This film encourages us Egyptian/Middle Eastern women to unite with one another, in order to have honest and personal about their intimate lives. Through the individual narratives/ voices I interviewed we can see how lack of sexual education, shame and fear triggered by our societies have led to tragic consequences for women, such as life in oppression.
HELLO YOU!
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Your Contributions
This section is meant for you to respond to the film above by sharing how it made you feel and generally sharing your thoughts, to encourage and aim for a larger female discourse.
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2. click start recording, to record your audio
3. Once your are done recording click on the stop button, if you would like you can then enter a text/title or not , then click continue
4. You can either log in through Google or Facebook, or click signup with Heyoya, insert a fictional username or your own if you would like, and your email. This is to insure the security and integrity of this platform and all users.
5. Additionally please tick the little box below to agree to the terms of this website
6. Then click post, this will redirect you to a message to confirm your email address. After you have confirmed, its all done!
7. You can then listen to other audios and interact with them by leaving them a reply if you would like!
Resources
Below you can find a selection of films, books, social media accounts, websites, podcasts, and artwork in relation to the topics explored within the film. Hopefully these can help you in some way or form be it by informing/educating yourself, seeking belonging or comfort, or finding liberation.
TABOO TALK & SHAME
Nadine Labaki, a Lebanese filmmaker establishes a strong female leadership and sisterhood throughout her films. Caramel, delivers the struggles of five women who work in the same hair salon, facing societal, cultural, and religious pressures that cause fear and guilt in their everyday lives.
Egyptian-born and London-raised, Alya Mooro grew up between two cultures and felt a pull from both. Where could she turn for advice and inspiration when it seemed there was nobody else like her? Today, Mooro is determined to explore and explode the myth that she must identify either as ‘Western’ or as one of almost 400 million other ‘Arabs’ across the Middle East.Through countless interviews and meticulous research, as well as her own unique experience, Mooro gives voice to the Middle Eastern women who, like her, don’t fit the mould.
In the political unrest that has swept across the Arab region in 2011, all eyes have been on the streets and squares erupting in protest. But for the past four years, Shereen El Feki has been looking at upheaval a little closer to home - in the sexual lives of men and women across the Arab world.
SEXUALITY & SEX EDUCATION
The first work of non-fiction in English from the prize-winning and internationally bestselling author of Lullaby and Adèle, translated by Sophie Lewis.
In these essays, Leila Slimani gives voice to young Moroccan women who are grappling with a conservative Arab culture that at once condemns and commodifies sex.
In these essays, Leila Slimani gives voice to young Moroccan women who are grappling with a conservative Arab culture that at once condemns and commodifies sex.
Sex From Scratch is a love and dating guidebook that gleans real-life knowledge from smart people in a variety of nontraditional relationships. Instead of telling people how to snag a man, seduce a woman, or find “true love,” the book sums up what dozens of diverse folks have learned the hard way over time.
A wealthy iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's dangerous obsession.
WOMANHOOD
AZEEMA is a print magazine, online platform, community and creative agency, exploring women and non-binary folk within the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, diasporas and BEYOND. Azeema challenges and confronts issues surrounding representation and diversity by creating a space that is inclusive and celebratory of our cultures.
"This collection of stories, speeches, essays, poems and memoirs bears fierce testimony to a tradition of brave Arab feminist writing in the face of subjugation by a Muslim patriarchy."
Walking through Fire takes up the story of Nawal El Saadawi's extraordinary life. We read about her as a rural doctor, trying to help a young girl escape from a terrible fate imposed on her by a brutal male tyranny. We learn about her activism for female empowerment and the authorities that try to obstruct her. We travel with her into exile after her name is put on a fundamentalist death list. We witness her three marriages, each offering in their way love, companionship and shared struggle. And we gain an unprecedented insight into this most wonderful of creative minds.
SELF-CENSORSHIP
The struggle for Muslim women's emancipation is often portrayed stereotypically as a showdown between Western and Islamic values, but Arab feminism has existed for more than a century. This groundbreaking documentary recounts Arab feminism's largely unknown story, from its taboo-shattering birth in Egypt by feminist pioneers up through viral Internet campaigns by today's tech-savvy young activists during the Arab Spring. Moving from Tunisia to Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, filmmaker and author Feriel Ben Mahmoud tracks the progress of Arab women in their long march to assert their full rights and achieve empowerment.
In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of “orientalism” to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined “the orient” simply as “other than” the occident.
Said argues while representations are essential for the function of human life and societies, as essential as language itself—what must cease are representations that are authoritatively repressive, because they do not provide any real possibilities for those being represented to intervene in this process. Therefore, we must give ourselves as women the chance to tell our own stories , without male influences.
Said argues while representations are essential for the function of human life and societies, as essential as language itself—what must cease are representations that are authoritatively repressive, because they do not provide any real possibilities for those being represented to intervene in this process. Therefore, we must give ourselves as women the chance to tell our own stories , without male influences.
Contrary to popular perceptions, newly veiled women across the Middle East are just as much products and symbols of modernity as the upper- and middle-class women who courageously took off the veil almost a century ago. To make this point, these essays focus on the “woman question” in the Middle East (most particularly in Egypt and Iran), especially at the turn of the century, when gender became a highly charged nationalist issue tied up in complex ways with the West. The essays challenge the assumptions of other major works on women and feminism in the Middle East by questioning, among other things, the familiar dichotomy in which women’s domesticity is associated with tradition and modernity with their entry into the public sphere.
