Jenny Nordberg / Adam Ferguson: Bacha Posh

Following up the Sworn Virgins of Albania, a project by Pepa Hristova, which went viral a few months ago - and will get an entry of its own on this blog soon - an interesting story from Afghanistan emerged recently. Jenny Nordberg, journalist, tells the stories of girls who live as boys to fulfill a social role, who live up to their parents' and society's expectations this way.

Bacha posh Mehran. Photo: Adam Ferguson

These so-called bacha posh are girls made boys to save their families from starving, or mere ridicule in a strictly patriarchal society: Girls and women are often not allowed to work, and families with only daughters are frowned upon. It is yet another example that a change of gender does not need to happen on the basis of body dysphoria and has nothing to do with sexuality - on the contrary, both the bacha posh and the sworn virgins from Albania emphasise the importance of virginity. The change takes place outwardly, through clothes, change of speech and behaviour; what is beneath the clothes is never mentioned or shown. As Mehran's (see above) headteacher points out, "what sets little boys and girls apart is all exterior: pants versus skirts". It is an accepted practice for little girls in Afghanistan, and the only way to ditch the rigorous binary gender regime in which women are valued far less than men.

Zahra, living as a boy since being very little. Photo: Adam Ferguson

As opposed to the sworn virgins, the bacha posh maintain their switched gender roles only until they reach the age of marriage. This only means that children in Afghanistan become part of the patriarchal system very early, and especially the bacha posh experience how fickle freedom can be. Nordberg quotes Robin Morgan on how destructive patriarchy can be to the life of an individual: "[Birth] Sex is a reality, gender and freedom are ideas."

Jenny Nordberg's extensive findings have been featured in the Guardian and The Atlantic, among others, and will be published in a book soon.

Stephen Reiss: Home

There's been some heated discussion in Germany recently after a columnist of the newspaper Die Welt called same-sex couples "deficient" and deemed them unable to raise children. One of the most powerful and poignant answers to this outrageous ignorance can be found in the work of photojournalist Stephen Reiss and his Home project.
Home is a beautiful, tender long-time observation made in the Bronx, NYC home of Eshey Scarborough and Paris Harris, a lesbian couple who have raised twenty foster kids in ten years - and there will be more. Reiss started the project as a student and soon found himself entangled in the extended family, carefully documenting the life in the family and the individual lives after foster care.
"We believe the service we give is the rent we pay to stay on the planet", states Eshey Scarborough in the New York Times. Many of her foster girls identify as LGBT, live with disabilities or are scarred by abuse, and would probably have never had a perspective in life, if it hadn't been for Scarborough and Harris. The pictures show the family eating together, praying, playing, celebrating birthdays. They also show the sad and lonely times: a girl crying, fears of death and isolation captured in a diary.
But when one strips away the knowledge of the unusual materialisation of this family, the Home project becomes a very 'normal' portrait of a family - including all the ups and downs, children growing up and moving on, children returning to the nurturing arms of their parents, cuddly toys, pets, huge cooking pans. There is nothing deficient about this family, on the contrary: Reiss has captured a family as wholesome as one can wish for - with a few more children than one would expect, perhaps.