Sex “burns at the intersection of existence, identity, and power,” says Eric Berkowitz, author of 

, a book about the legal boundaries of sexuality over the past century. According to Berkowitz, these laws were mostly absurd, and served a system of oppression that placed a lid on people’s sex lives.

There’s a reason why such an instinctual, animal act should find itself in five thousand years of legislation. It is perhaps the highest form human intimacy, both physically and emotionally, but sex and sexuality are inherently political — a tool that shifts balances of power, and also one that reflects (and sometimes challenges) cultural norms.

Dr. Judith Mackay’s findings on the topic reveal

 the vast cultural variations in the conjugal act. Over the course of a year, the average French citizen has nearly three times as much sex as the average resident of Hong Kong. (

 Some populations seem to stop having sex completely after a certain age — like in India, where many couples stop being intimate when they have a married daughter or become grandparents.

In Japan, a national sex drought has dire implications for an already shrinking and aging population: an unsustainable workforce amidst negative population growth has led international markets to abstain from Japanese investments. A 2013 

 piece revealed that a strong percentage of the nation’s young people were embracing 

, or “celibacy syndrome,” as the norm. For Japanese men, the dread of sex is so strong that many prefer “relationship-simulating video games and even holiday retreats” to actual relationships. For women, the strict norms of Japanese culture force many to choose between family and career; married women who work often find themselves labelled “devil wives.”

A short flight across the Sea of Japan, you find a completely different story. In China, custom dictates that 

. The practice has become so deeply entrenched that there are now different gradations of mistressdom; one type of mistress (called an 

) merely serves as a girlfriend, while another (

) forces herself between a man and his wife. “If you’re an official, you have to have a mistress, or at least a girlfriend,” one mistress, named Xiaxue, told 

 magazine. “Otherwise you’re not a real man.” (Even China’s wealthiest gay men keep mistresses while keeping their boyfriends secret.) However ubiquitous the mistress culture may be, it’s still dangerous. The Internet has become a superhighway for shaming these kept women, often at the hands of ex-boyfriends or their lovers’ wives.

South to India, the Indian Telecommunications Ministry 

 more than 850 pornographic websites this summer, and immediately came under fire for mass censorship and allegations of corruption. The majority of the previously banned sites went back online, save for those involving child pornography. Now the unblocking faces a backlash of its own, not just from religious conservatives, but also from women’s rights activists who are concerned about violent pornography in the face of a national rape epidemic.

Whether or not pornography encourages abuse and violence against women, a less ambiguous threat to women thrives in Africa and the Middle East – female genital mutilation. An ancient cultural tradition, female genital mutilation is 

 (WHO) as any action that injures or modifies female genitalia for non-medical reasons. The WHO categorizes genital mutilation as a violation of rights against females and, often, children. In the 29 countries where the practice is widespread — largely throughout the Middle East and Africa — more than 125 million girls have undergone FGM. In cultures where FGM is culturally accepted, it is believed that, by cutting or removing the clitoris, a woman will live without libido and preserve her virginity, keeping her “pure” for marriage.

The countries that practice FGM are predictably conservative in other sexual matters. Across entire continent of Africa, for instance, only South Africa

. In most African countries, being gay or having sex with someone of the same gender can mean trial and jail time — including an incredible 14-year prison sentence in Kenya. When President Obama took his historic trip to Africa this summer, he 

addressed the country’s persecution of LGBT people in a press conference

, declaring, “The state should not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation.” Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta responded that other issues that took priority over gay rights, among them health, infrastructure, and the social representation of women. “For Kenyans today,” said Kenyatta, “the issue of gay rights is really a non-issue.”

 insists that all of these laws and practices revolve around control, around dominance and the “thrill to forbidding others what they desire,” as 

 it. By placing limits around sexual acts and interests, cultures and governments can define sex on its own terms, rather than allowing people to explore their own sexuality, to be vulnerable, and to want physical closeness. And in an age of the multi-billion dollar boom in tech sex — dating apps, virtual reality pornography, sex robots, etc. — that human element of self-exploration, maturation, and intimacy, has more allure than ever.

Global sex: sexuality and sexual practices around the world

8321017288_95707fea4a_k.jpg

Governed by courts and various social customs, what are some of the international laws and norms regarding sex?

The global politics of sex

War is blind to age. It’s a truth that is seemingly innate, yet one that was reaffirmed by a June 2015 study from the 

United Nations, which documented a worrying rise in the number of wartime child deaths in war-ravaged countries during 2014.

Last year, 710 Afghan children lost their lives in the ongoing war there, the largest number of any country in the world. In Iraq, child causalities hit record numbers since UN monitoring systems began in 2008: 679 children were killed, another 505 injured. Israeli military strikes killed 557 Palestinian children and destroyed 543 schools.

War makes victims of children, even the ones who live.

UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict

, are those under 18 years old who are affiliated with an armed force and are “used as fighters, cooks, porters, spies or for sexual purposes.” Though some nations still enlist them — 

, the governments of Burma, South Sudan, and Yemen all employ child soldiers — they are most often used by extra-national militia organizations.

Recruiting and keeping child soldiers is an old practice, and ISIS has taken advantage of it. The children they force into military service are called “cubs of the caliphate,” ranks that swell as 

ISIS strips children away from their parents and forces them to submit to jihadism

. Others are prodded into it by their parents, like the 

7-year-old Australian boy whose family joined the terrorist group, and who was photographed in Syria holding a severed head

, the neo-medieval militants even pay some of their child soldiers, with rates going up to $400 a month. ISIS is proud to show off the children at their disposal, casting them as the star executioners in propaganda videos.

War makes victims of children, 
even the ones who live.

In modern times, the scale to which ISIS uses children is without precedent. Syria and Iraq may have lost an entire generation to ISIS, either as victims of its systematic violence or unwitting participants in it. “We need to face the consequences of what ISIS has done to children,” Steven Weine, a psychiatry professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, 

. “[They are] traumatizing and indoctrinating a whole future generation.”​

The rehabilitation process for children will be strenuous, if not impossible. After returning home — if there is a home to return to — communities are hesitant to welcome back these former fighters, and these children lack the skills necessary to operate in a peaceful society. 

, a former child soldier for Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Since he was only taught to murder and operate as a soldier, his return home meant the instinctual abuse of his siblings and general antisocial behavior. After years of therapy, Okello’s personality had to be cleansed of the war-oriented hatred of his youth. Though he now leads a normal life, he laments that “the spirit [of the LRA] is still there.”

, Dr. Theresa Betancourt of Harvard’s School of Public Health noted that rehabilitation of child soldiers would require many of the totems of a normal childhood: a sense of safety; access to essential physiological needs, including sleep and food; family, biological or otherwise, and a connection to others who share a common identity; and economic security and education, which gives children the chance to seek a fulfilling life.

For now, the children in ISIS have a long way to go. But if Betancourt’s model is acted upon, there may be hope for the children of ISIS when and if they escape the grip of war.

Joshua Berlinger, “ISIS’ child soldiers: What will happen to ‘cubs of the caliphate’?,” CNN, May 28, 2015.

The Uphill Battle To Saving ISIS’ Child Soldiers

“Grooming Children for Jihad: The Islamic State (Part 2),”

 VICE News, August 12, 2014. Cover image taken from VICE’s documentary.

Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 6.43.43 PM.png

The tragedy of child soldiers has existed for as long as war, but their use and exploitation by ISIS is without rival, at least in modern times. War makes victims of children, even those who survive.

The Lost Children of ISIS

Income inequality is rising in the United States, and the gap between the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans compared to the majority of income earners is now 

. While the growing disparity may be attributed to a multitude of factors (

, to name a few) the environment that one is raised in bears the most impact, for better or worse.

, led by professors Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, found that among subjects who were studied through adolescence to adulthood in the nation’s 100 largest counties, the average annual income at 26 years old was $26,000. Inevitably, there were deviations from that mean; the average household in Dupage, Illinois, a wealthy Chicago suburb, makes about 15 percent more than the national average. At the other end of the spectrum, natives of Baltimore, Maryland, take home nearly 17 percent less than the average national income. The study’s takeaway, according to Chetty and Hendren, is the environment one is raised in determines his or her economic mobility.

A similar analysis by John Hopkins University focused solely on Baltimore. Tracking about 

800 students from the first grade through their late-20s

, the study found that only 4 percent of children from low-income families achieved a college education, compared to 45 percent of children from higher-income families. Cultural environment and surroundings undoubtedly impact the eventual success of a child, as they determine available opportunities and govern how a child will perceive their social standing. One of the study’s subjects, Monica Jaundoo, 

, describing her upbringing: “I remember being so immune to death, so immune to shootings, killings,” she said. “I just remember wanting them to rush, like, get the body out the way so we can get back to playing hopscotch or dodgeball.”

An entirely different reality exists for the nation’s wealthiest minors, evidenced by 

social media accounts that flaunt their lifestyles

. Naturally, a child born into a high-income earning family has easy access to luxurious resources. Yet this environment has set them up with an unfair advantage compared to low-income children, as wealthy kids without fiscal responsibility are likely to stay wealthy 

 as poor kids who work hard are likely to stay poor. In other words, the rich are likely to stay rich and the poor are likely to stay poor.

The cycle is unlikely to end soon. Researchers based in Sweden (which possesses 

a lack of social mobility similar to the United States

) found that the rate at which Swedish children of wealthy, biological parents were likely to become wealthy was 

 (with 0 meaning no correlation and 1 being exact). A positive correlation also exists for adopted Swedish children of wealthy parents. Naturally, as wealth is passed from one generation to the other in the form of inheritance and gifts, the children of rich parents become rich, too. 

. But there’s more to the passing of wealth than inheritance.

From the moment a child is born into a wealthy family, their parents’ spending habits determine if they, too, will be in a high income bracket as an adult. It stems from how wealthy parents spend money compared to their low-income counterparts: where low-income families focus on immediate needs, such as food and transportation, rich families invest more on future-oriented purchases that will ensure their wellbeing.

Growing up with affluence even impacts the college major a wealthy student is likely to choose. Kim Weeden, a Cornell sociologist, 

 about National Center for Education Statistics data on the correlation between family wealth and choice in college major. She found that, for students with affluent backgrounds, the choice in college major tends to be in the humanities such as English, history, and the arts. Meanwhile their lower-income peers seek majors in math, physics, and computer science. As low-income students may choose their majors based on financial necessity and marketibility, more affluent students experience the luxury of their families’ safety nets, and can explore majors that are less marketable:

The gap continues upon graduation, when more affluent students are substantially more likely to enter the workforce with little to no student debt. For less-affluent graduates, chains of student loan debt weigh down any chance of wealth accumulation. As their paths diverge, and the college graduates age and have families of their own, the cycle perpetuates.

To fix a problem that starts so early in life, it is necessary to start in early childhood. Chetty and Hendren, after finding that the chance of upward mobility is increased if young children are exposed to resources usually reserved for the rich (such as better schooling and safer neighborhoods), recommend housing voucher programs to enable lower-income families to move to better neighborhoods with quality pre-school programs. Otherwise, leaving such traps of inequality unanswered means another generation of children blocked from success.

Tami Luhby, “Where poor kids stay poor,” CNN Money

richkid.jpg

For American families, the unequal distribution of wealth translates to their children as they grow older. How does this imbalanced economy set up the wealthy for generational success while condemning others to multigenerational poverty?

Why rich kids become rich adults and poor kids become poor adults

With the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to its west, the Syrian Civil War to the north, and ISIS’s rampage in the east, Jordan has been relatively stable, a sanctuary encircled by intense and years-long warfare.

The horrendous nature of war plagues the economic and political stability of all nations, regardless of direct involvement. Jordan is no exception. Feuding between Iraqi powers and Sunni tribes 

prompted the partial closure of the Jordanian-Iraqi border

, triggering the collapse of trade between the two nations. The Syrian conflict has mostly cut off overland trade between Jordan and Europe, sinking Jordan’s economy.

Less discussed is the impact of regional turmoil on Jordan’s tourism sector, which comprises 

about 13 percent of the nation’s $34 billion economy

. While an estimated 8 million tourists visited Jordan in 2010, by 2014 that number had dropped to below 3 million. Popular sites, like Petra (the UNESCO World Heritage site

 found new marketability after being featured in 

) and Jerash (a well-preserved city from the Roman Empire, where one can see ancient marks from chariot wheels in the pavement), receive only a small fraction of visitors compared to the hundreds of thousands that came annually before the ascendancy of ISIS.

The tourism industry is 13% of Jordan’s national economy.

Despite all of this, Jordan’s economy has been doing relatively well compared to the rest of the Middle East, and is 

set to grow at more than 3 percent this year

 while its neighbors’ economies barely grew at all. The 

 have made headway, but they are not enough to fix the high unemployment rate that disproportionately plagues the nation’s youth. In the desperation and frustration of their tattered lives, radicalism has an appeal and sets the region further down the death spiral of destabilization, destruction, and deprivation.

The steady improvements in Jordan’s economy are not enough for those working in the hotel industry, where many establishments have scaled back on staff and services, if not closed operations completely. Yassar al-Majali, the manager of the Jordan Hotel Association, spoke with the 

 and acknowledges that even among the tourists who do visit the country, few stay overnight.

These prospects threaten the success of the Shepherd, 

a hotel owned by Nader Shalhoub and his family

. While their business has experienced slow periods of revenue during previous conflicts, from 

2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States

, the hotel has lingered around only 20 percent occupancy for the past few years, leaving the business vulnerable to collapse. While Jordan does not have the high-scale violence of its neighbors, foreigners see it as a dangerous nation. “Now we are considered a war zone,” Shalhoub says, “and when you’re a war zone, you’re not a tourist zone.”

consider wars in other countries an opportunity

, despite its detrimental impact on their economy. Thiab Atoom, a business owner who believes Jordan should take advantage of the conflicts, told the 

, “Nobody is going to Yemen, Syria or Iraq. This … should also be an opportunity to say, ‘Jordan is a haven; come here!’ But we aren’t doing enough to lure in visitors.” Residents and business owners lay blame on fellow Arab nations for scaring away tourists, the Jordanian government for not doing enough to try and attract foreigners, and the international community for not doing enough to stop Middle Eastern crises.

Despite the criticism, the Jordan Tourism Board is making strides to attract more tourists. With the help of the government, the Board is trying to lure foreign visitors. Some are drawn by promises of price cuts and waived airport fees, others come to seek adventure or religious fulfillment. And there are also those who feel less threatened by the surrounding chaos. “The problem is not in Jordan,” states Nayef Al-Fayez, the Minister of the Board. “The problem is with the misperception.”

Surrounded by fire, Jordan’s tourists scared away

Even Indiana Jones Can’t Shield Jordan From Middle East Fighting

Ancient Petra Sees Few Visitors as Jordan Tourism Declines

9289828202_23e80a1f32_k.jpg

Tensions and bloodshed in the Middle East have scared away scores of tourists from Jordan’s safe borders. What does this mean for the nation’s tourism-dependent economy, and how will it recover, if it can?

Surrounded by war, can Jordan’s tourism industry survive?

In most developed nations, issues of race occupy headlines and are components, unstated or overt, of nearly every conversation about policymaking — whether the topic is 

. Mostly, its relevance to the issue is framed in matters of promoting harmony and expanding opportunity.

There are, however, notable exceptions. Japan, 

a pillar of technological development and progress

, has yet to address race as a pressing national issue. The racial discrimination that exists in Japan is reminiscent of the segregation-based atmosphere of 1950s America, posing a hostile environment for those of non-Japanese origin.

One of the more prominent victims of Japan’s ingrained discrimination is Ariana Miyamoto, 

who represents Japan in the 2015 Miss Universe competition

. Miyamoto, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an African-American father, is categorized as 

, a Japanese term and bastardization of the English word “half,” indicating someone who is mixed race.

Growing up in Japan, Miyamoto’s skin tone and curly hair caused others to shun her; classmates and their parents referred to her as 

, the Japanese equivalent of the N-word. Rather than identifying solely as black or Japanese, Miyamoto instead chooses to present herself as a representative of all ethnically and racially mixed Japanese. Her participation in the Miss Universe pageant opens the door for 

 to be accepted as part of Japanese society, and changes what it means to act and appear “Japanese.”

 to represent Japan?”, “Miss Universe Japan is… What? What kind of person is she? She’s not Japanese, right?”, and “Even though she’s Miss Universe Japan, her face is foreign no matter how you look at it.”

 run deeper than social acceptance — there are 

. Regardless of their ethnicity, children with dual-citizenship between Japan and another country must choose one nation or the other once they turn 22 years old. 

 is based solely on suspicions to force individuals to base their loyalty with Japan or another country should international tensions arise. The ruling was introduced in a 1984 amendment to define Japan as a 

 country, one that bases citizenship on blood, not birthplace. This makes it all the more difficult for 

 to strike a balance between embracing their mixed heritage with a Japanese upbringing.

Japan’s racial problems extend beyond mixed-race citizens to include discrimination against foreigners as a whole.

, members of the Japanese bands Momoiro Clover Z and 

in blackface for a promotional photo for a performance on Fuji TV

 pressured the station to stop the performance. The petition seems to have worked, but the incident is a reflection of Japan’s blindness to its own racism. It’s worth noting that Japan has also had high-profile 

, which again shows the distance between Japanese citizens and those seen as foreign.

Japan’s treatment of non-black minorities reflects additional deeply ingrained racist tendencies. In 2013, a 

group of nationalists led protests expressing their hatred of Koreans

, and threatened to flatten Tokyo’s Koreatown and replace it with a gas chamber. “Go home and die,” some of the demonstrators yelled. Authorities were aware of the threats, but because Japan 

, the discriminatory actions continued unabated.

Although cases of extreme racism exist globally, Japan is notable for its lack of dialogue about racism and the absence of meaningful change to protect against discrimination. Japan sees itself as a homogenous nation. As one of the 

 populations in the world, the country’s overwhelming homogeneity means that any Japanese citizens who are not 100 percent ethnically Japanese are seen as foreign in their own homeland.

Change will take time. The ingrained insularity and rejection of foreigners has been a part of Japan’s history dating back to at least 1639, when the ruling Tokugawa shogunate cut Japan off from the rest of the world. Though centuries have passed, the ideas of racial superiority and separatism are still deeply influential in the national mindset. This history reveals itself in the Japanese language as well, where the term for foreigner, 

, translates to “outside person,” which gives no possibility of integration for non-Japanese.

Japan’s geography further deters any hope of inclusion — a version of what is dubbed as the “Galápagos effect.” Originally coined in reference to 

the differences between Japanese cell phones and those used in the Western world

, here the term refers to a nation that has been deeply isolated from foreign influence for a considerable amount of time, so much so that it has branched off evolutionarily (hence the name, a nod at Darwin’s travels). Japan, a collection of islands off the coast of mainland Asia, has developed its own values and a national agenda that tends towards the esoteric.

Still, Japan must reform cultural obstacles if it wishes to build a sustainable future in an increasingly multicultural world. Japan’s birth rate is falling and the population is aging, setting up a shortage in the national labor force. In the hopes of fixing this problem, Japan has 

 to allow more workers into the job market and make up for the lagging birth rate. Even so, any first-generation Japanese would arrive to find a cultural and political climate that is still deeply inhospitable to foreigners. In February 2015, 

a former adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

 suggested that apartheid would be the best solution for keeping foreigners separate and retaining Japanese racial purity.

In the meantime, Ariana Miyamoto uses her status as Miss Japan to fight for the unrecognized and discriminated segment of her country’s population. She hopes to put a new face on Japan — one that is diverse, defiant, and depictive of its future.

Biracial Beauty Queen Challenges Japan’s Self-Image

Japan’s blackface problem: the country’s bizarre, troubled relationship with race

momoiro-clover-z-blackface-rats-star-fuji-tv-1.jpg

Bearing a false belief of racial singularity and superiority, can Japanese culture ever embrace diversity in an ever-intertwining world?

Beauty pageants, blackface, and bigotry: Japan's problems with racism

is no stranger to periods of violence and riots

 across its capital city, Paris, and its suburbs. These instances, the most recent of which was the 

, tend to have one common factor: they result from the segregation between low-income suburban residents and the rest of French society.

The city’s layout plays a crucial role in the economic imbalance of the French population. Paris has twenty arrondissements, or neighborhoods, that are 

ringed by upper- and middle-class residents to the west, while low-income residents, including many immigrants, reside mostly northeast of the city

. It is a structure that physically alienates low-income residents, most of whom live in housing projects that, 

, were hurriedly and poorly built in the postwar era to house the growing working class. The now dreary, rectangular buildings were originally intended to be leisurely spaces that encouraged open social interaction and offered easy commutes to and from nearby factories.

The buildings’ first residents were a mix of working-class French and working-class immigrants. Jobs were plentiful, education was free, and there was hope for the economic advancement of the next generation. But a government-sponsored home-buying program allowed many native French citizens to move elsewhere, while their immigrant neighbors could not afford to make such changes. And the factories have since shut down, leaving the first generation of French-born children of immigrants robbed of the opportunities — jobs, education, and respectable living conditions — that were presented to their native French counterparts.

A lack of opportunity in the early 1980s gave rise to delinquency among the youth of the area, triggering a strong police presence, which only heightened the level of suspicion between immigrants and native French. “The violence is an expression of anger but also a cry for help,” Harlem Désir, one of the handful of those interviewed by the

ter another riot, says. “The state must be there to guarantee that people will be protected from discrimination, treated correctly by the police, [and] helped to get out of the projects.”

, then-President François Mitterrand ordered a renovation of low-income areas: repainting walls, fixing elevators, and establishing programs for the area’s youth. Despite this progressivism, these programs were quickly demolished when Jacques Chirac became president and his interior minister, future president Nicolas Sarkozy, increased police presence and aggressive force in the housing projects.

In the years since, demonstrations and violence have resulted from a combination of increasing police confrontations, a rise of unemployment, and deplorable economic conditions following the 2008 recession, a period from which the housing projects have yet to recover.

Since neither educational nor occupational opportunities exist, some residents turn to drugs and crime to release frustrations. Others turn to religion — an act that is reassuring to traditional, older Muslim generations yet worrisome to French officials. As France has 

, there is a fear that deprivation, inequality, and radical fundamentalist ideologies could curdle into acts of terrorism.

It is not just the sentiment of fear that influences the hostility against the immigrant population, but 

France’s legal implementation of secularism

 does, too. Muslim immigrants have moved into an environment where it is often illegal to display one’s faith — a cloaking that goes against Islamic customs. France’s separation of church and state, made legal in 1905, has become the basis for a multitude of rulings, including 

a 2004 ban on religious symbols in schools

2010 ban on publicly wearing face-coverings (which effectively included the Muslim 

a 2013 program that required a 15-point guideline in classrooms to enforce the prohibiting of religion in school

. These acts, intended to unite the French population by its commonalities instead of dividing it along religious fault lines, has only further isolated and stigmatized French Muslims.

How can the divide be bridged? It would be helpful for both sides to start a conversation and rid any perceived stereotypes, but more effective, perhaps, would be a scaling down of police aggression and an effort to equip more young people with the skills needed for careers. 

 against its segregation and discrimination problem in response to the 

 shootings, and city planners intend to expand Paris to include a portion of its suburbs — which will expand access to jobs and city-centered resources for isolated and low-income immigrant areas.

But France must continue to make progressive and inclusive strides before an outburst of violence, a result of alienation and stigmatization, happens again.

Public Housing’s Role in France's Tensions

Inside French Housing Project, Feelings of Being the Outsiders

Why There’s Tension Between France and Its Muslim Population

4977990504_f2ea0ecfbb_o.jpg

In Paris, the residents of suburban public housing are alienated from other French residents, for reasons both socioeconomic and cultural. Can the gap be bridged between native French citizens and their Muslim immigrant neighbors?

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity? Native French citizens and their immigrant neighbors

In a Western context, crossdressing and reversing gender roles are used as a means of outwardly expressing gender identity. But in Afghanistan, altering a child’s appearance as masculine or feminine often signals a social response to oppression or even the trappings of abuse.

For girls, there is the commonly implemented custom of 

, the Dari term for the representation of girls as boys. The custom is so popular, in fact, that Afghans often know someone – a friend, neighbor, distant relative, etc. – who grew up as a girl disguised as a boy, according to 

The popularity of this trend stems from the generations-long parental preference of boys over girls in societies where families without sons are pitied. A response to this public shame and stigma is to transform a daughter into a son, at least cosmetically, cutting her hair and dressing her in male-appropriate clothing. It is a decision that comes with plenty of benefits and freedoms. Disguised daughters can attend better schools, play sports, escort their sisters outside, and help their families with chores outside their homes. Even if there are those who may know of a son’s true identity as a 

, having a daughter pose as a boy for a few years enhances the family’s social standing and is favorable to not having any sons at all.

 isn’t a matter of honor or reputation, but a means of economic survival. 

, a 10-year-old girl who goes to work in a small grocery store disguised as a boy. Her earnings keep the family afloat, but she admits that she wants better things — namely, she wants to look and act like a girl. Yet her status as a 

 will only last for a few years; her younger sisters will eventually have to take on this role.

There are no legal or religious rulings that speak against 

, yet the practice still comes with negative repercussions. Because these girls are raised and treated as boys, they have immense difficulty when their parents make them behave and dress like girls once they enter puberty. At this point, the girls are of marriageable age and must take on the role of a woman.

In another interview, Nordberg spoke with a 15-year-old girl who had passed in public as a boy, but worried about growing into an adult life as an Afghan woman because of the oppression and harassment women face. “People use bad words for girls,” the girl told Nordberg. “They scream at them on the streets. When I see that, I don’t want to be a girl. When I am a boy, they don’t speak to me like that.”

Azita Rafaat, a former member of parliament and a mother of four daughters, the youngest of whom is a 

, strives to refine Afghan laws to ensure rights for women. She acknowledges that speaking against this popular practice will draw criticism, but 

 exists as a response to the dehumanization of women in Afghan society. “This is the reality of Afghanistan,” she said. And though it is a survival tactic against oppression, it should not have to exist.

Afghanistan’s tradition of gender-swapping contains an even darker reality for boys. 

Maya Wesby