Mustarjil

Mustarjil (Arabic: مسترجل), also in its feminised form mistarjila, is an Arabic-language term, as well as a gender identity used among the Ahwari culture, or Marsh Arabs, in Southern Iraq. The term equates with 'becoming a man' and is used for women who have adopted a masculine gender expression through choice or economic necessity. Lives of mustarjil people are recorded by British explorer Wilfred Thesiger who lived with the Ahwari in the 1950s; his observations were supplemented by the work of anthropologists Sigrid Westphal-Hellbush and Heinz Westphal. In 21st-century usage the term has misogynistic overtones. In Islamic tradition, the "mustarjila" (masculinized woman) is condemned; according to prophetic hadiths, she is cursed and thereby excluded from God's mercy.