Worrying quote of the day

“Loads of people who work in the sex industry are academics – education is a very expensive habit,” said Catherine Stephens, an activist for the International Union of Sex Workers who has been a sex worker herself for 10 years.
“At a brothel I worked in, I think I was the only one not doing a PhD.”
On [...]

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When did talking about race become taboo?

Whenever I’m back home in Malaysia, I’m frequently faced with the annoying question of what race I am. It’s annoying because it jumps right at me from nowhere, from people I hardly know, from strangers. Yes, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that some Malaysians are just rude but one thing is for sure, [...]

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Feminisme: Antara mitos dan fakta

Ramai yang berpendapat bahawa golongan wanita dan lelaki feminis yang berpegang kepada prinsip “kesamaan” begitu khusyuk dengan isu-isu hak asasi manusia dan anasir-anasir berwajah kebaratan yang lain, seperti sekularisme dan liberalisme. Tidak kurang juga para bijak-pandai yang mendakwa gerakan feminisme sebagai satu-satunya punca keruntuhan akhlak dan rumahtangga. Ada pula yang khuatir feminisme menggalakkan persaingan antara [...]

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Whose revolution? Critiquing Seyran Ates and her Islamic sexual revolution

The calls of lawyer, activist, and writer Seyran Ates for a sexual revolution in the heterogeneous Muslim world may surprise many, particularly when the movement is commonly associated with free love, hippies, and public nudity. In a recent interview with German magazine Spiegel, Ates begins with discussing what she means by this and her experiences [...]

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More on men and feminism

Men and feminism: the next frontier on feminism’s agenda. Underrated, under researched, but quite possibly one of the most important issues surrounding our engagement with the source of female oppression. Gareth at Ad Fontes has some thought-provoking views on this:
Patriarchy forces men and women to play gender games that damage both of us. The damage [...]

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Big Love: Appropriating feminism in advocating polygamy

Originally posted at Muslimah Media Watch
Stories about polygamy tend to surge and ebb in the media, but they never fail to intrigue people. Recently in South Africa, a Zulu man married four women–all at once–making the most popular story on the BBC news website (you can watch the clip here). In the video, a male [...]

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Reconstructing the deconstructed: some thoughts on transnational feminist activism

The genetic material that connects us people with pre-historic creatures are the hox genes; genes that determine the basic shape of the body – signalling where the front and back, top and bottom of the body of more complex organisms (this includes worms I’m afraid) would be, essentially. Now, the discovery of the hox genes [...]

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Selamat Hari Raya! Maaf zahir dan batin

Cycads would like to wish you Eid Mubarak! Posts will resume shortly when I finally have internet connection in my new (but very empty) house. For the rest, a wonderful rest-of-the-weekend to you!

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Why I am against mainstream pornography

There was a time as a sex-positive feminist I believed that women should be able to enjoy porn if it floats their boat, and that all other avenues for female sexual desire should be open as long as elements so fundamental to the world of feminism and sex – choice and consent – are present. [...]

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Ramadhan book club: Our Stories, Our Lives

Originally published at Muslimah Media Watch, with thanks to The Policy Press.

Our Stories, Our Lives is an anthology of a diverse group of women in Bradford, England, offering a glimpse into their lives and their issues with reconciling their Muslim identities with being British. With the media’s daily onslaught on the image of Muslims and [...]

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