, Karim, and Fadi, along with other young men that I talked to, grew up with fathers who worked long days, sometimes well into the night, or spent a few hours with their friends before coming home late at night. Karim and Fadi’s fathers died from heart failure at an early age—also quite common for Coptic men of their generation. None of them were able to spend much time with their families while their children were growing up. As loving, but largely absent, fathers, they did not have to actively set firm boundaries for what kind of chores they should do at home, and they grew up within households that were often conjoined or very close to the households of other paternal family members.

While I could not speak to Rami, Karim and Fadi’s fathers, I had many conversations with men of their generation, who also stressed the difference between their own lives, and those of their sons. When talking with Coptic men in their fifties and sixties, some of them would express disapproval, some just shake their heads, and some would marvel at the extent to which the rules of male behavior, and of male–female interaction has changed since they themselves where young. ¹⁶ Today’s young men get married and start their own families in a time when the romantic connection between spouses, and the families they make together, is placed at the center of people’s lives, at the expense of wider family relations and friendship ties. This informs their masculine practices in the field of courtship, marriage, and early family life. They describe these practices partly as adjustments to new expectations, partly as their own personal priorities. Young Coptic men are expected to invest in their emotional relationship with their wives, in what Inhorn (1996) has termed “conjugal connectivity.” They wish to get to know their future wives before getting married, and once they do, they wish to make them happy.

While significant enough, the differences between these young men and men of their father’s generation should not be overstated. Men of past generations have also sought to be loving and considerate husbands and fathers. What may be new is the way in which these ideals connect with expectations that create a tension between one’s personal obligations as fiancé/husband and father and other social obligations. These changes are not unique to Egyptian Copts. Middle-class Muslims in Alexandria describe similar changes within their own social circles. ¹⁷ Middle-class Copts are to a large extent unaware of these similarities, partly due to the lack of informal, personal interaction between Coptic and Muslim middle-class men. At the same time, the norms and ideals of young Coptic men and their sense of masculine responsibility are also informed by their own position in Egyptian society, by their vulnerabilities as members of a non-Muslim minority community, and by their own views of Muslim men.

The Coptic Experience: Vulnerability and Self-protection

The place of Copts within Egypt’s national community has remained unresolved since before the 1919 Revolution and, more so, since the country won full independence from British rule in 1952 (Mahmood 2015, 2012a, 436). Their position has long been characterized by fear and vulnerability in relation to Egypt’s Muslim majority. Since the late 1970s, movements with a clear Islamist agenda have gained popular support in Egyptian society. Throughout the same period, there has been a steady escalation of violent attacks against Coptic churches and homes. Under Mubarak’s thirty-year rule (1981–2011), these attacks were largely muted within the framework of a discourse on “national unity” (Sedra 1999, 231–33).

Shortly after Mubarak’s removal, there was a dramatic increase in sectarian violence against Egyptian Copts. Faced with these threats, many Copts longed for a return to the Mubarak-era understanding in which Coptic leaders sought protection from state authorities in exchange for political loyalty. This understanding was readopted following the removal of Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood as Egypt’s president in July 2013. In the wake of this event, Egyptian Copts, led by the Coptic Orthodox Church, stood out as the most ardent supporters of Egypt’s new president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

At a community level, the most flammable points of tension between Christians and Muslims involve the policing of sectarian boundaries and control of women, especially with reference to religious conversion and mixed marriages (Mahmood 2015, 111). Among Christians and Muslims alike, patriarchal authority is legitimized with reference to religion, and female members of each communal group are to some extent considered the “property” of the group, not to be “stolen” by members of the other group (Mahmood 2012b, 57).

In recent years, there have been a number of incidents in which single or married Coptic women have disappeared from their homes, sometimes reemerging as Muslim converts. Rumors abound that these women have either voluntarily converted to Islam or—as claimed by their families—been taken hostage and forcibly converted by Muslim radicals (Tadros 2013, 55–56). ¹⁸

Sexual Harassment—What “The Others” Do

These events have fueled Coptic perceptions of Muslim hostility toward their community, as well as a suspicion that Muslim men seek to “steal their women” (Mahmood 2012b, 57). To some extent, this perspective also informs how many Copts view the problem of sexual harassment in Egypt. In public spaces, especially in urban centers, physical harassment against women is a serious social problem that places constraints on women in terms of where they can move around and at what times of day, what kind of clothes they have to wear, and whether or not they need a male escort.

Alexandria is seen as one of the worst cities in Egypt when it comes to sexual harassment. The city at large, and, especially the public areas that are filled with young men in the evenings, such as the seaside boardwalks that stretch from the Citadel of Qaitbay all the way to Montaza, some twenty miles further East, are considered high-risk zones, especially for young women. Coptic young women who primarily socialize with other Copts view themselves as especially vulnerable to harassment. As Christians, they do not wear the veil and, in general, they are less covered up than Muslim women. They argue that this makes them “natural targets” for predatory young men in the streets of Alexandria. ¹⁹

Coptic churches and their affiliate institutions are considered safe havens where young women can be freed from worrying about inappropriate and unpleasant sexual attention, from catcalling and crude comments about their bodies, and from threats, groping, and more invasive physical assaults. Many Coptic men insist that such abuses are committed almost exclusively by Muslim men. Mina, who is thirty-two and works as a youth counselor in the church, articulates a widely held opinion on this matter:

There is so much harassment in our society. So much! Our girls aren’t safe anywhere. Except here [within the church compound]. This happens in a society where young men don’t learn to relate to, and respect women. Our boys don’t behave like this! We teach our boys to respect women. You will not find Coptic boys who shout offensive things at women, or grab their bodies. Not one!

The image being projected within the Coptic community is that of Coptic men who are religiously devout, have a strong, active commitment to their church, and express qualities such as humility, respect, and good manners toward other members of their community, in particular its female members. This ideal is contrasted sharply with the image of young men who hang around in the streets and cafés of Alexandria in the evening. When meeting at coffee shops near their churches, young Coptic men observe these other, mainly Muslim, men with some unease, seeing them as loud-voiced and easily agitated, with aggressive body language and a tendency to get physical when having arguments. They experience these men as both primitive and somewhat intimidating, and this fits well into a discourse of a destructive, predatory Muslim working-class masculinity (Amar 2011, 61) that is used to describe the young men who fill the streets of Alexandria at night. These men are often referred to in a dismissive tone as fellahin (sing., fellah), a term that traditionally refers to someone from a rural background who works in agriculture. ²² Among middle-class Alexandrians today, the term is more commonly used as a derogatory term, referring to a set of characteristics more than a rural origin, denoting a person as uncultured, lacking in education, manners, and civility. The term has a clear class dimension but does not refer to a specific religious background.

Another term that comes up, especially in conversation about sexual harassment, is baltagi, a term commonly translated as “thug” or “bully.” Baltagi (plural, baltagiyya) describes men who are prone to violence to get what they want. Ghannam recalls how, during the Summers of 2011 and 2012, people in working-class neighborhoods in Cairo described baltagiyya as a threat to public order. In the absence of functioning police forces, there were stories of car thefts, the kidnapping of people for ransom, the shooting of police, and the brutal beating of ordinary citizens, all at the hands of brutal street thugs, widely describes as instances of baltaga (bullying, thuggishness; Ghannam 2013, 128).

In Alexandria, baltagi is used in a more general sense, referring to someone with a violent disposition. The young men who dominate shared public spaces in Alexandria are widely ascribed with both fellahin and baltagiyya characteristics, as uncivilized, uneducated, and often prone to violence. Naturally, it is these young men who are viewed as the main perpetrators of sexual harassment in the city. The image of the well-mannered, religiously devout Coptic man is shaped in sharp contrast to these constructs.

Traditionally, patriarchal norms dictate that young women do not leave their family homes unescorted in the evening. ²³ The extent to which people abide by such norms varies greatly, but the very real problem of sexual harassment strengthens the sense of “moral danger” associated with public spaces and constrains women’s freedom of movement. This affects not only the women who are targeted, but also—in less dramatic ways—the men who are supposed to keep them safe.

Karim

Karim works at a cultural center in Alexandria. He has grown up in the city, and married Nancy, a local young woman, two years ago. In line with local expectations, he had an apartment ready before getting married. After their wedding, the two of them moved into his apartment, located at a five- to ten-minute drive from his mother’s house.

Until marriage, he had lived with his mother and younger brother, but it was important to him and his wife that they got a place at some distance, but not too far away from their own parents, so that they could build a life in close contact with their families, but without too much everyday interference. Before marriage, Karim used to have plenty of time to hang out with his friends after work, at their houses or cafes. Since getting married, this has changed. Like Rami, he no longer finds the time to socialize on his own. After work, he feels obligated to go straight home and spend the evening with his wife. Since her miscarriage, he takes extra care to be there for her. While she is still in a vulnerable state, he has also found his mother to be rather pushy and not willing to show the kind of consideration that his wife needs. So, with a heavy heart, he has tried to limit their interactions with his mother and focused on being home, and trying to cheer her up (his wife) as he is afraid she will be lonely and unhappy if she has to spend the evenings on her own. The bond between a mother and her son is highly valued in Egyptian society. The rest of his family is upset, and his mother is deeply hurt by his efforts to keep her at a distance. But for now, Karim sees no other way. In his view, his wife’s well-being must come first.

Because of the threat of sexual harassment, both Karim and his wife feel that it is not safe for her to leave the house and make social visits on her own. When they leave the house together, they also take great care about which parts of town they visit and at what times. For instance, walking along the Cornish, the seaside boardwalk, after dark is not an option, mainly because of the large groups of young, single men who roam the area in the evening. These constraints became far more urgent when Karim was forced to sell his car for financial reasons. They soon found that moving around without a car was really stressful.

Karim is convinced that the problem of sexual harassment has grown much worse in recent decades, and he stresses that this is a serious problem not only for women, but also for their men. When young women can no longer move around in the evening without male company, men have to escort their sisters and, later, their wives if they are to leave their houses in the evening. Thus, he argues, young men are also held hostage by a cultural malaise directed at the women in their lives.

Fadi has started to feel this as well. To him, the obligation to both entertain and protect his fiancée has become a point of tension between them. She wants him to escort her during nighttime visits to different parts of the city, and he is reluctant to follow her to some of the places she wants to go. For Fadi, this is a delicate problem. As a young Coptic man, raised and socialized within the Coptic community built around St. Mark’s Cathedral, he considers himself a fairly soft man compared to men of his own age who roam the city, at large. Fadi is a socially confident man within his own circles. At the same time, he points out that he does not have the self-assertive tone of voice and the aggressively masculine body language that he sees among the Muslim men who dominate the crowded streets of Alexandria at night. It is hard for him, and those around him, to imagine him getting involved in any kind of physical confrontation. As such, he is concerned about what he can do if he and his fiancée find themselves in a “bad” area, surrounded by men who start commenting on, or try to grab her body.

If something like that happens in a bad neighborhood, there is nothing I can do. They won’t listen to me. And if I engage in a fight with someone, I will only end up with more trouble.

Karim and Fadi feel burdened by their responsibility to protect the women in their lives, and, as Copts, they feel a distinct sense of vulnerability in carrying out these responsibilities. As non-Muslims, they fear that they will not be granted the same courtesy as male guardians that Muslim men may naturally grant each other. While there is some truth to this, well-groomed, middle-class men of Muslim background take similar precautions when escorting the women in their lives. They express the same anxieties and fear the same kind of disrespect from working-class men that Karim and Fadi fear. In general, however, Muslim middle-class men do not experience quite the same level of vulnerability as their Coptic class peers. Judging from their own accounts, ²⁵ Muslim middle-class men do not fear being challenged, as men, or as male protectors to the same extent as do Coptic middle-class men. Nor do they face open sectarian hostility in the way many Coptic men can experience.

Still, middle-class Copts and Muslims do hold many of the same concerns, many of which are conditioned more by socioeconomic status than religious belonging. The fact that many middle-class Coptic men seem largely unaware of this, that they define Muslim men as their opposites with little distinction along socioeconomic lines, reflects their own level of self-insulation and the limits to their own interaction with Muslim men, even of their own socioeconomic standing. Many Coptic men see themselves as carrying a set of masculine-attributed aspirations that set them apart from other men in Egyptian society. This appears to stem not so much from a religious identity and upbringing as Copts but from being members of a vibrant religious community that offers robust, self-contained social institutions in which they can live socially fulfilling and active lives without establishing close personal bonds with their Muslim neighbors. In this context, social tensions that may be primarily class-based can be read in sectarian terms among Coptic middle-class men. When they describe sexual harassment as something committed by “Muslim men,” they are, more specifically, blaming low-educated, rural, and working-class Muslims—the exact same group of men that are vilified and construed as masculine others among middle-class Muslim men. This reflects a class-based insulation that is evident among both middle-class Copts and Muslims and that reveals limited knowledge about the lives of people who don’t share an urban, middle-class background. Inhorn’s (1996) concept of conjugal connectivity grew out of her ethnographic encounters with fellahin men and women in Alexandria, who were openly affectionate and emotionally committed to each other. Such traits are completely lacking in young middle-class and Coptic male representations of their masculine other.

Emerging Trends among Coptic Men

When trying to understand the changes in masculine ideals and practices among young Coptic men, as well their masculine self-positioning within a wider Egyptian community, I argue that a focus on emergent masculinities is far more useful than an approach centered on hegemonic masculinity. When talking to Coptic men like Karim, Fadi, Rami, and, to some extent, Saed, we see the emergence of ideas and practices that were less prevalent only a few decades ago.

Fatherhood is highly valued among Copts, and among Egyptians, at large, but the focus on having an everyday presence in their children’s lives, at the cost of other social relations, appears to be somewhat new. For these young men, to be loving husbands and fathers are important measures not only of whether they themselves are “good men” but also of whether they are “good at being men” (Herzfeld 1985, 16). The sense of vulnerability that they feel as Copts, as members of a minority community in Egypt, adds weight to their responsibility to protect the women in their lives.

A Parallel Masculinity

In a predominantly Muslim society, a Muslim identity might be viewed as a central part of a hegemonic masculinity, and it might be natural to assume that men belonging to Egypt’s Christian communities would be relegated to a status of marginalized masculinities. However, hegemony is a specific form of dominance that relies not on the exercise of raw power but on the discursive and cultural persuasion, as well as the “consent and participation by the subaltern groups” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 841). For non-Muslim men to be “stuck” with a position of marginalized masculinity, they would have to accept a discursive framework in which specific “Muslim” forms of masculinity represent ideals that are worth striving for, yet remain unattainable to them. Among Copts in Alexandria, especially those of middle-class background, this seems not to be the case. As mentioned earlier, they have a sizable community, with a robust social infrastructure which constitutes a self-contained social universe that answers most of their needs, including that of social validation.

Coptic men like Rami, Fadi, and Karim subscribe to masculine norms and practices that may—at least in their own eyes—set them apart from both Coptic men of their father’s generation and from their Muslim neighbors. They are conscious of and self-assertive about the priorities they make and the way they choose to handle their own masculine responsibilities. They define themselves in opposition to Muslim men, in particular, working-class Muslim men, who they largely define in negative terms, such as lacking in the emotional sensitivity and communication skills that they themselves aspire to and view as important in order to be good husbands and fathers—to be good at being men of their own generation. For this, they seek, and find recognition, within their own families and among friends who are almost exclusively Copts. In their personal and professional lives, they often do not depend on close relations with, or social recognition from, Muslim Egyptians, and they express little interest in obtaining either. As such, it makes more sense to talk about these men as inhabiting parallel masculinities. Coptic men are not unaffected by their relations with Egyptian Muslims, but their masculine identities are primarily defined by ideals and practices that gain validation within their own community.

These young men strive toward a middle-class masculinity that combines economic self-reliance, confidence in interactions with women, and sensitivity to the social and emotional needs of their wives. This package of masculine ideals may gain wider traction, especially within middle-class circles, among Egyptian Copts and Muslims, alike. ²⁶ At this point, however, religious belonging is a central part of Coptic men’s masculine self-identification and, to a large extent, they define their own masculinity in opposition to a construct of a Muslim, lower-class, masculine other. ²⁷

Conclusion

As argued by Inhorn (2012), a search for hegemonic masculinities in the Middle East has sometimes fueled orientalist portrayals of Arab men, emphasizing violence, misogyny, and enforcement of patriarchal authority. In recent years, scholars have sought to challenge such constructs with nuanced and dynamic portrayals of Arab men. A focus on emergent masculinities allows us to identify changes in masculine ideals, practices, and self-conceptions and to place such changes in social contexts. A focus on emergent trends that takes into account the impact of other identity markers, such as social class and religious background, also allows us to appreciate that negative stereotypes of Arab men are not only found in the West; in a deeply divided society, such as Egypt, such constructs can bolster group identities and serve as contrasts against which particular masculine self-conceptions are shaped.

Among Coptic men in Alexandria, we see the emergence of masculine ideals that highlight conjugal connectivity, the ability to be sensitive and affectionate husbands, and the need to be supportive fathers with an everyday presence in their children’s lives. This is contrasted with an image of a brutish, primitive, working-class Muslim man, who harasses women rather than communicating with them. These Coptic young men are not rejecting patriarchy at large. Instead, they are seeking new ways of asserting masculine authority, upholding their patriarchal duties as protectors and providers, while at the same striving to be compassionate husbands and fathers. As they struggle, and sometimes fall short in realizing all of these ideals at once, the negative construct of a masculine other can be an important tool of both self-definition and self-assertion. In the case of Coptic middle-class men in Alexandria, we can see how new masculine identities emerge in the intersection between generations, class, and religion, while appreciating the formative impact of a masculine other. Among these young men, we see the emergence of a middle-class masculinity that combines a progressive detachment from certain patriarchal ideals, an elitist contempt for men of lower socioeconomic standing, and a sense of social vulnerability as members of a non-Muslim minority community.