The Happy Feminist

MIDDLE EASTERN BLOGS AND OTHER GLOBAL LINKS

I went through a phase about a year ago when I was obsessed with finding middle eastern blogs and sites.  The following have wound up on my list of regular reads:

The Religious Policeman  (the anonymous diary of a Saudi man who lived in Saudi until just recently, but now lives in the U.K.  He is very critical of Saudi Arabia's gender apartheid).

Mahmood's Den (a blog by a well-to-do professional and progressive family man in Bahrain)

Arab News (a daily news site out of Saudi Arabia, widely read in the middle east).

I am ashamed to say that I don't have any women's blogs on my list.  I promise to go about remedying that soon!

In addition, Feministing has a list of sites (with the heading "international") of organizations dedicating to improving women's lives in other countries.  I have to rush off to work but I will be adding these links to the side column shortly. 

MIND THE GAP

While noodling around looking at the stats on visitors to this site, I was very pleased to discover I'd been linked by a feminist blog run by a group of women in Cardiff, Wales.  It's called Mind the Gap!  I am happy to have discovered them for a couple of reasons:

1) The blog has all sorts of interesting posts, plus a lengthy list of both UK and US blogs. 

2) Maybe this shout-out to them will absolve me of my mortifying behavior during the afternoon I spent in Cardiff nearly twelve years ago (to which I alluded in my post entitled Hooray for the U.K.).  (Hint: It involves faggots and peas.)

VIGNETTES OF ADOLESCENCE IN A MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRY

After my grade school years in a whitebread American community, my family moved overseas.   I spent part of my adolescence in a middle eastern country.  The following are a handful of experiences I had that might interest readers of this blog. 

--  When I was 13, my class at my expatriate school was assigned to do a comprehensive report of one aspect of life in the country where we lived.  We were supposed to do book research and interviews, produce a 20 page report, and make an oral presentation to the class. 

A family friend suggested to me that I focus my report on female circumcision, which was almost universally practiced in the country where I lived.  For anyone who does not know,  female circumcision is the sexual mutilation of young girls (generally without anesthesia) as a means to control their sexuality and ensure their virginity until marriage.  It is a major social evil that occurs throughout vast swathes of the Middle East and Africa.  I could have interviewed my family's cook, who claimed that the women in his family were the ones most insistent that the younger generation be circumcised. 

Unfortunately, as an awkward adolescent, I just didn't have the social courage to stand up and talk about female genitals (much less their mutilation) in front of my middle school class.  (If only I could have known that my adult self, in my role as a prosecutor of sex crimes, would routinely discuss penises and vaginas at length in front of packed courtrooms!)  So I wound up reporting on the country's school system (ho hum) and missed my first chance chance to establish my feminist credentials in earnest at such a young age.  It was one of life's great opportunities missed. 

--  I took up cross country running during my teens.  When I went off to boarding school (the year after my boring presentation on the school system), I made the varsity cross country team.  The problem was that when I went back to the Middle East on school holidays, there was no place to train except on the public streets.  My parents felt it was important to respect local standards of female modesty, which of course, didn't have much truck with young girls running through the streets.  So my solution was to go running every morning at 5 a.m., wearing an oversized long sleeve t-shirt and wind pants, and accompanied by my father.  The streets were virtually empty at this time of day, but there would usually be one or two old men sitting on the sidewalks.  They chucked little pebbles at my ankles and called me a whore.  I actually felt bad that I was violating local standards, until one day when I was out walking with my parents, covered from neck to ankle in a loose t-shirt and long skirt in a different part of town.  A different group of little old men I'd never seen before chucked some pebbles at me and called me a whore.  At that point, I decided, "Screw it.  I'll just train my little heart out and not worry about it."

-- I hate to be entirely negative about my middle eastern experience, so I should say that I really enjoyed most aspects of  life overseas. I should also stress that female circumcision and chucking pebbles are NOT sanctioned by Islam.  On a positive note, I recall that on Christmas Day, we often received a number of visitors from our host country, who would drop by with presents and well wishes "on the Birthday of Your Prophet."  Muslims tend to be quite respectful of Christianity, and I never felt that any Muslims held it against me that I did not belong to their faith.   (While I have noted elsewhere on this blog that I do not consider myself Christian, I am of both Christian and Jewish heritage and my family has always celebrated Christmas.)

HOORAY FOR THE U.K.

I have been fascinated since childhood by the similarities and differences between British and American culture.  The following are some random generalizations that struck me during the six months I lived in London in the early nineties. (Most people I met were English so I therefore refer to "English people;" I don't know whether these observations would apply in other parts of the U.K.)

• British soap operas focus on working class characters.  A lot of scenes take place in laundromats.  In contrast, American soap operas focus on glamorous and privileged characters.

• Baked potatoes (aka “jacket potatoes”) are often served with sweet corn or tuna fish inside. These are still among my favorite meals, but my family thinks I'm weird.

• English people tend to be very conscious of each other’s accents and what a person’s accent says about his or her social class.  It seems that the wrong accent can really sink a person professionally. (Americans aren’t necessarily immune to this phenomenon.  We are certainly class conscious, but we don’t focus as much on accents nor are we often conscious of the fine gradations among different types of accents.)

• Names also say a lot about a person’s background.  Being named “Tracy” or “Gary” indicates a working class background.

• Drinking and drunkenness seemed much more acceptable than in the U.S.  The secretaries in my office often had alcoholic beverages during lunch in the middle of the work day.  I often saw professionally dressed, intoxicated people on the subway on the way home.  Intoxicated British people seem much more charming and less belligerent than intoxicated Americans.

• It is impossible for someone who is American and 22 years old to go to a restaurant and order the Welsh dish “faggots and peas” without bursting into peals of uncontrollable laughter, thus embarrassing herself and her nation.

• Upper middle class English parents do not necessarily become hysterical if their daughters forego a university education. (I am not sure if the same applies to sons.)

• Fast food places in London charge for salt and catsup packets. 

• People of all ages mix and mingle in pubs.  Your regular pub is called your “local.”  Even if you are from another country and aren’t that outgoing, you will get to know people at your local. Going there on a Saturday night is like going to a great party where you will see all your friends.

• British women seemed less concerned about having a lot of different clothes to wear to the office.  The women in my office each had two very good suits, which they alternated on different days.  American women focus less on quality and more on cobbling together numerous outfits. 

• Most people I met had been to the United States (which surprised me since I hardly ever run across anyone British here).  Hardly anyone I met knew any other Americans besides me.

• Strangest question I ever got from an English person: “What is it like to be the citizen of a superpower?” (Huh.  It never occurred to me that the experience of being from a “superpower” is qualitatively different from the experience of being from any other industrialized nation.)

• Second strangest question I ever got from an English person:  “Is your accent considered posh in America?” (Also never occurred to me.)

• Most spot on question from an English person: (in a thick Cockney accent) “How is that Americans exercise so much and yet are so very FAT?”

This post was inspired by the fact that Emma and Emmy live in Scotland, which unfortunately I did not have the chance to visit.