The Daily Omnivore

Bacha Bazi (literally ‘playing with children’), also known as bacchá, is a practice recognized as sexual slavery and child prostitution in which prepubescent and adolescent boys are dressed as girls and sold to wealthy or powerful men for entertainment and sexual activities.

This business thrives in southern Afghanistan, where many men keep them as status symbols. The bacchá tradition, historically more common, waned after World War I, was forced out by Victorian era prudery and colonial powers. The reverse of bacha bazi is bacha posh, where girls are dressed up as boys.

Bacha posh is a cultural practice in areas of Afghanistan where a family in which there are no sons may have a girl dress in characteristic male clothing and have her hair cut short, occupying an intermediate status in which she is treated as neither a daughter nor fully as a son. In Afghan culture, pressure exists to have a son to carry on the family name and to inherit his father’s property. In the absence of a son, families may dress one of their daughters as a male, with some holding the superstition that having a bacha posh will make it more likely for a woman to give birth to a son in a subsequent pregnancy.

As a bacha posh, a girl is more readily able to attend school, escort her sisters in public places and find work, in addition to helping overcome the shame that a family experiences at not having any male children. The girl’s status as a bacha posh usually ends when she enters puberty. Women raised as a bacha posh often have difficulty making the transition from life as a boy and adapting to the traditional constraints placed on women in Afghan society. The reverse of bacha posh is bacha bazi, where boys are dressed up as girls.