Being and Becoming: Men in a Matrilineal Society

Abstract

This article elucidates what it means to be a man in a matrilineal society by critically assessing the status of men within the Khasi matrilineal tribe in Meghalaya, India. This article argues that Khasi men constantly negotiate their gender identity in tandem with a tribal identity and find themselves trapped between a masculine assertion of patriarchal hegemony and demands that the rules of matriliny apply to their everyday existence. There is inevitably a conflict between the two, and Khasi men constantly tackle this dilemma by presenting their worldview through a notion of victimhood or a sense of pathos in explicating their position in the tussle between these two polarities. While the structural order of a matrilineal system determines the existence and ways of being a man and even a woman in a matrilineal society, this article argues that both of these positions could be prescriptive while ascribing of an identity in itself.