One of the multitudinous reasons why I love research is the unexpectedly joyous subjects that appear from nowhere, light up your studies, and then fade into a corner of your files, beaming with satisfaction.
Research can be like a labyrinth: days, weeks even, can be passed in blind frustration as each path leads to another wall, while the minotaur of deadlines is forever stalking your heels.
Then, when you least expect it, a veritable blossoming of writings emerges that makes all the frustration worthwhile and provides a door into a previously uncomtemplated arena of new ideas and opinions.
A few weeks ago this occurred with Zainab Fawwaz; now, she is joined by the Syrian writer Ghada al-Samman.
After composing an analysis of her first essay, Our Constitution – We the Liberated Women, compiled in 1961 for publication in Jaridat al-Nasr al-Suriya, I am itching to peruse her other works, including Bayrut 75 and Kawabis Bayrut [Beirut Nightmares], published in 1975 and 1980 respectively.
For now, however, I provide but a snippet of the essay – the full version of which can be found in the marvellous Opening the Gates: An Anthology of Arab Feminist Writing, by Margot Badran and miriam cooke.
The liberated woman is a person who believes that she is as human as a man. At the time she acknowledges that she is female and he is male and that the difference between them is how, not how much. Since they are equally human they must have equal human rights.
The liberated woman is not, as some think, that modern doll who wears make-up and tasteless clothes. That woman has only liberated herself from her clothes, her humanity and self-respect.
The liberated woman today is a reality and part of the intellectual awakening of Arab society. She wants to free herself from some of the inherited social laws and traditional attitudes which contain no human meaning and which disfigure her humanity.
It is a revolution of honour by the thinking woman against the doll woman and a fervent cry to affirm existence and dignity and to become free from delusions, uncertainty, guilt and to reach the sun of truth, thought and reality.
The liberated woman believes that as a human being she has the right to be responsible for herself and her society. She insists on the right to responsibility because responsibility is what distinguishes humans from animals.
Responsibility is one of the outcomes of freedom. That is why the liberated woman insists on having complete freedom and to assume complete responsibility after receiving sufficient education, culture, age and stability.
With each text I am reanimated and fascinated by the strength, passion, and eloquence of the writers, whether they are writing during the 19th century, or the 1960s.
Time has not diminished their words; rather, like a good malt, their expostulations become more potent and inspirational with each decade that passes.
Filed under: Culture, Lebanon, Middle East, note-to-self , academia, feminism, Lebanon, Middle East, Syria
” That woman has only liberated herself from her clothes, her humanity and self-respect.”. That is quite a powerful statement, and in my opinion that need to shed clothing and use ones sexuality to garner favours and progress, is a form of aggressiveness, which I am not sure entirely works.
I have only recently started reading feminist text (starting with Germaine Greer), and contrary to what I thought, that self proclaimed feminists desired total equality, that women somehow were just like men, Greer at least celebrated the difference of women, and that somehow we were selling ourselves short by merely seeking to be like men. Her book was scarily insightful!