Talking, loudly, about a revolution
Could Mona Eltahawy have chosen a more provocative title for her manifesto? “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution” combines sex, religion and politics in a way guaranteed to bait, captivate or possibly infuriate. And that’s just the front cover.
Eltahawy is the Egyptian-American journalist who came to prominence during Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring. She was beaten and sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square by security forces who broke her arm and hand. Refusing to stay silent, she then wrote an incendiary essay for “Foreign Policy” magazine about the misogyny of Arab men titled “Why Do They Hate Us?” that provoked massive, impassioned debate. She has expanded that essay to create this book.
Blunt and angry, “Headscarves and Hymens” tackles every issue of women’s oppression you could think of, and some you couldn’t, across the Middle East and North Africa. Eltahawy tells us of young Egyptian women arrested and subjected to “virginity tests.” She reports on eight-year-old girls in Yemen forced to marry older men in what amounts to legalized pedophilia. She talks of divorced mothers in the United Arab Emirates who automatically forfeit custody of their children once they remarry (although polygamy is legal for men).
She tells us that Iraqi men who kill their wives never serve more than three years in prison. She writes about rapists in Jordan who legally escape punishment by forcing their victims to marry them. She reminds us of the 15 Saudi girls who perished in a 2002 school fire because morality police wouldn’t let them outside without their headscarves. “Yes, misogyny can kill you,” she fumes.
It’s clear Eltahawy paid attention to the critics of her original essay, for she expands her argument beyond simplistic rants. She incorporates examples of Arab women who have fought for women’s rights, from the early Cairo feminist who publicly removed her face veil in 1923 to the two Saudi female athletes who competed in the 2012 London Olympics. She cites reforms that don’t get enough media attention, such as Kenya’s criminalization of female genital mutilation and Saudi Arabia’s 2013 ruling allowing women to practice law (though they still can’t drive to work).
She acknowledges that women can be oppressors too, carrying out female genital mutilation, disowning “immodest” daughters and berating other women for being unveiled. She also addresses the artificial Islam-vs.-the-West divide, mindful that many people, like herself, represent both.
Born in Egypt to parents who were both doctors, she lived in London from ages seven to 15, then moved to Saudi Arabia, where she was “traumatized into feminism.” She now lives in New York City.
Eltahawy is aware people who already abhor Islam may be all too glad to hear how badly Muslim men treat their women, which risks intensifying Islamophobia. Even though she doesn’t expect the West to “save” all Arab women, she nevertheless chastises Westerners who remain silent out of a misplaced respect for foreign cultural practices. She says it’s an Arab women’s fight but our silence isn’t helping.
Linking the personal and the political, she describes being molested as a young teen on a family pilgrimage to Mecca, and only losing her virginity at 29. Now 47, divorced and childless, she tries hard to show she’s not anti-male. She writes of her overwhelming desire “to inhale Egyptian men” (a remark which, if the genders were reversed, Eltahawy would likely be the first to decry as offensive) and of her disappointment that so many male political revolutionaries still want their women safely unliberated.
“Headscarves and Hymens” is a call to arms by a woman who’s plainly proud of her justified rage. She brings to mind those angry, outspoken women in the 1970s who were branded strident feminists — the ones who yelled, who offended, but who generated change.
“It is the job of a revolution to shock, to provoke, and to upset,” Eltahawy writes, “not to behave or be polite.” Mission accomplished.
Source: www.thespec.com