By Mozn

Mona’s article was published in a time where, I have been in a process of critique to the different visions and approaches different feminists groups adopted since the revolution of the 25th of January. I argue that there are four main traps most of the feminists groups felled in as follows:

Gender vs. sex

One of the most dangerous traps opinion maker’s fell in when trying to promote women’s issues is generalization. Assuming that all women have the same needs and consequently will act and follow the same approaches in life. This is one main reasons for why some of feminist approaches fail to relate to daily women’s aspirations, challenges, and sufferings.

For many years, feminist schools did not tackle “masculinities” within feminist theory because of the assumption that feminism is only about women and not about deconstructing gender power and relationships. Considering “patriarchal” concepts as the main obstacle of achieving freedom, dignity and happiness for women without understanding their contexts and realities in their societies.

Love/hate relationship

The love/hate relationship is another trap within approaching women/men relationships. Promoters of this argument are trapped in taking the private to the public, falling into the dichotomy of do they love us or do they hate us?

Taking the Love/hate question from the private to the public ignores other crucial factors affecting women’s status in their societies, such as race, socioeconomics, accessibility to resources, and visibility. These factors are important in determining the nature of relationship between women and Men in the public sphere. The power relationships have no place in the love\hate relationship analysis. Love/hate relationships are for personal relationships and generalization for it for all gender.

Who represents women?

Feminists fell in is their attempt to use personal stories to support their argument. The challenge in this approach that the recipients does not particularly and shall not relate to these stories the same way as the feminists wants. Where others can also bring collective stories and claim that this also represents women’s utopian life they desire, this clearly happens when middle class women in Egypt tries to enforce their aspirations and visions as representative of all women.

People have the right to relate to their own personal experience and live in dignity. Our lessons learnt are that no one is representative to all Egyptian women.

Militarization of the state vs. Islamization of the state?

The last trap that feminists fell in since the revolution was answering the question: Who is our main enemy “Militarization of the state” or “islamization of the state”?

This dichotomy has been monopolizing feminist’s discourse and approaches. Promoters of that Militarization of the state believed that Islamization is the first enemy, while militarization could act as a protector of the civil state and women’s rights.

I would argue that for feminists to promote their believes they have to believe in a third road. For me as a feminist activist, referring to the so called “Islamic laws ” and using them to scare the public does not particularly help feminism. But rather deprived them more from the street.

Once the so called “Islamic Law” is codified  as law. For us as feminist activists we have the tools to change these laws and it is different than having a military rule, trying to engendering  women roles and closing the door for their existence in the public space as citizens aspiring freedom and dignity.

I would like to end my intervention by reminding all feminists women have the multiple identities and are multilayered. And for activists to succeed in changing their societies to the netter they have to relate to the women aspirations and needs. And agai I want to remind all of us that feminism is about choice! 

I meant to quote an excerpt, but the entire piece is quotable!