Why does so much honor and self-esteem hinge on this aspect of men's daily lives? The late Marshall Hodgson, a noted Orientalist, writes that this situation often obtains "when there are few other sources of assured status than sheer masculinity. Presumably in a society where social status on the basis of class was relatively precarious, sensitivity about a man's honor was reinforced."
To what extent this explanation is valid is debateable, but relations between the sexes in the Muslim world are changing, especially in Tunisia, and this "sensitivity," whatever its causes, is easing.
While I was there the "National Day of the Freedom of the Woman" was celebrated, which, in view of prevailing conditions, seemed far from the consciousness of most Tunisians. But it would be unfair to say that men are uniformly horrified by and opposed to the trends it represents. They just hope it all happens gradually and does not result in the untempered, immoral freedom they see in the conduct of Western women. Some spoke in vague terms of upgrading the status of women toward some Islamic ideal. But they could offer no historical model for this, and its realization is doubtful because Tunisia, a French protectorate until 1956, has become even more subject to Western influences since independence. More tourists are coming, more Tunisians are travelling, prolonging their schooling, and coming under the sway of Western attitudes and goods.
As I sensed, and as many Tunisian intellectuals complained, the people seem to be becoming increasingly materialistic. Those who can afford it hold lavish weddings at hotels like the Tunis Hilton, and ride Peugeots and Mercedes. Men with more modest resources practice other forms of conspicuous consumption, like wearing overpriced French clothes, usually unspeakably tight bell-bottoms and even tighter, half-buttoned shirts.
The growing social and sexual freedom of Tunisian women may be the result of this increased emphasis on material wealth, which lessens the importance of the issues of male honor at stake in men's position vis-a-vis women.
The popular Arabic movies exemplify the duality of the Western inheritance. On the one hand, they ogle European fashions, hairstyles, sports cars, ad nauseum. But they also liberate the roles of women; the heroines can be as impulsive, seductive and treacherous as their Hollywood counterparts.
While the cult of masculine honor is giving way in Tunisia, the void may be filled all too predictably by the cult of materialism. In the modernization process it is unlikely that in Tunisia, probably the most secularized of Muslim nations, Islamic considerations will provide much competition to the seduction of the West in shaping the ultimate directions of the liberation of women, or most other trends for that matter. This is the price that many developing countries have to pay.
Tunisia is already a little too westernized for my tastes. I had hoped it would be more exotic, more traditional. Those women at the airport excited such hopes prematurely. Next time I fear they will greet me in miniskirts. Or maybe they'll just decide not to come at all.
[Ricky Goldstein, a junior in Dunster House, has traveled extensively in Tunisia.]