And if we be honest, there is plenty of them to go around … for everyone.
In this blog (a piece of trivia for ya: a blog is short for weblog, and it all began with this) I will be discussing something I have always been aloof to tête-à-tête about. Well, what kind of feminist would I be – bad feminist y’all - if I don’t fully side with women, or announce that maybe it’s not the men’s fault, ALL THE TIME, maybe it’s their fault MOST OF THE TIME (you getting’ no free pass from me boyz) ”. Having said that, I will not be re-inventing any wheels here, similar stuff was uttered by feminist icons - whom we owe everything - like Naomi Wolf and Germaine for ages.
Before I go all feminist on you let me tell you where I am coming from so that you’d understand why the hell I even care.
I am half Arab and female …. not the best combo and is probably enough to set the stage for why women's issues matter so much to me. Long story short, as a kid there was always something painful and puzzling about how women carry themselves in our culture, and please hear me out when I say “carry themselves”, because it wasn’t – still isn’t – only about being mistreated/ belittled, it is also about how women behave, how much value they put on themselves as humans vs sex objects (being sexual/ sensual is a world apart from being a sex object, understanding this will in retrospect explain why legal rights per se are not enough to liberate women, as objectifying oneself comes in different forms, we needn’t look far, look at how women objectify themselves on social media). On the other hand, it always infuriated me how boys/ men could walk the earth with a sense of ease in their own skin, whilst girls/ women were burdened by their biology (true across all cultures, as biology is destiny). Of course, my observations stretched further and were more imaginative and lucid, but I guess this will suffice.
I come from a secular family, or more like agnostic/ very anti-religion in every sense of the word. Men and women are equal in my family and to say anything else will bring the wrath of the Abu Ayyash gods. As for my immediate family, my mom is Circassian, though very different from Arabs, a somewhat conservative culture in terms of women’s status. Bad news! For it meant a lifetime of my mom – a very strong-minded woman mind you - trying to crush what she believed was “evil rebellion”. My dad was …. Hmmm how should I put it, a rebel without a pause, non-conformist, and aggressively secular. A self-made man, he worked his way out of Palestine - at a time when people were born and dead in the same square space - to England to acquire a high school diploma, then completed his Bachelor's in Engineering from Huston, Texas. My dad was also an artist, a poet, and a major alcoholic. Sadly for me, he died when I was 16, and with him the freedom and privilege I had as a girl (shed no tears, I broke every rule, disobeyed every law, and fought hard)
But where is the “feminist” bit in this feminist blog you say?
First, this will definitely be the “more on this later” typa blog but there ya go fellas
I was only 12 when I laid hands on my first feminist book; I was a reader/dreamer from early on … to escape reality? Maybe, who knows what goes inside kids’ heads. The book was a deep critique of our societies and how they treat women, I will later discover it was actually banned from bookstores (my dad was awesome). Something inside of me lit, I swear this ain’t just a fancy phrase I’m using. That book ignited something in me that will live to this day. And that was that. For a decade I could not get enough of feminist literature, from Simone de Beauvoir to Manal Al Sadawi and Mindy Kaling.
One last word about my old man though, it was he who taught me early on the difference between real freedom, where acts/behaviors/ even clothes stem from an authentic powerful you, and fake freedom that serves as another form of sexual objectification.
Then came the writing, then came the activism – both of which got me threats – then came years of study (Women studies at the University Of Western Ontario Canada, and religious/ cultural studies literally everywhere). Now if you are a writer/ thinker, you know things should not get personal, but I cannot help it, because this subject touches the essence of my humanity.
Now I know that by now you are thinking that after all those years I may have reached a point today where I am throwing bombs, burning flags – or people – and have grown a mustache… or two. In reality, after all those years of study, struggle, and plain good ol’ living I have actually departed from mainstream feminism, especially the modern one or what people like to call the 3rd wave, and latched to the idea of humanism. So what I say today is, I am human and my humanity is female, just like water takes the shape of its different vessels, being human is a single essence with endless forms. No shape should eradicate the essence or be deemed better/ worse than the other.
Who speaks for women?
I do … just kidding!
When I first started this thorny business called feminism, I assumed – every human assumes their view is the world’s viewpoint – that all women need/ want/ like feminist ideas, and that they want to be free from this and that, seek independence …ya know the lot. First mistake!
The second one is a killer: that I or a bunch of chicks have the right to speak on behalf of half of humanity, I mean whoever anointed us?
What I realized after all those years of “fighting the good fight”, is that the great majority of women could care less – if are not outright outraged – by how as radical feminists we want to design the world and appropriate gender roles (ok feminism have become fashionable in some circles, but it’s only lip service, fake boobs, and feminism just don’t go well together). What I have found is that most women aspire to a life of full harmony with biology, which to think about it is actually natural, and that we are the snowflakes, and for whatever reason the outliers. We are not the norm, we are not better, we are not worse, we are just different. We are who we are, so let’s just live our lives and allow the rest of humanity to live in peace.
Of course, there will always be a time and a place for struggle, and fighting injustice …. So to say what is said is not pacifism is not carelessness.
Stopping here …. This blog has left the building but will continue later ….