Feminist Inspiration

I attended a very interesting lecture by Nawal El-Saadawi tonight. El-Saadawi is a leading Egyptian feminist, sociologist, medical doctor and writer on Arab women's problems. She is one of the most widely translated contemporary Egyptian writers, with her work available in twelve languages.

I just wanted to share a few of the interesting points she made (in the order they were raised):

• I don't like the term "the Middle East". Middle to whom? If we call it the "Middle West" people laugh but why? When I go to America I say that I go to the "Far West".
• We don't live in a post-colonial world; it is neo-colonial.
• There are global and local dictators. Local dictators imitate global ones.
• I challenge the concepts of "democracy", "diversity" and "multi-culturalism". They divide people. They are words of post-modernism, which in turn is neo-colonial.
• Condoleeza Rice is biologically a woman but when you open up her brain, George Bush is there.
• Nakedness and veiling are two sides of the same coin = the paradox of the woman's body. Plastic surgery is the post-modern veil, the veil of the body.
• The father (or the [male] teacher, professor, etc.) is the representative of the divine power.
• Religion (Christianity) has caused a split between body and spirit. The woman is associated with body, physical and feeling, while the man is spirit, mind and thinking. Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and became a sinner. Why was knowledge condemned?
• One cannot get away from the history of patriarchy in the bedroom.
• If someone says they are apolitical it means they are political but that they are hiding their politics. Everything is political.
• The education is system is based on fragmented knowledge. We specialise. We are not organised and united. But a physician must know why people get sick.
• We must believe that things are possible. The veil of the mind is the most dangerous.
• God is my conscious. Religion has no meaning if one does not do anything. If one just goes to church/mosque or read the bible/quran but never works for justice, is one then saved by religion/God?
• The religious backlash is a political backlash.
• A woman cannot marry two men because then one won't know who is the father of her children. The father's name is important. We should give the mother's name to children instead.
• There is a difference between sexual liberation and economic and political liberation. Women have the first but not the latter [not even in Sweden].