Egyptian - Journalist | August 1, 1967 -
I was 15 when my family moved to Jidda from Britain in 1982. Living in Saudi Arabia was such a shock to my system that I like to say I was traumatized into feminism.
Mona Eltahawy
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When I first read Margaret Atwood's novel 'The Handmaid's Tale,' it was Saudi Arabia as I knew it that came to mind, not a dystopian future United States as in the new television adaptation.
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Saudi Arabia isn't just a conservative country with different values we shouldn't judge. It is a modern Gilead.
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I'm a survivor. I'm a messenger.
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Across the globe, fundamentalists of all religions are on one side, and their attitudes towards women and towards female sexuality are almost identical.
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I wore the hijab - a form of dress that comprises a head scarf and usually also clothing that covers the whole body except for the face and hands - for nine years. Put more honestly, I wore the hijab for nine years and spent eight of them trying to take it off.
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I chose to wear the hijab at age 16, soon after my family moved from Britain to Saudi Arabia.
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For years, despite my inner doubts, I represented to others my choice to veil as a feminist one.
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To write about the hijab is to step into a minefield. Even among those who share my cultural and faith background, opinions veer from those who despise it as a symbol of backwardness to those for whom religion begins and ends with that piece of cloth.
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We have been under military rule since 1952, when a group of army officers overthrew Egypt's monarchy and ended Britain's occupation of the country. But that only replaced an external occupation with an internal one, in which favored sons of the armed forces replaced their uniforms with suits, a move meant to create a semblance of civilian rule.
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When we complain to Egypt's Western allies about whichever autocrat is in power, we are asked, 'But who is the alternative?' It is a question designed to frustrate.
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While the 2011 revolution did not remove the regime, it has shortened the seemingly endless patience that many Egyptians once had for military rule.
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