they have cyclic period while we don't,
they get pregnant while we can't,
we are allowed to do mistakes while they are not
written by an Egyptian author
in return to his very true words I say
We are taught only three parallel facts about men since we are born
we need their protection,
we can seduce them to get whatever we want,
we should manipulate to get away with our mistakes
***
About 90% of females in my country are taught that their lives should belong to a man, her father when young, and her husband afterwards, and either they discover very late that it's not true, or they just continue their lives thinking so.
When we are young we all take our believes from the most trusted sources we know, Family and religious figures
later on, bit by bit we discover that (family traditions, religion believes, political views) are all blended together for a hidden big ugly reason which require us to be driven like a herd
I used to believe that I wouldn't be able to protect my self without a man, wouldn't be able also to make a good living or support myself financially, not even able to open closed staff for myself because I am weaker (this is all true) ......... and life goes on, I am not young now, I work too much, I go to the gym for more physical power, I constantly read, regularly write, and casually paint or play violin
But sometimes I still find myself stopping in the middle of whatever I’m doing, trembling
remembering with shame and humiliation the moments my dad hit my face because I did something, that was in his opinion, shameful to the family and to his name that I didn't choose to carry
Once, when I was thirteen, I was shoved against the wall by my dad's very strong hand while he shouted and hit me with his other hand because (I was writing a poem) he suddenly grabbed the paper from my hand, he thought that it was a letter from a playful boy to me, and then he hit me
wait..........
this is not a physical abuse, it was just a regular Arab father raising "his" daughter
forget about the fact that he doesn't know my hand writing, and he didn't know that I am a good writer, or know that I was so shy to talk to any of my male colleges in the school ... he just assumed that I am shaming his name and he hit me
While this was meant in good, the experience became deeply abusive at my end, a little too shocked to say anything, I felt teary, I crawled under the sheets and totally wrapped myself inside, trying to shake off the feelings of shame and guilt, yes, that's how I felt then, because I believed at the time that I belonged to him, and that I shouldn't make him angry.
That memory and that feeling and other similar ones had never faded from my mind
I cried many nights.
After repeated similar incidents, I ran away from home once when I was 20 years old, aiming to live in a place where no one knows that I am "his" daughter, so no one is shaming him because of me, but I was too young to support myself financially or in anyway, so -too afraid to make my way alone through life- I went back very vulnerable, feeling totally powerless in this so wild, male dominated society
Something inside my nature had changed once and forever, each time anyone raise his voice or raise his arm around me, I get back to the size of this helpless thirteen years old girl, which doesn't exceed that of a hazelnut
Add to this, I am really very little in size, about 4.2 ft long, weight 123 lbs, and physically weak, and it happened here that every six-something feet man is always angry and had loud voice, pushing every thing that comes in his way with a totally unexpected, completely unreasonable, explosive force, to prove being more of a man among his peers or in front of women and unintentionally make me hid like a useless ugly sack of potatoes.
At that very moment I don't feel angry, or saddened, or even embarrassed, these emotions are all attached onto the experience later, when I go through it over and over again in my mind, but at that very moment I just feel scared
Sometimes I still find myself stopping again in the middle of whatever I’m doing, remembering with humiliation when my mom hit my face for drawing instead of doing my homework, remembering with sadness and confusion the moments I felt jealous of my brother because he gets away with whatever he does, and never been hit by anyone
Giving credit – if you can call it that - where it’s due, my parents did really wonderful things away from screwing my mental health
I don’t think they intended to make me feel those feelings – but they did.
Now that I am old enough to be independent and make my own choices in the way I like my life to be, I have a boyfriend, and other male friends, even though there is always rough and tumble in the relationship with my boyfriend , jokey fights between me and my brother, rude and crude verbal sparring between me and my male friends ... but in all of these scenarios there’s the unspoken, understanding of (the line). It doesn’t have to really hurt or really humiliate when you cross the line for it to be a really frightening or physically painful, relationship-changing experience for me.
And deep down I know I can’t have any kind of friendship with any man who doesn’t consider that, as a bigger, stronger person –as a man- he has the power to scare me and that being violent towards me, in a big or small way, serious or jokey manner ... is not ever okay
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