Video - Egyptian Theater Student Explains Refusal to Undergo FGM Despite Pressure: Your Body Is Your Own.

Egyptian Theater Student Explains Refusal to Undergo FGM Despite Pressure: Your Body Is Your Own.(Memri).

Iman Hussein, an Egyptian theater student, was interviewed by the Egyptian DMC TV channel on the issue of female circumcision. She recounted that at the age of 10 or 11, she had discussed it with her mother and told her that this was her "own private matter," resisting pressure mounted by relatives and acquaintances. Hussein sent a message to young girls: "Your body is yours... In order to avoid the pain of sexual harassment, FGM, or things like that, you must confront it with all your might." The interview aired on February 12.

Iman Hussein: I was raised in a place called Bashayer, where my mother used to work. We were educated against FGM, and I knew my rights on this matter. Later, when I went to school, my friends were undergoing this operation. I told my mother that my friends at school were undergoing female circumcision, and I started discussing this with her. I told her that this was wrong because this is a part of the body. My mother always said to me: "This is your body, and nobody can touch it."

First Interviewer: How old were you?

Iman Hussein: I was 10 or 11 years old.

First Interviewer: At such a young age...

Second Interviewer: Right.

Iman Hussein: Then my mother's friends at work started to ask her: "Why haven't you done the operation to your daughters yet?" Some of our family members, like my grandmother, also raised the issue. I said to my mother then: "This is up to me. You can't do this." I'm into theater, and I watched some shows about FGM...

First Interviewer: And you must have heard stories from your friends at school.

Iman Hussein: Yes, one of them told me that she could not move for 3 or 4 days, and was hemorrhaging. Stuff like that. I was very scared, and I tried to imagine myself in such a situation. Besides, I am small, not like my friends, who are...

Second Interviewer: You are petite.

Iman Hussein: Yes... My mother's friends and our relatives told me that after the operation, my body would develop and I would put on some weight. But I didn't want that. I wanted to stay the way I am. This is my own private matter. So I told my mother that I was not doing this. She was also against it, but every now and again, she would say: Maybe we should consult a doctor? But I said: No way. What doctor are you talking about?! Why should I let a doctor see me? This is my own private matter.

Second Interviewer: Iman, we'd like to hear your message to girls your age or younger, who might find themselves in this situation one day.

Iman Hussein: Your body is yours. You are the one who will have to deal with the pain and everything. In order to avoid the pain of sexual harassment, FGM, or things like that, you must confront it with all your might. Our body deserves to be protected from these things.

Second Interviewer: I salute your courage and your position against all the pressure.

Video - Iranian Majlis Member Nader Qazipour: The Majlis Is No Place for Women or Donkeys

Iranian Majlis Member Nader Qazipour: The Majlis Is No Place for Women or Donkeys

Against the backdrop of the Iranian elections, held on February 26, 2016, Iranian Majlis member Nader Qazipour said that the Majlis is "no place for children or donkeys" and that it is "no place for women. It is a place where only men belong." The address was posted on the Internet on March 1.

08 March 'International Women's day': Erdogan offers 'Islamist'‘Turkish-style’ women’s rights.

08 March 'International Women's day': Erdogan offers 'Islamist'‘Turkish-style’ women’s rights. (HU).

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has declared the country should develop its own unique values of gender equality, finding inspiration from his will to have a new constitution which will pave the way for an authentic “Turkish-style” presidential system.

“Those who impose their understandings on this nation are the enemy of both our women and our people. This issue is not a matter of lifestyle,” Erdoğan said on March 7, while delivering a speech at an event held by the Confederation of Righteous Trade Unions (Hak-İş) on the occasion of March 8, International Women’s Day.

“On the contrary, this issue is an issue for our country’s and our nation’s future. We had that saying, ‘Turkish-style presidential system, Turkish-style constitution.’ On this issue [women’s rights] too, we are obliged to develop a Turkish-style model and implement it. We don’t necessarily have to express, defend and implement women’s rights in the format and style that exists in the West,” Erdoğan said.

“We can all together take steps to strengthen the presence of women as human beings and as individuals in the light of our history and cultural background, by correcting mistakes and by eliminating shortages. Believe me, this way it will be much more effective. If the defense of women’s rights had existed in the West in the literal sense, then they would not have remained silent about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrian women along with their children,” he said. Hmmm.......Keep Turkey out of Europe.

President Erdogan full-on on Int'l Women's Day: "Birth control is used here. Why is birth control used? (Pause.) To dry up our nation."

— Ayla Albayrak (@aylushka_a) March 8, 2016

#Turkey's top official Imam Mehmet Görmez says he joined Cabinet meeting & asked gov't to legalise the outlawed religious Madrasah schools

— Abdullah Bozkurt (@abdbozkurt) March 8, 2016

Video - Tunisian Researcher Prof. Naila Selini: The Status of Arab Women Is Worse than a Decade Ago

Video - Algiers Friday Sermon by Sheik Kamel Nour: We Have No Need for Women's Rights

International Women's Day: In the Arab world, women aren't supposed to talk about sex - let alone enjoy it. But 'hope springs eternal'.

International Women's Day: In the Arab world, women aren't supposed to talk about sex - let alone enjoy it. But 'hope springs eternal'.(TI).By Shereen El Feki.

A millennium ago, a writer in Baghdad by the name of ‘Ali ibn Nasr al-Katib produced a good sex guide called the Encyclopedia of Pleasure. Among his top tips: “Conversation and kissing are particularly important when the sexual union is over because they are indicative of a lovers’ kindness, where as silence, besides creating an embarrassing situation, would make the woman regret what she has done.”

Fast-forward to the 21 century, and such sexual etiquette is in short supply--at least according to my female friends in Cairo. Azza, a forty-something middle class mother of three, summed up their experience: “Five minutes, and it’s only his pleasure.” Forget French-kissing, forget foreplay. “He kisses her et cetera? That’s not true—it’s one minute only. After kissing, it’s straight to sex, then he sleeps, then he watches TV.”

Azza is not alone. I’ve heard her story time and again over the past five years as I travelled across the Arab region, talking to men and women about sex: what they do, what they don’t, what they think and why. Sexuality might seem a strange focus in these tumultuous political times in the Arab world. It is, in fact, a powerful lens with which to study a society because it offers a view not just into intimate life, but also of the bigger picture: politics and economics, religion and tradition, gender and generations that shape sexual attitudes and behaviours. If you really want to know a people, start by looking inside their bedrooms.

In today’s Arab world, the only socially-accepted context for sex is heterosexual, family-sanctioned, religiously-approved, state-registered marriage—a social citadel. Anything else is “ forbidden”, or “shameful” or “impolite”. The fact that large segments of the population in most countries are having hard time fitting inside the fortress—especially the legions of young people, who can’t find jobs and therefore can’t afford to marry—is widely recognized, but there is also widespread resistance to any alternative. Even within marriage, sex is something to do, not to discuss. And when sex is broached in public—in the media, for example—it is most often as a crisis or a scandal or a tragedy.

On the face of it, there is plenty of bad news about—especially when it comes to women. The drive to control female sexuality is an age-old feature of patriarchy, and is alive and well in the modern Arab world, given new impetus by the rise of Islamic conservatives in the wake of the Arab Spring. It’s reflected in statistics: in Egypt alone, 80 per cent of 15-17 year olds women are circumcised, in large part to tame their sex drive by cutting the clitoris, so the thinking goes; and less than 5 per cent of young women get any sort of sexual education from schools, routinely sent out of the classroom in the rare event that teachers indeed willing to teach the lesson.
It’s reflected in laws which, for example, allow rapists off the hook if they marry their victims, or lesser punishment for “honour crimes” (more often than not against women who are thought to have impugned their family’s reputation through some sort of sexual infraction) or in higher burdens of proof for adultery by men than women.Read the full story here.