About Us, And Them.

I remember— back in ‘06, when a bunch of us were helping CRTDA gather signatures at AUB, in support of their Nationality campaign. A boy signed his name on the petition, then he asked me: would this mean that a woman would be able to give her Lebanese nationality to Syrians? And I said: yeah.

So he just scratched his name from that petition and walked away.

Strange how that ability, that power of women to determine who to give their nationality to, scares people. Like we have the power to change the entire demographics of this country. Like we can turn this country into a Palestinian state, into a sub-Syrian state.

Strange how racism works with sexism and with classism. Swayable, easily seducible, women can sleep with the “enemy.” Poor women, women of certain regions/sects, have lots and lots of babies, tipping the sectarian balance to “their” favour. Them. The Syrian workers. The Palestinian refugees. And then there are the migrant domestic workers. The women. The women of da7hyi and the South. The sexually active women. They’re all equally threatening. To the nation. To the middle class. To the family.

Sometimes I think that some men (particularly the very sexist ones) are more aware of our capabilities and potentials than we are ourselves. I don’t mean our abilities to change the distribution of the population in that racist/sectarian way, like that AUB boy was afraid of. I mean our ability to change things for the better. To introduce new ways of understanding things.

And that’s why we’re here. Because we see things differently, because we can see how things are wrong, from the little things that we have grown numb to, like the pressure on women to conform to impossible beauty standards, like street harassment, to more blunt things like how migrant workers are treated, how women can’t give their nationalities to their husbands and kids, how there are no laws against domestic violence and marital rape. And because we know we can/must change that.

That’s why we’re here.

Disabling people out of habit - Marvelous world of Sexual Harassment

Again, I need to vent! A couple of days ago I finished reading one of the very few studies in the Middle East about sexual harassment. Not surprisingly, the study comes from the Egypt, one of the very few countries that have finally broken the wall of silence around street harassment. I expected it to be bad. I expected to find an outrageously high percentage of women that have been subject to street harassment (83% for Egyptian female citizens), I expected them to blame the woman’s outfit (62.5% assumed that a woman is more likely to get harassed if she is wearing a provocative outfit) only to contradict themselves a few seconds later (31% of the women who had confirmed being the victims of street harassment also confirmed that they are usually veiled and decently dressed when harassment takes place).
In my mind, I expected all that, but what I did not expect is how men willingly admitted that they had often harassed women on the street (62.4%), shamelessly as if they were doing nothing wrong going as far as pointing/hinting at or exposing bodyparts (4.3%) and a decent percentage even admitted they don’t even feel anything when they do these crimes, they just do them out of habit (19.3%).
Now that shocked me! What does this mean? What does it say about our society? I just think we live in a very sick society where degrading and humiliating women just because they are women have become the norm. When you know that 83% of women are fully aware of the fact that they are harassed, their humanity is aggressed. They are aware of how damaging this is but no one does anything about it. We don’t even want to talk about it.
This has reached a point where men don’t even see anything wrong with what they do, they admit that they harass women as if they are just stating that they like football. Women are afraid to go down to the street and avoid doing so, they have nightmares and depressions, their academic and professional productivity are reduced. Why? What for? Whereas some men enjoy it, others feel nothing at all, they just do it as a habit… Just a habit… For a retarded, stupid habit, women are deprived of the street that should be theirs just as it is anyone else’s.
Men often brag about how they are better drivers, how they are more productive at work, more successful in everything, more confident. And I have a question that anyone is kindly asked to answer: if you had to go through a debilitating experience, such as walking on the street when you are a woman; If your space is either limited to the safety of your home; if every excursion is a terrifying experience… would you be able to compete, excel and perform?
Most men adopting this oppressive patriarchal system are more vulnerable and weak than any other creature, but they are protected by patriarchy, by the fact that they can let out any anger or feeling of weakness on women, yes women, Women on the street, family members at home, or female colleagues. That is the sad truth of this great value that we defend so fiercely, our values in this beautiful Middle East have been degraded to humiliating women just because they are women who breathe.

The study is written in Arabic and I would recommend you read it: غيوم في سماء مصر

Sexual Harassment - The Frustration

I always knew I would end up working on street harassment, I just knew it. At times I felt it's too much work to do, that it's too big for me or even for civil society all together to work, at times I thought that the world is just waiting for my signal and that I will change the WORLD.
So I finally got my act together and started writing this plan, how to eradicate street harassment... right? And in my head it seemed like such a cool plan.
Now I after spending a very long weekend writing and fixing the plan I was only done with 50% of the first draft of the plan and then more time passed and I worked even more. I still had like 20% but I was stuck. So I thought I'd research what others have done and now I am not sure how to quantify that I have over with.
There were and there are lots of people working on street harassment, it's an agonizing job. The more I work the more I realize my work is so far from being complete. I never understood how can writing a plan take so much time, but now I understand. It's like the more you do the more you find out you need to do more.
I am not sure if I am supposed to be thrilled about that or frustrated. On one hand, harassment is very personal, very intimate, very complicated and each survivor has to go deep inside her/his being to find answers to harassment, its motives and its mechanisms. But at the same time, the woman's body has always been the battlefield of the most political/public war ever (and no, the use of "ever" is not exaggerated).
Society has to change, women have to change, men have to change, you have to change, I have to change, you and me have to change.
That's a lot of "changes" that need to take place, don't you think? And all this to stop sexually frustrated and blind mobs from scaring the shit of every penis-deprived person on earth.
Back to the plan I guess.

بمبة سيليكون - Review

On my way to see the play “بمبة سيليكون” in LAU I was telling my friend Amie why in Lebanon we have sense humor that u don’t find in any other country in the Arab world (according to her). We are funny, yes we make fun of everything, we laugh and joke about our wars, our politicians, our pain.

We have it our blood we are funny people that make fun of everything without realizing the amount of pain behind it, we make fun of politicians and people laugh and people from out side this country do they realize how much pain and hard living these politicians are causing us.

بمبة سيليكون a play that’s being shown for free on the occasion of International Womyn’s Day directed by a feminist as I heard, so I was very interested to see what it is, I walked into the theater a woman sleeping on the floor in a living room that sounded very much from our reality.

The stage was divided in two spaces, the first was where the caller’s bedroom and it occupied most of the stage and the second was the office of the operator which was above the rest of the stage and restricted to the left side only. In the background Majida El Roumi music and the sound of the TV indicating that the story took place during the 2006 war.

The play starts with a woman screaming and calling the doctor’s clinic, at that moment u would think that she was having a baby. After calling the clinic 4 times the secretary walks in and answers the phone and then the woman stands from behind the coach and you would notice D33 size boobs.

My silicon exploded because of the pressure of war planes and bombing, said the panicking woman.
Well the doctor ran away with his family and I can’t really do anything for you, answers the secretary in the office.

These two sentences started the dialogue which was the backbone of the whole play.

And then after something exploding in Beirut they both freak out and start screaming one of them is scared for her life while the other is scared of the silicon is in her blood which she fears might kill her. The secretary makes it clear that it won’t happen.
Both characters go through a lot of emotional stages, at some point they are crying and then they would be gossiping about their lives and they would forget the war outside.
That explains exactly the reality of a lot of women in our society and shallowness of their lives.

It was a funny play and I couldn’t help myself from laughing although I see it as a sad play.

The audience laughed all through the play especially when the actresses were making a fool out themselves; talking about bra sizes, marriage and sex-positions that will make you pregnant.

It was not funny at all and I know for a fact that the woman who wrote the play wanted people to see the sad reality behind this humor, but the question is how many people really saw that and understood it.

We make fun of things, we laugh at our own misery and people laugh with us, without paying attention to the suffering behind every joke. And that is our main problem while working on any issue in this country. We are too busy laughing that will always create boundaries that will prevent us from addressing our issues and changing mentalities.

Zainab Nasser

The Day Has Come

If you were given a penny for every woman being beaten up at home, you’d be rich. And this home we are talking about, where she comes every day to sleep, to cook, to do her second full time job, which is a mum or a wife, this home would be built on her economical and emotional contribution.

Women on Sunday the 8th of march would be celebrating IWD "International women’s day" and while some women in far some place are celebrating this day, others are being beaten up until they bleed at home, being raped in dark alleys. Posters and billboards objectifying women’s bodies are all over the roads from Jounieh to Beirut to somewhere else in Beirut, to Tripoli, to Saida, to Sour, everywhere in Lebanon.

To fathers that make there daughters get married to their rapists, for Honor, in what world is that fair? And what honor is that if I may ask? What is honor? Define it for me, and what definition allows another human to kill for it. Honor, honor was made for humans, what is honor next to death? Next to losing a daughter, a sister or a wife.

I still remember when I first discovered this awful fact, and I couldn’t believe it, by logic, if a guy shoots your daughter and stabbed her, would you make him marry her, to hide the shame. And what is shame really next to a lifetime scar and billions and trillions of psychological problems. So now let me get it right, why can’t every man who wants a woman and she didn’t say yes, rape her simply, and yah take her sister too, it’s a garage sale, rape one get one free.

Am not so fond of statistics but by logic I can say that our economy and it’s a new trend, is based on Botox and beauty products, loans for plastic surgery, little girls buying barbies, and tell me why barbies can’t stand on their feet? I’ll tell you why, because it’s a subconscious message for a little girl since she is 1 that she can’t stand up alone, she always needs a man to help her up,
but look at me, look at us, women, we go to a fulltime job, we come back home to the other full time job, we raise kids, we do stand up while we carry babies inside us, and we stand up for 9 month. We are actually standing up, ON OUR OWN. Fairytales are over, no prince charming anymore, there are women in the world and women can manage homes, and can run this freaking world, get over it.

Yesterday was the 8th of March 2009. A lot of women went down to the streets to ask other women what they think of woman’s rights, a lot said: “in my surrounding there is no violence. I am not concerned”. If you saw some of these women, please a message from me, tell her, wake up, not for you, not for me but for my nieces, for your daughters, for your sisters, and even your own mothers.

After Sunday the 8th of March 2009, for every woman I mentioned above, we went down to the streets to rebel, with signs and voices that cannot be shut down anymore. God know I’ve been waiting for this day, and the one after it, and after it. That day HAS come.

Maya

إنو معليش

من فترة كنت عم بقرا مقالة من السفير، عنوانها: إمرأة نصف عارية مجرد «شيء» لدى الرجل

هلق طولوا بالكن وسمعوني شوي، تعوا لنحلل المكتوب بالسفير والمكتوب بالدايلي تلغراف (المصدر)... أول شي، السفير بتأكد إنو "الرجال" بيشوفو النساء النصف عاريات على إنن أشياء. بالوقت اللي ريتشارد ألاين أكد نقلاً عن سوزان فسك إنو الرجال المعروفين على إنن عنصريين ضد المرأة بيتفاعلوا مع صور النساء النصف عاريات متل ما بيتفاعلوا مع صور أشياء
ما بعرف أنا بحس في فرق... مجتمعنا اللبناني بيمتاز بالذكورية والإجحاف بس إنو نقول إنو الجال بيشوفو النسوان النص عاريات على إنن أشياء... سمكن فيا شويّة ظلم بحق الرجال كلن
واللي مش مصدقني يقرا المقالين ويصلّحلي