Martyrs, Men, and Masculinity: Institutional and Ritual Reproductions of Male Authority in the Nine Emperor Gods Festival of Postcolonial Southeast Asia

This study examines the Nine Emperor Gods Festival through a gender-focused lens, making two key contributions to the study of masculinity and male dominance. First, it demonstrates how masculinity is not only embedded in the festival’s structure but continually reinforced through ritual, myth, and institutional authority. In postcolonial Southeast Asia, sworn brotherhoods fostered a homosocial environment that shaped the festival’s leadership, securing male control over ritual space and religious power. Second, this study introduces the “peripheralizing impulse”, a mechanism that systematically relegates women to secondary or symbolic roles across individual, institutional, and cultic domains. Despite social and demographic shifts, the festival’s male-dominated hierarchy persists, sustained by historical inertia and evolving gendered exclusions that uphold masculine religious authority. By tracing the festival’s history across East and Southeast Asia, this study reveals how entrenched gendered power structures persist and adapt, ensuring the continuity of male dominance despite broader societal change.