Sakhina: A Study of Female Masculinity in a Sri Lankan Muslim Community

Abstract

In a Muslim village in Sri Lanka, one woman, Sakhina, was collectively reviled for committing adultery while other women who had committed adultery were not. This article uses a figured world/cultural models theory to describe and explain both Sakhina’s and the villagers’ behaviour. It shows that additional punishment by society occurs when an individual’s behaviour not only does not conform with cultural norms but with cultural understandings of ‘bad’ behaviour. Further, I demonstrate that Sakhina’s nonconformity implicitly posed a threat to male hegemony because it provided evidence that females could express traits that had heretofore been thought of as natural to, and hence, the exclusive domain of, males.