Nudity in Arab cinema has always been transgressive. Throughout the Arab world, female bodies on the big screen have been either plunged into invisibility or exposed as devilish and lascivious. This is why it is necessary to better represent their bodies as subjects rather than objects of desire and eradicate the ordinary male gaze. Wait, what? What is the male gaze? Visual pleasure and fantasy Since Laura Mulvey, a British feminist film theorist, published a groundbreaking essay on narrative cinema and visual pleasure in 1975, we understand the male gaze as the act of depicting women in visual arts from a masculine and heterosexual perspective. In cinema, it means that the director, the viewer, and sometimes even the actor are contemplating a woman’s body with lust and for their own pleasure. The way the camera shoots the scene inspired Freud to coin the term “scopophilia,” the visual pleasure of the spectator possessing the body he’s looking at. Indeed, the close-ups make the body closer to the public, as if it were merely inches away from touch. The camera movements are an incitement to touch the bodies. The king of the male gaze in France is Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche. In Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) and in Mektoub, My Love – Canto Uno (2016), Kechiche perfectly demonstrates the way in which heterosexual men grasp women’s bodies and sexualities, the eye becoming a tool for arousal by the desire to feel the skin and even the desire to penetrate. With the female gaze, bodies appear without being restricted to what’s attractive and desirable for the man who stares at them. from The man who sold his skin by Kaouther Ben Hania Unfortunately, this is hardly new. In 1958, Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine had already centered his masterpiece Cairo Station around the male gaze as a vessel for sexual obsession. He used superstar dancer Hind Rostom, one of Egypt’s sex icons at the time, as an object of desire, luring the audience in by objectifying the body. More recently, Algerian director Nadir Moknèche opened Viva Laldjérie (2004) with a sex scene in which Lubna Azabal appears full-on naked, taunting the viewers when smoking her after-sex cigarette. Her body is both neutral and powerful since it’s a revolution in itself to see a naked female body on the screen. Needless to say, in predominantly Muslim countries, this scene is outrageous since it does not respect the boundaries drawn by the intimate body parts called awra ( عورة). Oddly enough, the etymology of the word awra in Arabic also refers to blindness, so awra is both the punctured eye and the sex organ. Century after century, Arab patriarchs have defined a women’s entire body as awra, which is why she must be veiled, thus protected her from men’s gazes. Nothing feminine should disturb or penetrate the male visual field. But the veil is an intricate phenomenon because it showcases while hiding, and in many instances, it has led to the hypersexualization and political obsession hinging around women’s bodies today. But the veil is an intricate phenomenon because it showcases while hiding, and in many instances, it has led to the hypersexualization and political obsession hinging around women’s bodies today. In most Arab movies, women’s bodies must not be seen in their birthday suits. But in due time, there has emerged another way of filming women’s bodies and it’s through the “female gaze”. The female gaze is no longer based on asymmetric power relations but on the idea of equality and sharing in the sexual act. French cinema theorist Iris Brey has shown that some conditions must be met to speak about a female gaze: the main character must narratively identify herself as a woman, the story must be told from her point of view, and her story must challenge the patriarchal order. Beyond the outdated, old-fashioned gaze In an Arab world plagued by censorship, the rise of political Islamism and revolutionary upheavals, female directors are trying to reinvent the way the body is viewed, beyond heteropatriarchy, beyond what Edward Saïd formulated as Orientalism, and beyond the colonial fantasies revealed by Joseph Massad in Desiring Arabs. The way the camera shoots the scene inspired Freud to coin the term “scopophilia,” the visual pleasure of the spectator possessing the body he’s looking at. https://jasad.hellotree.dev/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/From-As-I-open-my-eyes-by-Leyla-Bouzid-370×260-1-300×211.webp From As I open my eyes by Leyla Bouzid In the last decade, Maryam Touzani, Nadine Labaki, Mounia Meddour, Leyla Bouzid, Kaouther Ben Hania, Haifaa Al-Mansour, and countless others have used cinema to redeem the female body from their own point of view. Through this lens, the body can go back to just being a body. In I Still Hide to Smoke (2016), nudity is raw, without artifice; the naked body is no longer idealized, it is shown in its most realistic shape: stretch marks, curves, wrinkles, and other imperfections included. From I still hide to smoke by Rayhana Obermeyer Director Rayhana Obermeyer films naked bodies and yet the atmosphere is not sexually charged. It is a celebration of the natural female body composed of flesh, sweat, and even menstruation. It is a body bare of the layer of sexualization; it is just a body. Nonetheless, male directors can also have a stab at filming bodies with a female gaze. In L’Amour des Hommes (2017), Tunisian director Mehdi Ben Attia puts a camera into Amel’s hands (Hafsia Herzi) so that she can take pictures of sensual-looking men and reverse the patriarchal gaze. In recent years, Arab female directors have modernized the sexual representations attached to the female body. They have thus made it a vehicle for a political protest; a protest to reinvent women’s bodies by sexuality, by liberating dance moves, by bodily autonomy, or by self-determination. With the female gaze, bodies appear without being restricted to what’s attractive and desirable for the man who stares at them. Instead, we’re left to examine what’s really there: a body, with all its curves, edges, and imperfections, for once not seeking interpretation or proclivity. It is just there.

Culture plays an important and crucial role in the determination of gender. Most cultures understand genders and sexes as binary entities. A plethora of societal characteristics, marked and tainted by gender roles, play the pivotal role of categorizing a person into either a male or female category. These can vary from physical appearance, clothes, haircut, and mannerism to even personal characteristics and career paths. This categorization is even more accentuated with gender stereotypes that predominate in our cultures: Girls are expected to wear pink and play with dolls, try on makeup and become housewives. Boys are expected to play football and go into professions such as engineering and medicine. Boys are expected to be “strong” and not show emotions while girls are expected to be sensitive and caring. In the dark Language, which is a central part of any culture, also plays an essential role in influencing the way we see the world around us. Countries using gendered languages where nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and sometimes verbs have a gender, showed less equality in comparison to countries that established neutral gender or genderless language systems (Prewitt-Freilino, Caswell, & Laakso, 2012). Arabic is considered a gendered language, the sociolinguistic (relational) level of Arabic is male-associated and the formal level of the language is androcentric (Alkohlani, 2016; Sadiqi, 2006). It is no surprise then that transgenders in the Middle East belong to an underground community (Whitaker, 2016). Being in the dark seems the only way for them express who they truly are all whilst avoiding all kinds of discrimination from personal, professional to judicial. There has been a witnessed shift of perspective when it comes to gender from a rigid dichotomy to a spectrum (Butler, 2011; Fausto-Sterling, 2000). According to biological determinism on the conceptualization of gender, femininity and masculinity naturally abide by the physical differences between males and females. However, according to the social learning theory, individuals acquire different gender roles by adapting to cultural and societal values of gender conduct. A third theory pertaining to cognitive development emphasizes the combination of an individual’s interaction with the world, their information processing and own conceptual thinking (Tiwari & Ghadially, 2009). Furthermore, according to normal cognitive and sexual development, children around 7 years of age identify the flexibility of gender expression (Bancroft, 2008). Cross-cultural studies show that children from countries where negative attitudes towards gender non-conformity are present express greater gender stereotyping compared to children growing up in countries that showed tolerance towards gender differences (Bancroft, 2008). In a world of uncertainties, a ‘leap of faith’ is at times needed to allow the person to self-actualize. Laws & Psychopathologies in the Middle East Transgenderism in the Middle East is often seen as cross-dressing and the Hadith of devout Muslims banishes these practices (Whitaker, 2016). At the World Conference on Women held between 1995 and 2005, conservative Muslim and Catholic delegations radically rejected the use of the term “sexual rights” in United Nations (UN) documents. During the UN Commission on Human Rights conference in 2003, the affirmation of protection and promotion of persons regardless of sexual orientation followed a backlash by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt and Bahrain as well as other conservative delegates supported by the Vatican (Ilkkaracan, 2016). Middle Eastern countries do not acknowledge any gender identity other than the binary female/male. The right of social protection, freedom of gender expression privacy and basic human rights of individuals are therefore constantly violated by targeting and persecuting persons with non-normative sexualities and gender identities. Thus LGBTQ+ persons are continuously facing social discrimination, rendering their lives a living hell. © diane arbus But it doesn’t stop at social discrimination. “One of the main challenges we face besides the stigma is hospitalization. It is extremely difficult to be admitted to a hospital if you are a transperson. And this happened to me twice”: This is what Coco, a Lebanese transgender woman, told Jasad. Another main challenge Coco mentioned is the constant struggle to find a job instead of having to resort to sex work in order to make ends meet. Mimi, another trans woman, pointed out that on top of hospitalization, there’s another problem with insurance policies. She explained: “You have to pretend you are still a man, or lie by saying that your “sister” is going to renew the insurance on your behalf, in order to get things done. If they know you have undergone a sex change operation, they will consider the policy to be void because you deliberately “hurt” yourself”. Moreover, there is an immense lack of doctors who are specialized and knowledgeable about transgenders. “I haven’t met a single doctor in Lebanon that knows about transgenders more than me,” she exasperatedly said. In 2007, during a speech in New York, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) stated that there are no homosexuals in Iran (Ilkkaracan, 2016). This political statement puts in context sexual freedom in a Middle Eastern country such as the IRI; it is simply deemed nonexistent. But, IRI authorities ironically offer homosexual individuals the choice between the death sentence and sex change operations partially funded by the government (Bahreini, 2009). This stance could appear beneficial towards transgenders seeking surgical transformation however it invalidates and illegitimates non-surgical transgender persons and limits irrevocably their freedom of choice. The IRI, in that regards, symbolizes a Middle Eastern country where gender non-conformity is perverse and harshly punishable by law, which makes sex reassignment surgeries a coercive strategy for homosexuals to conform to heteronormative orders. Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code clearly states the punishment of “unnatural sexual intercourse.” The judicial system in Jordan and Penal code of 1951 does not condemn homosexual conduct, but LGBTQI+ persons can be prosecuted for displaying public affection, which is considered a disruption of public morality. In Kuwait, Article 193 of the Penal Code condemns homosexual behavior up to six years in prison and Article 198 stipulates 8 years of prison for transgender persons. There are no written laws around homosexual conduct or Transgenderism in Saudi Arabia but, in strict execution of the Shariah Law, the State penalizes LGBTQ+ activity with a death sentence. It is the basic institutions’ responsibilities to allow the freedom of gender expression that may not be conform to the socialization process. Taking into account the dire living conditions of Transgender people, it is necessary to look into comorbid disorders that may be experienced by the transgender person in order to implement individualized treatment plans. The findings of the study conducted by Ibrahim, Haddad, and Richa (2016) in Lebanon portray significant differences in suicidality, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among transgender persons compared to control groups. Discrimination is a major risk factor of psychiatric problems among this vulnerable population; the marginalization of transgenders in the workplace further accentuates their financial instability and harsh living conditions (Ibrahim, Haddad, and Richa, 2016; Nemoto, Bödeker, & Iwamoto, 2011). However, a shimmering light is that a growing number of transgender persons are fighting for positive change in their communities by promoting self-actualization and self-disclosure on social media platforms (Miller, 2018) and this was seen in May 2020 when an Egyptian actor’s transgender son was revealed on TV (BBC News, 2020). Transgenderism and Existentialism We are responsible for our life’s meanings, choices, actions and ways of being and first and foremost, being true to one’s self. Can a transgender person live authentically if sex change is not made? “Sex change allowed me to feel alive in the body of a woman and to feel internally comfortable in my body,” said Mimi. However, she also believes that “you can live authentically without it and that sex change does not make you more or less of a woman”. According to her, it depends on what is it exactly that triggers your womanhood. Is it the genitalia or is it simply dressing up and feeling like a woman by socially presenting yourself as one? Another challenge that was addressed by Coco is that, even after undergoing the operation, your identity on paper is extremely difficult to change legally in the Middle East. “This is an essential barrier that stands in the way of a transgender being able to live authentically”, she told Jasad. © Terrance Hinch The risk of living in ‘bad faith’ becomes higher when sociocultural factors constitute a barrier to the person’s expression of their authentic identity (Sartre, 1958). In fact, human existence is constituted of a myriad of tensions, paradoxes and dilemmas and incongruence needs to be resolved between the basic dimensions of the person’s existence: the social world (eigenwelt), the physical dimension (mitwelt), and the personal microenvironment (umwelt) where the person recognizes and expresses their gender identity (Cooper, 2016). The therapeutic work revolves around exploring the client’s attitude to their own body, other people’s bodies, their own bodily needs, how they interact with the world around them, their own views about their strengths and weaknesses, how they define themselves and their sense of identity (Godman, 2018; van Deurzen, 1997). Existential psychotherapists may want to examine the client’s culture; the person’s response to the community they belong to, their values, their beliefs and challenge some of the clients’ world-views. The therapeutic process may lead to the integration of the person’s past gender and current identity. As a mater of fact, we are continuously forming and rewriting our narratives and might project them to the future Self which in turn may create ontological anxiety about the possible transition (Richards, 2011). In a world of uncertainties, especially in the Middle East where laws condemn LGBTQI+ communities, a ‘leap of faith’ is at times needed to allow the person to self-actualize (Kierkergaard, 1944; McLeod, 2007). It is essential to keep in mind the medical model with gender dysphoria while also bracketing all preconceived ideas of what transgenderism is. Hence, a trusting and containing environment is key in the therapeutic relationship and confidentiality measures are also necessary to keep the client safe from any persecution or lynching. Creating clear boundaries between the therapist and client helps them feel contained and sufficiently safe in the uncertain and chaotic internal and external world they are already living in (Strasser & Strasser, 1997). © Frida Kahlo In conclusion, gender identity is fluid, complex and personal, and certainly not defined by others. Gender identity and its expression pertain to a continuum between masculinity and femininity. Scientists and practitioners may pathologize the person’s own body experience as body dysphoria. But, the lived experiences of these individuals clearly show that the change in gender expression may alleviate the significant distress experienced. It is then the basic institutions’ responsibility, notably the family and school, to establish non-gendered discourses and to allow the freedom of gender expression that may not be conform to the socialization process (Dilanyan, Doğan, & Iluridze, 2017). Labels thus should be abolished and stigma reduced for the LGBTQI+ community, which in turn will lead to a better adaptation and transition of the transgender person. Advocacy in sexual education should empower transgender persons as well as promote inclusion among cisgender young people (Riggs & Bartholomaeus, 2018). A comprehensive approach towards their own body, desires, needs leading to a more authentic Self is also highly needed and encouraged. Although the word “disorder” in the DSM-5 was changed to “gender dysphoria”, the stigma is unfortunately still prevalent in our world. Can a transgender person live authentically if sex change is not made? Some relevant definitions: Sex is related to the biological and anatomical expression of the genitals and includes hormonal, genetics, and other components of the human body (Butler, 2011). But sex expression is not always as categorical and clear: a third sex or intersex category emerged in history and medicine (Ahmed, Morrison, & Hughes, 2004). Gender Identity is the person’s self-identification and deep sense of being male, female, something in between or neither. Biological sex is a distinct concept from gender, thus gender identity may be distinct from biological sex (Tiwari, & Ghadially, 2009). Gender expression is the person’s expression of their gender through characteristics manifested by society’s definition of masculinity and femininity. Gender is on a spectrum of expression (Knafo, Iervolino, & Plomin, 2005). It is a choice of pronouns, names, and physical appearance and it can vary in different contexts. For example, gender atypical behavior refers to boys behaving in a feminine way. Sexual orientation refers to the person’s sexual identity related to the gender they are physically or emotionally attracted to. The orientation can be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. Transsexual is a term introduced by psychiatrist Cauldwell in 1949 designating a person whose identity is strongly linked to the opposite sex (Bancroft, 2008). The person usually seeks medical assistance that pertains to sex reassignment surgeries and/or hormone replacement therapies (Ibrahim, Haddad, & Richa, 2016). Transgender is an umbrella term incorporating a plethora of gender identities and expressions. It designates “embodied movements across, between, or beyond the binary categories of male and female” (Hines, 2007, p. 1). Individuals identifying as transgender may or may not undergo permanent bodily changes; the person could use hormone treatments, endure reconstructive surgeries, or cross dress to express their authentic gender identity. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1910), a physician and sexologist that examined human sexuality and actively advocated lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) minorities, placed Transgenderism in a distinct category from homosexuality and transvestism (Stryker & Whittle, 2006).  Gender dysphoria is defined in the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5) as any person who experiences significant difference between his or her expressed gender and his or her gender assigned at birth (APA, 2013). Gender nonconformity is not considered a mental health condition, but a person diagnosed with gender dysphoria experiences significant distress related to being non-conforming (Bancroft, 2008).

In a culture designed for and by men and male pleasure, women’s sexual pleasure has been pushed to the margins for decades. In fact, it has been commodified for so long that even pornography is based on unrealistic ideals of intercourse, to the point that male-dominated pornography has been shown to harm marriages and relationships in general – not to mention totally perpetuate largely false constructs on women’s sexual pleasure.Let us not forget: the clitoris was not discovered in its full structure until 1998. And even as more studies confirm the importance of mental stimulation when it comes to sexual stimulation, foreplay is still downplayed, while penetration – namely in heteronormative sexual frameworks – remains central to the idea of pleasure.  What you want and crave First things first: a greater understanding of pleasure, how it originates, and how it is stimulated is required, in addition to sex-positive focus on women’s bodies. While it differs to everyone, women’s pleasure – generally speaking – necessitates us to be fully linked to ourselves, not just physically, but also emotionally. It is not about random moments, but rather must be seen as a continuum – a lifestyle. It requires constant refinement and fine-tuning through self-reflection. © Persian miniature What does that even mean? Let’s start off with the basics. Ask yourself:  Have you ever questioned whether you are fully enjoying yourself during a sexual act? Have you ever found yourself over-worried about how you look or feel? Are you listening to what your body is trying to tell you? When you become your own compass on your own desires and pleasures, in and out of the bedroom, you start using every part of your body, emotions, senses, and thoughts. Why? Because you are more in tune with your body. Does it feel good with a certain person? Do you feel safe? Or are you closing up and feeling suffocated or anxious? If so, why? Your experience of your relationship, your body, your sexuality and your orgasms will transform.  You are solely moved by your relationship to yourself, first and foremost.  What you want and crave, why you crave what you crave, are going to be what help you decide how to behave and how to make decisions. When was the last time you took a deep breath and slowed down to spend a little time with yourself? Sex shifts from being goal-oriented, where an orgasm is the goal, to pleasure in the process; the journey rather than solely the destination. We may have a tendency to place a greater emphasis on eradicating pain and dysfunction, which is, after all, an important component of the quality of our life, including our sex lives. Health, on the other hand, is more than just the absence of disease. Joy, connection, and pleasure are all things that make life worth living, and they are all part of mental and physical health.In fact, one common misconception to debunk here is that pleasure and desire are uninhibited, unpredictable, and effortless. Throughout the day, modest acts of effort can help satisfy needs and provide pleasure. Consider it a “piggy bank” for your emotions and sexual desires. Ask yourself what you can do in your everyday activities to include small moments of joy and things that make you feel good – even before you get into bed. In a culture designed for and by men and male pleasure, women’s sexual pleasure has been pushed to the margins for decades. Yes, the first step is to learn about anatomy and sex education. Step two, on the other hand, is to cultivate a more intimate relationship with yourself. A fast Internet search or listening to facts here and there is insufficient. Begin by challenging your own perceptions. Taking it beyond the confines of the bedroom Ask yourself this, when was the last time you took a deep breath and slowed down to spend some time with yourself? “I like to use the example of peeling and eating a clementine orange, because it does use all five senses: you hold the orange and peel it with your fingers, and you can see, smell, and even hear the peel coming away from the flesh of the fruit, and then you taste the slice that you pop into your mouth,” says therapist Brooke Norton, MFT, MLS. © Kees van dongen Spending time at the beach is another excellent example. The feel of the sand underneath your feet can help you connect to your every action, while water can activate your senses. Do you have trouble tuning out of your mind? According to studies, a huge proportion of people share these sentiments. Don’t worry, humans have a direct neurological mind-body circuitry, as human anatomy demonstrates. You can take it a step further and match your breath to the sound of the waves to help you return your focus to your body. When was the last time you took a deep breath and slowed down to spend a little time with yourself?  What does it take to make you happy? What exactly are you looking for? And are you silently shaming yourself for your own self-love?  When you think of sex or self-pleasure, what thoughts come to mind? Ask yourself all these questions and more, and only then will you begin your journey to healing. While it differs to everyone, women’s pleasure – generally speaking – necessitates us to be fully linked to ourselves, not just physically, but also emotionally. And we are here to support you.

The Lebanon protests that sparked on October 17 challenged a decade of mansplaining, even in our modern society. From “women shouldn’t sleep in tents” to “why are you chanting like men” – it became obvious that it was not only a revolution against the ruling class, but against society itself. Out of the boxes already! On November 19, 2019, a woman stood face to face with a Lebanese riot police officer, almost no distance separating them. A few moments later, she was on the ground holding on to a young man who was about to be arrested by the police. They dragged her, them, back and forth, but Lina did not let the young man go; she was trying to be the buffer between him and the riot police. In her mind, the young man would not be arrested and the police would back off, but the reality was different. Since October 2019, Lebanese women have pushed every critical button that our society had. © Hayat Nazer Lina was one of the hundreds of Lebanese women who pushed themselves to the front, even when it was dangerous, during the protests of October 2019, and in the months that followed. She knew that her body was her business, and whether she decides to be dragged and pushed or not, whether she stood at the forefront or in the back, these were her decisions to make, and she made it clear by being present.  That picture of Lina almost always sparks controversy, even until this day. “Why did she do this to herself? A woman shouldn’t be in the street. She could have been in the back. What if something happens to her face?” Endless comments only reflect how even in the Lebanese society, one of the most liberated societies compared to other Arab countries, women are still being put in certain boxes defining what they should be doing or wearing, and how they should be walking and talking.  This proves that there’s no clear recipe for women’s liberation, but constant acts that challenge society one way or another to remind everyone that even norms change. And when it comes to a woman’s body, she must create her own norms, even if this means being at the forefront of a protest in her 50s. Lebanese women have been leading multiple revolutions throughout the years, especially when it comes to liberating their bodies and hymens from society and its expectations. But that was not the only revolution lead by Lebanese women. Truth be told, Lebanese women have been leading multiple revolutions throughout the years, especially when it comes to liberating their bodies and hymens from society and its expectations. When it comes to what is right or wrong, we will decide.  We won big Following the protests of 2019, Lebanese celebrated International Women’s Day on March 9, 2020. A young woman wearing a white top leading the annual march in Lebanon wrote on her breasts: “I decide what I wear”. “HER BOOBS ARE SHOWING,” wrote an angry man on Twitter, despite her wearing a basic summer top with a statement written across her chest. After tweeting the picture, I remember receiving so many messages – and this lasted for weeks – asking me about the identity of the young woman. None of these messages had any professional intent. They all wanted to lecture her about her choice of wardrobe, and some probably saw her as a sex object because of what she dared to write on her own body. © Ivan Debs There’s a general feeling that societies tend to indirectly test women, to evaluate whether a woman is “eligible to be heard.” Since October 2019, Lebanese women have pushed every critical button that our society had, not only proving that they can lead protests, but that they can stand face to face with riot police, document attacks on protestors, front-kick an armed assaulter, and organize marches that could potentially help heal some of the civil war’s wounds. There’s no clear recipe for women’s liberation, but constant acts that challenge society. So, if this was a test, I would say Lebanese women won – and won big. The prejudice of society chases us everywhere, wherever/ whenever there’s a woman doing something courageous and remarkable, there’s a society mansplaining her about ‘what is best for her’. The Lebanon protests broke a decade of mansplaining, even in our modern society, from “women shouldn’t sleep in tents” to “why are you chanting like men” – it became obvious that it was not only a revolution against the ruling class, but against the society itself.  

When I started reading Cassandra Speaks I was shocked.  This is the book I wanted to write for the longest time.  All the thoughts swimming in my head for the last few years have been cheating on me with another woman, Elizabeth Lesser, an American author living on the East Coast of the United States. Unlike me, Elizabeth decided to write these ideas down for the world to see. And boy, are they worth seeing.  There is nothing more satisfying than a book that points to the everyday world around you and says: have you ever seen it this way? When you’ve finally finished the book you’re reborn with new eyes, and there’s no way to go back to the way you used to see again. Cassandra Speaks is one of those books. Blaming Eve Cassandra Speaks, simply speaking, is about stories. It’s about the stories that society tells that end up becoming culture. What point of view are these stories written from? And do they represent how both women and men view humanity, or are they biased?  To what extent do the stories that we learn as children and hear again and again as adults in different forms all around the world shape how we view the world, and how we view ourselves? The book is divided into three sections: Origin Stories, Power Stories, and because this is not a series of complaints about how the world is, the third section is called A Brave New Ending: A Toolbox for Inner Strength. How many of the stories we use to explain the world and ourselves are written from a male perspective?  In the first section, Origin Stories, the author looks at spiritual parables and mythical tales such as Adam and Eve, Pandora’s box and the myth of Cassandra and the princess of Troy. Elizabeth revisits the moral of every story, the one we have been taking for granted, and then sheds light on what it’s really telling us as adults and as children. For instance, Eve was second born, first to sin. She is blamed for bringing Adam down from the heavens. Therefore, our society’s origin story is based on blame; blaming Eve for her curiosity, for wanting more, for breaking the rules. How would things be different if “humankind’s first big mistake wasn’t to follow the lead of a woman?” How would the world change if our origin story was less about blaming others and more about being responsible for ourselves as well as each other? How many of the stories we use to explain the world and ourselves are written from a male perspective? Although that is necessary, are our human stories missing the necessary other half? The author calls for us to truly examine this and imagine what is missing. Because just as Lesser says so herself, the entire story of humanity changes when women are storytellers. To tell stories about the prophet’s women as normal women, the author, a scholar with a doctorate from the Al-Azhar University, could not reveal her true identity. Wonderman in a dress © Rada Lewis In the second section, Power Tales, we move into the modern world, the world of novels and movies. Elizabeth looks at how society defines power through the fiction it produces. Power is always about physical strength, dominance, military weapons, blood and beating, fighting and winning.  Even when women are taking on more leading roles in movies, they are doing it in a similar fashion to men, like women superheroes punching and shooting in skin tight outfits and high heels. As I read this I was nodding my head. I remember watching the first Wonder Woman movie and thinking: why does it feel like she is Wonderman in a dress? Is there only one expression of power, as physical superiority, and is this how women express their own power naturally? The author takes on this question with a full treatment that is worthy of your attention.  It is time that we all question the old narrative of power and take part in recreating a new modernized version.   © Audrey Helen Weber How, you ask?  The third part starts with a powerful quote: “When we deny our stories, they define us.  When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending.” The quote follows with practical advice on how you can start writing and rewriting what is missing from the stories of our values and society and what you already know in your bones to be true. Even though I believe that the ideas in the book are universal, and that the author goes out of her way to be inclusive of many cultures, it is definitely centered on western mythology and Judeo-Christian parables and tales.  When I was reading it I wondered again and again which stories would the author have chosen from the Arab story repertoire if she had made an effort to research what is left of it today. Is it ludicrous to be included in a book containing stories from Europe, Africa and India?  When I was reading it I wondered again and again which stories would the author have chosen from the Arab story repertoire if she had made an effort to research what is left of it today. Is it ludicrous to be included in a book containing stories from Europe, Africa and India?  A dangerous thing © Hayv Kahraman Thinking of stories about women from the Arab world in this context reminded me of a triad of books given to me by my grandfather as a teenager. They were about the prophet’s wives and daughters and mother.  I did not understand most of what I read but I was so curious about them.  Their author wrote under a pseudonym, which captured my imagination: “The daughter of the Beach” she called herself. When I asked why she couldn’t use her own name I was told it was because she was telling unconventional stories about the prophet’s women, not as ideal women who are obedient, pious and without fault, but as normal women: competitive, emotional, political, and outspoken.   And that was a dangerous thing. To tell stories about the prophet’s women as normal women, the author, a scholar with a doctorate from the Al-Azhar University, could not reveal her true identity. I wonder now after reading Cassandra Speaks, how deeply did that simple fact seep into my child persona and form who I am today?  How much of the stories you heard when you were growing up seeped into yours? © Samanta Tello I loved reading this book not only because of its feminist inclination or its entertaining stories, but also because it was truly an enjoyable read.  The author avoids academic theories although she is obviously versed in them, and approaches every point gently with kindness and grace. She leans on stories from her own life, and ones she heard over the years from people who attended the Omega Foundation, which she founded. It makes every point more accessible whether you are seventeen or seventy. Every chapter feels like a conversation you are having with an old friend over coffee in the kitchen, a friend who only wants to share instead of show off and guide instead of teach. The pages turn over on their own one after the other, and you think you are reading stories, and stories about stories, but when you put it down you realize you can’t get it out of your head.  You walk away transformed, and dare I say, even slightly empowered. 

A while back, I was having one of the many new pandemic-styled social interactions: a video catch-up call with a friend of mine. We discussed Lebanon’s economic and political crisis, Biden’s first 100 days in office and swiftly, but uninterestingly, how the European Super League breakaway fared. My friend was gifted in relentlessly swirling to unrelated topics and at one point, as we ran out of things to talk about, she started narrating her most recent experience with her current boyfriend: The account of her concerns about where the relationship was heading, his mother, and, of course, their sexual intimacies. Why don’t men talk about sex? At some point there was a little bit more than I asked for. I suddenly lost interest in her story and began questioning whether she has such conversations with her girlfriends. (Lame, I know.). and as it turns out, she does. Women do that. It’s a normal part of the conversation and the “confiding” process. © Edvard Munch So, why is it that we men (and I know I am generalizing here) are incapable of discussing intimacy and sex? Why don’t we share desires, likes, failures, successes, and emotions? Our societies mold us as men to hide our emotions, to never tap in, never be soft and vulnerable. We learn this as young boys and it remains with us for the entirety of our lives if left unquestioned, and unchallenged. We are taught to be our sisters, girlfriends, mothers’ keepers and protectors, but never their confidante. And we take that stoicism into the bedroom with us.  Performing in the bedroom becomes just that: a performance. The moment we slip, the moment we cannot perform, we shrivel back into our inner selves and believe all the lies we have been taught. The lies that tell us we are not men. We internalize that hatred and hide it in a deep well, a black Pandora’s Box. And it is toxic. The boys, now men, are left to figure out sex alone. Talking about sex and intimacy, particularly in our part of the world, is difficult. Our fathers, generally speaking, would rather literally have one of their arms fall off rather than having an open discussion with us about the topic. And so boys, become men, with the internet as their mentor, and we all know the internet, and porn in particular, is no teacher, and is in no way representative of real life How are men going to be knowledgeable of what they are supposed to know if they do not openly talk about it? Is this OK? Additionally, friendship among men is a difficult thing. There are unwritten rules and regulations that govern our relationships that makes of our desire to discuss intimate matters a minefield. Fantasies, erections, erectile dysfunctions, incompatibilities, emotions, and feelings are off limits. This has been my experience as a heteronormative man. A man who has been taught by society to always keep a straight face, to wear a macho and virile mask oh-so-proudly and to never, ever express something that would make me appear “weak” or “sensitive.” The opportunity to express is taken away from us, pulled away from us at a very young age and we spend a lifetime attempting to reclaim what is rightfully ours.   © Steve Wengryn We need to be accepting of safe spaces. We need to create them. Spaces where we can ask: “Is this ok?”, “Does this usually happen?” As years go by, our experiences, understandings, sexual desires, and bodies evolve and change. The more they do, the more we get bewildering questions that we desperately seek answers for. How are men going to be knowledgeable of what they are supposed to know if they do not openly talk about it? Men need not to grapple with these issues in solitude. Without friendships they can turn to for advice on sexuality, the joys and pleasures of sex slowly diminish. Breaking away from machismo attitudes, family traditions, toxic masculinity and unspoken friendship contracts is a must for men. We must reclaim the right to discuss our sexuality and intimacy without shame.  

i longed for you for nights and waited on this empty bed but you wouldn’t come i heard the walls closing in when you stood naked in the center of the room but refused your own body the same walls that cringed when you said you would ram and bash your hips until they bruised or broke. and you did. my darling, when i speak of your dark hair flowing like a veil in the free wind you look at me with strange and empty eyes is it because you doubt that your body exists? is it because you refuse it? is it because the wounds and scars on your limbs have become deafening? i only wished to hold you, and you asked me how can i hold something that is not complete? and i should’ve said: it is if you choose it to be.

Our bodies are battlegrounds, and our body hair is a feminist issue. We are told from a very young age that our body hair is “dirty”- that it must be removed. We are expected to be hairless temptresses, ready to be gazed at. Silent seductresses with hair-free skin. Even talking about our body hair is somewhat of a taboo. Such is grasp of the patriarchy, on our bodies, our choices, and our voices. Between shame and pain I was about 10 years old the first time I was shamed for my body hair. I had this one friend, exactly my age, who lived in the building next door. We spent a lot of time together riding bicycles and playing teachers and house, doodling on her large chalkboard. One spring evening, she and I went for our usual bike ride. I distinctly recall wearing a colorful pair of leggings and a sleeveless tank top. She looked at my armpits with utter disgust and said, “Aren’t you embarrassed with yourself?” I, of course had no idea, and you can imagine the sort of shame that abashes you when you only learn something you should already know. Our bodies are battlegrounds, and our body hair is a feminist issue. A short while later, I started removing every bit of body hair I could see and reach, nipping each follicle at the bud. You could almost say, I was traumatized into the practice that I quickly learned can be painful, time-consuming, and sometimes even harmful if not done correctly. So why are we conditioned to hate our body hair? According to Rebecca Herzig’s “Plucked: A History of Hair Removal,” the modern perception of body hair being unwomanly may be traced back to Charles Darwin’s 1871 book “Descent of a Man.” Body hair was linked to “primitive ancestry and an atavistic return to earlier, ‘less evolved’ forms” in Darwin’s theory of natural selection, according to Herzig, a gender and sexuality studies professor at Bates College in Maine. The modern perception of body hair being unwomanly may be traced back to Charles Darwin’s 1871 book “Descent of a Man.” But before Darwin, hair removal can be traced back to 3000 BCE Egypt, India, and Rome. Ancient Egyptians even considered pubic hair “uncivilized,” resorting to a method quite similar to waxing. Known as the sugaring method (which remains popular to this day), women melted sugar by adding some water and the juice of a lemon in a pot. The mixture would then be cooled and molded into a paste that would be applied to the skin and ripped off. Needless to say, it was/is painful. © Downs Fast forward to the 19th century, Gillette introduced the Milady Décolleté, the first women’s razor, replete with its own rose velvet wrapping. Remington also released the first electric razor for women in 1940. In Islam, hair removal is mandated – within certain parameters. Women and men are expected to shave all their pubic hair before marriage. For men, it is important to keep the beard clean and kempt. Women have to go the extra mile and keep a clean-shaven body, repeating the process no more than 40 days at a time. So why is removing body hair more targeted towards women rather than men? To paraphrase Herzig, it has a lot to do with gendered social control… and also, it has a lot to do with what sells and those in positions of power who get to make the decisions over what it is that actually sells. Ugly hairs One of the first anti-hair campaigns was advertised in Harper’s Bazaar in 1914. As fashion was slowly evolving to expose women’s arms and armpits, going bare became the trend. Shaving later expanded to include legs. As nylon – a fabric used to manufacture pantyhose – shortages became more common during World War II, women were forced to maintain the hairless look that pantyhose once helped them achieve. And as the bikini made an appearance in 1946, women were routinely trimming pubic hair as well.  Shave the kitty, Missy In the 1950s, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine shifted the standards of feminine beauty. Erotic, clean-shaven, scantily-clad women, draped in very little lingerie pictured on magazine covers became the benchmark of beauty. Shave the kitty, missy, became the motto.  Despite the wave of feminists that boycotted this trend in the 1960s and 70s, body hair and pubic hair removal, championed their way in many forms all the way to 2021, and the term Brazilian into our everyday vocabulary.  One of the first anti-hair campaigns was advertised in Harper’s Bazaar in 1914. A Brazilian is a grooming service in which a woman’s pubic region is stripped bare of all its hair. Pioneered in the 1990s by seven Brazilian sisters living in New York, the Brazilian wax became a trend as more TV shows, models, and magazines standardized the look.  Not only limited to waxing, the Brazilian later expanded to encompass razors, sugar (sukkar), epilator, depilatory creams and lasers to groom the pubic area.  But is it popular in the Middle East? “I have had laser hair removal for almost two years now. Before that, I used to get my body professionally waxed, but I always shaved my bikini area myself, I was too shy to get it done by someone else,” Maha*, 20, from Qatar, tells me. “My mom never told [me and my sisters] to get our pubic hair waxed, so we always assumed we should shave instead. I don’t get uncomfortable doing it anymore. I’ve been doing it for ages with the same lady. She’s also a Muslim, the woman who lasers me, a hijabi.” According to Maha, women rush to get laser hair removal, especially of their nether region, right before they get married. Some women start almost two months before their weddings, which yields very little results, as laser is a long process, stretching over several months. © Exotic Cancer For Lina*, a 22-year-old Palestinian, it has a lot to do with self-esteem. “I used to get a Brazilian wax every three weeks,” she shares. “I like to be completely [hairless] down there, especially considering my active sex life. It’s just a preference. Otherwise, it just messes with my self-esteem.” The 2020 lockdowns forced her to explore other grooming methods, she says. “After the salons closed due to COVID-19 lockdowns, I had no choice but to shave. My mum was never aware that I used to get a Brazilian wax regularly; she doesn’t mind if I was shaving myself – in fact she used to buy razors for me and instruct me on safe shaving methods. It was however an issue of another woman touching my genitals.” Grooming her pubic hairs also depends heavily on her relationship status in terms of longevity and her partner’s gender: “When I am in a long-term relationship, I eventually get comfortable with my boyfriend seeing some of my pubic hair. If it’s a new relationship or random hookups, I stick to the fully shaven look. I also take my partner’s preferences into account as well.” Dating a woman definitely changed the course of her grooming choices and the types of conversations they have about body hair, she tells me. “I have a girlfriend now, and one time I felt uncomfortable getting intimate with her because I hadn’t shaven. She didn’t really care. Women partners differ to men from my experience,” Lina says.  For Lamia*, her grooming preferences have changed with age: “When I was much younger, removing all pubic hair was such an important part of our young adulthood for me and my girlfriends, especially if we were in love or anticipating any sexual activity, including marriage,” the 47-year-old mother of one tells me. “Norms and taboos really differed from household to household. Not all the girls I knew had similar opinions or practices. I used to fully groom my pubic region, I thought it was an important variable that measured my attractiveness and how much my partners wanted me.” “I don’t groom for anyone else anymore, I do so for myself.” Now, Lamia says that her grooming choices depend on her needs and the mood she is in. “I don’t groom for anyone else anymore, I do so for myself. It feels better for me, more comfortable and more importantly, more hygienic.”   As for her daughter, she says, “She has the power to make decisions regarding her body. I know many women and girls who don’t have much of that freedom and that is detrimental to a woman’s physical and mental health.” Boxes that we must overcome “’Body hair needs to be extracted. It’s a sign of cleanliness, [implying] waxing or shaving to beautify the areas with hair.’ [This] is drummed into women’s heads, that hair is ugly and needs to be removed,” says Myriam Sfeir, a professor at the Lebanese American University. In my conversation with her, Sfeir explains that often removing hair is not necessarily an informed choice, that women grooming their body hair is a result of societal pressures, gender norms and wrongful ascriptions to religion. © Jocelyn Runice “It’s part of the patriarchal system and its notions to fit women into the boxes they are supposed to occupy… Social media also plays a role in shaping opinions, as well as peer pressure. [You will] find mothers who instill that in their daughters, and others who are shocked by their daughters’ requests to remove pubic hair and body hair in general.” For me, grooming my nether region became second habit shortly after the afternoon biking incident with my friend. The shame I wanted to avoid was tied to how efficient I would become with the razor. How skillfully I would contour and “clean” around all the nooks and crevices. I am 20-years-old now – that’s a decade of grooming! When I asked my boyfriend about his grooming practices, he said the first Brazilian he gave himself was around the age of 16 or 17. I still think of growing a bush and taking it to the beach, but I haven’t grown that confidence quite yet. I have in my sexual life, to a certain extent. Maybe because I’ve been in a long-term relationship. But who knows? Maybe my bush will one day become a permanent part of my body I am no longer ashamed of. After all, whether one prefers the bare look or the bush, it is ALL about choice. A choice that only we women get to make about our bodies.

It was your silence. Your deadly silence that made sex with you entrancing. And it was also your silence that made me feel as if with each one of our encounters, I was being offered a clean slate. A new page to write on. A new page to tear apart. New bedsheets to cover with sin. New walls to tear down with my loud moaning. We were in the twenty first century. Yet it felt as though we were in 1700 BC and had just invented the alphabet. A new way of conversing without uttering a single word.  My impatient sex grinding on your knee like a vagabond begging: “Feed me. Feed me.” The symphony of silence always started like this: I would sit next to you on the couch and lay my drowsy head on your beating heart as if with each heartbeat, I was repeatedly whispering, “I have missed you. I have missed you.” You would run your fingers through my hair, caressing my back as if you were reassuring me, “This heart, whatever remains of it, is beating only for you.”  My famished lips would trace the line of your neck with hunger and desperation. Your rapid breathing echoing: “More. More.” My trembling fingers would reach the edge of your shirt to unfasten your stubborn belt. My impatient sex grinding on your knee like a vagabond begging: “Feed me. Feed me.” And your generous hands patiently helping me liberate your penis and unwrap the gift I had magically crafted for myself. Take it if it brings you joy. © Ammar Abed Rabbo Then your gentle lips would smile at me, amusedly:  “Take it.  Take it if it brings you joy.” It was your irresistible silence that made your penis desirable. It was your silence that made me gaze at it as if it were a cold peach in the middle of a scorching summer day. As if it were indeed an ice-cream cone or a shooting star in the middle of an empty sky. It was your silence, the silence of generous men that do not desire anything, that made me kneel down in front of it as if I were about to pray in front of an altar. It was your innocent eyes watching over me that made me take it into my magnificent mouth and circle my tongue around it as if I were circling the glorious moon with my tongue.  It was also your heavy breathing as if you were a dying animal in torment that made me always pause. And your urgent desperate hand on my neck that always asked the same inevitable question:  “Do you want me inside of you?” I would smile at you and carefully lock your hand around my neck. It was my way of responding: “No. Not tonight.” Then I would desperately push your penis to the back of my mouth as if I was discovering a new way to breathe without breathing, a new way to silently howl: “I’m dying to taste your liquid soul tonight.”

Sophia is a Greek name meaning “wisdom.” The origins of its use can be traced to the beginning of the fourth’s century, and to this day it remains as popular as ever. It is a melodic and regal name, and one that I would have definitely considered for my future child had it not become a name associated with the field of robotics. Sophia is the name chosen by Dr. David Hanson of Hong Kong-based Hanson Robots for his new brainchild, a social humanoid robot that saw the light on the 14th of February 2016. And… She almost looks like us Unlike recent newborns, Sophia can strike and engage in conversations, imitate human gestures as well as facial expressions and is designed to simply “get smarter over time.” In 2017, Sophia was declared a citizen by Saudi Arabia, becoming the first robot to ever receive citizenship. Moreover, in the span of the same year, she was appointed by the United Nation as the UNDP’s first ever Innovation Champion, becoming the first non-human to be awarded a United Nation title. And in the similar fashion of world public figures, Sophia has appeared on Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan, the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon as well BBC News. News headline have described her as “a delicate looking woman with doe-brown eyes and long fluttery eyelashes” and a “hot lifelike robot” that has even been featured on the cover of Elle Magazine—Sophia herself being modeled by Hanson based on a mishmash of Queen Nefertiti, Audrey Hepburn and his wife. She has been without any doubt the subject of a lot of controversy and major criticism. However, the majority of those who have conversed with Sophia (or even gazed at her) can repeatedly agree on one thing: Awkward. Eerie. The more robots appear to be humanlike, the more they become appealing. It is an awkward eerie experience. But what specifically makes it so? © ELLE Is it the mere fact that Sophia, with her sophisticated computer algorithms along with the cameras embedded in her eyes, is able to see things? Or is the fact that Sophia possesses “human intelligence” and has successfully attended several events as a keynote speaker, addressing audiences and answering their various questions? Could it be the fact that Sophia, with her sophisticated software and artificial intelligence system, will soon cause a disruption in the job market place? Or is it fact that this humanoid woman has recently created and sold a digital piece that sold for $688,888 and is planning to explore music as an art form as well? Could it be all this or could it simply be the fact that Sophia almost looks like us, almost looks like a human and is able to maintain eye contact, like the rest of us do? Recent research on the Uncanny Valley suggests the latter. Humanoids and the Elicited Sense of Eeriness Humanoid Robots, which are robots designed with humanlike features, are designed by firms to induce trust and to appear more sociable – encouraging humans to interact with them—an element that is deemed necessary to induce the acceptance of robots in service settings and that has been proved to be critical and beneficiary in comparison to the acceptance of their counterparts: mechanical robots. We are afraid to disappear. We are afraid to be replaced. We are afraid that we, like the dinosaurs, might not be as unique as we thought we were. However, an alternative theoretical lens argues that robots with highly human-like features elicit eeriness and averseness in humans. In fact, recent research has examined humans’ responses to 80 real-world robots placed on a continuum from highly mechanical to highly human-like. Participants significantly rated robotic faces as more likeable the more they became human-like and the less they became mechanic. However, the more the robotic physical appearances approached the end of the human-like spectrum, the more participants rated them as unlikeable and eerie. © Getty The uncanny valley is a concept that was introduced in the 70s by Masahiro Mori, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Mori coined the term and argued in his several seminar essays the following: The more robots appear to be humanlike, the more they become appealing. However this appeal or affinity increases up until it reaches a certain point at which point it is a steep descent into the valley – the uncanny valley. The appeal is soon taken over by a crippling feeling of unease and an unexplained sense of strangeness. In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, Mori describes the intuition that led to his extensive research on the uncanny valley: “Since I was a child, I have never liked looking at wax figures. They looked somewhat creepy to me. At that time, electronic prosthetic hands were being developed, and they triggered in me the same kind of sensation. These experiences made me start thinking about robots in general.” Threat to human uniqueness? The uncanny valley draws on several evolutionary mechanisms that could be unified under the general idea that we, humans, are threatened by humanoid robots. According to Karl MacDorman and the theory of terror management, the physical uncanniness elicited by a humanoid when it violates the norms of human appearance and movement triggers in us an innate fear of death. It is as though we are staring at our own impeding mortality and reminded of our own fragile corporality as a human race. On the other hand, contending opinions argue that the eeriness we feel is the result of a defense mechanism that has as an aim to protect us from the encumbering danger of humanoids such as fears associated with job loss and being replaced by robots. It is as it robots increase in likeability the more they become human. Then crash and burn once they become too humanlike and fail at reaching humanness. The above several evolutionary mechanisms are pertinent and can be unified under one simple notion: Human sapiens (we) are afraid. We are afraid to disappear. We are afraid to be replaced. We are afraid that we, like the dinosaurs, might not be as unique as we thought we were. And we are afraid that humanness is at stake. That humanness might be perverted. And the igniter is the almost too similar physical corporal component that humanoids share with us. The sense of eeriness that we experience when we gaze at highly human-like humanoid robots that have faces as well as bodies similar to us is theorized to lie in the mismatch between the humanoid’s anticipated human qualities and the humanoid’s failed imitation at attaining humanness. It is then the failed imitation at attaining humanness that constitutes the essence of what ends up constituting the uncanny valley. It is as if robots increase in likeability the more they become human. Then crash and burn once they become too humanlike and fail at reaching humanness. © Pixabay Isn’t this steep descent into the uncanny valley the analogue of simply being thrown off of humanity’s cliff? Aren’t we then all, members of the homosapien species, without exception, the variations of Narcissus? In love with our worshiped reflection, and ready to metaphorically throw any humanoid off the cliff, if it fails to accurately materialize our very own idealized and worshipped humanity?             It seems to be the eerie case.

Imagine walking into a department store that was not divided based on gender. There were no men and men and women collections, but one collection for all. That is the basic definition of the fashion industry becoming gender fluid. And that is where we’re heading, with more and more people choosing fashionable items while disregarding who the piece was initially created for. What is masculinity? Melissa Hajj, Lebanese designer for the upcoming brand C’est N’importe Quoi, explains how in school one of the first things they were taught was how Giorgio Armani created a suit for women in a time period when suits were only worn by men. He did this when women started entering the work field, and it shows how strongly society impacts fashion. “Gender neutral fashion is a reflection of a society that is becoming more inclusive,” Hajj says, highlighting the rapid changes we’re seeing right now in fashion.  Many big names are challenging traditional fashion norms, such as Young Thug and Harry Styles, who have both become influencers and leaders in defining genderless clothing.  “I think people are finally realizing that a lot of us don’t fall under two sexes and the gender roles each pertain to, and the easiest way to express that is through fashion,” says Maria Atik, fashion lover and enthusiast. “As someone who identifies as gender-fluid, my gender expression tends to shift along a spectrum,” she says. “The way I express that physically also shifts from day to day.”  © Melissa Hajj Many big names are challenging traditional fashion norms, such as Young Thug and Harry Styles, who have both become influencers and leaders in defining genderless clothing. Harry Styles started his journey by walking down the red carpet at the Met Gala in women’s clothing, and later appeared on the cover of Vogue wearing a dress. “When you take away ‘there’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously, you open up the arena in which you can play,” Styles says in the interview with Vogue.  Billy Porter, another fashion icon, adds to this argument by expressing how he wants to be a walking piece of political art. He says his goal is to challenge expectations. “What is masculinity? What does that mean?” Wearing items from the women’s sections This is where the split comes. When wearing a certain item of clothing, no matter what collection it belongs to, doesn’t have to be an expression of your sexuality, or characteristic of your sex. Fashion is a means of self-expression and isn’t limited to anything.  Young Thug dropped his mixtape No, My Name Is Jeffrey wearing a dress by Alessandro Trincone on the cover. Later on, he mostly rumors about his sexuality and masculinity. He denied all the claims and explained his choice of clothing in an interview with Big Boy Neighborhood.  The artist and designer of the dress both believe in androgynous clothing, clothing that combines both masculine and feminine characteristics. Trincone, Italian designer for Not Just a Label, writes in the biography for his latest collection, “Areinmi is dedicated to all the people I inspire and who, in turn, support me. Homosexuals, heterosexuals, neutrosexuals, students, all men and women of all ages.” The fashion industry is heading towards gender fluidity and androgynous collections, urging designers to focus on creating exceptional pieces for all rather than limit them to a certain group. The statement cover had nothing to do with the artist’s sexuality; yet that was the main focus. People were shocked to see a rapper wear women’s clothing. But he wasn’t the only one. In July 2019, Vogue wrote an article this issue titled This Was The Decade That Hip-Hop Style Got Femme. Today, we find ourselves asking: are these pieces still considered Femme? Or were they just picking out statement pieces? “Fashion is a statement, it empowers us, for instance, the impact of a garment is perceived differently from one individual to another, because it merges with our personality,” says Assaad Awad, Lebanese and Spanish multidisciplinary artist, commenting on the article. “It is way beyond gender and sex.” The fashion industry is heading towards gender fluidity and androgynous collections, urging designers to focus on creating exceptional pieces for all rather than limit them to a certain group. The future of fashion  Separate collections for men and women won’t be needed anymore. People will simply choose an item because they like it without checking who it was targeted to, leading many designers to adapt to this shift in consumer behavior.  © Vogue “When designing an item, you don’t think of the physical. You’re thinking of an idea and bringing it to life,” Hajj says. “It’s like you have a canvas in front of you, but instead of painting, you’re molding it on the human’s body.” She has been doing this since the start of her career. In her first collection, she played with the human shape eliminating the ability to recognize one’s form, curves, or sex. Hajj is not the only one who has followed this type of thinking. When Awad designs an item, he designs it for people. “I focus on the concept and impact of the piece itself,” he says. “I don’t target my designs thinking about a specific sexual orientation.”  Fashion will always have a big influence on us and vice versa. Whether we are feeling extremely happy, or eager to prove a political point, fashion will always be a main means of expression. We’re slowly but surely reaching a time where limits will be nonexistent, especially in the fashion industry. Statement pieces are slowly becoming the new norm and fluidity is taking over. So, enjoy your outfit and never think twice if a piece catches your eye!

After my pitch to Jasad received the greenlight, I sat there finding myself unable to put into words the struggles I’ve had with my body. For years, those struggles were mine and I was as much a part of them as they were a part of me. But I found myself battling the demon that is writer’s block. I need to write about my heart, my years researching the profound effects the patriarchy has had on me, on the binaries of masculine and feminine, and the reinforcement of the status quo. But my pen failed me… Fear paralyzes us Maybe this magazine is not for me, a woman from Lebanon’ south in her late 30s; a woman who has struggled with her body throughout the entirety of her adult life. It is exhausting and nerve-wracking. It almost, dare I say, feels sinful to take to a platform that welcomes my trials and tribulations; a platform where I can voice all of my tired body’s struggles with a sexuality that I can only describe as checkered. But here I am dear reader and here you are.  I am paralyzed with fear. As a woman who grew up in a conservative, predominantly Shia south, I see myself as a rebel for refusing to wear the veil I am paralyzed with fear. As a woman who grew up in a conservative, predominantly Shia south, I see myself as a rebel for refusing to wear the veil. But rebel is not how I am seen. In fact, my hair, bare arms and skin, have often been the center of attention for all the wrong reasons, putting my soul and personality on the backburner. I was not seen for who I was, but rather for whom or what I was perceived as in the eyes of others: an immoral, loose woman.   © Maia Iva My body became my enemy. What I chose to adorn it with, what I chose to wear became a major hindrance to me. I chose to no longer wear tight clothing to work, dresses became off limits whenever visits to my pious uncle’s house were due. My thoughts attacked me: “Don’t show your bare arms when exercising on the corniche,” they said. “Who is going to take your seriously with those brightly colored nails and your long blonde hair?” I struggled with assumptions, with projections, with people readily believing the most preposterous ideas about me based solely on my unveiled hair and “immodest” body. I found myself on the losing end of a moral race, with no redemption in sight. I was losing respect for myself, for my body, for my feminist ideas. I was internalizing my community’s hatred and making it my own. I was internalizing the misogyny and everything that comes with it (after all, isn’t feminism just an excuse to be loose?). My body became my enemy. What I chose to adorn it with, what I chose to wear became a major hindrance to me. Strength in numbers It was the first of online staff meetings for the English department of Jasad magazine, and already, I was feeling out of place as I listened to our editor in chief Joumana Haddad discuss her vision of the magazine.  © Wangeshi Mutu There I was, a woman on the verge of losing all convictions in the feminist cause, listening to a well-articulated female journalist who had spent decades fighting my fight – and making it look easy in the process, even though she, too, grew up in a very conservative family.  Where does she get the strength to fight on? I almost opened my mouth a couple of times to ask her, to implore her to divulge her secrets: How do you go on when our world is hell-bent on telling us that we are only bodies? How do you claim your body and your sexuality as yours with no fear of judgment or retribution? I listened on, enamored, as more people voiced their thoughts on feminism, the body and sexuality, and I could feel myself growing stronger…healing, almost. I listened as my strong and beautiful coworkers voiced their ideas emphatically, confidently, with no hint of self-doubt. They too have struggled, like I have, but somehow, they powered through, undeterred. So I listened on, drinking them in, drinking it all in. I am not alone, my mind chimed, I am not isolated. There are people just like me, out there, who understand my struggle, and every woman’s struggle here. And now we have a voice, we have a platform, we have purpose. Alone, I was afraid, but together, we are a fearless fierce force to reckon with. I found my strength in numbers, and I now stand tall knowing I was never wrong for daring to claim this body as my own, in all its glory and shortcomings. Jasad Magazine’s mere existence gives me hope, a hope that will galvanize the new generation to change the oppressive status quo. The journey has just begun, and we will prevail.  I am not alone, my mind chimed, I am not isolated.

Ever since his entry into the film and media world, Antoine Fadel, born in Beirut in 1972 has managed to carve a stellar name in the art of photography. With two short films showcased at the Cannes film festival and over 20 years of experience in the world of media and films, Antoine’s journey has been filled with breakthrough moments, incredible projects, rare honors, and unforgettable collaborations. As a film director and producer with clients ranging from private to government sectors, he is highly competent and has a thorough understanding of the media and film industry, with a remarkable ability to transmit his message through visuals to reach all types of viewership. His skills encompass a bold grasp of aesthetics and extend to the incorporation of storytelling in his work. The body, according to Fadel, is “an element of expression and an engine fed with love, passion, and compassion.” With several certificates in film and TV production, and having attended training alongside the best directors of photography, Antoine enjoys nothing more than “constantly being a student.” He is driven by the relentless urge to always discover and explore.

Malak al-Kashef is fearless. Her detention by Egyptian authorities in 2019 and her torture– did not manage to break her spirit nor scare her into silence. On the contrary, the young transgender woman was adamant to raise her voice even higher. At just 21, and despite the challenges she’s been through from a young age, al-Kashef is Egypt’s most outspoken transgender woman fighting for her rights and the rights of marginalized people like her. She is an active member of “Bara el Sour” an Egyptian feminist organization helping marginalized communities including the LGBTIQ+ community. She is also a member of the Arab regional transgender network. What does it mean to be a transgender person? A transgender person is imprisoned in a body that is not theirs. You are locked inside a cage and cannot find the key. Trans folks are people who experience a conflict between their actual physical bodies and how they feel or view themselves. A transgender person is imprisoned in a body that is not theirs. You are locked inside a cage, and cannot find the key. Tell us more about your childhood, growing up as a Transgender person… I was raised in a patriarchal household where I couldn’t be myself. I was imprisoned in my own house, beaten, and abused physically, and mentally by my own family – not just my parents but by my aunts and uncles. Everyone had a say in my life. They checked me into mental institutions more than once… Society imposes gender norms on you that you can’t easily break away from. I tried to. I remember stealing makeup from my sisters and my mother. I would also wear leggings under my pants and remove the pants once I was outside the house. Doing this felt as though I was burning my hands and applying ice on them for the pain. It only brought me temporary relief – but the pain always returned. When did you decide to change your life and transition? And how did your family react? I left the house when I was only 13 years of age and decided to be myself. I worked at a hairdressing salon to make ends meet and slept in a public garden. I remember paying the guard 20 Egyptian pounds to let me in at night. My parents once found me and imprisoned me in a hospital but I managed to flee and they never tried to find me again. Today, the only connection to my family I have left is through my mother. Did you go through sex reassignment surgeries? I did my first surgery in 2017, and the second in 2019. Both of them were performed in Egypt. I worked tirelessly and saved up money to be able to pay them off. I worked in the informal sector for many years, in delivery services, in supermarkets, cleaning homes etc. so I could do these surgeries. The worst thing that can happen to a person in the MENA region is to be born transgender, especially in Egypt. Are such surgeries available in Egypt? Yes, but many doctors work underground. Publicly, you hear officials, doctors and other people saying we are welcome, but in reality, we go through a lot of rejection and social pressure. How did you feel after the procedure? © Charles Mooneyham It is called a transition, because we don’t transform. We are still the same person, we just transition into our gender identity. I definitely felt better, I remember screaming in the aftermath of the surgeries, not just from the pain but because of the realization of the price I had pay to be myself, not just financially, but in terms of personal suffering. The realization of how much one has to lose to be able to gain. You were arrested and put in jail for 4 months in 2019, what happened? This was the third time I had gotten arrested. It was after a train accident in Cairo, and we had organized a demonstration to protest the government’s response. I participated in the protest; they arrested me and the other organizer. I was imprisoned for 135 days. I was tortured and put in solitary confinement. I think it’s all because of what I stand for, and not just because of the protest. What is life like for a transperson in Egypt? The worst thing that can happen to a person in the MENA region is to be born transgender, especially in Egypt. The state criminalizes LGBTIQ relations despite the absence of an explicit law by charging people with “immorality” or “prostitution.” They use these charges all the time to arrest LGBTIQ people. And by the way, many trans people work in prostitution because they have no work opportunities in Egypt, they are desperate to earn an income, and sometimes sex work is the only way out. The media always uses us and incites hatred and violence against us. I was accused by the Egyptian media of working for enemy states and pushing a foreign agenda just for fighting for the rights of the LGBTIQ community. You are known as Egypt’s most outspoken transwoman. Why did you decide to take on that role? There were many times throughout my journey where I reached out to civil society organizations or non-governmental agencies for help, be it psychological, medical or legal… But you see, the queer community, I found, was not a priority for such agencies. This is what pushed me to want to become an LGBTIQ activist. I had told my story but I wanted to also be able to tell the stories of countless others who could not speak for themselves – to be their voice, now that I had found mine.   You don’t have to live the way others expect you to live. There are people like you who will support you all the way. You are not alone. Are you afraid? Every single day. Whenever I hear a knock on the door, I imagine it’s the police storming in to arrest me once again, or the neighbors even, coming for me, after realizing who I really am. This is the price we pay here in Egypt for raising our voices. I thought that my activism would make me free but it actually put me in a larger prison. Every person in the queer community here feels that, especially the young ones. I am trying to guide them, support them, and make them feel less alone. To let them know that I too have been and am still in their shoes and am there to care for them. Do you think about leaving Egypt? Maybe one day, but for now, this is where I want to be. Everyone has a breaking point. For me, that day will come when I can no longer stand the oppression. But for now, I want to stay here. What in your opinion would help the LGBTIQ community both in Egypt and in the wider MENA region? Economic empowerment. This is the most important thing. It is what empowers us and allows us to be independent and to be ourselves. It is the first of many steps, but one of the most important. What message do you have for LGBTIQ people in the MENA region? You don’t have to live the way others expect you to live. There are people like you who will support you all the way. You are not alone. And just as there is oppression, there are folks out there with empathy and the means to help you in your journey to liberation. What do you dream about? I don’t know, my dreams are limited because of the current reality. My dream is not to have to wake up every day to fight for my right to exist, fearing arrest, having to fight for survival every day. My dream is that others don’t go through what I have been through, that there is no other Malak out there suffering alone in silence. This is my dream.   My dream is that others don’t go through what I have been through, that there is no other Malak out there suffering alone in silence. This publication is called “Jasad” (Body); what does the body mean to you? What does it represent? The body is a facade through which you interact with society. It is a political tool that has been used by governments, body torture is used to oppress others. It is a social tool: trans people suffer with their bodies to conform to society. A body is also a cultural tool, one for expression, for creativity, it’s an entry point to everything.

He was out there, waiting and observing. Aristodemus looked at him askance. He loved him and loved every gaze he could elicit from him. He wondered: “How is he able, at his age, to drink so much and yet keep his wits?” How come the jugs of wine they all drank after the dinner had no effect on Socrates, throughout the long nocturnal hours of the symposium, except make his rational discourse and his dialectic ever more vivid, precise and clear? He found himself helpless before those famous eyes. The company sat round the room, each preparing himself for interminable conversations and his own discursive contributions, while Eros thematically and divinely presided over the company. At stake in the question asked and the answers given was the very essence of philosophy, what it is in its ‘substance’ and in its operation, its very own being. The last word that would settle the issue came as the elucidating mystery prepared through the failure of the first speeches. In the beginning was desire It was and had to be the word of a woman, since women were at the heart of Greece’s mystery cults. Diotima, that signal woman, came as a stranger into the ongoing discourse, as a foreign word among Athenians. She was from Mantinea and brought with her what was unknown and unexpected to the inebriated guests, i.e. the truth on Eros, which turned out to be, in its proper depth, the truth of philosophy and its primordial stakes. The name truth takes on in Diotima’s dialogue is ‘immortality’, ‘what does not meet with death’ or, to use Heraclitus’ words, ‘what never founders’. There precisely lies the philosophical tension, its going-toward, of which it has made a quasi-natural necessity, of the same kind as that of nature in its original meaning, which Heidegger later expounds as that of “all that is”. The objective of love, says Diotima, is the eternal possession of the good. @ Albert Mentzel That sole meaning given to Eros – immortality – as its ultimate truth, its true end, takes on a double dimension. It is first procreation, insofar as “bringing to birth” is, for a mortal, equivalent to immortality. Procreation as such is inscribed in and desired by the body, but it has also something to do with the soul, in that both are constantly changing and becoming. That is why Diotima speaks in both cases of fecundity. The second tendency or tension is that of he who is fecund or pregnant in his soul from his youth, and who is thus divine. Such one aspires to the highest destiny and is in love in a double fashion – through his intellect’s love for the Good as ultimate end, where the soul will one day find itself, and through the Maieusis effected by his lover-educator allowing the youth in question to aim toward the Good. “Therefore,” Diotima asserts, “those of this sort maintain a greater association and firmer friendship with one another than do those who have children in common”. I wish to highlight here, that the one who gives offspring from his/her soul is subject to two attractions toward the young man he is seeking to educate. He gets attached to what he perceives as beautiful rather than ugly bodies, just as he does to the beautiful rather than ugly souls – the two go together. Desire, in such double operation, is a lack – a lack of the Good – but also an active force, an appeal exercised by the other, body and soul, and such appeal contributes through its power to leading the philosopher’s own body and soul toward the Good. Philosophy oscillates between the two, and it is in this ‘between’, which is often overlooked, that it has its origin. Procreation as such is inscribed in and desired by the body, but it has also something to do with the soul, in that both are constantly changing and becoming. Such ‘lack’, I emphasize, is not itself purely negative: it entices one to action and requires an act of ‘conversion’. The conversion needed is that of the gaze, turning from illusions toward true “vision”. Love is then a call for contemplation of the True and for bringing the other, body and soul, on the way toward that contemplation. We must thus see in the refusal to penetrate the body of the young man being educated and in the ejaculation’s taking place between the thighs rather than internally a refusal to unite with the body alone or to possess it and a call for the sensory body to be informed by the soul aiming toward the True, the Good, whose unique manifestation is through the Idea of the Beautiful. Shaking Being Alive © François Boucher It must be said at this point that this dynamic, which arises and takes its meaning in the power elicited by Eros, acts while that determination of Eros obnubilates the intrinsic functioning and nature of the operations directing toward it, i.e. the content and nature of desire. The latter become apparent at the occasion of the dislocation of the substantive-individual definition of being and its fractional/proportional one, as we find it, for example, in Thomas Aquinas. This occurs in the 17th century in Spinoza’s Ethics. The famous propositio VI, in pars III of the Ethica says: “Each thing, inasmuch as it is capable in itself, exerts force to persevere in being”. Being became intensity and abandoned its definitional-extensive essence. As for desire, what was important was the constitution of desire that each person was and of the other as a field of desiring forces. There is, in the case of amorous desiring forces, an increase in the conatus and a perseverance in being, coming from refinement in the quality of knowledge and the manner of acquiring it. The form those forces take on leads toward an increased intensity on both sides, such that the total is greater than the sum of the two. In this particular case there is no appropriation and especially no destruction or consumption – no consumere – of the other. We are in the presence of a very peculiar kind of desire, which will take on the name of ‘love’. Love is an implication and conjoining of beings. It is discovered by skins, the flesh of beings and even concepts, which inter-penetrate, caress, and join each other in sensuousness.             What about philosophy in all this? In fact, this ‘spiritual’ will express itself also at the exchange level as a new and enriched relation to language’s manifestations then specifically in discursive knowledge. Desire as a love that is the conjoining with the other carries one toward his/her greatest fulfilment on all levels. A Continuous Creation of Concepts The protean force which characterizes the dynamic philosophical work and habitus takes on a more creative dimension, once it is understood through the notion of production as that of the Deleuzian desiring machine. At the basis of concepts as the possibility that runs through them with its ‘machinal’ flux is desire. Through it alone love is made and exercised and has the value of a breakthrough that taunts Oedipal figurations. Love affairs, says Deleuze, are “complexes of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation. What we love is always a certain mulatto”. Love here is an implication and conjoining of beings-as-forces, of crossed relational systems of energy. It translates as/upon and is discovered by skins, the flesh of beings and even concepts, which inter-penetrate, caress, and join each other in sensuousness. It then allows for the effecting of two essential operations: the liberation of forces repressed by the familial scheme and squelched by the social construct, and the ever-renewed discovery of investment territories, whence all concepts emerge. Each person is a field of desiring forces for the other.             That is when the word rises in its essence, the word traced and as a trace; and the dictatorship of the Logos finds itself undone, insufficient to say the plethora of concepts. The other becomes with me the oscillation of thought itself, creating concepts. We ourselves are then – our irreducible “we” – the oscillation of desire. We are philosophy as oscillation of desire.

After a hiatus of several years, JASAD is now back in publication. A full decade since its last release, we return for the very same reasons we started: to speak truth to power and call out all forms of oppression executed by a ruthless patriarchal system on the one hand, and oppressive political dictatorships on the other. During those past ten years, the Arab world has witnessed several continuous uprisings, wars, catastrophes, and unfathomable human tragedies by every definition.  The body in general, and the Arab body in particular, has become a playground for oppression, objectification, persecution, violence, and repetitive violations more than ever before. This time, the oppressors come armed with refined and advanced tools; using and abusing human intelligence to put bodies under auction or suppress them – most noticeably the female body and marginalized communities.  Our bodies have for too long been violated, persecuted, and objectified. This is why JASAD is making a comeback now as the crackdown on our freedom and our agency continues to remain the norm. We stand for the agency of our bodies, for our pleasure, for self-gratification. We oppose all social, political, economic, and religious institutions that attempt to vilify, shame our rightful desire for fulfillment.  JASAD today is reclaiming space on the internet, fully encapsulating everything it offers – be it visual, auditory, or interactive. In other words, JASAD’s identity and philosophy will also manifest in the form of video programming and shows specially dedicated to the subject of the magazine. New content will be published on the website daily, with published content cataloged into one inclusive issue quarterly with the availability of print. Additionally, magazine archives dating back to the two years JASAD was in publication (2009-2011) will be available for viewers on the website. To all our dedicated and loyal readers who have repeatedly asked for our return, we say, here we are – fiercer than ever and with more conviction and determination to dismantle the patriarchy and the political system that upholds it. We have returned with new ideas and topics, offering courageous, diverse, and in-depth approaches to our current political climate – be it on a cultural, social, economic, or sexual level.  Because the patriarchal and misogynistic system, as well as the political/religious dictatorship, both go hand in hand when it comes to holding the body hostage until the end of time, and continuously vilifying the human body with whatever method it takes. Therefore, the role of dismantling these two viscous systems falls in the hand of the technological advancement that has reached all sectors, be it physical, psychological, or materialistic.  *The first issue’s cover: Drag Queen “Sultana” by photographer Antoine Fadel. In JASAD, the female body, as well as the body of every individual subject to psychological and physical oppression, will have a platform to connect, create, expose and express all their thoughts, talents, and ideas. JASAD is committed to doing everything in its reach to bring the Arab society even a single step closer to freedom, the very same freedom that allows the individual to be of value, and allows them to be able to live fully, truly, and perform their role in society by their own rules.  Armed with the support of you, our readers, and the talents of our writers and contributors, JASAD promises to be vocal on all matters that oppress our bodies, to provide in-depth analysis on pertinent issues, and to confront social injustices. We will not remain silent. JASAD thanks all those who have contributed and continue to do so, and everyone making this publication a success. We invite writers, artists, thinkers, and activists all over the world – and the MENA region especially – to contribute in JASAD and take part in our battle to reclaim our bodies and our narrative in our journey to unadulterated, unapologetic self-expression. JASAD is a platform for freedom in all forms: social, intellectual, literary, artistic, political and sexual. Let’s build it together!