People always ask me about the way I see myself, how I can describe myself and what do I look forward to in the future. Well to sum it all up, I’m a Lebanese woman whose rights are taken away from her and a woman that is treated as an inferior human being compared to […]
Tag Archives: Lebanon
Do not open your legs… Women!
Welcome to Lebanon, the land of tabbouleh and hummus, sea and mountains, arak and wine. Welcome to the Mekka of plastic surgery and castration, schizophrenia and lethargy, hijab and short skirts, war, neo-feudalism, corruption and political-sectarian mafias and tribes… Welcome to a country where people magazines and soap operas continue to pigeonhole women as objects, […]
Keep your Voices Ringing against Domestic Violence!
“We knew all along that He was hitting her’, she said. “And you did nothing?’, I answered all perplexed. All what I got from her was a smirk and a nod from her head. That is what puzzles and perplexes: the ability to turn away from the atrocities of marital abuse, the constant convincing that […]
Mirror Mirror on the Wall…
Mirrors, such a shallow reflection… When you live in Lebanon, where physical beauty following particular standards has become your ticket to ‘success’ (fine marriage, fine job, good connections, more money,….) or at least your guarantee to be ‘accepted’ by others, the pressure can be often unbearable, leading to: Insecurities, Depression, Anxiety, Extreme Eating disorders, Narcissism, […]
A glimpse at the Battle of the Sexes
I recently got into this new life; the working class. And it is in this domain that Ia��ve seen and heard of sexual harassment, any kind of harassment actually. It is also in this domain that Ia��ve met young men and women, who would be considered to be the youth and part of the upcoming […]
One Morning at the Lebanese University : the Essence of Smiles
Festooned with scars, dirty walls, silence and drillers, on the side of the corridor, a happy cockroach that’d died with a smile on his moustache, a hallway, a room, then a hallway then another room… We went, my friend and I, she a professor of religious studies, I a professor of philosophy, festooned with curriculum […]
How I Do Feminism
I will not focus here on answering the question of ‘why’ doing feminism in a closed circle with tiny windows, but I will definitely talk about the ‘how’ – in fact, the ‘how’ is related to the ‘why’ -: while seeing and defining ‘change’ from different yet complementary perspectives – as a professor and academic […]
"Against the Current" Jihadist!
I am both Lebanese and Canadian. I was born in Lebanon, survived the 80s physical war, left for Montreal in 1999 to pursue my studies, was stuck in Lebanon during the Summer 2006 war, and decided, along with my husband, to leave Canada and live again in Lebanon. I am what many define as ‘against […]
A never ending fight for Peace in the Middle East?
When I came back from Montreal (Quebec, Canada) to Lebanon in 2006-2007, all my friends called me ‘crazy’: ‘How can you leave a stable and secure environment for a volcano?’ I had my personal and family reasons, and I was convinced of the inevitable change yet to occur in the Middle East. I wanted to […]
SPOILED CHILDREN = DECADENT CITIZENS
Miserable, unsatisfied, ill-disciplined, demanding, despotic and useless… Rude to their parents and other adults, acting bossy and refusing to share with other children, prone to excessive self-absorption, lack of self-control, anxiety and depression… Yet they get extravagant birthdays, Prada purses, Tiffany jewelry, designer clothes, etc. I am certain of the fact that many mothers – […]