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Dreams Derailed

In Opinion, Wonder Woman on March 13, 2009 at 8:43 pm

March 8th was International Women’s Day, and I remained mum.
March 10th was the 6th tragiversary of my aunt’s death, and I forgot.
March 12th was the 2nd blog about Jordan day, and I didn’t participate.

While attending a seminar last summer at the Socialist Thought Forum, about women and the Left, I was genuinely captivated by the eloquence of the speaker — a Palestinian activist. She knew her stuff and she spoke so well that I almost couldn’t breathe. I had found it, I knew I had found it even though I didn’t know what it was.

In the Q&A session that followed, a man with side parted hair stood up. He demanded to know if women had a “special condition” that would call for “special treatment.” The man with side parted hair was wearing a white shirt and grey pants, he had grayish hair even though he was young. He was clearly emotional as he made his case against the separation of man and woman, his arms moving restlessly and his voice a tad louder than necessary.

Read the rest of this entry »

نوال السعداوي تكتب، إذن تعيش

In Wonder Woman on January 3, 2009 at 2:51 pm

في مقال نشره موقع الحوار المتمدن اليوم، تكنب نوال السعداوي تحت عنوان أنا أكتب إذن أنا أعيش

لأني أكتب فأنا لا أعرف الغربة أو الغرابة أو الكآبة أو الفجيعة أو الفضيحة أو غيرها مما يحزن البشر، ومن ماذا يحزن البشر أكثر من هذا؟ امرأة يموت زوجها لماذا تحزن أو امرأة يخونها زوجها مع نساء آخريات لماذا تكتئب؟ أو رجل يدخل السجن أو يرحل إلى المنفى؟ لماذا يشعر بالغربة أو الحزن؟ لماذا لا يبتهج بالتجربة الجديدة، بالحياة المختلفة دون زوج أو أسرة أو وطن؟

الكتابة تجعل الوطن هو كل العالم، تجعل الإنسانية هي الأسرة والوطن، الكتابة هي حياتي وراء الشمس، وأمام الشمس، هي حروفي بقلمي المطبوعة على الورق، تربطني بالناس وتربط الناس بي في كل البلاد بكل اللغات، لهذا أستقبل الصبح الجديد بحب جديد، بأفكار جديدة تنتظر القلم والورق، أحب رائحة أوراقي أكثر من أي عطر.

قال لي زوجي الثاني ذات يوم: أنت تكرهين الجنس! أنت تكرهين الرجال!، قلت له: غير صحيح أنا مثل البشر بكل غرائزهم، ولكني أحب الكتابة أكثر من الجنس والرجال، اندهش الزوج الذي لم يعرف لذة الكتابة وقال: يعني إيه تحبي أكوام الورق ده أكتر من زوجك؟

تصور الرجل أن العيب فيه أو في فحولته لكني شرحت له الأمر دون جدوى، لم يكن خياله قادراً على إدراك حقيقة: أن المرأة لها عقل يفكر، وأن التفكير وحده لا يكفي ليكون الإنسان إنساناً، بل لابد من التعبير، لابد من توصيل الأفكار للناس، وأضفت قائلة: إن ديكارت قال نصف الحقيقة فقط، لا يكفى أن تفكر لتعيش، وانفجر الزوج غاضباً ولعن أبو ديكارت وأبو الشخص المجنون الذي أباح التعليم للنساء!

بعد الطلاق أقسم الرجل ألا يقترب من امرأة تقرأ، فما بال أن تقرأ وتكتب، ثم زوّجته أمة لفتاة من العائلة لا تفك الخط

تجدون المقال كاملاً على هذا الرابط

Jordanian Women vs. Nationality

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on September 15, 2008 at 10:56 am

The Jordan Times published a revealing first-person account of the sheer sexism of Jordanian law with regards to Jordanian women married to non-Jordanian men. (Reverse the situation: Jordanian men married to non-Jordanian women, and you shall have a smooth sailing). Read:

A Jordanian family of men?

Nermeen Murad

Almost two years ago I wrote my first column at The Jordan Times and expressed my incredulity at my family being denied membership of the Jordanian family.

My husband and children have not only been denied citizenship, they have also been subjected to a series of what I would call xenophobic legislation and directives that certainly ensure they could never claim that they belong here.

Two years on, I have become resigned to the fact that Jordan, with its current social and political mindset, will resist any attempt from my side to add my small family’s imported name to the list of Jordanian family names. This I do with regret for my children who will never comprehend why their mother’s country rejected them outright and without compromise.

But this doesn’t mean that I will give up the fight, at least for reduced bureaucracy in dealing with the affairs of the spouse and children of a Jordanian woman, regardless of their nationality.

Hence, here I go again.

Two weeks ago, the Jordanian Ministry of Education saw fit to allow the foreign children of a Jordanian woman to enrol in public schools. I don’t want to go on about how shocking it is that they had been kept out of these schools for so long. I will instead concentrate on welcoming the positive and calling for even more movement in that direction.

Let me please describe the situation. The husband of a Jordanian woman is treated exactly like any foreign labourer and has no special categorisation that even slightly improves his standing with the authorities in the country.

In plain Arabic speak, he has no wasta! He and every other menial worker who enters Jordan are given the same treatment.

So, therefore, when he buys a car, he needs security clearance. When he buys a house, he needs security clearance. He renews his driver’s licence every single year and every year he pays the fees again. He renews his visa every year and, of course, has to go through the same procedure as the domestic helper, registering his address at the local police station and then taking all his documentation to the different departments associated with the Ministry of Interior. My children carry an iqama, exactly like the contracted workers, and my husband has the added pleasure of also carrying a work permit.

The husband of a Jordanian woman cannot simply decide to live in Jordan without work because it is the work that allows him to have a residency and not his marriage.

I look forward to making arrangements for retirement in any other country in the world that will be happy to allow my husband and I to retire in peace without an annual hassle; my country has so far not made allowances for that possibility.

In fact, an anomaly appeared the other day when we began procedures to employ a domestic helper under my husband’s name, only to find out that he has to put JD2,000 deposit as a guarantee against the import of a house helper.

This is the same treatment allocated to passing foreigners in the country and does not begin to allow for the fact that he resides here in Jordan because he is the lifetime partner of a Jordanian citizen, albeit a women.

I asked the other day at a brokerage firm whether I could create small investment portfolios for my minor children only to find out that the law had a relapse against me in this regard.

Apparently I, their mother, cannot be the guardian of my minor children, because that is the father’s prerogative and therefore any funds invested on their behalf by me is under the control of their father.

If Jordan cannot bring itself to welcome our husbands and children as honoured citizens of the Jordanian family, then let it at least welcome them as honoured guests.

Directives such as the one that allowed the children of a Jordanian woman into schools are to be commended and encouraged. But they must be followed by other such steps that recognise the special status of this sector of society and seeks to make its members welcome in their adopted home.

One-year residency should be replaced with five-year residencies, followed by permanent residency for the relatives of a female Jordanian citizen. Sale or purchase of personal property, i.e., houses and cars, should be routine for the spouses and children of a Jordanian woman.

Irregularities in the law which favour male members of the Jordanian family over female siblings should be reduced and in time, removed. Then, we can honestly claim to be home to the one Jordanian family.

Nermeen34@aol.com

Source

This is truly a slap on the face of justice.

سيكون رداً كافياً: الجزء الثاني

In Wonder Woman, عربي on September 14, 2008 at 12:40 am

و ترد النساء الأردنيات رداً كافياً على تصريحات الدكتور خالد الكركي رئيس الجامعة الأردنية العجيبة في الأسبوع الماضي

كتبت – سمر حدادين – تؤشر نسبة الفتيات المقبولات في الجامعة الأردنية على تفوق جندري للإناث على حساب الذكور، إذ وصلت نسبتهن إلى 80%
المعلومة للوهلة الأولى إذا ما أخذناها بمعزل عن الأرقام الأخرى عن التعليم العالي في الأردن ككل، تبعث بالنفس الارتياح بأن المرأة الأردنية تسير قدما في مسيرة التعليم الجامعي.
بيد أن المعلومة منقوصة ولا يمكن التباهي فيها واعتبارها ردا على الهيئات النسائية كما قال ذلك رئيس الجامعة الأردنية الدكتور خالد الكركي لأنه لم يرافقها الحديث عن نسبة الإناث بالموازي، وما هية الكليات التي تم قبولهن فيها.
علاوة على أن الجامعات الحكومية الأخرى لم تعلن عن نسبة قبول الإناث فيها، ما يعطي صورة غير واضحة عن الوضع، فإذا كانت النسبة مرتفعة كالأردنية تقرأ الأرقام بصورة مغايرة، أما إذا كانت متقاربة بين الذكور والإناث فلها قراءة مختلفة.
هذا إن لم نأخذ بالاعتبار نتائج الثانوية العامة والأسباب التي أدت إلى تفوق الإناث على الذكور، والعوامل التي سببت تراجع مدارس الذكور خطوات إلى الخلف.
كما لم تتضح نسبة الإناث الملتحقات في الجامعات الخاصة وهل هن المسيطرات على الكليات أم أن كفة الميزان راجحة باتجاه الذكور.
وعبرت أمين عام اللجنة الوطنية لشؤون المرأة الأردنية عن اعتزازها بما حققته المرأة الأردنية بالتعليم، وكانت نتيجتها بأن نسبة الإناث 80%
لكنها شددت بالوقت ذاته على إن التوازن بين الجنسين ضروري، فلا يعقل أن تكون الفتيات بالجانب الأكاديمي، والشباب في الجانب المهني (أي بالعمل قبل التحصيل الجامعي)، داعية إلى قراءة متأنية للرقم.

المصدر

كان بودي لو قامت طالبات الدراسات العليا في مركز دراسات المرأة في الجامعة الأردنية بالرد أيضاً, لتوضيح الصورة للأستاذ الكركي رئيس الجامعة.

سيكون رداً كافياً

In Wonder Woman, عربي on September 9, 2008 at 1:30 pm

قال رئيس الجامعة الأردنية الدكتور خالد الكركي أن حوالي 80 % من نسبة الطلبة المقبولين لهذا العام في كليات الجامعة ضمن قائمة تنسيق القبول الموحد هم من الإناث، مبيناً أن ارتفاع معدلات النجاح في امتحان الثانوية كان وراء ارتفاع نسبة قبول الطالبات في الجامعة. وأضاف خلال لقائه أمس الطلبة الجدد في الكليات الإنسانية أن هذا التقدم الذي أحرزته الفتاة الأردنية سيكون رداً كافياً للمنادين والمدافعين عن حقوق وتمكين المرأة الأردنية.

المصدر

مبروك بس يعني شو؟ نسد بوزنا مشان الدكتور الكركي قبل 80% إناث في الجامعة الأردنية؟ يعني التعليم كويس بس الثقافة أهم, و التفكير أهم أكتر, و هل يضمن الكركي أن تتخرج الطالبات مفكرات و لا بس من حاملات الشهادات اللواتي يبحثن عن عريس في الجامعة؟ العريس المستحيل في هذه الحالة.

و أصلاً ليش التعبير الغلط “سيكون رداً كافياً للمنادين و المدافعين عن حقوق و تمكين المرأة الأردنية”… إحنا في حرب يا دكتور؟

شو هالمسخرة.

و…جاهة

In Literature, Wonder Woman, عربي on August 15, 2008 at 9:52 am

في الصالة الواسعة يجلس ما يناهز الأربعين أو الخمسين رجلاً يرتدون البدلات السوداء و يضج بحديثهم المكان كأنما هم سرب عظيم من النحل لا تستطيع لحديثهم تأويلاً. في المنتصف تقريباً يجلس الرجال المهمون, أولئك الذين لوجودهم معنى أكبر من وجود كل الرجال الآخرين. هم الممثلون الرئيسيون في هذه الحلقة الاجتماعية.

يرتدي أحد الرجال المهمين بدلة رمادية اللون, يقف و يعطي تعليماته للشباب الصغار الذين يقومون بواجب إكرام الضيوف, تارة يأمرهم بإحضار الماء لهذا و تارة بتشغيل المراوح الموزعة في زوايا الصالة. ثم يجلس و يجامل من حوله من الرجال و يهتم على وجه الخصوص بالرجال الذين لم يرهم قبل في حياته: لا بد أنهم من جماعة العريس.

في لحظة يدب صمت تام على الحضور, يتململون في جلساتهم, يتوقفون عن الكلام و ينظرون بترقب إلى جهة الرجال المهمين, يتوقعون أن تصدر عنهم إشارة ما لبدء الفعاليات. يأتي شاب بالقهوة العربية في بكرج مذهب, يسكبها في فنجان صغير و يقدمها لأحد الرجال الطاعنين في السن يجلس مع المهمين. يأخذه الأخير منه, و بحذر شديد و بحركة مسرحية يضع الفنجان على الطاولة الصغيرة أمامه. يشنف الحضور أذانهم و تتعلق أعينهم بالرجل و كأنه يقبض على أرواحهم. تكاد لا تسمع نفساً في الصالة المكتظة, و يتكلم الرجل.

يقف و يخاطب الحضور بصوت جهوري, يقول لهم ناظراً باتجاه أقرباء العروس بأنه, و رجاله معه, لن يشرب قهوتهم حتى يتحقق له, و لرجاله معه, مطلبهم.
بحركة دراماتيكية مماثلة, يقف رجل كبير السن اخر يسأله ما مطلبه.
يرد الأول بأنهم (بصيغة الجمع) يطلبون الفتاة الفلانية لتصبح زوجة للشاب الفلاني.
“اشربوا قهوتكم, و اللي جيتو مشانو ابشروا فيه”

و تنتهي المسرحية المحبوكة مسبقاً فيجلس الرجلان كأنما هما ملكان متوجان, و يعود الحضور للحديث بحماس غير مسبوق. بذلك يتحقق الهدف وراء هذه الحلقة الاجتماعية, فكما الرب أعطى و الرب أخذ, كذلك الرجل يعطي و الرجل يأخذ, و تبقى المرأة وراء الكواليس تدبر و تعالج, ثم نقرأ “إن كيدكن عظيم.”

في القسم الداخلي من المنزل حيث النساء متمركزات في المطبخ يعنين بشؤون إعداد الضيافة للرجال, تسترق بعص الفتيات, و من بينهن العروس, السمع على ما يحصل في الصالة. لسبب ما تشعر الفتيات بالأهمية, و بالأخص العروس, لأن الرجال من عائلتين أو أكثر يتحدثون بموضوعها. تشعر بأن قيمتها تضاعفت لأن رجالاً كباراً في السن, و مهمين, قد أتوا إلى رجال عائلتها يطلبونها للزواج من صديقها الذي عرفته سنة أو أكثر. لا تعرف لم تشعر بالأهمية المضاعفة. أذلك لأن الرجال لا يتحدثون عن النساء بشكل علني كهذا إلا في مناسبات محددة؟ أم أنها تستشعر قوتها كأنثى بأنها استطاعت أن تحشد هذا العدد من الرجال من أجلها؟ هل اجتمعوا من أجلها, أم من أجل أنفسهم؟

على كل حال, هي تشعر بسعادة بالغة مع أن دورها معدوم في هذا الاجتماع الذي تظنه من أجلها. تزهو بين فتيات العائلة لأنها استطاعت أن تحصل على جاهة كبيرة و فيها رجال مهمون جاؤوا خصيصاً لطلب يدها. تستمتع بهذا الشعور لدرجة الغثيان و تتهامس مع الفتيات خلف الأبواب الفاصلة بين العالمين.

في هذه الأثناء, تناديها أمها من المطبخ أن “تعالي, نشفي الفناجين, و حتى لو كانت جاهتك, الزلام برّة أهم و لازم نقوم بواجبهم.”

و تزغرد النسوة خلف أحاديث الرجال.

Gender Equality Campaign in Jordan

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on July 10, 2008 at 8:27 am

I got this press release in my inbox from a Jordanian gender equality campaign, as did other bloggers- I am sure, and I felt compelled to spread the word:

Gender Equality, Made in Jordan

Young Jordanians using new methods for new audiences

Amman 5th July 2008-As part of a local initiative, groups of young Jordanians have been seen in various areas of Amman handing out badges, stickers and posters. This is all part of the Gender Equality Campaign, which is just being launched in Jordan. A number of local Jordanian NGOs have cooperated with some individuals and companies from the private sector to help support this campaign and the young Jordanians working on it.

The Gender Equality Campaign was created as part of a homegrown initiative by a group of young Jordanians who are committed to the idea of justice and equality for the women and men of Jordan. The main purpose of this campaign is to educate the public in Jordan about women’s rights and to mobilize the community to take action to address this human rights issue in Jordan.

The main component of this campaign is to provide a channel for dialogue for people to discuss this issue in Jordan. The foundation of this new channel is to target all aspects of Jordanian society, taking the issue of gender equality outside the walls of conferences, workshops and offices.

This channel is being opened by the young campaigners, using the logo that they created. The logo of the campaign illustrates the wishes, hopes and ambitions of the young Jordanian campaigners. It is a symbol that represents the rights, duties, and dreams for us all, pink for women, blue for men.

As part of the Gender Equality Campaign, permission was gained by one of the supporting local NGOs from the Greater Amman Municipality to install two sets of monuments with its logo. One is on Tabarbour Circle, the other on Middle East Circle in Al-Wihdat. The hope of the young Jordanian campaigners is to gain permission to install similar monuments in other areas around Amman in the near future.

-The End-

Gender Equality Campaign

This campaign was created as part of an initiative by a group of young Jordanians who are committed to the idea of justice and equality for the women and men of Jordan. The main purpose of the Gender Equality Campaign is to educate the public in Jordan about Women’s Rights and to mobilize the community to take action to address this human rights issue in Jordan.

The vision for the campaign is to increase the level of awareness and commitment to women’s rights in Jordanian society. Furthermore, the mission is to create a channel for a broad based dialogue about the rights and roles of women in Jordan.

Contact Details:

Lulwa Al-Kilani Dina Liddawi

Gender Equality Campaigner Gender Equality Campaigner

Email: genderequalityc@gmail.com

Telephone: +962 77 90 6 90 40 Telephone: +962 77 9999 187

It’s positively refreshing to see a local effort being made by local women and men eager to improve the stereotypical gender images in Jordan. Oh and by the way, I saw one of the monuments the other day while I was driving: it is basically two columns, one blue and one pink, and the blue column is taller than the pink one. ” It is a symbol that represents the rights, duties, and dreams for us all, pink for women, blue for men.”

If you would like to get in on the fun, join the campaigners in downtown Amman on July 12th, where they will speak to people and spread the word, which is so groovy. You have the contact details of the campaign, so don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need directions or have any questions!

Go, gender equality, go!

تفكيري موّجه

In Wonder Woman, عربي on July 8, 2008 at 9:52 pm

تبين لي في الأيام القليلة الماضية أن على الإنسانة أن تعتمد على ذاتها كلياً إن هي أرادت أن تحقق ما تحلم به, و ليست هذه الفكرة جديدة طبعاً و لا أنا اخترعتها, بل اضطررت أن أتبين صدقها بنفسي بعد محاولتي أن أسلك طريقاً ملتوياً لأحقق أحد الأمور المهمة جداً بالنسبة إلي. حاولت أن أوفق بين ما يريده المجتمع متمثلاً بعائلتي و ما أريده أنا شخصياً, و هما أمران على طرفي نقيض تقريباً أو لنقل أن أحدهما يود لو يلغي الآخر. حاولت أن أحلل الأمور و أن أتفاوض مع نفسي و مع المجتمع لأصل إلى الحل الأمثل, لكنني إلى الآن لم أستطع الوصول إليه. هل يكون الصراع شرطاً لتحقيق الأحلام؟ هل يكون التنازل عن شيء مهم طريقاً للوصول إلى شيء آخر مهم؟ من يصنع هذه المفارقات؟

لمداواة المشكلة مؤقتاً انصرفت إلى القراءة, فأنا الآن في إجازتي السنوية التي انتزعتها انتزاعاً من رئيسي في العمل و الذي كان يريد أن يقسطها لي أسبوعاً أسبوعاً. قرأت في الشهر الماضي خمس كتب أربعة منها لناشطات نسويات عربيات: نوال السعداوي (أوراقي…حياتي بأجزائه الثلاث) و فاطمة المرنيسي (هل أنتم محصنون ضد الحريم؟), و كتاب أيريك فروم “فن الوجود” , مما حدا بأختي أن تعلن أن فكري متحيز و موجه. أظنها تعني أنني أركز في الفترة الحالية على قراءة ما يثري معرفتي عن أوضاع و شؤون المرأة و بالأخص المرأة العربية. أين العيب في ذلك؟ لماذا تعتبر أختي أن فكري “متحيز” لأنني أريد أن أتعلم ما يخصني و يخصها بالدرجة الأولى كوننا نساء عربيات؟ لم لا تريد الكثير من النساء معرفة موضع الخلل في الواقع المؤلم الذي يعشنه يومياً و يفضلن أن يتذمرن, أو لا يتذمرن و هو الأخطر ؟

لا أفهم هذا الأسلوب في التفكير, فبالنسبة لي العلم بالشيء خير من الجهل فيه, حتى لو كان العلم يزيد حياتي صعوبة فأصيح نزقة و لا أحب التعاطي مع من لا يستطيعون أن يقيموا أفكارهم على أسس مقنعة و دلائلية. أصبحت أقاطع شيوخ التلفاز و أفراد العائلة و الأصدقاء عندما يخص النقاش المرأة التي يتكلم الجميع باسمها إلا هي, و ينتهي الأمر بي أحياناً أن أسمع بعض الكلمات غير اللطيفة لإسكاتي. لكنني لا أمانع بل أحب ذلك لأنه يثبت لي أن حديثي لا بد و أنه قد أراهم جانباً من الحقيقة لم يألفوه, و المقاومة في هذه الحالة أمر طبيعي..أو ربما أخذتني العزة بالإثم فتوهمت ذلك. لا يهم.

أنا لست متحيزة و لا فكري موجه, أنا بكل بساطة أحاول أن أفهم واقعي اعتمادأ على المعطيات التي لا يمكن تجاهلها: أنني امرأة, أنني أفكر, أنني أعيش في بلد عربي اسمه الأردن, أنني مزيج من حضارتين إحداهما عربية و الأخرى شركسية تتعاملان مع الأمور باختلاف واضح مما يشكل أزمة لي للتوفيق بينهما, و أنني لا أحب التعصب و أنني أعاني من نظرة المجتمع لي و تعاطيه معي على أساس أنني امرأة و لست إنساناً مجرداً, فلو توقف المجتمع عن النظر إلي بمنظار ضيق و جنسي كهذا لما كان هناك سبب يدعوني للتركيز على قضايا المرأة, و التي هي نصف قضايا الإنسانية. أين اللامعقول في ذلك؟ لم يرفض السواد الأعظم من الناس هذا الموقف مع أنه مبرر جداً لا بل ضروري و طبيعي؟

The Voice of an Arab Woman

In Culture Arabia, Wonder Woman on June 18, 2008 at 7:09 pm

I am currently reading Nawaal el Saadawi’s biography أوراقي …حياتي, and I can’t seem to get over the similarities between us. I could be imagining things of course because I respect her thought a lot, but it is undeniable that there are several aspects that link my history to hers. I think many of these aspects are shared by almost, if not all, Arab women.

The way Saadawi tells her life story is simple and almost child-like. Her language is clear and reminds me of my late aunt recounting family history, now using common English words كعب روكي and now slang for effect جوزي. The chronology of Saadawi’s tale is logical in the first volume, then it seems she took a break before continuing and so there is a mild break at the beginning of the second volume, but nothing confusing. I am done with the second volume and still have the third to go through, but so far I can safely say I have never in my life connected to an author as I connect to Saadawi. Her voice is powerful throughout the biography, too powerful to ignore.

She thinks my thoughts, she feels what I feel, but she is far more courageous than I have been up until now. She was prompted to write her biography after leaving Egypt to the United States in order to defy time and to defy death. She did not want her life to be forgotten or deformed by the same people who pushed her to leave Egypt out of fear for her life; Islamic scholars and Sheikhs threatened by her ideas about gender and religion شيوخ العصور الوسطى, and government officials equally threatened by her ideas about justice and integrity حكومة اللصوص. These two categories of people combined with the ignorant public الغوغاء who saw her mere presence a danger to their non-existent social cohesion wanted her to die, so she left to stay alive.

Far from idolizing her, this woman is a solid role model to every Arab girl out there. She’s educated, she’s strong, she’s unafraid to voice her opinions, and she thinks for herself. What more do we want our girls to turn out to be? Forget the people who call her a tramp منحلة أخلاقياً without knowing anything about her life and contributions to political and social life in Egypt, forget the people who call for Allah’s help against the devilأعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم when they hear her name because she is a woman, forget all the hatred directed towards her because she personifies what Arab people fear: an intelligent, strong woman who gets some air time to “corrupt” their girls’ minds امرأة .فاسدة تدعو إلى الانحلال What every person must do is learn for themselves and form their own opinions, and I learned this the hard way. It pains me to admit I was prejudiced without even realizing it at the time.

As I said before, Saadawi’s biography resonates with me to a great degree. I recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the life of Egyptian women and Arab women in general, and about Saadawi herself. I have a lot of respect for that woman now, and I am sure you will too after you learn about her life.

Young Brides for Sale

In Culture Arabia, Wonder Woman on June 13, 2008 at 5:51 pm

Poor Egyptian families definitely see marrying their young daughters off to wealthy Gulf men as a win-win scenario; the girls are supposedly provided with a chance to escape poverty, and their families get financial aid and remain with one less mouth to feed after the marriage. In today’s news:

The Egyptian authorities have banned a 92-year-old man from marrying a 17-year-old girl, the Egyptian al-Akhbar newspaper has reported.

The ministry of justice invoked a law which says the age gap between spouses should not exceed 25 years.

Egypt brought in the law prohibiting the marriage of elderly men to very young girls during the Gulf oil boom.

It was an effort to prevent wealthy men from the Gulf states seeking young poor brides from the Egyptian countryside.

Not much is known about the 92-year-old man who tried to marry an Egyptian girl of 17 except that he is an Arab from the Gulf.

This is not exclusive to Egypt, of course. Young women all around the Arab world and in other countries as well are usually traded off like sacks of wheat in such transactions, particularly if they come from poor families. This is not to say that well-to-do families don’t practise similar trade, but they do it with more pomp: the dowry in proportion to the girl’s education or her father’s social standing, the extravagant wedding to signal status, the expensive gifts, and all the other ornateness a marriage entails. It all boils down to the same thing in the end: a commercial transaction similar to any other.

It’s a good thing that Egyptian authorities banned that 92-year old man’s marriage to that girl. Sadly though, this is one case in many, many others that don’t get reported and are not banned. The Egyptian law also has a loophole regarding this, and for all we know that 92-year old man can use it and marry the girl after all:

However, in special cases, the justice ministry does allow foreign men to marry Egyptian women more than 25 years their junior if they deposit a very large sum of money in the name of their wife at the Egyptian National Bank.

Needless to say, the objectification of women is thus made legal by the very law that intends to limit it. That’s like saying: Hey! If you have THAT much money (about $80,000) and you put it in an Egyptian bank and let us work it for you, then OK, you can have that girl. She’s probably worth a lot less, but it seems you really like them young and fresh and poor, you rich pedophile you! Go on now, take your young virgin bride to your high-walled mansion and do what you please to her. Who cares if you’re perverted? Her family can’t afford to care, and her country has been paid to keep mum. She’s all yours.

Honour Strikes Again

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on June 1, 2008 at 9:58 am

Just the other day I was thinking of the role that women in leadership must play to help society move towards gender equality by cooperating with women’s civil society organizations. This duty is often clouded by “differences” between women in various leadership posts.

At the call of the The Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW), women ministers, deputies, mayors, and others met last week to discuss ways to cooperate to lobby for women’s causes in the country. This is a good step forward I think, but I withhold judgment until something tangible comes out of it — like suggestions to achieve equality for women in the various laws.

Take this an example of legal and social discrimination against women in Jordan:

20-year-old kills his sister in so-called honour crime

By Rana Husseini

AMMAN – The criminal prosecutor on Saturday charged a 20-year-old man with the premeditated murder of his younger married sister in the Jordan Valley for reasons related to family honour, official sources said.

The suspect reportedly confessed to stabbing his sibling to death at their family home a day after she was released from custody by the administrative governor, the source told The Jordan Times.

After the incident, the suspect waited for the police to come and arrest him and when they arrived at the scene, he claimed he killed his sibling, who was married at the age of 16 and had a one-year-old child, to cleanse his family’s honour, the source added.

His sister’s husband accused her of seeing other men and she went missing from his home a few days before the incident, according to the source.

“The authorities found the victim and she was detained for a while by the administrative governor, who handed her over to her family on Thursday after her father signed a JD5,000 guarantee that he would not harm his daughter,” the source said.

The victim went home with her father on Thursday and on Friday morning her brother murdered her, the source said, adding that the criminal prosecutor did not press charges against other family members, but ordered her brother detained.

The victim’s husband refused to press charges against the suspect, a source close to the investigation told The Jordan Times.

The victim became the seventh woman to be killed in a so-called honour crime in Jordan since the beginning of the year.

She is also the third woman to be killed for reasons related to family honour in May.

Source: The Jordan Times

Every time something as atrocious as this happens in my country, I feel a piece of me has died. When I think about it, I feel that I am powerless except to shout from the bottom of an abyss. There has to be something you and I can do about it, I hate to think we are so insignificant in the face of organized and legalized murder. What can we do?

Bad Genes Cause for Honor Crime in Iraq

In Culture Arabia, Wonder Woman on May 29, 2008 at 12:44 pm

In a continuation of the ancient practice of wa’d (a practice of pagan Arabs before Islam whereby they buried living newborn female babies in the desert to avoid future scandals stemming from these females’ dishonoring them when they’re adults), honor crimes still occur today in Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. The practice is thus still alive and well, because the aim of killing a female in both wa’d and honor crimes is to preserve family honor. A loose concept with burdens carried by women and privileges enjoyed by men.

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. ‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,’ he said with no trace of remorse.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British soldier in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said.

‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,’ he said.

He said his daughter’s ‘bad genes were passed on from her mother’. Rand’s mother, 41, remains in hiding after divorcing her husband in the immediate aftermath of the killing, living in fear of retribution from his family. She also still bears the scars of the severe beating he inflicted on her, breaking her arm in the process, when she told him she was going. ‘They cannot accept me leaving him. When I first left I went to a cousin’s home, but every day they were delivering notes to my door saying I was a prostitute and deserved the same death as Rand,’ she said.

‘She was killed by animals. Every night when go to bed I remember the face of Rand calling for help while her father and brothers ended her life,’ she said, tears streaming down her face.

- The Guardian:Read the full story here

Bad genes always seem to come from the mother’s side in this part of the world. A mother or a sister is automatically a partner in crime when a female family member is a suspect, she receives similar punishment and is condemned without question. Yet it is the men who rape and kill, the men who think they’re entitled not only to a woman’s body but also to her soul, the men who deny the right of life or grant the privilege of servitude in the name of tradition or religion. Doesn’t that make you wonder who really has the bad genes? By Allah!

The Old Hag

In Opinion, Wonder Woman on May 18, 2008 at 1:45 pm

For as long as I can remember, the name Dr.Nawal Saadawi equaled nothing more than an old hag who preached immorality and social dysfunctions. That was (is) how my family saw Saadawi, and consequently that was how I saw her too.

From the bits and pieces I heard infrequently about her, she wanted to “liberate women and corrupt society,” and demanded things like “calling a child by its mother’s name” and “abandoning the veil.” These her points of view were quickly linked to her physical appearance, words like “masculinized woman” and “old bitch” were invariably linked to her ideas and effectively stripped them of any validity somehow. Why is it that a female thinker is seen as a masculinized woman and her hair color and texture are brought up in a discussion of her ideas?

I never bothered to investigate Saadawi because I thought I had her figured out through what everyone thought of her. Gradually, though, as I started to grow out of what-everyone-else-thinks bubble I began to understand what I had been missing out on, and it was a lot.

Just today I visited Saadawi’s official website where I discovered that this is an educated, intelligent woman who has written many books (fiction and non-fiction), has served her country and has tried to raise awareness against female genital mutilation. None of that was ever mentioned in any discussion of her that I witnessed. People only talked about her crazy hair and how she had no “shame” of going on TV and speaking against society and religion at her very old age. They had not been prepared for her discourse, so they focused their attention on throwing cheap shots at her hair and age.

I have never read anything by Saadawi (novels, plays,etc.) but I plan on looking for her writings and reading them (some are available on her website). As such, my attitude to date is based on internet materials I read from and about her. I am very impressed with her talking sense into people and suffering for her cause. She was put in jail, exiled, some lawyer tried to force her divorce from her husband through courts (where does that ever happen except in the Arab world?), and some other ultra-conservative lawyer in Egypt recently tried to deprive her of her Egyptian nationality on the basis that she mocked religion through a play of hers. Thankfully, logic triumphed and the latter case was dismissed by the court.

Saadawi’s ideas on women and the wellbeing of society are also impressive to me. In this BBC Q&A she answered people’s questions directly and cleared out some ambiguities created around her thought by the media. She said she is strongly opposed to female genital mutilation, she supports secularism and argues for the essential link between women’s rights in a society and its general wellbeing and progress — things that make sense if we only reflect on them.

I find it scandalous how many religious people fabricate lies around a single woman’s thoughts instead of taking them into consideration. For this reason, I will read more about Saadawi now that I know she makes sense, and I will learn her opinions and hope they spread far and wide, because we need them now more than ever.

On Honor Crimes in Jordan, Again

In Wonder Woman on May 17, 2008 at 10:11 am

I realize that I have been lending the issue of honor crimes in Jordan a lot of attention lately, but that is still not enough.

I remember when I wrote the post Honor Is Another Word for Vagina, some people found it repulsive of me to link such a noble concept as honor to female anatomy. They said I was a cultural renegade, and that I was self-hating and deliberately out to maim a fundamental aspect of Arab, and Jordanian, culture. I was slightly annoyed, but I could not find a counterargument that dismissed my point that, yes, “what Arab men term as “honor” is a polite word for the Arabically-explicit word vagina.” Here were my points in that post:

The other part is a woman, an anatomically different human being who is almost always the honor-defaming culprit in any scandal. The woman’s private parts play a vital role in condemning her because they are, in the traditional male chauvinist view, the forbidden yet deeply desired apple.

To illustrate this, think of the worst possible curse words out there in Arabic and in English. About 99% of them involve someone’s mother, someone’s sister, and their genitalia. They might also include explicit references to sexual acts done to these private parts. In Arabic, these curse words are intended to verbally harm the opposite person’s “honor,” a sacred concept referring simply to a woman’s vagina.

Within this context, when someone commits an “honor killing” to wash away the family’s shame, all they are doing is killing the target woman’s vagina who may or may not have engaged in sexual acts deemed socially taboo. By the same token, when a man swears by his “sister’s honor,” he is swearing by her vagina. Fascinating, isn’t it?

The final point I want to make is this: men do not really have honor to swear by or to protect. Anatomically speaking, it is the women that live with these men that do have honor and sometimes pay a dear price for having it.

Well, what do you know. I found in Al Ghad a citation from a research paper done by Dr.Hani Jahshan defining masculinity and honor as follows:

الذكورة لدى القاتل هو “أن على الرجل أن يحمي، يراقب، ويدافع عن كافة أنواع عذرية المرأة قريبته، ويفسر هذا أنه في صالح المرأة، فإذا لم يقم الرجل بذلك يكون قد أخل بصورته كرجل أمام المجتمع، فيتخذ أنماطا سلوكية لمنع المرأة من انتهاك حدود كافة أنواع العذرية المفروضة عليها، بما فيها السلوكية والاجتماعية، بواسطة العنف الجسدي أو الحبس داخل جدران المنزل أو الرقابة الدائمة أو التخويف بالسمعة السيئة، مما يشكل بحد ذاته نوعا من أنواع العنف والتمييز ضد المرأة”.

He defines masculinity as the male’s duty to protect, monitor, and defend all types of female virginity (not just her tangible virginity, but also her moral and social virginity — not interacting with men,etc.). So I was right then, honor really is centered around the vagina, and guess what, like I argued before, men don’t have it. Something about this makes me smile.

إنتِ مَرَه

In Jordan, Wonder Woman, عربي on May 12, 2008 at 12:45 pm

هل تؤيد تعديل القانون المتعلق بقضايا جرائم الشرف؟
أؤيد بشدة (55 % )
أؤيد (12 % )
لا أؤيد (11 % )
أرفض بشدة (22 % )
عدد الأصوات : 2862

Al Ghad.

في مثل بحكي : صار للخرى مره و صار يحلف بالطلاق. عزيزي القارئ فهمك كفاية

Another One Bites the Dust

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on May 11, 2008 at 10:12 am

Horrific news this morning, another woman killed for the sake of a myth called honor:

Criminal Prosecutor Amjad Kurdi on Saturday charged a 23-year-old man with the premeditated murder of his younger married sister for reasons related to family honour, official sources said.

Kurdi also charged the victim’s father, mother and sibling of complicity in premeditated murder in connection with the drowning of the 22-year-old at dawn on Saturday.

The 23-year-old suspect, an electrician who got engaged a week before the murder, then placed his sister’s body in the trunk of the car, drove back to Amman, headed to the Jabal Hussein Police Station and informed officers on duty that he murdered his sister to “cleanse his family’s honour”, the source added.

The victim, who was married almost two weeks before the incident, was returned to her family home on Friday by her husband, who questioned “her fidelity”.

The victim’s family interrogated her and she allegedly told them that “she knew a man but was not involved in an affair with him” so they beat her until she almost fainted, the source told The Jordan Times.

The victim tried to resist and informed her brother that she did nothing wrong, but “he did not listen and killed her,” the source added.

Read the full story here

This is the second woman to be slaughtered in cold blood by a male sibling this week, the 6th since the start of 2008. Nobody knows if the husband’s allegations were accurate, the family never bothered and killed the girl anyway, and now how can we ever be sure what went on?* The woman was married so she must have lost her virginity, and the husband decided to report her “infidelity” after two weeks of marriage. At the sound of the word “honor” the victim’s family was taken by some demonic myth and butchered their own daughter.

Will this killer also walk and be hailed a champion of honor?

*Please note that the woman’s being or not being in an affair of sorts should not have spelled out her death sentence. There is no excuse for murder, and least of all for murder in the name of honor. All justifications for that, real or fabricated, should be made illegal.

Quid Pro Quo

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on May 8, 2008 at 1:46 pm

A new atrocity in the name of female genitalia honor was committed in Jordan two days ago. Al Ghad reports that a man killed his 20-something, married and pregnant, sister by shooting her repeatedly in the head. The man then handed himself in and claimed his motive was defending the family’s honor.

The story in Al Ghad does not clarify exactly what the situation was that led to the young woman’s, and her baby’s, death. But there is mention that her brother suspected she was having an affair with a relative. That begs the question: how come the man who’s engaged in an improper relationship with a woman is rarely, if ever, treated with the same cruelty that the woman is subjected to, i.e. death?

In another story, a 19-year old girl was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison (originally to hang to death but the verdict was reduced) for poisoning four members of her family. The story goes that the girl poisoned her parents and two brothers because they had accused her of stealing some money, and let her brother beat her up, in the week prior to the murders. The girl felt she needed to avenge herself and stated that she wanted to “harm them” only and not to kill them when she presented them with poisoned juice, but they died.

There is no excuse for murder that a rational person would hide behind. But, given the situation in our societies, women are extremely marginalized and at the same time there are many doors open to them to pursue education and careers. The resentment resulting from prejudice against them when they have achieved just as much, if not more, than their male counterparts is bound to take shape one way or the other. You can only repress someone for so long, and then they’ll explode in your face and you won’t like it.

If that girl’s family had prevented her brother from beating her up upon accusing her of theft, she would not have been so angry and frustrated with her situation. If that other young woman’s family had cared to check the murderous brother’s actions and attitudes, there would not have been a woman and an unborn baby dead today. A large part of the reason many women are angry is because when they speak up they are violently silenced, when they dare to ask a question they are ridiculed, and when they demand their rights they are robbed of what little privileges they already have.

I am saddened by this current state of affairs. It makes my heart bleed to see the brutality of the patriarchal system that sees women not as companions and equals, but as followers and subjects. This won’t last, though, because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

The Irony

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on May 6, 2008 at 10:04 am

In today’s news, the Jordan Times reported the following:

Criminal Prosecutor Tareq Shoqerat on Sunday charged a 70-year-old man with the manslaughter of his daughter during a family brawl in Karak at dawn, official sources said.

The 30-year-old victim, who was not identified by officials, was shot twice in the face and head, allegedly by her father, while she was attempting to stop a fight between him and one of her siblings, one official source said. The victim died instantly, the source added.

It’s definitely a good thing that the man’s crime was treated seriously, seeing as the victim is not only female, but also his daughter. These two conditions usually render crimes committed by male relatives against female family members extremely insignificant and very often legally and socially condoned.

The man was angry at his son, and shot his daughter (who stood between the two men) supposedly by accident. The criminal part of the affair is obvious, but how is this situation any different from a man shooting his daughter because he suspects she is damaging the family’s honor? In both cases the man is angry, the daughter is not proven guilty, and oftentimes is not at all guilty (think autopsy that proves she, and her honor/hymen, are intact). So how come legal authorities and society itself look the other way and let murderers out of prison after serving a modest 6 months when the word “honor” is mentioned by virtue of the infamous article 340:

Any man who kills or attacks his wife or any of his female relatives in the act of committing adultery or in an “unlawful bed” benefits from a reduction in penalty.

Is that not giving men a “license to kill” in the name of an imaginary term invented by men themselves? Any man can kill his sister in Jordan for reasons like taking over her finances or her share in inheritance, and he can simply cite honor as his motive, and it would not matter if this woman is not found “guilty” of adultery during her autopsy, and society would hail the murderer as an honorable man.

I am willing to bet that if that 70 year old man cited honor as his motive for killing his daughter, which might be his lawyer’s tactic in the near future — you never know, he would be allowed to walk free and celebrate his 71st birthday at home. The irony.

Strip

In Wonder Woman on March 18, 2008 at 11:58 am

Apparently, in some parts of the world women can only grab attention when they strip naked.

Via BBC News:

A group of Liberian women refugees who have held naked protests by the roadside are to be deported from Ghana, a minister has told the BBC.

Hundreds of the women were arrested on Monday and taken away from a refugee camp in 10 buses, witnesses say.

They were protesting at plans to send them home with $100 – they demand $1,000 and to be resettled in the West.

“$100 is not anything you can start life with. We are all lost,” one woman said.

Stripping naked is a traditional form of protest amongst poor and powerless women in Africa.

The women reported being beaten by police. But hey, that’s not so bad. In my country, they get shot or stabbed to death for doing far less than protesting naked on the roadside.

I applaud these Liberian women for their courage. It seems a woman always has to invest in her body to survive in the world. A sad state of affairs.

المرأة و الضمان

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on March 18, 2008 at 10:17 am

كتبت – سمر حدادين – تنتظر الهيئات النسائية إقرار مشروع قانون الضمان الاجتماعي بـ”ريبة”، تحسبا أن تعلق المواد التي تخص المرأة في بوتقة ”المعارضة”، ولا تخرج منها بسلام.
تخوف الحركة النسائية أفصح عنه نيابة عنهن وزير العمل المهندس باسم السالم الذي”استنجد” بالمدافعات عن حقوق المرأة ليهببن للدفاع عن المكتسبات التي ستتحقق لهن، إذا ما خرج مشروع القانون إلى مجلس الأمة بالصورة التي أعلن عنه.
ويقضي مشروع القانون بتطبيق تأمين الأمومة، إذ سيقتطع (75ر0%) شهريا من العامل وصاحب العمل توزع بنسبة (5ر0%) من صاحب العمل ونسبة (25ر0%) من العامل بحيث يتولى صندوق دفع أجر إجازة الأمومة للمرأة العاملة، لحماية المؤمن عليهن العاملات في القطاع الخاص، ما يساعد على تشجيع أصحاب العمل لتشغيل النساء وعدم الاستغناء عن خدماتهن في حال زواجهن أو قرب استحقاقهن إجازة الأمومة.
ويلغي مشروع القانون التمييز بتوريث راتب التقاعد للمرأة، ويجيز لها الاحتفاظ براتبي تقاعد، مع التأكيد ان الراتب التقاعدي للمؤمن عليها المتوفاة يؤول كاملا إلى أبنائها ووالديها في حال عدم استحقاق الزوج لنصيب منه سواء كان يعمل أو عدم ثبوت العجز لديه .
مطالبة الوزير لم تأت من فراغ، فالقانون كما أفصح عن ذلك خلال الحفلة التي أقامتها اللجنة الأردنية الوطنية لشؤون المرأة بمناسبة يوم المرأة العالمي، ”يواجه مقاومة شديدة من أصحاب العمل”، ومن جهات أخرى لم يسمها.
مشروع تعديل القانون الآن في عهدة مجلس الوزراء الذي من المتوقع أن يقره في جلسة اليوم (الثلاثاء)، أو جلسة الأسبوع المقبل على أبعد تقدير، وإذا خرج من ”رئاسة الوزراء” كما هو، تحتاج الهيئات النسائية إلى حراك مكثف لحشد التأييد ودعم المواد التي تمس مصالح المرأة، خصوصا وأن في الذاكرة تجربة سابقة مع قوانين تخص النساء ”وأدت” وحبست خلف جدران السلطة التشريعية.
قلق الوزير على التعديلات التي تتعلق بالمرأة ، عبرت عنه أمين عام اللجنة الوطنية لشؤون المرأة أسمى خضر، في الدعوة الى البحث عن وسائل تساندهم في حملة الحشد لتمرير المواد المذكورة، فقد دعت الناشطات والقيادات النسائية في المحافظات للضغط على نوابهم لحثهم على تمرير هذه المواد.
وقالت الى ”الرأي” إن اللجنة من جهتها ستبذل قصارى جهودها كي تحشد المناصرين للقانون، مشيرة إلى أنهم سيحاورون أعضاء مجلس النواب لشرح أبعاد مشروع التعديلات، وأهميتها على رفع مشاركة المرأة الأردنية في سوق العمل.
وحثت النساء في المحافظات على التحرك ”بسرعة عالية الوتيرة” لإقناع نواب مناطقهن بضرورة إقرار التعديلات، مشيرة إلى أنه لم يتبق على أعمال الدورة العادية لمجلس الأمة سوى نحو أسبوعين، منوهة الى أن المواد المذكورة تمس النساء وخصوصا العاملات في مصانع بالمحافظات.
وتصل نسبة الإناث العاملات في القطاع الخاص للعام الماضي 15% فقط وفي القطاع العام نحو 37% وبلغت نسبة البطالة بين الإناث 25% بينما للذكور 9و11% .
الطريق ليست سهلة أمام الحركة النسائية، وينبغي عليهن إدارة المعركة – إن جاز التعبير – بحكمة ومنطق، حتى تقر المواد ويمر مشروع القانون بمراحله الدستورية.

المصدر: جريدة الرأي

Oy! Pink Viagra

In Wonder Woman on March 16, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Do you think it would be a positive or a negative thing if pharmaceutical companies came up with a medicine like Viagra for women? You might want to read this article before making up your mind:

A Dose of Desire

Where is the women’s version of Viagra?

The short answer: They’re still working on it. A bunch of companies have tried and failed to create “pink Viagra,” as it’s often called. Other companies have drugs in late stages of clinical testing, including a gel that recently began a make-or-break nationwide study with several thousand women. Give us five years, maybe less, say the most optimistic researchers and doctors. Though it’s unclear exactly how many women would ask for a prescription, no one doubts that the first company that gets to market a remedy for female sexual dysfunction, as it’s formally known, will earn a fortune.

A modest-size but fervent group of psychologists, academics and public health advocates contend that FSD isn’t an authentic medical condition, or at least not the sort of problem that should be treated with drugs. These aren’t the obtuse male physicians who for decades have been telling women distressed by their lack of libido that “it’s all in your head.” The anti-FSD crowd is mostly women, many of them self-described feminists. The most prominent is Leonore Tiefer, a psychotherapist and clinical associate professor at New York University, who has long decried what she calls “the medicalization of women’s sexuality.”

“Drug companies want to say to women, ‘You don’t need to know anything; you can have the satisfying sex life that you seek — people dancing on TV, the whole bit — without knowing anything. Just ask your doctor,’ ” she says. “I resent that, because there are specific harms that come from being ignorant and dependent in the world we live in. There may be lots of people who aren’t interested in sex, but is there a medical reason for that, and do we diagnose that?”

Arousal for women does not always lead to desire: Even Pfizer had a hard time grasping that concept. The company tested 3,000 women over the course of eight years before finally abandoning hope, in 2004, that Viagra itself could be the female Viagra.

“What we know is that very little of what’s going on with women and sex is below the waist,” says Anita Clayton, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Center for Psychiatric Clinical Research and co-author of “Satisfaction: Women, Sex and the Quest for Intimacy.” “Almost all of it is above the neck.”

I can’t help but smile at that remark; “above the waist.” I suppose for women to be more interested in having sex with their partners, a pill should be made to help them with juggling housework, raising kids, excelling at their jobs, being socially perfect, AND being content with their partners’ practical approaches to sex, if that is the case.

So now you tell me, will Pink Viagra be good or bad?

Some Killers Are Spared

In Jordan, Opinion, Wonder Woman on March 12, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Funny how people are willing to protest against certain sentences said in a TV show, but they won’t be moved by the blatant gender discrimination in Jordanian law and legal proceedings:

Woman handed death sentence for killing her husband

By Rana Husseini

AMMAN – The Criminal Court on Tuesday sentenced a 30-year-old woman to death after convicting her of stabbing her husband to death on April 20, 2007.

The tribunal declared the woman, a mother of four, guilty of the premeditated murder of her husband at their home in Irbid and handed her the maximum punishment.

Court papers said the defendant was involved in extramarital affairs and her husband of 11 years discovered them and threatened to tell her family.

Fearing a scandal, the defendant decided to kill her husband and secured a knife for this purpose, according to the court verdict.

On the day of the murder, the woman wore gloves and stabbed her husband several times in the neck while he slept, the court said, adding that she then called the police and her brother-in-law, claiming that a burglar killed her husband while attempting to rob their house.

The court did not mention how investigators determined she was the main suspect in the case.

A government autopsy indicated the victim was fatally stabbed three times in the neck and pathologists also detected defence marks on his arms, according to the court verdict.

Shortly after the murder was committed, officials had told The Jordan Times that the defendant told investigators she murdered her husband because she heard he was planning to take a second wife.

But on Tuesday, a judicial source told The Jordan Times that the woman “confessed in front of the criminal prosecutor under oath to murdering her husband to prevent him from exposing her illegitimate affairs”.

The tribunal comprised judges Omar Khleifat, Mohammad Abu Dalbouh and Hayel Amr.

The verdict will automatically be reviewed by the Court of Cassation within the next 30 days.

I say fine, if the woman is guilty then she should be punished accordingly. But I say it is NOT fine that the Jordanian law looks so superficially interested in achieving justice when the contradictions in its folds are so manifest. The men who kill their wives or female relatives when they SUSPECT them of having ‘inappropriate’ relationships are ALWAYS semi-pardoned to the extent of serving a meager three months in jail.

How many men in Jordan are involved in ‘inappropriate’ relationships? And do we really trust that the infamous article 98 will treat women killers of unfaithful men with the same leniency it treats the men? Like I argued before, it seems that Jordanians’ understanding of the word ‘honor’ is synonymous with a woman’s vagina, which is why a man does not have much honor to speak of, per se, unless he controls his female relatives ‘vaginal honors.’

Think about it. What would a woman who kills her husband upon catching him in an adulterous situation say in her self defense? ‘I killed him to protect my honor and my family’s honor’? The fact remains that the discrepancies between the theoretical and the practical in Jordan, both legally and socially, are so vast as to prevent justice from setting in this country.

Working It

In Culture Arabia, Wonder Woman on March 10, 2008 at 1:24 pm

Rania Kudsi started blogging recently. I read her blog when I get the chance because she often writes about women in Jordan and in the Arab region and makes a lot of sense. Today, she wrote the following:

Tomorrow you may get a working woman, but you should marry her with these facts as well.

Here is a girl, who is as much educated as you are;
Who is earning almost as much as you do;

One, who has dreams and aspirations just as
you have because she is as human as you are;

One, who has never entered the kitchen in her life just like you or your Sister haven’t, as she was busy in studies and competing in a system that gives no special concession to girls for their culinary achievements;

One, who has lived and loved her parents & brothers & sisters, almost as much as you do for 20-25 years of her life;

One, who has bravely agreed to leave behind all that, her home, people who love her, to adopt your home, your family, your ways and even your family name;

One, who is somehow expected to be a master-chef from day #1, while you sleep oblivious to her predicament in her new circumstances, environment and that kitchen;

One, who is expected to make the tea, first thing in the morning and cook food at the end of the day, even if she is as tired as you are, maybe more, and yet never ever expected to complain; to be a servant, a cook, a mother, a wife, even if she doesn’t want to; and is learning just like you are as to what you want from her; and is clumsy and sloppy at times and knows that you won’t like it if she is too demanding, or if she learns faster than you;

One, who has her own set of friends, and that includes boys and even men at her workplace too, those, who she knows from school days and yet is willing to put all that on the back-burners to avoid your irrational jealousy, unnecessary competition and your inherent insecurities;

Yes, she can drink and dance just as well as you can, but won’t, simply
Because you won’t like it, even though you say otherwise

One, who can be late from work once in a while when deadlines, just like yours, are to be met;

One, who is doing her level best and wants to make this most important, relationship in her entire life a grand success, if you just help her some and trust her;

One, who just wants one thing from you, as you are the only one she knows in your entire house – your unstilted support, your sensitivities and most importantly – your understanding, or love, if you may call it.

But not many guys understand this……

Please appreciate “HER”

Amen, Rania. Read Rania Kudsi’s blog, it’s that good.

Women Giving Voice to Misogyny: Charlotte Allen

In Wonder Woman on March 10, 2008 at 12:15 am

I came across an article in The Washington Post, written by a woman called Charlotte Allen, titled We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?. The article is basically a misinformed and a misspresented pseudo-scientific misogynist interpretation of popular culture to prove that women are dumb. Part of what Allen says in the article:

So I don’t understand why more women don’t relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts’ content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.

But another woman wrote a brilliant response debunking the myths that Allen treated as universal truths about women, and politely bitchslapped her for thinking so little of her own sex. Bitchslapping can be good, let’s hope it wakes Allen up and stops her likes from giving a feminine voice to misogyny. The great response came from Katha Pollitt, also in the Washington Post, titled Dumb and Dumber: An Essay and Its Editors:

The upshot: we ladies should focus on what we’re really good at — interior decoration and taking care of men and children.

Oh, gag me with a spoon. Sure, girly culture can be silly — but what does that prove? It’s not as though men spend their evenings leafing through the plays of Moliere. Susie whips up doggy treats, Mike surfs porn sites; she curls up with the Friday Night Knitting Club, he watches football. Or maybe the two of them watch “Grey’s Anatomy” together — surprise, surprise, about half the show’s audience is male. If you go by cultural preferences, actually, you could just as well claim that women are obviously smarter than men — look around you at the museum, the theater, the opera house, the ballet, the concert hall. Women read more than men, too, especially fiction, which men tend to avoid. (A story about things that didn’t happen? How does that work?) Women even read fiction by men and about men, further evidence of their imaginative powers — while men, if they do pick up a novel, make sure it’s estrogen-free. Who’s really the dim bulb, the woman who doesn’t see the beauty of “Grand Theft Auto,” or the man who thinks Tom Clancy is a great writer?

For Allen, it’s definitely the woman: her brain is just too puny. She cannot mentally rotate three-dimensional objects in space — and that, as we all know, is the very definition of smarts. Funny how that definition keeps changing, as women conquer field after field that was supposed to be beyond them. In the 19th century, physicians insisted women couldn’t cope with college: studying would send rushing to their brains the blood that was needed for the womb. Back then, nobody credited women with the superior verbal abilities and memories Allen says scientists now find women to possess.

True to form, she dismisses these as minor talents that only helped her “coast” through school and life. But back when the experts were explaining why women couldn’t be lawyers or professors or poets (at least not very good poets), nobody said verbal skills and memory were trivial; they only became trivial when women were found to excel at them. Now the sexists diss women as inferior mental-object-rotators. I have no idea whether this is true, and whether if so it’s unchangeable, but you have to admit this is a very narrow scrap of turf on which to plant the flag of manly superiority.

The two articles are too long for me to post here, but please take the time to read them both before leaving me any comments that have sweeping generalizations or irrelevancies.

I am entirely glad that someone like Pollitt wrote back and spoke up for the millions and millions of women that Allen pretends to represent but in fact fights against. This is exactly what I mean by women pulling women down, some are so infected with myths about women’s inferiority that they dare not believe in themselves as capable of anything comparable to men’s achievements. Allen clearly stated she can’t do much beyond add 2+2 together, called her brain Cream Wheat, and explicitly said that women are ‘dim.’ What’s outrageous is that she used the pronoun ‘we’ as if she was the spokesperson of half of the population of earth.

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Make the world a better place for everyone.

On This International Women’s Day

In Wonder Woman on March 8, 2008 at 3:50 pm

On this International Women’s Day, I am somewhat speechless.

I see it all around me how women are socially built to be inferior and how if they choose to fight this status they have the word ‘feminist’ thrown at them as if it was a slur.

I see how a woman’s success in work or academia is considered a threat to her familial or marital life.

I see how a woman is seen by many as either a subject to rule over or an object to enjoy, and never as an individual with intellect and emotions.

I see how little girls are brought up to fantasies of Mr.Perfect and of financial dependence even if they have careers in the future.

I see how a girl’s actions inevitably reflect on her family’s reputation while a boy is just a boy, and whatever he does is what boys do.

I see how a woman’s body is the focal point of her existence and a meter of her morals.

I see how families still prefer baby boys to baby girls.

I see how women gossip about other women who are more successful and try to bring them down socially.

I see how a woman’s mobility can only be practiced in daylight and it ends after dark to protect her name.

I see how a woman’s sensuality is a big taboo, an automatic whore label.

I see how a woman’s intellect is more often than not a threat to men in power.

I see how many women, including myself, cannot hope for academic advancement abroad on their own. It’s taboo.

But despite all that, I renew my commitment to voice women’s causes and to fight gender inequality. And If I ever have a girl, she will kick ass, starting with mine.

A Woman With Too Many Degrees

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on March 4, 2008 at 11:09 am

During class yesterday, a fellow student told me about a man who proposed to her. She said he told her “I am very ambitious and very achieving. What are your ambitions?” She told him she wanted to get a PhD (although in reality she doesn’t, but she was testing the waters so to speak), to which he said “A PhD?! I don’t like a woman who has many degrees.”

I felt disgusted and made a joke about that cave-dweller who boasted he had a 2008 model Mercedes. The girl even told the whole class about him, complete with his full name, and we all laughed and had a good time at his retarded expense. I have heard it and seen it time and again how many men in this society have a “thing” against highly educated women, how they would rather snatch a Tawjihi student instead of an MA degree holder.

It’s not only about the age of the Tawjihi student (a ripe, young girl), but also about her qualifications. In the minds and culture of these men, a younger woman with less education is far more obedient than a well educated one. They believe that they can shape and mould this younger, less educated wife as they please, while the other will most definitely be difficult to tame. By this token, they don’t think of their potential wives as partners but more as inferior servants who must, at all times, remain inferior. They will not opt for the ones that might equal or compete with them in education or other qualifications. It makes them less men (as if they are men to start with).

The question I have always had concerning this practice in Jordan is: how insecure can these men possibly get? Obviously, they feel threatened by a woman’s qualifications. They want to lord over their marital households not only because they are men (the classical justification for their superiority complex), but also because they are in fact better educated and therefore better breadwinners which adds an economical value to their social status.

Read these bits from an article by Linda Hindi of The Jordan Times:

Gender equality should be priority for economic development – UN

Gender equality

UN member states regard gender equality as an essential factor for the achievement of its priorities of peace and security, human rights and development, including the Millennium Development Goals.

* Investing in women and girls has a multiplier effect on productivity, efficiency and sustained economic growth. Educated women have more economic opportunities and engage more fully in public life.

* Women who are educated tend to have fewer and healthier children, and those children are more likely to attend school. Education also increases the ability of women and girls to protect themselves against HIV.

* Women make long-ranging contributions to poverty eradication and development.

* According to World Bank estimates, an increase of one percentage point in the share of women with secondary education is associated with a 0.3 percentage point increase in per capita income.

* Educated, healthy women are more able to undertake productive activities and earn higher incomes. Investments in women, the primary caretakers of the future generation, provide returns for decades. Better educated women are able to benefit from new technologies and the opportunities presented by economic change.

* Increasing women’s access to land, credit and other resources increases their well-being, and that of their families and communities and reduces the risks of poverty.

Oh, and the student in my class rejected that caveman’s sorry ass, in case you are wondering.

Jordanian Honor Horror

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on March 2, 2008 at 1:43 pm

I was reading a report by Human Rights Watch on so-called honor crimes in Jordan, and I got filled with resentment and fury. Read this:

Under article 340, any man who kills or attacks his wife or any of his female relatives in the act of committing adultery or in an “unlawful bed” benefits from a reduction in penalty.

…

The section of the penal code most frequently invoked on behalf of perpetrators of “honor” killings is article 98. This statute mandates reduction of penalty for a perpetrator (of either gender) who commits a crime in a “state of great fury [or “fit of fury”] resulting from an unlawful and dangerous act on the part of the victim.” It does not require in flagrante discovery or any other standard of evidence of female indiscretion. If the extenuating excuse is established for a crime punishable by death,such as premeditated murder, article 98 provides that the penalty be reduced to a minimum of one year in prison.

…

In murders for “honor,” given the family’s complicity in the crime, the family nearly always “waives” the right to file a complaint. Thus, “honor” killers may receive sentences of six months—and often do. If a killer has served that much time awaiting trial, the sentence may be commuted to time served and he may walk away a free man.

In my opinion, honour crimes are not prevalent in Jordan. The simple reason why they are not an “epidemic” is because women have learned their lesson. In the areas where honour crimes are a potential danger to their lives, they have learned to keep mum about their relationships with men. Note that by relationships I mean anything from talking to a man to kissing him.

In part, honour crimes have themselves acted as a restraint to the spread of the practice — because women are afraid they will be killed. Of course, this means a great degree of social hypocrisy and a great deal of limiting these women’s freedoms and putting them under tremendous pressure and making them live in constant fear. It also means ensuring the continuation of this practice, ensuring it has popular support in the areas where it is acceptable, and perpetuating the cycle of gender inequality in Jordan.

بلا تعليق

In Jordan, Wonder Woman, عربي on February 28, 2008 at 1:17 am

-1-

في ندوة المحامين حول قانون الاجتماعات، وتعليقا على حديث الوزير ناصر عن برامج تمكين المرأة، علق نقيب المحامين صالح العرموطي مداعبا ان “من يريد التمكين هو الرجل”، مدللا على رأيه بقوله ان المحامية السيدة تزداد نفقات تغطيتها في التأمين الصحي للنقابة سنويا بنحو 60 دينارا عن معدل نفقات المحامي الرجل!

جريدة الغد

-2-

مجموعة من الشباب المقتدرين مادياً.. يرفضون فكرة الزواج من كثرة الشوفات المتراوحة من أقصى حالات الانفلات عند بعض الفتيات إلى كل الانغلاق .. وعلى ما يبدو لم تسنح لهم فرصة التعرف على الشريحة المعتدلة بين النقيضين..
بينما ترفض بعض الفتيات العزابيات الزواج هرباً من المسؤوليات..
فهو بالنسبة لهن سلسلة كوابيس من المجاملات والتنازلات فبدلا من أن تتحمل الواحدة مسؤوليتها فقط.. فإنها بعد الزواج تنسى نفسها في سبيل تحمل مسؤوليات أسرتها النووية وما يتبع من حمولة أسرية ممتدة ! فبين رفض فكرة الزواج.. وقبولها.. وبين الإقدام.. والتراجع..
تبقى مشاكل الشباب معلقة تريد حلاً!

جريدة الرأي

Rouge for the Feminist

In Wonder Woman on February 27, 2008 at 4:00 pm

I have had several changes of heart concerning makeup during my life. Around third grade, I started biting my nails with a vengeance. As a passionate nail biter, the only cure to my bad bad habit was polishing my nails black or red. Oddly enough, this cure still works to this day –as the moment I color my nails is the moment they become untouchable by my eager teeth.

In 10th grade, I got called to the principle’s principal’s office. A disciplinary-type of administrator thought I had mascara on, and all my attempts to explain that I had nothing on my eyes were in vain. The administrative goddesses were not convinced my lashes were that long.

Then, of course, came college. The strange personas I adopted during this time were translated in my makeup rituals. At one point I was too practical for makeup, wearing minimalist block-colored clothes. At another I was an exotic dresser, wearing nothing on my face but mascara and black kohl along with fortune-teller type rings and necklaces. At another stage I preferred tight skirts, a black leather jacket and gloves, and the makeup was darker and more piercing. Later on, I took on a more sophisticated-chic look that toned down the makeup to more natural, less obvious selections.

Makeup was an integral part of all these transformations. Often I wondered, does makeup, the idea of covering up your supposed flaws and enhancing your beauty, mesh with the idea that you are a complete, independent woman regardless of male/female attention you may or may not get?

This question and more about the history of makeup (from royal courts to brothels to homes) were treated in this essay in The Smart Set by Paula Marantz Cohen :

All Made Up

Women’s application of makeup is an update of the Narcissus myth. One cannot apply it — or at least not well — without looking in a mirror. The self-reflexive gaze required has elements of the lover’s gaze: Eyes and lips are focal points and demand the most attention and care. Thus, applying makeup is a ritual of self-love, a kind of worship at the shrine of the self, though it can also reflect insecurity and even self-loathing. At its best, it is an exercise in self-critique, and, if you’ll permit me to be grandiose, a path to existential understanding.

…

Of course, one of the paradoxes of makeup is that it adds another level of concern to the one it is designed to appease. Wearing makeup means having two faces — a real face that threatens to be dull and unappealing if not given some assistance, and an artificial face that has to be maintained. If one wears makeup one has makeup worries: Is the foundation even, the eye make up smudged, the lipstick properly applied, etc.? By the same token, checking makeup is a useful rite. It allows for a respite from the hurly burly of life. It says, quite literally, hold on while I straighten up the mask that I’m showing the world. I suspect that men are more violent than women because they don’t have these “time-outs” in which to take stock and put their masks in place. If they wore makeup, they might think twice about going to war where, moreover, the opportunities to put on lip gloss are decidedly curtailed.

For the record, I always forget my lips. I like red lipstick but admittedly it does not look good on me, so they’re always alla naturale. I wonder what that says about me.

Pro-Women Laws

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on February 24, 2008 at 11:27 am

Good news for Jordanian women. As I blogged previously, Jordanian women’s organizations have been active in trying to improve Jordanian laws that affect women’s lives. A number of women’s organizations activists had started a campaign to organize a lobby in the House of Representatives last month. Now they met with Prime Minister Dahabi.

Check out this news from The Jordan Times:

Dahabi meets with women’s rights activists

AMMAN (Petra) – Prime Minister Nader Dahabi on Saturday met with a delegation representing the Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW). During the meeting, JNCW Secretary General Asma Khader reviewed the committee’s priorities which focus on finalising women-related legislation and ending all kinds of discrimination in existing laws. Dahabi and the delegation members highlighted the importance of increasing women’s involvement in the workforce and examining reasons hindering their participation. Dahabi underlined the government’s efforts to boost women’s participation in the economy and amend related legislation. The delegation briefed Dahabi on amendments proposed by the JNCW on several laws, including labour, social security, nationality, elections and civil status.

The news in The Jordan Times is very brief, but you can read it in details over at Al Rai (in Arabic). I am hopeful things will change for the better for Jordanian women. I truly hope that our tribal and businessy House of Representatives will not overlook the importance of gender equality as its predecessors have.At any rate, that will only delay the legalization of our demands, and will not succeed in “erasing” them.

Ain’t I a woman?

In Wonder Woman on February 9, 2008 at 4:49 pm

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and ain’t I a woman? … I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me — and ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear the lash as well — and ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen most all sold off to slavery and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me — and ain’t I woman?”

- Sojourner Truth

To be a black woman in America in the 18th century meant being thrice disadvantaged: black, woman, slave. Still, Sojourner Truth was able to say these words and achieve a lot more throughout her life. Read more about her remarkable journey here.

Turkey Unbans Hijab

In Wonder Woman on February 7, 2008 at 9:18 pm

How did I miss this earlier today?

Turkey has unbanned veiled women from enrolling in public universities. What a victory for human rights!

I am ecstatic!

Younger Is Better: Early Marriages in Jordan

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on January 24, 2008 at 1:04 pm

I was just doing my morning news round and I came across an important article in Al Rai newspaper. The article treats the subject of early marriage in Jordan, and why it will sap this country of its riches.

According to Jordanian law, the legal marriage age is 18, which is reasonable. But there is a special clause that basically says that a judge has the authority to marry off a 15 year-old girl whenever he sees fit, or when he sees that the marriage will be for her own good. Of course, a religious judge (which is the type of judges that does marriage procedures) or a Sheikh authorized to write the marriage contract (el ktab) seldom if ever object to marrying off an underage girl. I say this because I have heard from my mother, time and again, how the Sheikh married this girl or that girl although she was only 15-16. Beddo yostor 3aleeha, i.e. he believes he is doing good and preserving her honor (followers of this logic believe that a woman is a scandal waiting to happen).

Al Rai article details the health, financial, and psychological consequences for young marriages and criticizes the legal exception granted to judges to marry off underage girls. In essence, the exception annihilates the actual law, because like I mentioned, very few judges or Sheikhs would object to underage marriages because according to their religious views; they are saving society from the evils of adultery. Never mind the fact that they are helping perpetuate gender inequality and tens of social dysfunctions, not to mention literally endangering the girls’ healths and education and characters by marrying them off to, dare I say this, pedophiles who hunt young brides to “mould them” into the submissive wife-maids they wish. Never mind all that, they are saving society.

According to the article, the percentage of underage marriages is 14%, which translates to 7598 marriages. That is inaccurate, because judges and Sheikhs when they draft up the marriage contracts do NOT put the actual ages of the girls when they are underage, they simply write 18! So that 14% is only what got reported, but not the actual percentage.

Jordan has one million girls under the age of 15, who are alive right now. I did the math; this means that 140,000 girls between the ages of 15-18 WILL get married within the next 15-18 years. That is a huge number! Let’s assume that each one of these girls will only deliver three babies, that makes it 420,000 babies IN ADDITION to the other births from legal marriages. Naturally, the men who marry underage girls do not only want three babies. They want five, six, maybe more, and their child-wives are fertile enough to keep on popping kids for 15 years. And don’t forget, 14% is not the actual percentage of underage marriages in our society.

Can you imagine what will happen to the population of Jordan at this rate? Can you imagine the health bill that will come out of the birth complications and other child-related problems? Can you imagine the thousands of children who will be born to semi-illiterate mothers, what will become of them? Can you imagine what will happen when Almighty Daddy can’t take care of his dozen children?

He will marry off the girls at 15.

حملة نسائية في مجلس النواب

In Jordan, Wonder Woman, عربي on January 23, 2008 at 12:08 pm

يقود تحالف مؤسسات مجتمع مدني ومنظمات نسائية حملة لإقناع مجلس النواب بإدراج قانون الأحوال الشخصية المؤقت رقم (82) لسنة 2001 على جدول أعماله لإقراره

وتطالب التعديلات بما يأتي:

بالتأكيد على ضرورة الإبقاء على تعديل رفع سن الزواج للذكر والأنثى إلى ثمانية عشر سنة ورفع السن بالنسبة للاستثناء الذي يسمح بتزويج من بلغ الخامسة عشر إلى ستة عشر عاماً.

الإبقاء على مبدأ حق المرأة في الخلع القضائي

وتأكيد أهمية رفع مقدار التعويض عن الطلاق التعسفي ليتناسب التعويض مع مدة الزواج

واعتبار تعدد الزوجات ضرراً مفترضاً يسمح بطلب التفريق للضرر إذا لم ترضَ به أي من الزوجات استنادا إلى حق المرأة الوارد في القانون في اشتراط عدم زواج زوجها عليها في عقد الزواج

رفع سن الحضانة إلى خمسة عشر عاماً لكل من البنت والولد ولجميع الطوائف، وجعل الولاية مشتركة بين الولي والأم الحاضنة، وتعديل النصوص بحيث لا تحرم الطفلة في حالة اختيارها البقاء مع أمها من الحق في النفقة

وتعديل الأحكام الخاصة باستحقاق الوصية الواجبة بحيث يستفيد أبناء البنت بحصة من تركة الجد كما يستفيد بنات وأبناء الابن

ضمان حق الأرملة في الاستمرار بالإقامة في بيت الزوجية وفي حق الاحتفاظ بالموجودات لاستخدامها حتى وفاتها ما لم تتزوج

المقال كاملاً في جريدة الرأي بقلم سمر حدادين

مبروك, كلها تعديلات مهمة و يجب إيلائها الأولوية في مجلس النواب مع أنني لا أتوقع لها النجاح في مجلس نوابنا المكون من أغلبية ذكورية ساحقة انتخبها الشعب الأردني. و المسألة التي أريد أن أتناولها هي: أنا شخصياً لم أكن أعلم أن الطفلة تحرم من حق النفقة إذا اختارت البقاء مع والدتها, و لم أكن أعلم أن أبناء البنت لا يستفيدون من تركة الجد على العكس من أبناء الابن, و لم أكن أعلم أن هذه النواقص موجودة بالفعل في القانون الأردني, أو لعلها ليست نواقص بل إنقاص من حقوق المرأة تغاضى عنه القانون.

نحن في الأردن,نساءً و رجالاً, لا نعلم الكثير الكثير من الأمور القانونية التي تنظم حياتنا. أنا مثلاً لا أعلم شيثاً عن قوانين الطلاق لدينا لأن أسرتي لم تعش هذه التجربة, و لكن من المفروض أن أكون على دراية بهذه الأمور إذا قررت أن أتزوج مثلاً في يوم من الأيام و من المفروض أن تكون كل فتاة مطلعة على القوانين التي تذعن لها في اللحظة التي تقرر الارتباط. لماذا؟ حتى تتمكن ما استطاعت من تدارك الأمر قبل حدوثه و ربما تصحيح بعض الأخطاء القانونية في حقها في الوثيقة التي يقدسها المجتمع (كتب الكتاب) قبل أن يفوت الأوان.

شو يعني بدك تشرطي علي؟
مهو أكيد, إزا الزواج عقد و أنت بتحصل على حقوقك غير المكتوبة باسم القانون, فأنا سأحصل على حقوقي التي نسيها القانون بكتابتها هنا.

لو كانت رجلاً!

In Wonder Woman, عربي on January 20, 2008 at 11:27 am

كانت تتحدث بحماسة واضحة عن مشاريعها القادمة، الأعمال، الدراسات، الهوايات، الأمنيات التي ستعمل على تحقيقها بالعمل المتصل والجهد المضاعف.

كانت تتحدث عن كل ذلك حين همست لها: وماذا عن الزواج يا عزيزتي؟ يبدو الموضوع غائباً عن ذهنك تماماً، مهما يكن، فدورة الحياة لا بد لها أن تكتمل.

فأجابت بتأن شديد: في هذا الشأن تحديداً، أتمنى لو كنت رجلاً! ودون أن تلحظ ذهولي، أضافت ببساطة: لو كنت رجلاً، لكنت تزوجت بسرعة ودون تردّد، كنت ارتبطت بواحدة من أولئك النساء الهادئات اللواتي يتقن كل ما يتعلق بإدارة البيت، ويقدسن وجود زوج في حياتهن.

في حالة كهذه، فالزواج سيوفر لي تسهيلات مريحة، وجبة يومية ساخنة مثلاً، منزلاً نظيفاً مرتّباً، أطفالاً أرى فيهم نفسي، ثم سلطة وسطوة…

قلت وقد بدأت أستطرف الموضوع: كيف؟ فقالت بالبساطة نفسها: سيسير كل شيء كما أرغب، فأنا حينها الرب الصغير… إذا لم يعجبني أمر ما، لن أتردد في الصراخ، وإذا ارتفع صوت الأولاد أسكتهم بنظرة واحدة إلى أمهم… وإذا لم تعجبني هي لسبب أو لآخر، أو خالفت رغباتي ومشيئتي، سأردد لها المقولة الشهيرة: الباب بيوسع جمل! وإذا خرجت فعلاً، ودبّت الفوضى في بيتي، سأعمل على أن أردها بألف طريقة جهنمية! ويمكن أن أستلقي متى شئت إذا شعرت بالتعب، ويمكن أن أغلق الباب على نفسي إذا شئت الخلوة أو التأمّل، كما يمكنني أن أصفق الباب نفسه فيما لو انتابتني نوبة غضب مفاجئة… هل جرّبت لذّة صفق الأبواب… إنها الوسيلة الأفضل لتفريغ شحنات الغضب… اسألي بعض الرجال! وأضافت دون أن تأبه لذهولي المتصاعد: ويمكن أن أشكو قليلاً بين الحين والآخر من أنها لا تفهمني… فأنطلق باتجاه علاقة ما تتصدى للرتابة والملل، لكن دون أن تمس هدوء المنزل واستقراره، ودون أن تؤثر على وزني الاجتماعي بين الناس! وتنهدت أخيراً لتقول: هل رأيت كيف أنّ زواجي مستحيل، لأني باختصار، لا أعرف كيف أكون تلك الزوجة التي سأحلم بها فيما لو كنت رجلاً

د.لانا مامكغ
جريدة الرأي

سيمون دو بوفوار أنثى ضدّ «الأنوثة»؟

In Wonder Woman, عربي on January 16, 2008 at 3:22 pm

قرأت قبل يومين مقالاً في جريدة الأخبار اللبنانية عن أمنا سيمون دو بوفوار و أحببت أن أعيد نشره هنا حتى يطلع عليه المهتمون من القراء.

مما أثار اهتمامي بشكل أساسي في المقالة ذكر لقب سيمون “كاستور” مما يشابه تلقيبي أنا في المنزل باسم مذكر “وجيه” لأن شعري قصير و أفكاري لا تعجب عائلتي على الإطلاق. على كل الأحوال, أنا لم أقرأ كتاب سيمون “الجنس الثاني” بعد مع أنه موجود في لائحة الكتب التي أتمنى الحصول عليها في أمازون (و الرابط في العمود الجانبي للمدونة) و أنوي أن أحصل عليه الشهر القادم إن استطعت لأنه كتاب نسائي محوري و مهم. و يعجبني شخصياً أن سيمون جمعت بين الوجودية و النسائية في عقيدتها و أفكارها, مما يجعلني على مقربة كبيرة منها و بشكل شخصي علاوة على إعجابي الكبير بحياتها. لن أطيل, إليكم المقال


باريس ــ عثمان تزغارت

” مئة عام على ولادة صاحبة” الجنس الثاني

بعد قرابة ربع قرن على رحيلها، ما زالت تثير الجدل. الأم الروحيّة للحركة النسويّة في العالم، ورفيقة درب بطريرك الوجوديّة جان بول سارتر، صار عمرها اليوم مئة عام… عمر من النضالات السياسية والاجتماعيّة، طبعته الجرأة في الفكر والممارسة

لأول مرّة منذ تأسيسها، قبل نصف قرن، تصدرّت غلاف مجلة «نوفيل أوبسرفاتور» الفرنسية الرصينة صورة امرأة عارية. لكنّ المجلة الفرنسية المعروفة بنخبويتها، لم تقدِم على ذلك بدافع الإثارة الرخيصة أو الكسب المالي. وهي لم تختر صورة لعارضة أزياء أو مغنّية أو ملكة جمال، بل كانت الصورة لسيمون دو بوفوار، الأديبة والمفكرة والمناضلة النسائية الفرنسية، التي تحتفل فرنسا والعالم، اليوم، بالذكرى المئوية لولادتها (9 كانون الثاني/ يناير 1908)!

والصورة التقطها المصوّر الشهير آرت شاي، في شقة عشيق دو بوفوار، الروائي الأميركي نيلسون ألغرين، في شيكاغو، خلال خمسينيات القرن الماضي. أما سبب اختيار الصورة مع مانشيت بعنوان: «سيمون الفضائحية»، فيعود إلى أنّ «نوفيل أوبسرفاتور» ـــــ التي كانت إحدى المنابر الرئيسة لصاحبة «الجنس الثاني» وتوأمها الفكري جان بول سارتر، منذ نصف قرن ـــــ تعمّدت إبراز المفارقة الكبيرة التي تطبع الاحتفاء العالمي الحالي بمئوية بوفوار، إذ غلب الجدل بشأن تفاصيل حياتها الشخصية والحميمة على النقاش الفكري المتعلّق بأعمالها وفكرها.

اللافت أنّ خيارات الكاتبة الفرنسيّة سيمون دو بوفوار ومواقفها، سواء في فكرها وأعمالها أو في حياتها الشخصية والعاطفية، ما زالت تثير الجدل، على رغم مرور ربع قرن على رحيلها، ما يبيّن إلى أي مدى كانت سابقة لعصرها، من حيث تحرّرها الفكري وتمرّدها على الأعراف الاجتماعية. وقد رافق الجدل سيمون دو بوفوار منذ بداياتها، لكنّه اتخذ طابعاً أكثر عنفاً وتجنّياً، مع صدور مؤلفها الأبرز: «الجنس الثاني» (1949)، الذي يعدّ بمثابة البيان المؤسّس للحركة المطلبية النسويّة في العالم أجمع. حقّق الكتاب نجاحاً فورياً، وبيعت من طبعته الأولى قرابة مليون ومئتي ألف نسخة، وتُرجم إلى 27 لغة. لكن ذلك لم يمنع مفكّرين بارزين من التجنّي عليه والتهجّم على مؤلّفته. إذ وصف ألبير كامو الكتاب بـ«العار الذي يدنّس شرف الذكر الفرنسي»! أما فرانسوا مورياك، فقد ذهب إلى حد القول، خلال حوار شهير مع مجلة «الأزمنة المعاصرة» التي كان الثنائي سارتر ـــــ دو بوفوار يشرفان على إصدارها: «الشيء الوحيد الذي أفادني به هذا الكتاب هو أنني عرفت أدقّ التفاصيل عن الجهاز التناسلي لمؤلّفته»!

حتى الحزب الشيوعي الفرنسي، الذي كان آنذاك يمثّل طليعة الفكر التقدمي في بلد ديكارت، فقد علّق على الكتاب في جريدته «لومانيتيه»، مشيراً إلى أن «الأفكار التي يتضمنها، رغم ادّعاءاتها التقدّمية، ستُقابل بالسخرية، بلا شك، من عاملات مصانع «رينو» في «بولوني بيانكور» لو أُتيحت لهن فرصة الإطلاع عليها»!

لماذا كل ذلك التجنّي على الكتاب؟ لأنه بكل بساطة جاء في خضم الثورة التحرّرية التي تلت الحرب العالمية، ليطلق رصاصة الرحمة على الأعراف الذكورية السائدة. «لا تولد الواحدة منّا امرأة، بالمفهوم التقليدي ـــــ تقول دو بوفوار ـــــ بل تصبح كذلك، بفعل التأثيرات الاجتماعية التي ترى الأنوثة مزيجاً من الروح الداعرة والتمرّس في فن الرضوخ والعبودية». وتضيف: «الأنوثة بالمفهوم التقليدي السائد هي منتج مصطنع ومفبرك من الحضارة الذكورية. إن ما يشاع عن غرائز الغنج والخضوع لدى النساء، إنما هو انحراف مكتسب اجتماعياً، تماماً مثل غريزة الغرور والأنا الذكورية المنتفخة التي هي مكتسبة وغير فطرية لدى الرجال»!

أحدثت الأفكار الجريئة والرؤى الراديكالية التي تضمّنها «الجنس الثاني» ثورةً اجتماعيةً ومنعطفاً فكرياً مرجعياً، خرجت من معطفه أجيال عدة من مناضلات (ومناضلي) الحركة النسائية العالمية. وإن كان تطوّر الحركة النسائية، لاحقاً، قد سمح بتدارك شطط البدايات، حيث لم تعد مناضلات الحركة النسائية حالياً ترى أنّ «الأنوثة» هي بالضرورة نقيض للتحرّر. وقد أثبتت المؤلفات التي صدرت أخيراً، بالاستناد إلى أوراق ومراسلات دو بوفوار، أنّ حياتها الشخصية لم تكن متطابقة مع الصرامة المتداولة عنها وتقشف الصورة النمطية التي اقترنت بها… ولم تكن تعزف عن «المتع الأنثوية» (راجع البرواز).

بصدور «الجنس الثاني»، لم تعد دو بوفوار مجرد رفيقة درب وتوأم فكري لجان بول ساتر، زعيم التيار الوجودي في عالم ما بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية، بل أصحبت رمزاً ومرجعاً فكرياً للحركة النسائية العالمية. وقد رافق سارتر بالتأييد والدعم نضالات دو بوفوار النسائية، بالقدر نفسه الذي أيّدت هي مواقفه ونضالاته ومعاركه الفكرية، حتى الخاسرة منها، كتأييده الأعمى للاتحاد السوفياتي في العهد الستاليني. ولم يفرّق بين الاثنين سوى انحياز الأخير الصارخ لإسرائيل في أواخر حياته، تحت تأثيرات «سكرتيره الفكري» بيني ليفي. فهذا الأخير لم يتوّرع عن الاستغلال المغرض لشيخوخة سارتر، الذي كان قد أصبح أعمى وشبه أصم، بشهادة جان دانييل، مؤسس أسبوعيّة «نوفيل أوبسرفاتور» العريقة، ورئيس تحريرها حتى اليوم. لكن قطيعة السنوات الأخيرة بين دو بوفوار ورفيق دربها الأزلي، الذي كان يلقبها بكاستور Castor، لم تخرج إلى العلن سوى بعد رحيلهما، حين كشفت عنها بعض الوثائق والمراسلات التي نشرتها ابنة دو بوفوار بالتبنّي، سيلفي لوبون ـــــ دو بوفوار.

عن جريدة الأخبار

Tribute to Lady Oscar, The Rose of Versailles

In Culture Arabia, Love, Wonder Woman on January 14, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Born to live in glory and passion.

Who doesn’t remember Lady Oscar? Jordanian kids of my generation and up to ten years older grew up with this fascinating anime originally called The Rose of Versailles and dubbed in Arabic. In my opinion, Lady Oscar was the ultimate BEST anime ever shown on Jordanian/Arabic TV stations.

I am very nostalgic today. I found myself watching old cartoons on YouTube and repressing my tears. When I found that almost ALL the episodes of Lady Oscar were on there, and in Arabic, I almost cried. To me, Lady Oscar was more than an anime character. Looking at my life, my tastes, my personality now, I understand exactly how she affected me. This was a powerful, intelligent, and no-crap lady who was raised as a man and competed with, and always outshone, her male counterparts. On top of all that, her wardrobe was absolutely gorgeous.

The Rose of Versailles focuses on Oscar François de Jarjayes, a girl raised as a man to become her father’s successor as leader of the Palace Guards. A brilliant combatant with a strong sense of justice, Oscar is proud of the life she leads, but becomes torn between class loyalty and her desire to help the impoverished as revolution brews among the oppressed lower class. Also important to the story are her conflicting desires to live life as both a militiant and a regular woman as well as her relationships with Marie Antoinette, Count Axel von Fersen, and servant and best friend André Grandier.

Lady Oscar was this fabulously strong-willed woman who set, I believe, an excellent example for the thousands of Arab girls who watched her. Now that I think of it, I find it amazing how the anime was ever played on Arab TVs since Lady Oscar’s sexuality was a bit ambiguous. Perhaps the people who censor shows did not get that part, but hey, all the better for us.

There are some shoujo-ai elements embodied in the relationship between Oscar and her protégée Rosalie Lamorlière, the secret daughter of the scheming Madame de Polignac, whose admiration for Oscar may be interpreted as either idol worship or romantic love coming from her possible bisexuality. Many of the court ladies also greatly adore Oscar, openly admiring her at parties and become very jealous when she brings female companions to them.

I remember hating Rosalie too and feeling a very strong attraction to Lady Oscar. I also remember loving André Grandier and hoping they would end up together, him and Oscar, which never happened. There was this imposing sexual and intellectual tension throughout the show, and thinking back, again I wonder how it was broadcasted on Arab TVs in the 20th century. If that was intentional, it was very progressive. If not, well, it didn’t screw me up so the people who censor shows need not feel guilty about letting it slip.

I used to love everything Oscar wore; those military jackets and tight riding pants, the white fitted French-cuff shirts, the fine ruffled collars, the knee-high boots– everything. I still love the look today, and looking at my tastes in fashion, I see Oscar and the period she lived in in most everything I fancy. She was a fine fencer and rider, too. I’ve always wanted to learn fencing and to have a horse, but I learned how to shoot instead. That was more doable.

I used to admire and respect Oscar for being so strong, for being able to always hold her own in front of the men she led, and for being a good person. She was controversial and great. I still remember how heartbroken I was when she died, and although I watched the show tons of times, I cried every time. Oscar was a phenomenon, not just a cartoon show. The anime had a message about gender equality, history, love and loyalty.

I really wish more shows of the type would air on Arab TVs, as Oscar taught me a lot and became a role model of sorts to me. I am still very much in love with the character and the show as a whole, and right now I am looking for a way to purchase the complete episodes on DVD.

This was my humble tribute to Lady Oscar, the rose of Versailles and my role model.

Honor Is Another Word for Vagina

In Culture Arabia, Wonder Woman on December 9, 2007 at 8:51 pm

I have come to the conclusion that what Arab men term as “honor” is a polite word for the Arabically-explicit word vagina. I will explain.

When an 18-year-old murders his sister because he believes she has brought shame to the family’s name, he does so because he either knows or suspects that she has engaged in socially unacceptable behavior with a man (who is not her husband, if she is married). That behavior on the woman’s part ranges from talking to this man to fornicating with him.

Since one part of the equation is a man, let us examine that part. When a man talks to, or fornicates with, or takes any other action towards a woman he is more often than not spared any social consequences that result from his actions. This means that the “man” part of the deal does not fall within the scope of this argument.

Now let us look at the other part of the equation for the purpose of this argument. The other part is a woman, an anatomically different human being who is almost always the honor-defaming culprit in any scandal. The woman’s private parts play a vital role in condemning her because they are, in the traditional male chauvinist view, the forbidden yet deeply desired apple.

To illustrate this, think of the worst possible curse words out there in Arabic and in English. About 99% of them involve someone’s mother, someone’s sister, and their genitalia. They might also include explicit references to sexual acts done to these private parts. In Arabic, these curse words are intended to verbally harm the opposite person’s “honor,” a sacred concept referring simply to a woman’s vagina.

Within this context, when someone commits an “honor killing” to wash away the family’s shame, all they are doing is killing the target woman’s vagina who may or may not have engaged in sexual acts deemed socially taboo. By the same token, when a man swears by his “sister’s honor,” he is swearing by her vagina. Fascinating, isn’t it?

The final point I want to make is this: men do not really have honor to swear by or to protect. Anatomically speaking, it is the women that live with these men that do have honor and sometimes pay a dear price for having it. So the next time a man swears by his mother’s honor and thinks he’s macho cursing another man’s sister’s honor, ask him if he likes it shaved, waxed, or a la natural.

Salary, Where Art Thou?

In Wonder Woman on December 2, 2007 at 7:11 pm

Indian accountant at work, have mercy!

Today is December 2nd and I still have not received my November salary. I am not simpatico with the whole “end of financial year” syndrome which is the probable cause behind the tardiness in cash flow and I am not happy that I am already in debt for the sum of my November salary because said salary is late. This is a vicious cycle that I am stuck in!

Suppose I had to pay rent or had other urgent financial obligations and that I was impatiently waiting for the salary to grace my account, what would I do then? How do people manage when there is no money in the bank and they have to magically produce it at the demand of bills or persistent landlords? What do they do if they have children who need to be fed, and they can’t afford it because they are waiting on their paychecks?

I take pride in the fact that I am pretty much a self-sufficient microcosm, in that I largely depend on myself to get what I want and to do what I want, and in that I have an almost biological loathing of relying on anyone else but myself. But times have been trying, and I found out that I would rather remain broke than ask my parents for pocket money. I felt so little and incompetent every time they offered to give me money this month and, although I often accepted under pressure, I always promised to pay them back.

I find this particularly interesting because I live in a society that sees women as dependent on men to provide for them, and since most bread-winners are men, the rule is so general that even most working women expect to be provided for one way or the other. This puts working women at both an advantage and a disadvantage. It’s an advantage because they can always get effortless cash from their husbands or fathers, and they can demand it too as society and religion dictate. But it is also a disadvantage because of the “laid back” attitude some of these women will definitely have towards their jobs since they know that they will get money anyway even if they did not work. In addition to that, they will always be seen as “dependants” on men by the very same men who fund them, thus their jobs or careers will always be seen as marginal or for recreational purposes only. Again, this is a vicious cycle that prevents women from achieving their worth.

So, dear salary, where art thou?

1st Woman Appointed As Chief of Court

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on May 29, 2007 at 9:59 am

Good news; now we have women police officers, nurses, doctors, engineers, journalists, garbage-truck drivers, professors, teachers, mini-Sheikhs, nuns (obviously), managers, ministers, parliament members, and chiefs of court.

AMMAN — The first woman to hold the position of chief of court was appointed on Monday by the High Judiciary Board and described her new position as a big step forward for Arab women.

“This is a very important step for Arab women in the region; it is tough competition to be appointed as a decision-maker,” said Ihssan Barakat, who three years ago, also became the first woman judge to serve in the Appeals Court.

In her new post of Chief of the Court of First Instance in west Amman, Barakat will be in charge of 22 judges and 81 employees.

She told The Jordan Times yesterday that she is up to “the tough task” of leading the second highest court in Amman, adding that her number one priority will be to provide an efficient judicial system.

“The constitutional law gives every Jordanian citizen the right to obtain justice; my goal is to make it as hassle- free, fast and fair as possible… going to court should not be a punishment,” she said.

As a founding member and present vice chairman of the Arab Women Legal Network, Barakat’s appointment is in line with her determination to raise the capacity of women leaders in the region.

Formed in 2005 and headquartered in Jordan, the network is a nonprofit, nongovernmental regional entity that aims to facilitate the advancement of Arab women working in the legal field.

Link to original — Jordan Times

I have one reservation on something included in this article by the Jordan Times. Barakat is a chairwoman, and not a chairman, of the Arab Women Legal Network. Honestly, let’s be accurate and sex-sensitive — it’s the politically correct thing to do.

Oh, and good thing Barakat is veiled. So much for humbugs saying Muslim women are not allowed to lead or to be in positions of power. Check your references in context.

I hope Barakat and other leading Jordanian women would work to ensure that our laws do not contradict the constitution, like I found previously regarding women in the Jordanian labor law.

Women Bloggers Attacked: The Kathy Sierra File

In Wonder Woman on April 1, 2007 at 4:00 pm

Disturbing as they are in real life, harassment and sexism towards women have extended online as another face of one ugly coin. Certainly it comes as no surprise to note or learn that women online face problems unique to the fact that they are women, aside from the ones they already share with their male counterparts.

Via Salon.com, I read a story about renowned blogger Kathy Sierra who runs a blog called Creating Passionate Users, and who is suffering from a mass-cyber-attack staged by a group of misogynist perverts.

The story on Kathy Sierra, written under the title Men who hate women on the Web, is a narration of the blogger’s ordeal now that is she is targeted by an army of people that hate her simply for being a woman, and make no secret of it.

Drawing on my own experience online and on the stalking episode I previously mentioned, it is now even more evident to me how women are discriminated against online (as well as offline). The very nature of the discourse with a woman in a chat room is significantly different from that with a man (I played being both). It follows logically that women are targeted in different ways than men and that, often, attacks against women take a sexual-violent nature.

Take for example the Kathy Sierra case; she has had someone post this on her blog: “fuck off you boring slut… i hope someone slits your throat and cums down your gob.” Later on, famous bloggers took part in the “game” and comments poured in with crystal-clear threats of hanging Kathy, suffocating Kathy, beating Kathy, and sexually humiliating Kathy. Not to forget the photoshopped pictures of the blogger in dark-fetishistic situations.

So where does this leave us, women bloggers? In Kathy’s own words, she says

I do not want to be part of a culture–the Blogosphere–where this is considered acceptable. Where the price for being a blogger is Kevlar-coated skin and daughters who are tough enough to not have their “widdy biddy sensibilities offended” when they see their own mother Photoshopped into nothing more than an objectified sexual orifice, possibly suffocated as part of some sexual fetish.

In our conservative culture, everyone knows that any event of this type would escalate to a dangerous pitch. Simply put, Arab hackers probably first hunt for pictures on a girl’s PC, and then use them. Also, probably every woman blogger has received some sort of a threat, a special request, or a sexist remark. I know I have, and I know many who have received the same.

This issue at hand is not a single case. It is not about those “morally corrupt” American men who attacked a similarly “morally corrupt” American woman, as many men and women in cyber and real Arabia would quickly announce. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to a single society. This is a problem rooted deeply in our mentalities as people. Again I say, as people, not animals. Actually wait, I take that back. I never heard a male dog call a female dog “bitch.” My bad.

I am usually particularly offended by the men who think they have discovered a shortcut to heaven when they squeeze out the magical pseudo-solution “If women didn’t get that much exposure, then nothing would have happened.” What does a blogger like me do, according to these people? Crawl under a man-shaped shadow and wither? Go offline and write on papyrus?

Indeed, bad things are bound to happen, and they could happen to anyone. However, it is undeniable that when they happen to women, they are a lot worse. The social and psychological scars they leave are often irrecoverable. It’s technically “keeping women in their right place” principle that dictates this manifestation of a deeper social dysfunction.

Iman Maleki: Images of Iranian Nature

In Wonder Woman on March 16, 2007 at 6:15 pm

I have always been impressed by realism in painting, among the many fascinations I had for the artistic -isms. Today I am sharing paintings by an Iranian realist called Iman Maleki. Iman Maleki was born in Tehran in 1976, and he has a website that you can access by clicking here. The website features the artist’s works (in much bigger sizes than the ones shown here), and I am sure many of you will find them simply stunning.

I came across Iman Maleki’s work by pure chance as I was googling images randomly, searching for exotic visuals (one of my favourite pastimes). Here are my favourite paintings; and as you shall presently see, they are of women. I believe I appreciate Maleki’s creativity because it also involved veiled women as models of beauty and wonder, instead of portraying them as objects of captivity and decline. There is nothing more profound than art that speaks to you.

A Girl by the Window

Memory of that House

Omens of Hafez

Detail 1 - Omens of Hafez

Detail 2 - Omens of Hafez

Untitled 100

Sunlight

Paintings by Nerida de Jong

In Wonder Woman on March 6, 2007 at 2:18 pm

I received some beautiful paintings as email attachments just now, and I fell so much in love with them that I want to spread the joy. The paintings are by Nerida de Jong, an Australian artist born in 1945 in Sydney. This is one page I could find about Nerida de Jong, and it features a collection of her art.

La Fille Malheureuse
 

Nadia & the Cats

Sleeping Mother & Baby

Trekking Through the Snow

 

Women Leaders: Harvard’s New President

In Wonder Woman on February 12, 2007 at 2:49 pm

When will a Jordanian university have a woman as president? Hopefully the wish is not far fetched, and hopefully the position will not appoint a “token female” merely to ward off allegations of discrimination. Here’s a big NO to the defeatist attitudes of people who claim women cannot lead — disregarding the feeble religious, social, and personal motives behind their allegations.
The New York Times’ Drew Gilpin Faust: Coming of Age in a Changed World by Sara Rimer covers the story of Dr. Drew Faust and her ascension to her current position as president of Harvard University:

Recalling her coming of age as the only girl in a privileged, tradition-bound family in Virginia horse country, Drew Gilpin Faust, 59, has often spoken of her “continued confrontations” with her mother “about the requirements of what she usually called femininity.” Her mother, Catharine, she has said, told her repeatedly, “It’s a man’s world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that the better off you’ll be.”

Interestingly, Dr.Faust succeeded Lawrecne H. Summers, who dug himself a hole when he said that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers.

Constitutional Amendments: The 15th Amendment and Jordanian Women

In Jordan, Wonder Woman on February 3, 2007 at 10:13 pm

On February 3rd, 1870, the fifteenth amendment to the United States constitution was ratified. This amendment was part of several others that saw the light after the Civil War ended. In a nutshell, it gave former slaves the right to vote and dictated that neither states nor the federal government can use citizens’ race, color, or former state of servitude to prohibit them from practicing their right to vote. Here is the exact text of the amendment:

Section 1: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Now although the fifteenth amendment was not respected in many states after its immediate implementation and although the South continued to discriminate against people of color and might have even gotten more creative/violent doing so, it (the fifteenth amendment) did pave the way for future quests for equality on the part of African-Americans.

At that, how often do Arab constitutions get amended? And perhaps more important is the question of whether they get amended in positive, socially progressive ways (when they do get tweaked, that is) or in more restrictive, totalitarian democracy-wraps.

In an interesting little research I did tonight, I found out that the Jordanian Constitution says, in Chapter Two- Article 6 (ii) , that “the Government shall ensure work and education within the limits of its possibilities, and it shall ensure a state of tranquillity and equal opportunities to all Jordanians.”

However, after I inspected the Jordanian Labor Law, I found that women are not given equal rights as men in the workplace or even in their choice of a profession. Here’s what the Labor Law says in Article 69, conveniently titled “The Limits Applied to the Hiring of the Woman“:

The following shall be set pursuant to a resolution to be made by the Minister after inquiring about the opinion of the competent official parties:
A- The industries and works for which women may not be hired.
B- Times at which women may not be caused to be working and the cases excluded from the same.

In effect, then, the government has decidedly phrased the labor law in a way that explicitly contradicts the constitution. Moreover, it has been so unabashed in labelling women as unequal to men in competence and merit by titling and detailing Article 69 as seen above.

To step back to a previous point I mentioned, I do not think the Jordanian Constitution needs to be amended in this instance. It is the ambivalent sexist Labor Law that grants women the right to work but only in some professions as deemed appropriate by a patriarchal society, and is unashamed to put limitations restricting women’s potential blatantly, in an article of their own.

A fitting question may now be placed on the competence of the men who phrased this law, and on the readiness of the men that today dominate the political scene in Jordan to take steps to amend it. In a highly tribal and predominantly male parliament, I doubt much hope can be placed on progressive change.

My bet would be placed on more investigation to be done by activists and intellectuals, anyone interested in social progress really, on issues of gender and discrimination against women in Jordanian law and culture. I for one had no idea that the Constitution and the Labor Law contradict in such a way, and I had no clue that the Labor Law is as backwardly sexist as it turned out to be.

If Jordanian women are equated to former slaves in the United States (and Jordanian women are indeed enslaved in more ways than one at present), and their right to pursue a profession they see fit as the right of former slaves to vote – then what we have is a parable that we just might learn from.

The fifteenth amendment only had temporary immediate effects on the situation of former slaves. Local “voting qualification” laws were enforced in the South to swivel around it and to prevent Black voters from practicing their constitutional rights.

Our own Labor Law is very similar to these laws. It prevents Jordanian women from practicing their constitutional right to “equal opportunities.” The only difference being that the Southern local laws oppressing African-Americans date back to the 1890’s, while our Labor Law is still practiced in 2007.

Dismay aside, there are several ways to challenge Article 69 of the Labor Law. Awareness among women has to be emphasized. As I mentioned above, I only found out about this naked contradiction and scandalous legal sexism tonight – by pure chance. I doubt most Jordanian women, working women specifically, know about it.

Awareness may be a positive step towards change, but it is not enough. As positive as it is, it is not aggressive to a degree as to achieve anything on its own. A stronger presence for women empowerment societies and associations has to become reality. Social activists, women and men, must take action to see an end to legal discrimination against women in Jordan.

On a final note, thorough review of the Jordanian laws and legal framework has to be administered by a non-sexist government. Consider the phrasing of Article 6 (i) of the Jordanian Constitution: “Jordanians shall be equal before the law. There shall be no discrimination between them as regards to their rights and duties on grounds of race, language or religion.”

How about adding the word “gender” just so we make sure 50% of the population is not left out?

Facts and Events: Women’s Roles and Gender

In Wonder Woman on January 23, 2007 at 1:25 pm

In a very interesting book that I am reading presently, I came across some facts and events that were listed right in the first page, and I thought you might be interested in them. Consider the following facts and events that happened between 1986 and 1996 carefully:

- A judge in Rome, Italy, ruled against the victim in a rape case on the grounds that it is impossible to rape a woman wearing jeans, because they cannot be removed without her cooperation. In protest, women worldwide staged a “skirt strike,” wearing jeans to work.

- One in four U.S college students believed that the activities of married women should be limited to home and family.

- The Reverend Jerry Falwell claimed that a popular children’s toy, the “Tinky Winky Teletubby,” is an attempt to make children into homosexuals because it is purple and carries a “purse.”

- Women have been heads of state in twenty-three countries around world, yet in others they lack basic human rights such as voting and going to school.

- Women remained far more likely than men to suffer from serious depression and eating disorders.

- Less than 5 percent of the artists in New York’s Metropolitan Museum collections were women, but 85 percent of the nude paintings were of females.

- On television news, 97 percent of the anchors over the age of forty were men.

Crawford, Mary and Rhoda Unger. Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology. 3rd ed. Fairfield: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

The authors then said that “gender, sexuality, and power are at the core of social controversies around the world,” and I strongly agree with that. But do tell me, what do you think?

Never submit, ye ladies

In Opinion, Wonder Woman on August 11, 2006 at 10:06 pm

By way of a friendly suggestion of a reading, I came across an article one could call controversial but a bit on the disgusting side as well. I’ve thought a lot about linking back to the article, only to reach the conclusion that if I do link back to it, or quote it, I would be granting a sexist supreme more exposure than he probably ever deserved. Therefore I will not link to or quote this individual.

What seems to be the point of the article, other than the author stressing that he is being a “man” by ignoring women’s emotions and cheating on his wife then allowing her some rough sex, is to affirm that women secretly crave tough cave men who could walk out on them any minute while publicly sustaining that they want the Hugh Grant sensitive type.

The only point I could agree with is that some movies sell the ultra-sensitive always-there-for-you man image that rarely if ever exists in straight men who are not declared hardcore submissive. I’ll give the author of the article that, and the rest of his alleged affirmations about “what women want” are baseless since, I hope, he’s a man. At least that’s what he likes us to believe.

This brings me to the use of words and the representation of his views. The style in which he expresses himself is as if he is stating undisputed facts, he seldom uses the words “I think” or any that demonstrate that he is expressing his own opinions and views. He rather says “women want this and that”, and “women don’t want this and that”. How do you know what women want? Is it because your wife lets you cheat on her and then make rough love to her and ask her “Who’s the boss” while you’re at it and force her to say YOU? (He said this in his article). Really, who are you to know what women want when what you have at home is a doormat, not a wife?

Calling a man of that type a “man’s man” is a horrible distortion of men’s images. Sincerely speaking, no man should approve of this lest all men be branded utterly sexist and inconsiderate. What is wrong with this person, I reckon, is that he thinks he’s God’s gift to women and that he knows what’s best for them, (walking out in the middle of a conversation, telling them to “shut up” when they’re talking, dominating them in bed, making them feel inferior, making them feel they cannot do without his presence in their lives- to name but a few examples from the article) while what he’s missing is the big picture. God would not send men as gifts to women; we would appreciate a gift certificate much, much better.

What’s most amusing, and I am using the term quite loosely here, about this person is that he affirms in two separate occasions that his wife is a strong and intelligent woman and that he loves her. It’s as if he’s dismissing any ideas we the readers may have of her as being “submissive, stupid and unloved”. Well I am sorry but that is a hard case to win. If a woman is smart enough to run her own life she should know her worth and not stay in a relationship that runs in “his” favour all the time, if she is capable of carrying herself as a modern woman she should not submit to the desires of a sadistic male who could not care less about being faithful or considerate, and if he loves her he would treat her like a human being and not like an object he owns.

At one point of his article this person admits that his wife is more successful than he is, and older than he is. I’m leaning towards the possibility that his dominance in the bedroom may relate to those two facts. Momma’s boy? Jealous of her success and sex is the way you assert your own self and your own success? You need professional help. Just don’t go around telling women what they want. You are clueless as to what women are. ( We do have souls, by the way).

I must admit I am infuriated by this person’s article (note the absence of the word “man”). It saddens me to think that in many relationships the man rules and the woman only obeys, and the man thinks it his birth right to run the show from A to Z and the woman just takes it as if this was true. What ever happened to a relationship being a mutual effort, a mutual passion, a mutual experience? What this person is trying to sell is the old fashioned outdated “I’m tha man” scenario that we have come to discover totally useless.

A word to the wise, Hugh Grant may play too sensitive roles but he’s in demand more than this bigot. Trust me on this one, and get me dinner, boy.