Definition of a Woman

The movie Go West was a critically acclaimed blockbuster in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It tells the story of two homosexual men, one Serb (Milan) and one Muslim (Kenan), and their desperate attempt to survive the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The film opens at a peace concert in Sarajevo and in the next scene, Muslim residents of Grbavica are herded onto cattle cars and deported to concentration camps beyond Mount Trebevic. Milan accompanies Kenan during the deporation because he doesn't want to leave him. The train reaches its destination and the men, women, and children are herded inside a small warehouse. Once the soldiers begin separating the men from the women and children, Milan cuts his hair and borrows a veil from a woman crammed against them in the camp. Together they transform Kenan into a Muslim woman. Milan exits the camp, insists he is a Serb and his capture is a mistake, shows his uncircumsized penis as proof, and requests that his woman be allowed to leave with him.

And so the story begins. They spend the rest of the war living behind Serb lines with Kenan trying to hide not only his faith but also his gender. He assumes the name Jelena and reveals his identity only to a few people whom Milan informs him are safe.

Here's a screen capture from a scene where Milan and one of his friends are trying to take a photograph of Kenan (as Jelena) to use for a fake, Serbian identification document.


Anyhow, all of this makes me wonder - what is a woman, really? I don't mean in a physical sense, that's obvious enough, but in a societal sense. There were so many things Kenan had to do, to change, in addition to his appearance. He had to change how he walked, how he greeted other people, how he used the bathroom, how he interacted with other people. He had to be more timid in expressing his views.

In one scene, the Serb lady who had befriended Jelena (she doesn't know he is really Kenan) ridicules two Muslim woman passing by the village after fetching water. "Jelena" protests, modestly. A few scenes later, the Serb woman walks up to the ruins of the mosque in her village and re-arranges the men's, women's, and children's shoes outside. The shoes were left outside when the people inside were shot and the mosque blown up, and she sets them up orderly and evenly in a very long, wordless scene. Why did Kenan's timid nature get through? If he had reacted angrily, as did the real Muslim women being ridiculed, would it have been the same, or could it dismissed as primitive and vulgar?

All of it just makes me think quite a lot. I'm curious, in your opinion, what is a woman? Beyond the physical, describe what a woman is in your society.