The Afghan Murat: A Queer Subject at Transnational Crossroads

Abstract

This article introduces and explores the subjectivity of a queer community in Afghanistan, the self-identified murats. Murat is a subject position that emerged in Afghanistan over the past 20 years to become a viable category of personhood and a practical term of reference among a community of non-masculine dancers and sex workers living and working in the capital (and other major cities). Based on the findings of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2021 in Kabul, the article shows that the transnational and transhistorical formation of Afghan murats’ gender and sexual subjectivities has been the result of the intersection of three other categories of personhood: the South Asian hijra, the Turko-Persianate bachah, and the Afghan īzak. By studying the Afghan murat subjectivity, the article further sketches out a template for imagining the sex/gender configuration in Afghanistan, suggesting that it is non-binary and cannot be comfortably divided into the two opposing poles of the male/masculine and the female/feminine.