Muslim feminists have too much to worry about already to think about homophobia

Once a week I meet with people studying gender in the Middle East and we talk about the assigned articles we’ve read during the week. Last week, it was about sexuality and homophobia. Emerging from our discussion on homosexuality rights in the Middle East (particularly in Lebanon and Palestine) is the question why many Muslim [...]

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The hidden penis: on censorship, the female gaze and the queer eye

Memory can sometimes be a strange beast. While thinking about this piece, I suddenly remembered an article Cath Elliot wrote on the bad sex in literature award two years ago under the title, Flaccid prose, and the first comment it elicited:

flaccid is an unnecessary man-hating word to use in the title. I’m all for feminism, [...]

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Book review: Women of colour and feminism

First published at Feminist Review. (Thanks Mandy!)

If many postmodern feminists would have it, colour or“race” wouldn’t be of primary concern in theorising oppression; a woman would be seen as much more than her race, class, and sexuality. In other words, every woman’s experience of oppression is nuanced, different. And if the postmodern approach is hugely [...]

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Film review: Diagnosing Difference

This review also appears on Bitch Magazine’s latest issue No. 45, codenamed Art/See.
As an undergraduate in genetics, I learned about “abnormal gender” from medical texts, which taught me that the line between what was female and what was male was clear; anything in between was a chromosomal disorder and an aberration in nature. The message [...]

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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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