(2) Why they hate us

"In a crisp three and a half pages of fiction, Rifaat lays out a trifecta of sex, death, and religion that forms the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East."(3)

"The stories [in Rifaat's Distant view of a minaret - GdG] show women constantly sublimating themselves in religion, even as this faith is used against them by clerics and male-dominated society." [mijn nadruk] (4)

[Ik weet niet wat sublimatie hier betekent. Ik vind het maar raar dat je je als individu vrijwillig in een geloof zou storten dat in je nadeel werkt. Ik denk eerder aan allerlei vormen van sociale en gewelddadige dwang van buitenaf: zoals je daardoor de rol van mannen accepteert zo accepteer je op een gegeven moment de rol van religie.]

"The Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East and North Africa stand apart in their terrible record on women’s rights."(6)

Eltahawy werd geboren in Egypte, leefde vanaf haar zevende tot haar vijftiende in de UK, daarna woont ze zes jaar in Saoedi-Arabië. Daarna gaat ze in Egypte studeren aan de American University in Cairo.

[De vrouwvijandigheid en seksvijandigheid die ze hierna beschrijft is schokkend en typisch voor veel religies.] ]

"Both my parents, Egyptians who had earned PhDs in medicine in London, had found jobs in Jeddah, teaching medical students and technicians clinical microbiology. The campuses were segregated. My mother taught the women on the female campus, and my father taught the men on the male campus. When an instructor of the same gender wasn’t available, the classes were taught via closed-circuit television, and the students would have to ask questions using telephone sets. My mother, who had been the breadwinner of the family for our last year in the United Kingdom, when we lived in Glasgow, now found that she could not legally drive. We became dependent on my father to take us everywhere. As we waited for our new car to be delivered, we relied on gypsy cabs and public buses. On the buses, we would buy our ticket from the driver, and then my mother and I would make our way to the back two rows (four if we were lucky) designated for women. The back of the bus. What does that remind you of? Segregation is the only way to describe it.
It felt as though we’d moved to another planet whose inhabitants fervently wished women did not exist. I lived in this surreal atmosphere for six years. In this world, women, no matter how young or how old, are required to have a male guardian — a father, a brother, or even a son — and can do nothing without this guardian’s permission. Infantilized beyond belief, they cannot travel, open a bank account, apply for a job, or even get medical treatment without a man’s stamp of approval. I watched all this with a mounting sense of horror and confusion." [mijn nadruk] (9)

"Then (the 1980s and ‘90s) as now, clerics on Saudi TV were obsessed with women and their orifices, especially what came out of them. I’ll never forget hearing that if a baby boy urinated on you, you could go ahead and pray in the same clothes, yet if a baby girl peed on you, you had to change. What on earth made girls’ urine impure? I wondered. The hatred of women. This clerical obsession with women’s organs continues today. My favorite recent howler: driving will damage your ovaries." [mijn nadruk] (11)

"The obsession with controlling women and our bodies often stems from the suspicion that, without restraints, women are just a few degrees short of sexual insatiability." [mijn nadruk] (13)

"Yet while clerics busy themselves suppressing female desire, it is the men who can’t control themselves. On the streets of too many countries in the region, sexual harassment is epidemic. In a 2008 survey by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, more than 80 percent of Egyptian women said they’d experienced sexual harassment, and more than 60 percent of men admitted to harassing women. A 2013 UN survey reported that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women experience street sexual harassment. Men grope and sexually assault us, and yet we are blamed for it because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, wearing the wrong thing." [mijn nadruk] (14)

"Families impose curfews on their daughters so that they’re not raped or assaulted, and yet is anyone telling boys and men not to rape or assault us?" [mijn nadruk] (15)

"That is why I blame a toxic mix of culture and religion. Whether our politics are tinged with religion or with military rule, the common denominator is the oppression of women."(21)

"The university I enrolled in, the American University in Cairo, was a bubble of privilege that only set in stark relief the ugliness of the poverty around me. I would take a public bus from the lower-middle-class neighborhood where I lived and an hour later I would be with people who’d been chauffeured for most of their lives. It was a crash course in Egypt’s classist society; many of my classmates acted as if there were no one suffering on the streets their chauffeured cars passed through." [mijn nadruk] (25)

[Klassenverschillen. Blij dat er eens iemand is die dat soort dingen ziet en aanduidt.]

"But for women, there have always been two revolutions to undertake: one fought with men against regimes that oppress everyone, and a second against the misogyny that pervades the region. As jubilant as I was to see a dictator toppled in Egypt and in other countries in the region, and as thrilled as I am to see those countries stumble toward democracy, however clumsily — what else to expect after so many years of oppression? — I am still painfully aware that although women may have been on the barricades beside men, they are in danger of losing what few rights they had in postrevolutionary Egypt and in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and Syria." [mijn nadruk] (28)

"It was in the “new Egypt” that I was sexually assaulted by security forces during clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in November 2011 — beaten so severely that my left arm and right hand were broken — and detained, first by the Ministry of the Interior and then by military intelligence, for some twelve hours, two of which I spent blindfolded. Only by virtue of a borrowed cell phone was I able to send an alert on Twitter about my situation."(30)

"Culture evolves, but it will remain static if outsiders consistently silence criticism in a misguided attempt to save us from ourselves. Cultures evolve through dissent and robust criticism from their members. When Westerners remain silent out of “respect” for foreign cultures, they show support only for the most conservative elements of those cultures. Cultural relativism is as much my enemy as the oppression I fight within my culture and faith." [mijn nadruk] (33)

[Daar kan ik me veel bij voorstellen. Cultuurrelativisme is inderdaad niet handig: 'ik ben niet gelovig dus ik mag niets zeggen over mensen die dat wel zijn', 'ik ben een man, ik mag geen kritiek hebben op vrouwen', dat soort pseudotolerantie. Van de andere kant hoor je toch ook al snel over 'bemoeizucht' als je als buitenstaander - als iemand die niet 'bij de groep hoort' - je mening wel ventileert. Lastig probleem. Je ziet het ook aan de volgende uitspraak:]

"I insist on the right to critique both my culture and my faith in ways that I would reject from an outsider.(...) When I travel and give lectures abroad and I’m asked how best to help women in my part of the world, I say, help your own community’s women fight misogyny. By doing so, you help the global struggle against the hatred of women."(34)

[Dus mag de buitenstaander zich er niet mee bemoeien, toch? Dit is toch ook juist cultuurrelativisme?]

"While I am acutely aware of Islamophobes and xenophobic political right-wingers who are all too glad to hear how badly Muslim men treat their women, I’m also acutely aware that there’s a right wing among Muslim men that does propagate misogyny. We must confront both, not ally ourselves with one in order to fight the other."(36)

(38) Black veil, white flag

"Candy in a wrapper, a diamond ring in a box — these analogies are commonly used in Egypt and other countries to try to convince women of the value of veiling. They compare women to objects that are precious but devalued by exposure, objects that need to be hidden, protected, and secured. When it comes to what are described as the Islamic restrictions on women’s dress, women are never simply women." [mijn nadruk] (40)

"There are various explanations for why women veil themselves. Some do it out of piety, believing that the Qur’an mandates this expression of modesty. Others do it because they want to be visibly identifiable as “Muslim,” and for them a form of veiling is central to that identity. For some women, the veil is a way to avoid expensive fashion trends and visits to the hair salon. For others, it is a way to be left alone and afforded a bit more freedom to move about in a public space that has become increasingly male-dominated. In recent decades, as veiling became more prevalent throughout the Arab world, the pressure on women who were not veiled began to increase, and more women took on the veil to avoid being harassed on the streets. Some women fought their families for the right to veil, while others were forced to veil by their families. For yet others, it was a way to rebel against the regime or the West." [mijn nadruk] (41)

[Dit klinkt alsof er vrouwen zijn die daar zelf voor kiezen. Ik geloof niet zo in die vrije keuze. Wat vrouwen hier zelf over zeggen mag ook best in twijfel getrokken worden. In een context van onderdrukking door religie en mannen - je wordt op allerlei manieren gestraft als je er niet voor kiest - is het idee 'vrije keuze' onzinnig. Er is veel moed voor nodig om in zo'n context af te wijken en geen hoofddoek etc. te dragen. Er is weinig moed voor nodig om al die bedekkende kleding te dragen in een context waarin dat vanzelfsprekend is.]

"Reading Mernissi [Fatima Mernissi: The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam en Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Societies - GdG] and Ahmed [Leila Ahmed: Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate - GdG] was a balm that emboldened me in my struggles with the hijab, and to this day, I often recommend them to younger women undergoing their own struggles."(45)

"But we must find a way to talk about the hijab that does not frame it as a choice between cultures."(47)

[Zodat vrouwen een hoofddoek gaan dragen, niet omdat het in de koran zou staan, maar uit verzet tegen het Westen.]

Alle regeringswisselingen in de regio hebben nooit geleid tot het loslaten van de kledingvoorschriften - en allerlei andere onderdrukkende regels - voor vrouwen.

"The veil, be it the hijab or the niqab, is a white flag raised to signal our surrender to the Islamists and their conservatism."(54)

"Why were women alone responsible for sheltering men from the sexual desires women supposedly elicited in men? Why could men not control themselves? Why, if men were the ones being tempted, were they not the ones being policed? All these questions pressed themselves on me at a time when I was trying to push them away. They were both welcome and unwelcome, a sign that a reckoning between me and my headscarf was inevitable." [mijn nadruk] (63)

"But I was to learn that choosing to wear the hijab is much easier than choosing to take it off. And that lesson was an important reminder of how truly “free” choice is." [mijn nadruk] (64)

[Precies. Zie boven.]

"Many people say that they support a woman’s right to choose to wear the niqab because it’s her natural right. But what they’re doing is supporting an ideology that does not believe in a woman’s right to do anything except cover her face. (...) I’m outraged when people say that as a feminist I must support a woman’s right to do this. To claim that the wearing of the niqab is a feminist issue is to turn feminism on its head."(71)

"What disturbs me about the discussion of veiling in Europe is that the headscarf and niqab bans there are driven almost solely by xenophobic right-wingers. (...) I’m disappointed with the left wing in Europe for not speaking up and declaring that the niqab ban has everything to do with women’s rights; we are fighting against an ideology that does not believe in women’s rights. This is why I support the bans on the face veil that have been imposed in France, Belgium, and some parts of Barcelona, Spain. It is why I question why so many Muslim men jump to defend the niqab and the right to wear it."(71-72)

"We must examine how the niqab contributes to the promotion of a “purity culture” — to borrow a phrase that feminists in the United States have began to use against Christian conservatives there who obsess over women’s “modesty” — and how such a culture directly contributes to the dangers girls and women face in public space." [mijn nadruk] (76)

"When I make the argument that the niqab erases a woman by concealing her face, I am often met with howls of disagreement from those who claim that women who cover their faces are as active as anybody else. That is clearly false. (...) But I implore them to recognize the privilege that allows them to make vocal and impassioned defenses of the hijab. It is easy to forget that there are women with less privilege than they who have no true choice in veiling." [mijn nadruk] (78)

"The niqab represents a bizarre reverence for the disappearance of women. It puts on a pedestal a woman who covers her face, who erases herself, and it considers that erasure the pinnacle of piety. We cannot continue to don the black veil and raise a white flag to Islamist misogyny." [mijn nadruk] (80)

(86) One hand against women

"Almost 100 percent of Egyptian girls and women report being sexually harassed."(87)

"These violations continue unchecked and unabated as our governments fail again and again to make serious efforts to protect girls and women in public space. Effective laws are not the only solution, but they would at least indicate a willingness on the part of government to take seriously any sexual violations against women." [mijn nadruk] (89)

"Street sexual harassment is not exclusive to the Middle East and North Africa. It is a disturbing reality for too many women around the world. But a combination of societal, religious, and political factors has made the region’s public space uniquely dangerous for women." [mijn nadruk] (90)

"Levels of street sexual harassment have soared throughout the Arab world, and everyone asks why. One answer — always met with howls of denial from conservatives — is that the more women cover up, the more it lets men off the hook. The “purity culture” that exists across the Middle East and North Africa burdens girls and women with the responsibility for their own safety from sexual violence, and for ensuring they don’t “tempt” boys and men." [mijn nadruk] (91)

"This purity culture leads both men and women to unjustly blame women for the harassment they suffer. Women are criticized, and they criticize and police one another, for wearing clothes that are too tight, or the wrong color, the wrong length, the wrong style — it’s always the woman’s fault. Anything a woman does to alter her own appearance is taken as an incentive to abuse." [mijn nadruk] (94)

"In Egypt, we have reached the point at which the state can physically strip you of your veil, and forcibly examine your hymen, while claiming to protect you."(109)

"Thanks to the tireless efforts of women’s rights groups and small but incredibly courageous initiatives launched to combat growing street sexual violence, including HarassMap, Tahrir Bodyguard, and I Saw Harassment, in 2014 the state finally acknowledged the problem and seemed to act on it, criminalizing the physical and verbal harassment of women and setting unprecedented penalties for such crimes."(119)

"But how will a police force that has harassed and assaulted women combat violence against women? How will that police force know how to act and what to do in cases of sexual assault and rape when it has no training in treating such crimes? Flourishes of words and chivalry are one thing. How those translate into concrete mechanisms that protect girls and women and ensure justice is another thing altogether."(120)

"Women have fought alongside men in political revolutions that have toppled dictators. But once these regimes fell, women have looked around to find the same oppression, sometimes inflicted by the men they stood shoulder to shoulder with, by men who claimed to be protecting them."(123)

"The regimes that governed the Arab world before the recent revolutions were united in an utter disregard for women’s bodily integrity — a message that was not lost on the male public, who reflected back a similar disregard. Lack of accountability left both state and street misogyny to grow unchecked, producing the horrific incidents of sexual violence that recur day after day.
Unless we draw the connection between the misogyny of the state and of the street, and unless we emphasize the need for a social and sexual revolution, our political revolutions will fail. Just as important, women will never be free to live as autonomous citizens whose bodily integrity is safe inside and outside the home." [mijn nadruk] (125)

(125) The god of virginity

"“Have you heard of purity balls?” asked one young woman in the class, referring to formal dances in the United States between fathers and daughters at which teenage girls pledge to remain virgins until marriage. Such balls underpin purity culture in the United States.(...)
Watching the way the U.S. religious right wing has managed to erode women’s reproductive rights, especially in the South, I was struck by how important and courageous feminists and reproductive rights activists in those southern states are. Some of the other students tiptoed around asking questions of the student who had shared her purity pledge experience." [mijn nadruk] (130)

"Male-dominated religions and cultures, which cater to male sexuality with barely a nod to women’s desires, are difficult enough to endure without the judgments of fellow women. I know where these judgments come from; I recognize the need to conform. That need internalizes misogyny and subjugation, so much so that mothers will deny daughters the same pleasure and desire they were denied, and will call them “whores” for seeking it. In order to survive, women police their daughters’ bodies and their own, subsuming desire for the “honor” and the family’s good name." [mijn nadruk] (132)

[Hoe kun je zo'n proces ooit doorbreken? Je kunt het zelf alleen maar anders doen, lijkt me, en - in je eentje, in actiegroepen, waar dan ook - informeren informeren informeren. Maar dat lijkt toch maar weinig zoden aan de dijk te zetten. Het conformisme is eindeloos groot en sterk. De mannen blijven zich dominant en vrouwvijandig gedragen en de vrouwen gaan er in mee omdat ze er bij willen horen / niet buiten het gezin, de familie, de buurt, de religie willen vallen. Wat nog versterkt wordt door de maatschappelijke klasse, de armoede, het gebrek aan scholing, de dictatoriale context van kerk en staat.]

"If they could, I’m sure many in our societies — families and clerics — would tie girls’ legs together until their marriage nights. In some countries, communities do the next best thing and cut off perfectly healthy parts of girls’ genitalia (the parts intended for pleasure), to curb sexuality until the girl and her intact hymen are handed over to a husband." [mijn nadruk] (134)

Meer over FGM ('female genital mutilation').

"After decades of misguided handwringing over “offending” a cultural practice — handwringing that paid little heed to a girl’s bodily integrity — [weer dat cultuurrelativisme - GdG] FGM is now designated a violation of the human rights of girls and women by a concert of international treaties, regional treaties, and political consensus charters."(134)

"How does a girl survive this barbarism with her trust of other people intact, especially after her own mother was there and failed to protect her?"(137)

[Schokkend. Hoe conformistisch ben je dan? Zie hierboven. En even later lezen we dan weer eens hoe de medische professie er niet voor terugschrikt om een grote rol te spelen in dit soort conservatieve praktijken: de medicalisering van FGM.]

"The Arab world raises its girls to remain forever mental and emotional virgins. How, after years of having it drilled into you that sex is dirty, that sex is a sin — when your genitals are cut and you are left to contend with the resulting physical and emotional trauma — are you suddenly to enjoy sex, let alone to express what you want?" [mijn nadruk] (139)

"I’ve blamed the Arab world’s toxic mix of culture and religion for many of the examples of misogyny I cite in this book. Female genital mutilation is such a difficult practice to eradicate precisely because those two behemoths underpin it. Although both Muslim and Christian girls are subjected to FGM, activists have long complained chiefly of the mosque preachers who instruct their communities that it is their religious duty to cut their daughters."(146)

"Again and again, we fail to protect our girls and women. Those who hesitate to criticize genital mutilation out of respect for other cultures should listen to Bogaletch Gebre, director of the Kembatta Women’s Self-Help Center, who was cut at the age of six: “When culture affects one’s human integrity, when it violates it — be it in terms of gender or in terms of ethnic group — that culture should be condemned, because whenever one of us is hurt or violated, all of us are violated.”" [mijn nadruk] (158)

(161) Home

" ... in Saudi Arabia, where rape and murder are among several crimes punishable by death, a father cannot be executed for murdering his children; nor can husbands be executed for murdering their wives."(163)

"Whether you are five or thirty-three, whether it’s your father or your husband, men can abuse and kill you and justify it by blaming you for bringing the violence and viciousness upon yourself. As I discussed in a previous chapter, regimes and mobs try hard to push women out of public space and back into the home for their own “safety,” knowing full well that, for many women, home can be an even more dangerous place.
Domestic violence is a global scourge and is obviously not a problem exclusively in the Middle East and North Africa. For too long, women around the world were beaten and killed with little or no protection. But while many nations have made great strides in combating domestic violence, women remain shockingly unprotected throughout the Arab world, due to that same toxic combination of conservative culture, religion, and politics." [mijn nadruk] (165)

"The researchers behind the Lebanese survey, conducted at American University of Beirut Medical Center, spoke about their respondents’ attitude toward abuse: “Many abused women are totally resigned to their situation and decide to stay in an abusive relationship because of the fear of losing their children, the need to conform to social expectations, the lack of financial independence, the lack of family support, and the duty to obey their spouses.”" [mijn nadruk] (168)

[Gevangen gezet in een web van achterlijke waarden en normen ... ]

En wetgeving alleen is niet genoeg.

"Just as Egyptians must turn to a predatory police force to file complaints of abuse, women in Saudi Arabia are dependent on the very same family members who might be their abusers to help them report abuse. It is imperative to continue to condemn Saudi Arabia for refusing to confront this institutionalized misogyny. All this new law does is allow Saudi Arabia to boast that it has anti–domestic abuse legislation on the books — a hollow “accomplishment.”"(171)

[Bovendien is in een aantal van die landen nog sprake van rechtspraak aan de hand van de sharia of minstens door religieuze tribunalen. Dat helpt natuurlijk niks.]

"Clearly, in Lebanon, a country of Muslims and Christians, conservative lawmakers agreed to the notion that religious authority must have the last word on the domestic sphere."(176)

"Let’s take a closer look at the patriarch’s laws, or what are known as personal status laws, the minefield of misogyny and injustice that governs marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance in the Muslim world. The laws that govern family life are decided by the interpretation of your religion, but you can be sure of one thing: they guarantee that men and their interests are always paramount."(177)

"In predominantly Muslim countries, where several religions are practiced, everyone is subject to the same laws except in the case of family laws, which are dictated by one’s religion or sect. In Egypt, for example, Christians are subject to canonical law when it comes to marriage and divorce, child custody, and so on, while Muslims must follow Egypt’s interpretation of Islam. In the absence of a civil law governing such family issues, what ends up happening is that women and children are subject to ideas that were first formulated centuries ago. A woman’s religion or sect might be different, but her subjugation to laws that favor men is the same." [mijn nadruk] (178)

"We are so socialized in our oppression that even in the face of injustice, we know to stay within the lines. Instead of a bold demand for the removal of a system that keeps women forever at the whim of male guardians, even their adolescent sons, women meekly suggest reform." [mijn nadruk] (182)

"Put crudely, marriage ensures that a woman, after a childhood and youth of obedience to her father, shifts that obedience to her husband, for whom she becomes a baby maker and wet-nurse to his children (for the children essentially belong to the father)."(183)

"When the role and the use of religion in the continued oppression and abuse of girls and women is starkly presented, I often hear from my fellow Muslims: “But this isn’t the fault of Islam. It is the fault of Muslims who abuse religion.” Then they usually launch into how perfect everything would be if we practiced “the proper Islam.” Never mind that the clerics in Lebanon who opposed the anti–domestic violence bill fully believed they were advocating for a “proper Islam,” and had the weight of the establishment on their side. We are in denial if we do not honestly reckon with the role of religion in maintaining the patriarch’s rule at home, including how the men of religion help him to uphold his rule. The “proper Islam” defense serves only the rule of the patriarch. Our best chance for pushing back against such idealized notions is to offer examples from the lived realities of girls and women. Those who insist on holding on to the ideal will remind us over and over again that the Prophet’s last sermon emphasized love and respect for women. But has that teaching made its way into personal status laws?" [mijn nadruk] (185)

[Dat is typisch. Religieuze gelovigen verdedigen altijd hun religie en hun heilige boek. Het zijn volgens hen de mensen die de fouten maken door van het geloof af te wijken, het ligt nooit aan god en het geloof. Ja, hoor. Hoe blind kun je zijn? En waarom worden die gelovigen in de praktijk dan niet gecorrigeerd zodat ze het 'juiste geloof' volgen? Wat mij betreft had Eltahawy hier een hardere kritiek op religie en gelovigen neer kunnen zetten. Maar het is waar: zowel voor het geloof als voor het huwelijk geldt dat het niet zo simpel is om je aan de sociale opvattingen te onttrekken en er buiten te blijven. Dat probleem duikt dus de hele tijd op.]

"To choose to rebel, to disobey, comes at a great cost (not least social) that not everybody is able to pay. To be ostracized by one’s family in a society that places so much emphasis on social ties is a terrible and dangerous thing. In our culture, marriage and motherhood are deified, raised up as the ultimate female experience. But for what? When a mother’s breasts are being regulated for the sake of the child, and yet the mother herself hardly has any safeguards to protect her, what is she but an incubator for offspring and breasts for their sustenance?" [mijn nadruk] (187)

"Attitudes toward rape across the Arab world are abysmal. The stigma (and often the law) is much harsher on the woman than on the rapist. Women often keep quiet rather than risk arousing blame or humiliation, or being raped again at a police station. In some cases, they risk being killed by a relative to rid the family of shame.(...) Other countries turn rape into wedlock by allowing rapists to escape conviction by marrying their victims."(188-189)

"She told me of women placed in protective custody and girls placed in juvenile centers in order to protect them from relatives who intended to kill them to rid the family of the “shame” of their rape."(194)

[De omgekeerde wereld ... ]

"Nothing more horrifically epitomizes marital rape than child marriage, which a 2010 UNICEF report defines as a marriage in which one of the participants is under eighteen years of age. This sorry practice is permitted and prevalent not just in poor countries such as Sudan, Yemen, and my own, Egypt, but also in much wealthier Saudi Arabia.
In Sudan, girls can legally marry as soon as they reach puberty. In Yemen and Saudi Arabia there is no minimum age for marriage. According to Human Rights Watch and Yemeni government data from 2006, 52 percent of girls are married before they turn eighteen (often to much older men) and 14 percent before age fifteen." [mijn nadruk] (196)

"When an eight-year-old is effectively sold off by impoverished parents to a forty-year-old man, the use of terms such as marriage and husband is an abomination."(196)

"So those clerics who insist on the “Islamic right” to marry little girls should just be honest about it: they want malleable and powerless girls who will never challenge them. We must say no once and for all by outlawing such marriages and seeing them for what they are: pedophilia."(200)

[Het eerste is ongetwijfeld het geval en raakt aan de dwingende machtsverhoudingen en aan de agressie van mannen. Maar het is een fout om te denken dat dat ook maar iets met pedofilie te maken heeft. Seksueel misbruik van kinderen is niet hetzelfde als pedofilie. Integendeel.]

(206) Roads through the desert

"In 1990, forty-seven Saudi women famously violated the kingdom’s ban on female drivers by taking to the wheel in a convoy through Riyadh, the capital city. They were denounced as whores in mosques, banned from working for two years, and had their passports temporarily confiscated. Saudi Arabia, which fuels so many of the world’s cars with its oil, bans half its population from driving."(207)

"Why were girls and women barred from sports in the kingdom? Because ultraconservative clerics deemed women’s sports sinful."(209)

"Participation in sports must be a right for all girls in Saudi Arabia, not just those whose families can afford to send them to private schools that cushion them somewhat from their country’s “exceptionalism.” The wealthy often — though not always —are protected from some kinds of misogyny, and the disadvantaged, the most marginalized, and the most vulnerable are often the ones who feel misogyny most painfully." [mijn nadruk] (215)

"Religious hard-liners are making Saudi Arabia a laughingstock. A country that in about six decades built multilane highways across the desert, and is one of the most connected on the information superhighway, keeps its women locked in a medieval bubble — and the world is shamefully silent."(225)

(229) Speak for yourself

"I finally began to reckon with my own sexuality when I was twenty-eight. Just as it had taken me eight years to take off my hijab, it took me a long time to overcome all that I had been taught about sex and what I should and should not do with my body. Unlearning cultural and religious lessons and taboos can involve a radical turning against all that you have been taught. But it can be just as radical to slowly unchain yourself, working your way carefully through layers of guilt so that you do not completely fall apart from exhaustion and loneliness." [mijn nadruk] (229)

"So I shut down the personal and focused on the political — the external aspects of it at least. But, as I now realize, the political will never truly change unless it is accompanied by a parallel fight in the realm of the personal — the double revolution."(231)

"I’m not saying that all women should forgo marriage and children. But so many women — themselves unhappily struggling against the weight of societal expectations — instill in their daughters undeserved reverence for conservative gender roles. We must remember that these mothers often do this to “protect” their girls, and that it is unfair to place the full burden of change on them unless we also dismantle the system that demands they socialize their daughters thus. Yet this does not absolve them. If these women — educated and economically independent — do not push against the system, if they do not recognize the levels of privilege that cushion them, and that this privilege obliges them to push against cultural barriers, then what chance do our societies have?" [mijn nadruk]

[Precies. Erg goed geformuleerd. Het is begrijpelijk, maar niet goed. En als zij het niet doen, wie moet het dan wel doen? Ik vraag me eigenlijk altijd af in hoeveel van die gezinnen de ouders hun kinderen wel de ruimte geven om af te wijken. Gezinnen als dat waaruit Mona Eltahawy zelf is opgegroeid. Ze zijn er dus wel.]

"Without sex education that presents sex as a positive experience — and that mitigates taboo and “dirty” associations — and without easy access to contraceptives or even basic information about birth control, sex will continue to pose a great danger to the most vulnerable in our societies: girls and women." [mijn nadruk] (245)

"It takes a fierce drive for survival to emerge from cultural and religious restraints and say, “I want sex. It is my right to want sex. I celebrate this desire I feel.”"(259)

(267) Epilogue

Over haar supportgroep in Cairo: ervaringen van vrouwen.

"We must connect domestic violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation, and street sexual violence, and clearly call them all crimes against women. And just as we stood next to men to overthrow President Mubarak, we need men to stand alongside us now."(273)

[Het vervelende is alleen - zoals ze zelf al op meer plaatsen aangaf - dat er weinig mannen zijn die zich bevrijd hebben van de typische mannenrol. ]

"We will have a reckoning with our culture and religion, with military rulers and Islamists — two sides of one coin. Such a reckoning is essentially a feminist one. And it is what will eventually free us. Women — our rage, our tenacity, our daring and audacity — will free our countries."(274)