On Women Responding to Sex

It is amazing how Mainstream media never ceases to amaze me! Alot has been said about women, men and how different their reaction to sexual stimulus is. Please take a look at this piece: أي الاعلانات "الجنسية" ترضي النساء؟
Now for one minute forget the fact that this article lacks the very least requirements of professional journalism (or at least passable journalism):

1. I cannot easily find the author of this masterpiece


2. it is impossible or at least, very difficult to trace back the original article in UBE that the author quotes and bases his whole article upon. Because needless to say that when you enter the query "women+sex" then regardless of what you are looking for and regardless of what you add to it, you will most probably find porn sites and porn links. A woman does not have a sex life outside the context of porn.


3. the author did not have a coherent idea of what he is talking about. I mean first of all, he is saying that a woman is more receptive to sex oriented ads or material if it is formulated in a "committed relationship" context (aka women use sex for love). They use sex to lur men into their traps of marriage, children, social burden, forced care... no really, just read this passage:
   

   يبدو الآن أنهن يشعرن باستياء أقل عند رؤيتهن صورا جنسية ضمن سياق عاطفي وطبيعي

   
   Now of course the author formulated it in a slightly different manor where he says that a woman is less disturbed by sexual images if they are formulated in a natural, emotional context. As if women are either disturbed or less disturbed about sex... Women can never be confortable about sexual images.
   But wait don't start arguing or thinking just now, the worst is yet to come. To prove his point, the author gives an example:
   

   وذكر موقع لايف ساينس أن الباحثين عرضوا على مشاركات في الدراسة صورة لساعة يد مثيرة للاهتمام وأخرى للساعة ذاتها يلتف حولها شريط ملون ألصقت عليها عبارة «هذه الساعة هدية من رجل إلى امرأة لها مكانة خاصة في حياته» حيث تبين أن النساء فضلن الصورة الثانية. وبينت الدراسة أن النساء يستجبن بشكل أفضل لصور الإعلانات التي تصور الرجل على أنه شريك يحترم التزاماته حيالهن، في حين أن الرجال يهمهم في المقام الاول أن يكون العنصر الجنسي متوافراً في الاعلان دون أي شيء آخر.
   

   
   The first thing that struck me was the fact that now the author is quoting the another magazine: Life Science. How he jumped from one article to another, and why, is still a mystery for me. But anyway, the idea is that women prefer the image of an interesting watch with a ribbon that says: "this watch is a present from a man to a woman that means a lot to him"...
   
   I am left baffled by this lack of coherence, what was the author trying to say? Why is this watch example relevant? How does it prove that women prefer sex in an emotional context?

Now let us, for a moment forget all these formalities and think about the following question: What does this article say about women and sexual fantasies?

First of all, this article was filed under miscellaneous (whatever that is supposed to say about how the authors, editors and readers of this online magazine view women and their sexuality).

Second observation, all these weirdly connected absurd conclusions emanate from total misconception about and ignorance to women's sexuality, presumptions and prejudice about women that try very hard to prove that women and men live in two different worlds and can only connect through the translation of the female language to the male language through MONEY.

And I insist that the translation is to the male language, the author of this article is a man,
expressing a man's incomprehension of the woman's body and desires, a man's media expressing a male dominated society in which women are odd beings, informations about women are first falsified then filed under miscellaneous news, news that don't belong anywhere else and cannot be classified in any serious section.

Yes I am outraged, I am outraged because I know men, the ones I call real men. Men that are willing to think and reflect, interact and communicate with other beings (some of which happen to be women). And the author of this article is just not one of those communicating men. He is just someone who has assimilated the mainstream culture and regurgitated it blindly.

In the end, I would just like to say that this article, not as an individual publication but as a school of thought, is an insult and a blatant promotion of a dangerous ideology that ignores a woman's pure sexual desire, banning them from exploring what they want or wish for. At the same time it keeps men under pressure to keep on getting more MONEY because, as these great studies show, this is what will get the woman feel less disgusted of sex.

You think not? prove me wrong

Just in case you didn't know:

• First of all, if you have not visited the feminist collective's website I strongly urge you to do so. The International Women's day is approaching and the collective is working hard for this event, the idea is quite interesting, on the 7th and the 8th of March the feminists will invade the streets of Beirut, talking to women and whoever would be interested to listen, about women, their rights and their day.
  So if you are interested, please do visit the website and here is the link to the event details in Arabic  and in English.
• Now the second thing I wanted to talk to you about was the cool archive that Deems has been sustaining for a while about Arab Media dealing or discussing issues relative to one or more of our core values or issues. The Blog is called Feminist Archiving of Arab Media and it is still under construction.

Constructing Victimhood

Part of the work I see the Feminist Collective doing is creating a space for self-refection and critique of women’s and feminist politics in Lebanon – and the Arab world more broadly. I would like to offer up one such critique to the women’s movement: We need to stop fetishizing our own victimhood.

In every feminist discussion I’ve ever encountered on “honor” crimes, the outrage at the phenomenon is almost invariably followed by a disclaimer that points to the fact that an inordinate number of women are posthumously found to be “innocent” (read: virginal). The underlying assumption is that the crime would somehow seem less heinous, or at least more defensible, had the woman in question actually been “guilty” of having sex, the act which supposedly led to her murder. Honor crimes are made all the more tragic by the apparent sexual innocence of the victims.

There is a sort of twisted logic to this. To further the cause, it becomes politically necessary to strip agency from the victims. To gain people’s sympathy and to allay fears that by challenging the legitimacy of these killings we’re encouraging promiscuity or allowing women to get away with having illicit sex, the victims must be presented as pure and innocent. How else can we get people to identify with victims when they seem to have committed such unspeakable crimes? Soiled women don’t make good poster children for the cause, after all. By playing into this on strategic grounds we are vindicating the logic of the very system that allows for these sorts of crimes to happen with impunity.

This is not only a problem of practice, but it also points to the larger problem of how human rights, as a normative legal system, represents certain events and reconstructs people as victims of a particular human rights violation. This conception creates a set of disempowering and counterproductive social categories: firstly, that all victims should be innocent, and secondly, that all victims are in a perpetual state of need, denying them subjectivity and agency. When working on issues related to sexuality, this becomes acutely apparent. In advocating for the repeal of anti-sodomy laws for example, gay activists constantly find themselves having to downplay the actual act of gay sex itself. To sell the cause, we must create sex-less beings, we must transform them from criminals to victims, innocent and act-less in order for the issue to be palatable to a conservative social order. Instead of focusing on the illegitimacy of criminalization as such, we look for other issues to push the point: police brutality, invasion of privacy, torture, etc. Although this is strategically sound for our purposes, we nevertheless inadvertently end up selling ourselves short: Disembodied beings, we look up wide-eyed in supplication and ask for the world’s sympathy, insisting on our sexless innocence. It’s almost like applying a band-aid over a malignant tumor.

Still, this strategy doesn’t work for everyone, particularly not for the less “popular” victims of human rights violations such as sex workers, who suffer from systematic state persecution, situations of legal limbo (particularly if they are migrants), violence, denial of health care, and a host of other abuses. Discussions on the rights of sex workers in the human rights community are almost solely centered around their right to be free of sex work, and the possibility of some sort of agency or will in the decision to engage in sex work effectively becomes null and void. The solution becomes to reconstitute sex workers into victims of trafficking, forced into the sex trade against their will – which is firstly not necessarily true, and secondly often leads to the adoption of policies that further marginalize and criminalize.

As feminists, we really need to start critically interrogating this idea of innocence. We need to move beyond the dominant human rights model of innocent victim vs. evil perpetrator. Once we dig a little deeper and start looking at systems of social control and oppression rather than individual violators/victims, the question of accountability becomes murkier. We need to restore a model where people are active subjects of human rights rather than passive recipients, able to frame their stories and lives with autonomy and on their own terms.

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

why the internet

As I am back from the infoactivism camp, I am looking back at all the tools that I have been informed about during the last 6days. And I find myself wondering, why? why would it be so important for us as feminists, to work along side with geeks? I mean no matter how cool my website is for example, using online technology ultimately means that I am excluding a big chunk of people who simply do not have internet access, right?
That's absolutely true. But if you ask me, in order to get to our audience we will have to use the internet, along with other things. Plus, keep in mind, that most of the work that we want to be done is based on public opinion, convincing people and promoting certain ideas, this work can only be initiated by us, if the people don't pick up feminist values and argue about them, then we will just keep on preaching ourselves, whether we use the internet, books, tvs, radios, newspapers, or even podiums and public speeches.

The greatest lesson that I have learnt over and over again is that we have no control over the revolutions that we push for. we can just say the first word, it is the people/others that will take the values that we thought are ours and will adapt and alter them to what they believe is right... And as they are doing so, our job is to keep on talking/typing/reading so that diversity is expressed.

So open those browsers, pickup those pens, turn on that tv, grab that newspaper and start thinking, acting and reacting... show me the world that you want to live in. It isn't just the internet that I want to see the world using

The Women's Declaration from the World Social Forum 2009

The coolest declaration I've ever read!

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM 2009 - Belém do Para, Brazil

WOMEN'S ASSEMBLY DECLARATION


In the year in which the WSF joins with the population of the Pan-Amazon, we, women from different parts of the world gathered in Belém, reaffirm the contribution of indigenous women and women from all forest peoples as political subjects that enriches feminism in the framework of the cultural diversity of our societies and strengthens the feminist struggle against the patriarchal capitalist global system.

The world is currently experiencing various crises that demonstrate that this system is not viable. Financial, food, climate and energetic crises are not isolated phenomena, but represent a crisis of the model itself, driven by the super exploitation of work and the environment, and financial speculation of the economy.

We are not interested in palliative answers based on market logic in response to these crises; this can only lead to perpetuation of the same system. We need to advance in the construction of alternatives. We are against the use of agro-fuels and carbon credit markets as 'solutions' to the climate and energy crises. We, feminist women, demand a change in the production and consumption model.

In relation to the food crisis, we affirm that transgenic foodstuffs do not represent a solution. Our alternatives are food sovereignty and the development of agro-ecological production.

With respect to the financial and economic crisis, we are against the withdrawal of millions from public funds to rescue banks and businesses. We, feminist women, demand employment protection and the right to a decent income.

We cannot accept that attempts to maintain this system are made at the expense of women. The mass layoffs, cuts in public spending in social fields, and reaffirmation of this production model increase the work involved in reproduction and sustainability of life, and thus directly affect our lives as women.

To impose its domain worldwide, the system resorts to militarization and arms; genocidal confrontations are fabricated that reduce women to spoils of war and use sexual violence as a weapon of war in armed conflict. Entire populations are forcibly displaced, forcing them to live as political refugees. Violence against women, feminicide and other crimes against humanity are committed on a daily basis in armed conflicts, while perpetrators enjoy total impunity.

We, feminist women, propose radical and profound changes in relations among human beings and with the environment, the end of lesbophobia, of hetero-normative and racist patriarchy.

We demand the end of control over our bodies and sexuality. We claim the right to make free decisions in relation to our lives and the territories we inhabit. We are against the reproduction of society through the super-exploitation of women.

We express our solidarity with women in regions of armed conflict and war. We add our voices to those of our sisters in Haiti and reject the violence perpetrated by the military occupation forces. We support the Colombian, Congolese and countless other women who resist – on a daily basis – the violence of military and militia groups in conflict in their countries. We stand together with Iraqi women facing the violence of the US military occupation.

At this current time, we express our particular solidarity with Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip under military attack from Israel, and we join the struggles for the end of war in the Middle East.

In peace, as in war, we support the victims of patriarchal and racist violence against black and youth women.

Equally, we express our support and solidarity to all sisters in their resistance struggles against hydroelectric dams, timber and mining companies and mega-projects in the Amazon and around the world, as well as those who are persecuted as a result of their legitimate opposition to this
exploitation. We unite with those struggling for the right to water.

We stand with all women criminalized for the practice of abortion and defend this right. We strengthen our commitment and join together in actions to resist fundamentalist and conservative attacks, in order to guarantee that all those women who need to, are entitled to safe and legal abortion.

We support the struggle for accessibility for disabled women and for the right of migrant women to freely "come and go".

On behalf of all these women, and of ourselves, we continue committed to the construction of the feminist movement as a counter-hegemonic political force and an instrument for women to achieve the transformation of their lives and our societies, by supporting and strengthening the self-organisation of women, dialogue, and networking between social movements' struggles.

On 8th March and during the Global Week of Action 2010, as women around the world we will unite in our confrontation of the capitalist and patriarchal system that oppresses and exploits us. In the streets and in our homes, in forests and the countryside, in our struggles and the in the spaces of our daily lives, we will maintain our rebellion and mobilisation.

Belém, 1st February 2009

Apple

The first time I came out to my parents, I came out to them as a pagan, I was thirteen. Being from a catholic background, outing myself as a pagan was just as bad as outing myself as Queer.

There was always something in spirituality that attracted me but during our religious studies at school, nothing made sense. I had questions and so many and instead of having them answered I would just get kicked out of class under the pretext that I was causing discomfort and opposing the teacher.

It never made sense to me, the sudden birth of an Adam and Eve, it didn't make sense to me that all the prophets were men and wisdom and spirituality was accessible through their words only, it didn't make sense to me, that I, who was supposed to be the image of God, as taught in my religion, found him white bearded and old in our religious study books.

I came across Gaia, mother earth, I came across all her elements and bit by bit, in my teenage head the world around me made sense. I was the image of a god, but this god was not defined by gender, this god was a one and this "One" combined all genders. This "One" combined all my facets, all the elements. Fire was in the energy of rubbing your hands against each other, air was in every breath, water made up most of my mortal flesh and this flesh was to return to dust, to earth… and all this sheltered a spirit. It made sense to be part of the One, a small particle of something big. With this I understood that we are all similar particles, that there was no hierarchy in defining human existence, that there shouldn't be.

I don't understand why my questions caused such a riot in my catholic school, had they looked deep enough beyond dogma they would have realized that these are the basic founding teachings that they were supposed to transmit.

As I dwelled deeper into my pagan readings, I came across feminism and matriarchal societies, I came across woman deities and strong female mythology figures. None of this was taught at our school. No one had told me the role Ishtar played, no one had explained to me the evolution of Adonis into a certain prophet centuries later, no one had given me the option to make up my own path. No one had told me that women could be warriors instead of just child baring beings, they had not explained the sanctity of a yoni (the vagina). A woman belonged to the "Father" and from the father, passed to the husband and Lillit was nowhere to be found, she had rebelled, copulated with the devil, unworthy to go down in history. So they created Eve, but Eve could not possibly be an example for mankind, let us not make her so, let us burden her with the original sin which we shall burry between her legs and breasts. And so it was decided, what an evolution!

I grew up hiding my breasts, I grew up crossing my legs, I grew up choking my words, my thoughts, swallowing the apple over and over and over again as whole, having it stuck in my throat blocking every potential thought that dared to try to escape. They fed me that apple and St. Paul asked me to shut up and "not speak, for the Man is speaking" and I hid my breasts and cursed my period and got disgusted by my own blood and choked all of me…

The apple has rotted, it has fallen to pieces swallowed and released. I have found the One within and this is what they fear, for you to find that your hand can move energies that your breath can do miracles and that , as it was once, your body is indeed a holly pathway.

Pomegranate