Headscarves and Hymens, Mona Eltahawy
Headscarves and Hymens, Mona Eltahawy
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Headscarves and Hymens
Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

Author: Mona Eltahawy

Narrator: Mona Eltahawy

Unabridged: 5 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/21/2015

Synopsis

A passionate manifesto decrying misogyny in the Arab world, by an Egyptian American journalist and activist

When the Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy published an article in Foreign Policy magazine in 2012 titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" it provoked a firestorm of controversy. The response it generated, with more than four thousand posts on the website, broke all records for the magazine, prompted dozens of follow-up interviews on radio and television, and made it clear that misogyny in the Arab world is an explosive issue, one that engages and often enrages the public.
In Headscarves and Hymens, Eltahawy takes her argument further. Drawing on her years as a campaigner and commentator on women's issues in the Middle East, she explains that since the Arab Spring began, women in the Arab world have had two revolutions to undertake: one fought with men against oppressive regimes, and another fought against an entire political and economic system that treats women in countries from Yemen and Saudi Arabia to Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya as second-class citizens.
Eltahawy has traveled across the Middle East and North Africa, meeting with women and listening to their stories. Her book is a plea for outrage and action on their behalf, confronting the "toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend." A manifesto motivated by hope and fury in equal measure, Headscarves and Hymens is as illuminating as it is incendiary.

About Mona Eltahawy

Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian American freelance journalist and commentator. Her essays and op-eds on Egypt, the Islamic world, and women’s rights have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Miami Herald, and other publications. She has appeared as a guest commentator on MSNBC, BBC, CNN, PBS, Al-Jazeera, NPR, and dozens of other television and radio networks. She lives in New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael on September 18, 2017

I was recently at a friend's going away party here in Paris and got into an interesting conversation with a woman from Algeria who mentioned this book to me. She said that should had her hand over her mouth the entire time - about how the author was groped during her hadj (or hajj) while she circled......more

Goodreads review by Caroline on January 15, 2016

Later add...... I think my review of this book has probably been rather biased in some respects. Two comments were particularly good in restoring some balance to my perspective. See below, comments 22 and 24. ----------------------------------- I found this one of the most depressing books that I have......more

Goodreads review by Jasmine on September 15, 2018

I first came across this book at the Librairie Antoine in Beirut, Lebanon, where I was happy to find a shelf full of feminist literature, mostly by Middle Eastern authors and some Western feminist literature as well. Up until to this point, I hadn’t really been aware of Arab or Middle Eastern femini......more

Goodreads review by Abeer on July 25, 2016

It's hard and bizarre to see your ugly reality reflected before you so accurately. Even more incredible is to have a book speak to you so personally, one that sounds exactly like your own internal monologue in the face of what feel like tyrannical life forces, impossible to counter. This book gives......more

Goodreads review by Deema on March 08, 2017

Growing up in the Middle East, I’m no stranger to the way men sexualize girls and women. I have been subjected to that myself, and had to spend years actively rejecting these misogynistic inclinations that I’d subconsciously internalized over the years. Despite my experience with this topic, and des......more

Quotes

“This is a timely and provocative call to action for gender equality in the Middle East.” —Publishers Weekly

“This is a powerful global feminist demand for equal rights.” —Vanessa Bush, Booklist

“In her debut book, Egyptian-American journalist and commentator Eltahawy mounts an angry indictment of the treatment of women throughout the Arab world.” —Kirkus Review

“This book is not easy to read, but it is necessary. Necessary because the warrior journalist who is Mona Eltahawy refuses to leave women crushed beneath the feet of their abusers or hidden behind their veils. Eltahawy recovers women's activism, art, voices, humanity, and demands for a revolution that makes a material difference for them, their daughters, sisters, friends, lovers, and teachers.” —Melissa Harris-Perry, host of MSNBC's "Melissa Harris-Perry"

“‘The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters,' says Mona Eltahawy in this courageous blend of the personal and the academic and the political. In the hands of Eltahawy, so many silences are opened. She writes about what others have largely feared: the body politic and the body sexual. This is a ground-shaping book that defines the edge of so many vital contemporary debates. Hers is a voice simultaneously behind and beyond the veil.” —Colum McCann, author of TransAtlantic

“Mona Eltahawy brings a journalist's keen eye, a revolutionary's prophetic courage, and a feminist's incendiary intellect to this work, demolishing the last cultural relativist myths. And she writes so well that it's hard to put down this audacious, information-packed treasure about the half of the Arab world that's female. Miss this book--the real key to the Middle East--at your peril.” —Robin Morgan

“One of the most powerful books I've ever read. And will ever read. No matter where she is-in Cairo during the Arab Spring, in the Saudi Arabia of her adolescence, in Oklahoma talking about American 'purity balls' with students, in a dozen countries across the Middle East and North Africa-Mona Eltahawy skilfully dismantles the religious, political, and familial machines that maim and silence girls and women everywhere. She is fearlessly honest about her own struggles as an Arab Muslim woman-to tell or not to tell when men accosted her in public, to wear or to not wear hijab (and how to take the hijab off), to wait or not to wait to have sex until marriage. She challenges men and boys, too, to transform themselves and their societies. Her honesty, her anger, and her unrepentant joy in being alive make Headscarves and Hymens more than an important feminist manifesto. It is a meticulously, beautifully drawn map to freedom.” —Karen Connelly

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