Articles

Empowerment of Women, Writing and Fighting

Lecture, 1981.

Introdcution about Dr. Saadawi:

Nawal El Saadawi, celebrated fighter, professor, doctor and writer from Egypt was invited to the seminar to talk about her experiences and how to combat violence and discrimination.

Nawal is a famous woman not only in the Arab world but also in the whole world for denouncing and fighting against not only oppression of women but also against all kinds of oppression, violence, discrimination and injustice that patriarchal societies are known to cause. As a result of her literary and scientific writings she has had to face numerous difficulties and even dangers in her life. In 1972 she lost her job in the Egyptian government. The magazine, Health, which she had founded and edited for more than three years was closed down. In 1981, President Sadat put her in prison. She was released one month after his assassination. From 1988 to 1993 her name figured on death lists issued by some fanatical terrorist organisations.

On June 15, 1991, the Egyptian government issued a decree, which closed down the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association over which she presides and handed over its funds to the association called Women in Islam. Six months before this decree the government closed down the magazine, Noon, published by the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association. She was editor-in-chief of this magazine. This has not discouraged her from continuing her struggle and action. Nawal El Saadawi’s most famous book is perhaps The Hidden Face of Eve, published in 1980 by Zen Books, London. Her bibliography in Arabic is extensive, in fiction and nonfiction, originally in Arabic but translated to more than 18 other languages.

Nawal El Saadawi is against monologues; she says that she likes dialogues. She thinks that we learn much more from disagreement than agreement because when we disagree and we have different views of the same point, then we are eliminated more and more. She is one of those intellectual fighters who can link different phenomena together to be eliminated and to eliminate others about the ’true knowledge’. In this sense her speech makes more sense if we give it in its whole with the dialogues of the participants that are following her speech.

By her charisma and her strength, Nawal El Saadawi did play a major role in the success of our seminar. We have therefore decided that we would like to share with you her lecture that she shared with us.

The key word here is “why?

“Violence against women is not separate from violence against the poor, is not separate from violence against the black people in Africa or in Europe or in the States, violence can be done by the state itself. It can be official violence. When my government put me in jail because I am a writer and I criticised the government, this is violence. When the government of the USA put sanctions against Iraqi people and kill children, 1000 children every day killed by the so called economic sanctions, this is violence against people. Now, maybe you heard about sanctions on Pakistani people; so they are punishing. Who is going to be punished by these economic sanctions? It is women, children and the poor and the black. So, we cannot separate between international violence, state violence and national violence and violence inside the family by the marriage system, by the fathers and the husbands. We cannot separate between sexual rape and sexual violence and economic rape and economic violence.”

What makes knowledge fragmented?

“When we have a fragmented knowledge about what is happening in the world that is how we are educated. We are educated in schools and in universities to fragment knowledge. I am a medical doctor originally, so why should I speak about politics? Why should I speak about religion, why should I speak about economics and the World Bank? We just studied the body and even not the body as a whole. We specialised in fragments. We graduated from the Medical College ignorant of what is happening around us. That’s how university education creates people who are very good doctors, very good technicians, but ignorant of what is happening around them. They cannot fight, they cannot resist, and they will be just working in their laboratory separated from what is happening in the world.”

“I have met a colleague of mine in Stockholm this morning. I had just watched CNN and what is happening in Pakistan and India. The US says we should punish Pakistan with economic sanctions because nuclear power is dangerous. The USA is using nuclear power against people all over the world. So, I asked my colleague, the physician, I asked him: what do you think about that? ”No, I know nothing about that, I am apolitical, I hate politics. I’m with my medical work only.” You see how they separate medicine and medical profession from politics and from what’s happening in the world. That’s why we cannot resist violence, we cannot resist violence internationally or nationally or in the family because we are isolated in our fragmented knowledge about the world.”

“Until now, knowledge is a sin. You know that Eve was punished in the history because she ate from the tree of knowledge. Until now, in 1998, if you eat from the tree of knowledge you go to jail. Even in the US. I lived six years in the US in exile. I just went back to Egypt. If you really know what is happening in the world you threaten the statuesque. You’ll discover the power relationships between countries, between classes, between sexes and then you become a danger. Then they want to get rid of you; they’ll get rid of you by killing you physically, psychologically. Or they’ll marginalise you or silence you. We have to undo what education did to us. We became unable to connect things together.”

What is the connection between the so-called New World Order and globalization with violence against women?

“If I say that there is a relation between George Bush in the White House and female circumcision in Egypt and clitoridectomy, what could that relation be? George Bush and Ronald Reagan encouraged religious fundamentalist groups all over the world, especially Islamic fundamentalist groups in our region. They recruited unemployed young men to fight in Afghanistan. They gave them a lot of money, a lot of arms to fight the devil, the Soviet Union: communism. Communism and the Soviet Union were the Devils at that time. They gave a lot of money to encourage these Islamist fundamentalist groups. Those young unemployed 18, 19 years old Egyptian boys were unemployed because of the economic reform by the World Bank and IMF’s forced reform on Egypt. They travelled from Egypt, Sudan and Pakistan to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, they came back to their countries and created many of the killings, some even went to the States. Some fundamentalist young men bombed the World Trade Centre in New York. Also, in Israel they encouraged the Islamist fundamentalist groups and created Hamas to fight the PLO. Now they finished with the PLO, so they are fighting against Hamas.”

“In Egypt, it was Anwar Sadat who encouraged the Islamist fundamentalist groups and also the Christian fundamentalist groups to fight each other and to divide the country by religion in order to neutralise the socialist groups. Then they killed him; the son killed the father.”

“This is related to women and violence against women because whenever you have a revival of the most reactionary and right wing parts of religions, women are affected first. Because most of the religions of the world put women in an inferior position relative to superior gender, the male sex. God is male. All prophets are male.”

“All religions are patriarchal, class religions with the authority of men. Whenever you have revival, especially political revival of religions and religions are political ideologies, then women suffer first. Violence is directed against women, by veiling them physically or psychologically. Some people think that veiling of women is specific of the Arab world or Islamic world. This is not true. I’ll give you example from the US. Most of the women in the US have post-modern veil. The post-modern veil is that the face lift, the make up. Yes, it is a veil because when I hide my experience this is a veil. When I hide my features with make-up, this is a veil. When I dye my hair, this is a veil. It’s a post-modern veil and it is psychological violence against women also. We have to know that.”

“This morning when I opened T.V. what did I see? They called it ‘sweet simplicity’: how to get rid of your body hair. You’ll find a lot of advertisements about plastic surgery, how to diminish your lips if you are a black. African women with thick lips, my God, what is that? This is like female genital mutilation. Plastic surgery is violence against women. Many men and women do not include this in violence against women. While you teach violence against women do you talk about plastic surgery? Do you speak about cutting the breasts? Do you speak about cutting the lips to make small lips? Do you speak about make-up and taking your hair out of your body? Do you speak about that? That affects most women.”

“I was giving a lecture at Harvard University in Boston and I looked at the room. Most of the women professors were having make-up, carrying heavy earrings and the ear is weighing down. This is a post-modern veil and some of them are looking down at Saudi Arabian women who are veiled. They say, look at these underdeveloped women who are having veils. And I told them, but all of you are having veils on your face. So, we are unaware that we are victims of make-up, of earrings, of sweet simplicity. Why should we take off the hair of our body? Many fundamentalists in Arab regions want women to cover their hairs, why? What is the problem with the hair of the women? Because hair is power. Hair is power. When they put people in prison, they shave them. Hair is an organism, it is a living organism, and it is part of you. My hair covers my head; it protects my head also. That is why it is natural. Hair is a natural organ in your body. Why should you hide it, why should you dye it? Why should you shave it?”

“We have to understand how we all are victims of the media, of the advertisements, of the whole big industry of beauty, to make us beautiful. Men are also like that. In Harvard I was looking at the male professors and most of them had the same hairstyle, the same deodorant, the same clothes. To the extent that sometimes you look to people and you cannot differentiate because they look alike. The capitalist machine mould men and women, create a uniform pattern of behaviour. They create the global consumer of goods. Most are luxury goods. Who said that make-up and plastic surgery is necessary? They force you to do it. One of the professors said, ‘but look, Nawal, I chose to do that, to put heavy earrings, I was not obliged to do that’. The Saudi Arabian woman student said, ‘Okay, me too, I put the veil, nobody obliged me. It is free choice.’”

What do we mean by free choice?

“Are we really free to choose? That’s the point. The media creates the illusion that we are free to choose but we are not free to choose. If we are injected every day, every night how beautiful you are if you are slim and with make-up, they work on the conscious and the unconscious. You think you are free but you are not. Professors in Harvard, they think they are free. When the media works on your unconscious, this is violence. It changes your mind; it changes your behaviour. It is like a thief. It steals your intelligence from you. It’s robbing you of your mind. It’s sometimes more dangerous than robbing your economy or your money. With what are you going to fight?”

“Who owns the media? It is four or five multinationals who oblige us to consume. If you listen to the news about India and Pakistan, you think you don’t know what’s happening. US is the biggest country who has nuclear power. Who inspects the nuclear power of US? Nobody. Who inspects the nuclear power of Israel? Nobody. The biggest nuclear power in the Middle East is Israel.”

“All the governments in the Middle East and in Africa, they signed what we call a nuclear-free zone. Egyptian people cannot have nuclear power, even for medicine. We are not allowed to have nuclear power even for medicine or electricity or agriculture. They allow Israel to have military nuclear power. You see the double standard. There is no power above the US. US is the super power. The same with Human Rights, the same with Women’s Rights. There is always double standard. Saudi-Arabia is one of the countries that violates human rights all the time. Prisoners in Saudi Arabia and women are oppressed, but it is very rare when the USA speak about violation of human rights in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a country obedient to US and that’s why they don’t show that Saudi Arabia is violating Human Rights.”

“We shouldn’t speak about violence against women separate from politics, nationally, internationally. The family is the unit of the society. When there is violence inside the family; it is a reflection of violence in the state, when there is violence in the state; it is a reflection of violence in the whole world.

We are living in one world. We are not living in three worlds.”

“The interviewer in the TV told me, ‘you live in the Third World’. I told her, ‘stop here, I am not living in the third world, this is an insult to me’. If somebody tells me you are a third world woman, this is an insult. We are not Third World. We are living in one world and we are dominated by one global power: the multinationals, the economic power headed by US They are using the UN They are now starting internationally to have an alternative UN which will defend the rights of people. UN and Security Council are no longer for the poor, the majority of the people. UN is a tool now in the hands of multinationals and the superpower.”

What can we do with this knowledge?

“Why don’t we have global resistance and local resistance? Why did the feminist movement fail? Why did the peace movement fail? Why did the left movement fail? In Egypt for instance, many people who were Marxists turned to be Islamic fundamentalists. Some of my friends who were Marxists during the sixties are now having the veil. Some of them joined the government. Some of them surrendered totally. Where is the women’s movement? What do we mean by feminism? The word feminism was misinterpreted. We have to speak about personal experience. Without understanding our personal experience and linking to what is happening generally we cannot understand and we cannot fight because resistance starts locally. That is why I went back to Egypt because I felt if I leave outside Egypt, how can I fight? Of course we can globalize internationally. This meeting is an international resistance and solidarity. We need to globalize from below. This is a new development in resistance.”

“We need what we call transnational power because the transnational corporations are globalizing from above. Since our enemy is global, we must have global power from beneath. This is a new development in the resistance. That’s why I am here, that is why I am travelling. Why I went back to Egypt. It is because I think that local resistance is important and that I travel because I also think that global resistance is important. We have to combine local resistance with global resistance. We as women, we should know that we must have political power. Now, I speak about our group in Egypt, which we call the Arab women solidarity association. We had a local group in Egypt and we had a Pan-Arab group that had status within the UN What happened during the gulf war that we opposed the gulf war but the Egyptian government didn’t like that, so they closed the local group. So, we took the government to court and until now the case is in court, now almost for seven or eight years. The case is still in court but we are working and functioning internationally through the Pan-Arab organisation which is good. If you are unable to resist and fight nationally, then try to resist and fight internationally, so you can function. We succeeded to organise our fifth international conference in Cairo last October. So, there is way. We must find the way to resist. Find the way, there are always people who can understand what you are saying everywhere. One small country cannot fight alone.”

“In our group we call ourselves historical-socialist feminist. Why do we call ourselves like that? Many people in the West, especially in Europe and in the States, they think that the West invented feminism. If I am a feminist and fighting for women’s liberation in Egypt or in the Arab world, then I am westernised and they fight us by that. This is not true. We fight and we want to liberate ourselves in our countries, not because we are westernised. I became a feminist when I was a child, seven years of age because I was fed up when they gave privileges to my brother and not to me. I said no. I am more privileged than my brother is. He was very lazy in school and every year he failed. He had all privileges and I was not rewarded. For my success in school I had to work at home during the holidays. So, I refused that. I rebelled against my mother and my father. If you really remember your childhood, you will discover that each one of you stood up against discrimination, each one. Go back to your childhood and remember when you reacted in a very angry way You’ll find that all of you rebelled, but what happened was that they silenced you. They used different ways. How do parents or the authority in the family try to silence children?”

“When I went to my father and mother and I told them that I work all the year in the school and I am at the top of the class, and my brother who is one year older than me was playing all the year and he failed. And he is playing and I am preparing his food, how come? My parents said because you are a girl and you have to learn how to cook, because you’ll marry in the future and cook for your husband. I said, but why my brother does not cook? They said, but your brother will never need to cook for his wife you know. You have to learn to cook because you will cook for your husband. You'll be a wife and a mother. You should be a good mother, a good wife but your brother has a different role, he will not cook. Why is this happening? Because you are a girl and he is a boy. But why? When they couldn’t answer, then they said, that is what God said. So, I started to rebel against God you know. The first letter I wrote in my life was to God. I wrote him a letter and I told him: ”God, I love you very much because you are just, because God to me is justice. I remember that from my grandmother who was a peasant, illiterate woman, never read the Koran and she told me God is justice. She went to the major, she was a poor woman and she was fighting against the major and she told him God is justice. Islam is justice. When I was five years, I remember that. So, I wrote the letter to God and I told him that he was justice, why are you discriminating between me and my brother, because he’s male and I’m female. Of course God didn’t answer. First of all, I didn’t know the address of God, so I didn’t send the letter.”

“Anyway, sitting down and writing this letter made me aware of the fact that there is a relationship between my mother, my father and God. I haven’t, nobody saw God. There is a relationship between authority in heaven and authority in the family. I discovered that unconsciously, when I was a child. This is feminism. Feminism to me, is to understand what are the authorities that are playing and working against you, in heaven or on earth, in the family or in the state? As children we discover that but we are silenced and we are shut up and we are afraid because we are afraid of God. I remember my father and my mother said, oh, if you criticise something related to God, you’ll go to hell, you’ll be burned in hell. So, I started to be afraid of hell, or to be punished by my father or my mother or to be punished in the school or to be punished by the state. The state can put you into prison also. I started to write about the connection between the power in the family, in the state and in religion. In a way knowledge is a sin. We are still living in a system that prohibits real knowledge and that is why knowledge is fragmented. That’s why we are educated but we don’t really know what is happening.”