Sawt al Niswa | صوت النسوة - Activism

في الانتخابات البلدية الآتية، لِنختر البديل

deema kaedbey — Thu, 05 May 2016 12:42:34 +0000

Sawt al Niswa

لطالما كانت المشاركة النسوية في المشهد السياسي العام وفي الانتخابات في لبنان موضع إشكال: فواقع الأمور بالأمس واليوم لا يشجّع على المشاركة في المشهد السياسي السائد الفاسد والمنفّر والذي لا ييأس من دفعنا إلى فقدان الأمل في إحداث تغيير فعليّ؛ ناهيك عن أنّه يحترف إقصاء أصوات غير اللبنانيين/ات المهمّشين/ات من عمّال/عاملات ولاجئين/ات، وأشخاص لا يمتثلون للأنماط الجندرية السائدة، وغيرهم/ن من السكّان المقيمين/ات الذين/اللواتي لا يملكون/ن الحقّ في التصويت.

لكن في المقابل، إنّ الانجذاب إلى التزام الموقع النقدي والترفّع والانسلاخ المطلق عن أي جهد إصلاحي قد يتحوّل من موقف إلى ممارسة تُضعف الانخراط السياسي وتعبّر بدورها عن موقع امتياز. وهذا لا يعني أننا لن نبقى على يقين بأن النظام الانتخابي اللبناني والنقاشات التي تدور في فلكه لا تزال بعيدة عن تمثيل وجهات النظر المختلفة وعن إنصاف المجموعات المهمّشة (كاللاجئين/ات والمهاجرين/ات)، وانتاج لسياسات تناهض العنصرية المتمثلة بقرارات حظر التجول تجاه اللاجئين المفعلّة من قبل البلديات، بل تقصيهم عمداً في الكثير من الأحيان لتؤكِّد على هوية لبنانية متميزة.

غير أننا نعي أن الانتخابات البلدية تفسح المجال أمام إحداث تغييرات على مستوى محليّ في المدن والبلدات. ونحن إذ نقدّر أهمية العمل على الأرض، والتعاون مع أشخاص من خلفيات وقناعات سياسية مختلفة وأشخاص قد لا يتّفقون على قضايا كثيرة، وأهميّة مراكمة الخبرات في العمل في الشأن العام، ندعم ونتضامن مع المجموعات التي تطرح بدائل عن النظام الحالي وتنظّم أنفسها بطرق مختلفة من خلال إِشراك الناس وإيلاء الأهمية اللازمة لاحتياجاتهم.

في الوقت نفسه، لا يخفى عن أذهاننا أنّ مسألة دخول النساء المعترك السياسي لا تعني بالضرورة تغييراً بنيوياً، لأن النساء، كالرجال، بإمكانهنّ أن يشكّلن أبواقاً للأحزاب والقوى السياسية ذاتها. نحن نرحّب بجهود النساء ونتضامن معهنّ، خاصّة منهنّ النساء المرشّحات ضمن لوائح مستقلّة تعمل على صنع تغيير حقيقي في مجتمعاتهنّ المحلّية.

اليوم نشهد أكثر من أي وقت بروز حملات ومجموعات جديدة منظّمة مرشّحة للانتخابات البلدية، في العاصمة بيروت وغيرها من المناطق، طارحةً بدائل عن الكتل السياسية التي تحكم لبنان منذ عقود ومشاريعها. إنّ هذه المجموعات والحملات المعلوم عنها وغير المعلوم عنها –من ضمنها مثلاً "بيروت مدينتي"، و"مواطنون ومواطنات في دولة"، و"هيدي عمشيت"، ومجموعة النساء المرشّحات في محافظة بعلبك والهرمل، وغيرها من المجموعات أو الأفراد المرشّحين بشكل مستقّل في مختلف المناطق- ساهمت من دون شك في توسيع رقعة المساحات السياسية وأشكال العمل والتحالفات وتنوّع النقاشات. ومهما اختلفت مشاريع تلك المجموعات على الأصعدة السياسية والمدنية، يبقى أنها تشكّل جهوداً ستدفع باتجاه المزيد من التحوّلات في المشهد السياسي.

من الأسهل الاستسلام إلى اليأس. فنحن نرى ذلك في ذواتنا أولاً، ذواتنا التي غالباً ما يعتريها شعور بأن النظام لن يهتزّ، وأن حتّى الأشخاص المناسبين فيما لو انتُخبوا، ستتمّ استمالتهم، أو إسكاتهم، أو إفسادهم. لكننا لا نختار المخرج السهل، بل نختار أن نتعلّم أكثر كيف ندعم بعضنا، حتّى حين نختلف. نختار أن نحارب إلى جانب مرشّحين/ات قد لا نتّفق معهم/ن على أن نبقى نحارب إلى جانب أمراء حرب وقادة طائفيين.

نحن في "صوت النسوة" ندعم المجموعات التي تعمل من أجل التغيير، وندعوكم/ن إلى أن تصوّتوا/ن في أيار ضدّ الكتل السياسية اللبنانية المتربّصة بالسلطة والمشهد السياسي منذ عقود، أن تصوّتوا/ن ضدّ أموالهم، ضدّ فسادهم، ضدّ قادتهم.

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Conceptual Offerings to the Current Movements for Justice

Azadeh Faramarziha — Sun, 27 Sep 2015 07:57:42 +0000

Rose Nakad

There is something historical taking place in Lebanon. Everyone agrees on this. Strength and a3fyeh to organizers and activists. The following is written with camaraderie and respect. Apologies for this English - the Arabic of this activist suffers from diaspora. She grew up outside, but lives in this place on its edges, suspiciously connected through “being Lebanese”.

One – Victories and arrogance

So far the Movement has achieved certain tentative victories: Forcing urgency among elements of the government, forcing the garbage back to the baladiyet and away from privatization, improvement among male activists in the recognition of women’s struggles, ongoing focus on people arrested and hurt in the movement, withdrawal of the parking meters on Raouche and the success of “difference” as a philosophy of the movement in the way the various groups are coordinating with each other.

The most important victory is the presence of momentum for change (and despite the arrogance of the Aou3neyeh in trying to assert their dominance over the actual concept of political ta7arouk).

But this is a partial victory and humility is necessary: it is the filth and insult of the garbage which finally handed over the opportunity for momentum. Keeping this awareness at the center of activist work may help reduce the guarded, but obvious arrogance or supremacy of some activists.

Two: The danger of the spectacle

Protests “pop up” everyday and many people rush home from work to see the latest. The movement is in danger of being dominated by its alter-ego: the television spectacle. It is becoming another product of entertainment, isolated from “material” life and slipped into television air time enjoyed with an evening argyle. Strangely dramatized even when it doesn’t deserve it: bordered, predictable, made for consumption not revolution.

This is exactly how the elite (economic and political) are hoping the movement will be defeated: its death as a spectacle. We cannot cancel media (at times it also protects the movement), but how can we interfere in the regime of the spectacle with its symbolic violence and social control? Note:Could we avoid” staged poses” at protests and media instructions at marches to stop and be filmed.

The dominance of spectacle also means we should never assume anybody cares if we are beaten up or hurt. They may care for drama or action, but it does not mean their “care” is sustainable. We live in times where “care” has been drained out of us, image by image, war by war.

The attempt of some public activists to seek sympathy or understanding for their work and suffering feeds the spectacle and works against the movement. Not because of “weakness” (we have the right to feel sad and treat our wounds), but because it further turns the “sha3b” into audience.

Three: The centrality of street protests is killing the momentum

Protests alone will not achieve the demands of a movement: especially with a small population. The automatic tendency to make protests and sit-ins dominant has to be challenged. Protests can be considered one strategy for particular times and places: the dominance of protests as a strategy is suffocating other possibilities for action.

Even millions of people in a street protest cannot be considered a success anymore. Bloated numbers of riot police and riot gear all over the world is evidence that the elite are prepared. The power of protests as a political strategy has passed. “Free speech,”here and in the western world is deception.

Crowd control and the ability to kill en-masse have developed together. They both speak hegemonic arrogance. The elite do not care what we think or how many we are. When they seem to listen, it isonly for a moment. It does not mean they are prepared to act against the structures that maintain their own privilege.

Only violent protests that destroy private property of elite institutions can make any effect. But the movement wishes to stay “peaceful” and this is the best strategy in current times. Perhaps protests can be more militant: not violent, but intense. We may find that many people may not feel the need to throw rocks if they are engaged in a militantly organized protest. Many people in the past could be heard ridiculing the “fun” of the protests and sometimes they were right.

Protests cannot be taken as a sign of a protestor’s commitment, especially when some of the protests have resembled festivals or a Saturday night out. Too much fun at protests mystifies political activity and divides the “sha3b” as non serious and the activists as serious.

And many people will never protest, ever: but they support. Shouting or trying to shame them on television to attend is useless. And if you watch NEW TV and LBC you “feel” you learn more than if you go: ten cameras and journalists will surely tell you more than your own body.

And now it seems we have arrived at the predictable situation where mostly the same “inner “circle of people are maintaining the protests. The movement is starting to talk to itself, rather than to the “sha3b” in whose name it is always speaking.

Movements burn out because they lose momentum, carried by fewer and fewer people. How can the movement be protected: open to a wider group of people and turned into a series of principles and a way of life, as opposed to a series of protests?

Four: Decentralization and protecting the movement

People who support the movement need to be offered ways to get involved without having to go to protests. Some groups are considering this. The momentum of the time needs to be a tool activists use to reach out beyond themselves: to encourage involvement in political and civil activities which also improve lives and work against the feeling of being helpless or hopeless in the face of power.

Decentralization, so that larger parts of the population are taking part in other activities can protect the more militant parts of the movement, giving it new dimensions and making it difficult to dismiss as one group of people. It can also make it more difficult for the movement to be sabotaged by the elite because it gets more embedded inside the everyday life of people.

Such momentum can be used to begin to change ideas: in this case, about garbage and environment. This is as important as bringing down a government, and pushes the point that revolution is private and public, inside my home and on the street, in my heart and against the government.

Can we start change without waiting on the state? This is a strength of many in Lebanon who since the civil war have become natural trouble-shooters and problem solvers: even if their solutions often create more problems. Such activities mean the movement is shifting reality from the beginning, not waiting till after. It means the movement is not satisfied with making demands, but struggles to put those demands into action. The parking meters activity is an example.

A “political design” approach to political activity: to consider activities (local or national) to include and mobilize people and put pressure on the state and its institutions within the momentum of the time. Protests and sit-ins can happen as part of an overall design, rather than being the main point.

Five: Examples of Political and Civil campaigns

The following are flawed examples. They aim to demonstrate concepts and invite discussion. Such grassroots campaigns have to be guided by people who understand the Lebanese governmental and judicial system thoroughly. Many of these ideas are floating in the air in discussions at protests.

· A call out for people to register a complaint against a violation or a request: at a particular wezara or government department. What mechanisms exist to allow people to do this legally? Yes, these are usually useless, but en-masse may pressure and encourage action to build the movement

· Collective lawsuits against a wezara or an economic institution or a company: Example: a cement company that is literally killing people off. These have happened before, but now is different

· Campaign asks people to argue with banks or complain about the fees taken from their accounts

· A general strike of some sort or a local strike that targets particular institutions: public or private

· Flooding a website at a particular time

· Refusal to pay electricity bills

· Organizers call on people to coordinate their buildings to recycle and give information on how: where it can be taken, recycling companies etc. These campaigns should consider the poor who currently earn an income from collecting garbage. The Campaign can provide a template or framework for people to use to organize their buildings and to include the garbage collectors

· Organizers call on people to use less: plastic bags, paper, less of everything. There is much talk of recycling, but not much talk about cutting down what goes into garbage circulation and the nasty consumption of how we live

At the same time the slogan of recycling has to be critiqued as a humanist and bourgeois solution easy for the privileged to digest. It is the huge corporate polluters of the air, land and sea and the businesses (hospitals) that generate the most pollution (the most toxic). It would be good to break this slogan down to show how it masks and hides bigger social and economic structural problems.

Perhaps the momentum of the time can help to transform these “humanist” or “humanitarian” activities into acts of everyday struggle: that make us think about how we live, and how we live with each other (instead of throwing our shit from one balcony down to the next). The momentum can also help stop such activities from becoming NGO AID, with its dirty band aids full of holes.

Obviously lots of people will ignore such ideas, but many people won’t. Even many inside political parties may take these things up. The suggestion of such campaigns also builds legitimacy for the movement.

The elite will reply to create pressure and de-legitimize the movement. Example: The greedy vomit coming out of Shammas’ mouth or blocking roads excessively to increase traffic and turn “the sha3b” against the movement and the activists. The Campaign has to think of counter tactics: not in words, but activities and actions that expose and put pressure and responsibility back on the economic and political structures and elite, not on individuals, who will always rally to protect each other.

Six: Other Concepts

Slogans, Stupidity and Patronizing “the Sha3b”

There is arrogance in reducing political movements to a “mousalsal” of slogans. This is increasingly happening and cancels out more intelligent or analytical talk. The same things are repeated over and over again, even on different malafet. Most of the time the talk is numbingly simplistic, without complexity or analysis or even any information. It is better to challenge those listening than to patronize them. It is also best not to assume that “the sha3b” will not understand: they are often the ones who “overstand”.

It is clear that certain groups are trying to widen issues of concern past the garbage. Again, constant protesting will change nothing and kill the movement. Could political pamphlets or internet sites that analyze and give information about the problem be more powerful and speak more to people outside each group. At the moment the only pamphlets one receives at a protest is to advertise the next protest, featuring the name of a group and its logo. This is “dumb” politics.

Note: September 20 we broke through police lines, only to advance a few meters. Many felt cheated. As we waited, dedicated to push more, the people on the microphones repeated the same simplistic patronizing speeches, slogans and songs. Nothing new was said to us or to the security forces. No thought, no analysis, no attempt to consider what could be said that would further the qadeyeh after the “victory” of a few meters and the police brutality of Wednesday 16 September, or weaken the ranks of the security forces. A wasted opportunity: and an opportunistic violation of the bravery and goodwill of protestors ready to be beaten to turn a slogan of “kol el sa7et...” into a militant reality.

Racism and Xenophobia

The overt nationalism of the protests and the movement sometimes borders on fascism: it has come from protestors and some activists. Obviously, many other peoples live in this country and suffer its problems without the back up of family, clan or the law and they are often the ones who clean up our shit and wipe our children’s asses. Many Syrians and Palestinians are also attending protests: at a much greater risk of police violence and arrest than a Lebanese.

How can organizers include awareness of Lebanese racism more? The idea is not to include refugee or immigrant issues directly, but to keep Lebanese racism in mind when writing interviews, chants and speeches. To minimize the tendency among people to use xenophobia to assert their own identities - in this case their identities as “Lebanese revolutionaries”. Some groups are already doing this.

Imitation

There is a general problem of imitation. Example: taking slogans from other movements or using the same way of naming groups. Imitation works against the specificities of the Lebanese situation, this place and this time. Even though government methods can be described as totalitarian, Lebanon is not a dictatorship: a “freer” media, a wide NGO sector, unions and some “democratic” institutions.

Yes, these are often controlled by sectarian and class regimes, but still have “cracks” that can be used.

The particularities of Lebanon have to be thought about intensely. Organizing of the lawyers is one example, but a standard activist move. What else is there in our specific system that can be used?

Imitation weakens the movement, encouraging laziness in thinking and sometimes a “superstar”mentality among activists. It also exposes the movement to being ridiculed or defamed as leading to war or backed by foreigners.

We are fighting a global system and not just government

The only type of economy Lebanon has been allowed to have since the end of the war is one mainly based on “service industries”. Local manufacturing and development is hindered (unless it is funded by USAid) and traditional industries have been killed by neo-liberal puppet governments. The use of local products is also discouraged by the myth that “foreign is better”. We are to remain a captive market that consumes the products of those in power: a favorite tactic of occupying armies.

Can we make more reference to huge capitalist institutions behind this government and most others in this world: weapons, pharmaceuticals, insurance, banking and security? Working as a security guard has become a common job for poor men all over the world, educated or not. “Security” is the destiny of many of those currently crossing borders into Europe. There are escalating “third words” within the “first world” of America and Europe where the same neo-liberal economic system is attacking swelling the numbers of “working-poor” and the “unemployable” under-classes.

Could some reference to these facts challenge common statements by protestors: that they want Lebanon to be like other countries? Can it help re-imagine the movement as more connected to the world? It may seem to make the struggle more difficult, but can also widen our thinking and provide a larger set of targets, beyond the individuals of this government who are only a speck of dirt in the global system.

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Shadow Feminism in Lebanon, Part One

deema kaedbey — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 18:09:18 +0000

Shadow Feminism in Lebanon, Part One

by deema kaedbey

I Intro

In the summer of 2011, Sawt Al Niswa issued a call for papers (CFP) for an upcoming new anthology, called Banat Tariq, that will explore histories of Arab feminisms.^{^[i]} The CFP was circulated at a time when a feminist movement in Lebanon seemed to be gaining momentum. It also came in the context of North African and West Asian popular revolutions, with their inspirational victories and painful setbacks, and the discussions that these uprisings stirred. The anthology was seeking to participate in these discussions through a critical feminist reflection on the political and social changes taking (or not taking) place. In addition, it aimed to push for more meditation on the history of Arab feminisms, and to invoke alternative narratives from women in Arab homelands and their diaspora. As the call for papers stated, “Writing about women’s presence while their past isn’t fully revealed is a dubious way to move through the future or change the present… When we look at our pasts, what pasts are we looking for or writing about?” (Abu Ghazal, email to anonymous mailing list). The anthology, then, recognized the political act of choosing what past to highlight in order to explain our present.

Banat Tariq—forthcoming in 2015, thus reveals a need for movements to ground themselves in their local contexts and to look for resonance and purpose in their history, rejecting colonialist lenses, and accusations of being “westernized.” It also reflects the need for many feminist groups and movements to challenge male-centered histories, and feminist narratives seen solely through middle and upper class women’s experiences. Banat Tariq proposes that writers connect to West Asian and North African indigenous myths and figures to re-assess the present, while also relying on the women’s lived experiences to personalize history. What this anthology offers may not be a mainstream feminist position in Lebanon, yet it is similar to tried feminist strategies around the world that search for women-centered, non-western paradigms (Anzaldua; Moraga; Allen; Perez).^{^[ii]}

One of the reason I was attracted to the idea behind Banat Tariq is because I truly believe that there is more to our feminist history in Lebanon than narratives of mainstream women’s rights organizing—such as the one that Rita Stephan recounts in “Four Waves of Lebanese Feminism.”^{^[iii]} I am more concerned with putting together a different, more complex narrative assembled from histories of women's participation in various struggles across multiple time periods.^{^[iv]}This obsession with finding an alternative feminist history led me to write my PhD dissertation on exactly that: shifting our perspective on what constitutes feminism, how we tell its story, and who its subjects are. To do so necessitated a centering of women in Lebanon who are not Lebanese, for example, such as refugees and migrant workers, as well as Lebanese women who do not identify as activists or feminists. For this reason, I called this feminism shadow feminism.

My dissertation used what I called a queer feminist methodology, informed by queer of color theories, as well as indigenous and women of color politics. I also relied on the concept of a non-linear serpentine, multi-directional and cyclical temporality—also found in many indigenous and women of color writing and theories. These foundations allowed me to draw the connections between different movements throughout different time periods. This paper thus seeks to challenge boththe separation of feminism and labor organizing, as well as a linear conception of time and history.

To go briefly into what I mean by a queer feminist methodology, I cite some theorists who have informed my way of looking at feminist struggles in Lebanon. Queer theorists of color in the U.S, such as Cathy Cohen in “Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens” (1997), Jose Esteban Munoz in Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999), Gayatri Gopinath in Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (2005) and Jasbir Puar in Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007) question the norms of sexuality and gender. Yet in doing so, they underline how norms of class, race and citizenship (that are closely tied to sexuality and gender) also need to be challenged. As Black feminist scholar/activist Cohen explains, queerness is not only tied to same-sex sexuality, but to the crisis that some individuals and groups pose to the dominant system by their mere existence and daily resistance (24). For Cohen, working class women of color in the U.S, even if they are heterosexual, are pushed to the margins of a standardized white well-off heterosexual norm in ways that wealthy white gay men are not. More importantly, working class women of color are also being kept at the margins of queer politics (21-5). Therefore, queer of color politics recognizes the interdependence of struggles, and it is this movement towards mutuality that also informs my work about feminism in Lebanon.

In similar attempts to theorize privilege to understand interconnection of privileges and struggles, in 2012, queer activist/theorist, Ghoulama, wrote a critique of sexuality politics in Lebanon. In “نقاش في آليات التنظيم المثلي في لبنان" (trans. “Discussion around LGBT Organizing in Lebanon”) Ghoulama argued that class, race andgender divide the LGBT movement, and that “weas sexual rights activists arenot the mercyof the law.” Ghoulama explained thatclass privilege protects activists from state persecution based on their sexuality, for“how manyofus have sexin their cars because theydo not have the means to lead afinanciallyindependent life?” (Bekhsoos).

Queer theory is also relevant to my project in its breaking away from linear temporality. Elizabeth Freeman, for example, challenges a linear mode of thinking and asks that we examine “relations across time and between times” (quoted in Puar xxi). Jasbir Puar makes use of Freeman to explain how different histories are at play in any given act or discourse (xxii). Similarly, I argue that at any given moment of contemporary feminist activism in Lebanon, there are histories of women's resistance that are at play. Some feminists in Lebanon, as I show, recognize and underline how the past lives in the present. My methodology is also heavily influenced by the challenges in temporal paradigms that indigenous epistemologies pose to linearity. M. Jacqui Alexander critiques the separation of disciplines, practices, and temporalities, divisions that we have inherited from colonialism (5). She urges us to seek interdependent frameworks that “interrupt inherited boundaries of geography, national, episteme and identity” (281). Accordingly, my paper aims at challenging boundaries of time, communities and identities, as well as of social justice struggles.

II. Serpentine Time

In Lebanon, what a different feminist history—a shadow feminism—necessitates, I argue, is a different understanding of time and how we re-narrate women’s history. One image that I rely on throughout this paper is that of serpentine and cyclical motions of time. Using Chicana feminist philosopher Gloria Anzaldua's descriptions of the serpent, the serpentine moves underneath, in the shadows, connecting issues, past and present, and twisting binaries into wholes. For Anzaldua, the serpent represents a feminine energy that moves through paradoxes and different levels of consciousness to make manifest what has been suppressed by patriarchy and colonialism (48-9). The serpent is the repressed and feared sexual, and instinctive feminine energy of individuals and collectives (57).^{^[v]}I find the image of the serpent useful for my own visualizing of a non-linear movement of time, gliding across various histories and geographies, making time multi-dimensional. What I will argue in a later paper is that a cyclical and multi-directional temporality is already operating in present day feminist organizing in Lebanon.

In Dreaming the Old Council Ways: True Native Teachings from the Red Lodge, Forest explains that for the Mayans, cycles of time move in “clockwise and anticlockwise motions” simultaneously, with “currents of energy penetrating each other.” She continues:

In their infinite concept of time, time itself cannot be seen as linear, for it is not a single continuum. Time is circular, moving inward and outward at this very moment…. Our current linear perception of time merely conceives of time as a line that goes away, in a progression of moments we are leaving and ones that we are heading towards. If humanity could adopt this new vision of time, clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time, we would have no need of making or holding onto human history. Our societies would be perpetually stable and centered (205-6).

Time, then, moves in different directions simultaneously— in a cyclical fashion, moving away and moving towards any given moment at the same time. History is not a series of events in the past that we leave behind. And can such a concept also mean that we may also access, on an individual and a collective level, a kind of hindsight, if future possibilities are already latent in present moments, just as the past is?

A unidirectional motion of time feeds into both historical amnesia and a disregard for the repercussions of our actions, while a multi-directional understanding of events acknowledges how the past lives in, and informs, the present. Forest visualizes this movement of time through the image of the “cosmic serpent.” In one illustration of this concept, she shows two serpents, one facing clockwise and the other in the opposite direction, each holding its tail in its mouth, forming two layers of full circles. I too have found that the serpentine imagery useful to connect time periods and to weave together seemingly isolated themes or political struggles.

Alexander connects non-linear temporality with the decolonization of spirituality, and of colonial, heteropatriarchal capitalist history. For Alexander, part of an activist’s spiritual and political responsibility—as these two are tied together, is a process of “rewiring the senses” (310). Such rewiring includes our sense of Time, so we are able to do the healing work of understanding “who walks with you” and thus of knowing the work that we are meant to be doing (300-3). In feminist organizing, I see the relevance of Alexander’s theory through a desire to deeply understand all the political, socio-economic and historical factors that influence any situation that we are involved in.

I started above with indigenous and women of color thinkers based primarily in the Americas because they were the theorists that I found first, who encouraged me to think beyond linearity. Yet I also found similar conceptions of time in ancient and contemporary narratives from West Asia that do not follow a direct chronology. Here I am thinking of examples such as Elias Khoury’s باب الشمس(Gate of the Sun), where past and present, fact and fiction are inseparable. There are also ancient narratives that reveal a more complex movement of events, and thus of time. When Firas Al Sawah, for example examined Mesopotamian myths, he observed two models of storytelling: a simple/straightforward model and a complex model. The first model is linear and chronological (49-50); while the complex model of narrating myths sees “events move in more than one direction, and intersect within a [more complex structure]” (50; my translation).

To begin with, the story that Al Sawah presents to exemplify the complex model is a Babylonian origin story where the gods are creating the four directions; hence, we see that the structure of the text (its complexity/non-linearity) and the content of the text (the creation of the four directions) mirror each other. In this particular ancient narrative, the sub-stories seem to be disconnected, yet they ultimately return to each other. This is not unlike the complex cyclicality of ألف ليلة وليلة, or A Thousand and One Nights. In this epic tale, there are multiple stories and digressions, yet we always come back to the original point with the story of Shehrazad and King Shahrayar. This point of origin and return, then, is also the larger framework that holds all the tales together.

What I see in this examination of the models of storytelling in ancient myths not only a study of narrative structures, but a different consciousness of time. Linear time does exist, just as the simple chronological model of narration exists, but it is to be understood within a bigger structure, a more complex model. Like the stories of Shahrazad and the Babylonian creation myth, time moves in cycles, patterns, and seeming breaks, yet it is always connected. As Forest explained it, movements of time are always meeting each other at any particular point. And as artist-scholar-activist Nia Witherspoon once said, indigenous thought “maintains several fundamental features” throughout different geographical locations (personal conversation, April 2012).

Like Banat Tariq-- the upcoming anthology that I highlighted at the beginning of this article, I see some aspects of feminism in Lebanon attempting to reveal these connections between older repressed histories of organizing and more contemporary mobilizations. Additionally, I also perceive in many of these feminist attempts an insistence on understanding the links and mutuality between different social/political struggles that are seen as separate. Such an inclusive lens would embrace women in Lebanon who are not Lebanese, or who have never identified as feminists. While I am not imposing a feminist label on them, I am arguing that their stories need to be remembered and acknowledged by those of us who do identity as feminists in Lebanon. We do need to remember the stories of women working in factories and mobilizing for their rights; of Palestinian and Lebanese militant women resisting occupation in the 1980s; of women in prisons. And we do need to incorporate into our feminism the stories and resistance of women/mothers/housewives (Lebanese, Armenian, Palestinian etc.) who are not activists, but who, in times of crisis and violence, mobilized to help their families and communities; the stories of domestic migrant workers resisting exploitation, racism, classism and sexism; and the resistance of queer women who break the shame and taboo of talking about sexuality. A serpentine understanding of time works best to unleash these histories that are not always apparent or acknowledged, because it is the temporality of what has not yet been resolved or healed and lives on in the shadows.[vi] These are some of the narratives that appeared in my dissertation, and some of which I will be publishing here in Sawt al Niswa, beginning with women in the labor movement.

III. Queer Feminist Thought and the Labor Movement

A vignette:

The beginning of May 2012 witnessed the contract workers of EDL (Electricite du Liban), Lebanon’s electric public company, declaring a strike against layoffs, demanding permanent employment and fairer wages (Abouzaki). Holding their protest inside the EDL building and its courtyard, the workers wanted the public to know that their pay had been withheld, and that the injuries some workers suffered on the job had not been compensated. Twelve of their fellow workers had been killed on the job (Abouzaki “Electricite de Liban”; Kob “Intifadat”). The strikers were also making a statement against privatization, arguing that it would take away their rights, their social security and other benefits (Kob).The strike would continue for two months, garnering national attention, both in sympathy and criticism.

I am not claiming that all feminists in Lebanon engaged with this strike, yet the feminist thought that I propagate here is one that connects with labor rights, materially and conceptually. In true serpentine cyclical motion, I open this section as I close it, by presenting feminist responses to the events that I recount in the above vignette. I will show how these responses supported labor struggles from a feminist perspective, contextualizing them within older histories of workers’ mobilization, and connecting them to different social struggles. Similarly, I also position this strike within the histories of women’s participation in labor and labor struggles from the 19^th century, to the 1940s and 1970s. Yet I also call attention to the queer presence of women in factories historically, and the challenges that they posited to heteronormativity.

Feminist solidarity with the 2012 EDL strike appeared not only in feminist spaces, but pushed into more widely-read national publications. In an example of the latter, journalist Rasha Abouzaki wrote “Electricite du Liban: Striking Workers Test Their Powers” in Al Akhbar newspaper. Abouzaki gave an overview of the workers’ demands and the government’s response, yet she interviewed only women strikers, of different political backgrounds. She was thus reminding readers that women are a central part of the demonstrations. And when workers burned tires in the company's courtyard in protest, Abouzaki revealed, it was the women workers who were “closer to the smoke than the men. Their voices rising with others calling for an end to the injustice.” In other words, if feminist journalists, scholars and activists, do not deliberately focus on women and document their participation in organizing, the history of labor struggles will continue to be told in the male pronoun. Centering women in the narrative allows us to see a continuity in women's resistance. It also reveals gendered anxieties and demands that are rooted in older histories of women's labor struggles, as well as historical perceptions of working class women in Lebanon.

When Abouzaki interviews women workers, she highlights their struggles-- the human suffering, as well as their radical voice, and their coalitional consciousness. The significance of this tactic is that public opinion of the strike was cut across political (and sectarian party lines), as well as class lines; political analysis that dismissed class struggles, or that was loyal to the Minister of Water and Energy and the political party he represented, portrayed workers as angry and irrational people (Kob). Workers were accused of trying to score a political gain rather than fighting for their rights.[vii]Alternatively, Abouzaki may have introduced the women's voices to counter such reasoning. Importantly too, Abouzaki presents the past by recalling history as a cyclical movement, and by drawing connections between the current event and demonstrations that drew national attention in the 1970s.

In November 1972, workers of the Ghandour candy company went on strike to demand “higher wages, equal distribution of wages between men and women, and the right to organize in unions” (Traboulsi A History of Modern Lebanon 167). Calling attention to the “echoes of the Ghandour strike” that she believes were still reverberating in the 2012 protests, Abouzaki writes that in 1972 “1,200 workers from the Ghandour candy factories took action that shook Lebanese public opinion. Their demand was similar to those of EDL’s contract workers, but their numbers were less.” The 1972 demonstration were met with brutal suppression, as police fired on the demonstrators, killing and injuring workers (Abouzaki; Traboulsi; Abu-Mjahed).[viii]What Abouzaki does not mention was that one of the workers killed was a woman organizer-- Communist party member Fatima Khawaja, as well as Yusuf al Attar, another communist organizer. While a mainstream middle class perspective may not remember these events, women face double erasures, as even contemporary feminists are not always aware of this history.

Looking through a serpentine framework reveals that the strikes of 2012 and of the 1970s were themselves a continuation of earlier movements from the late 1960’s. During the labor organizing of the 1960's, workers demanded “equal pay for men and women, family allowances, maternity and sickness leave” as well as “outlawing sexual harassment” in their jobs (Traboulsi A History 167-8). Women, therefore, were able to include their demands and experiences into the labor movement. And in order to demand protection against sexual harassment, the workers must have talked openly about their experiences, therefore breaking what we assume has always been a taboo subject for women. Moreover, in 1972, the heads of the Ghandour company must have acknowledged women as leaders, because both men and women were considered agitators, and were not allowed to go back to work when the strike ended and the company resumed operation (Traboulsi A History 168; Traboulsi “Al Harakat Al Ijtima'iya fi Tarikh Libnan”).[ix]

Labor struggles, therefore, have long been feminist sites; these are sites were women took leadership, and were they called for gender equality as part of improving work conditions. Yet if we only equate feminism with a mainstream women's movement, and labor organizing only with men's experiences, these feminist stories will continue to be repressed. AbouZaki also observed that the workers she talked to, who are often from poor families, worked collectively. Amhaz, for example, was not only striking for her own benefit, “but for those of all her colleagues.” Hers was therefore a collective consciousness that insisted on justice for everyone involved in the struggle. Another interviewee, Rida, countered negative publicity that showed them greedily agitating for unearned rights. Rida declared “we are from good families, we have pride” (Abouzaki).

I pay particular attention here to Rida’s quote “we are from good families,” as a response to a history of questioning the morality of women working in factories. It is this history that I turn to next, as I show that feminist alliances with labor movements today is grounded in multiple sites of historical struggles. I read the 2012 strike as containing echoes of women’s struggles dating back to the 19^th century, and to consecutive decades, such as the 1940's tobacco strikes that led to the killing of labor organizer Warda Butrus Ibrahim.

Historically, women’s entry into the workforce has been a dilemma for the heteropatriarchal system in Lebanon. In the mid 19^th century, Mount Lebanon experienced its entry into the global capitalist system, with the French-backed silk industry, manufacturing the silk in factories, and exporting cocoons to Europe. This industry changed not only the economy and its labor, from one based on land to one that is part of capitalism and factory work; it also transformed gender and class relations and expectations, as women and girls from poor families were the prime workers in silk factories (Khater 325-6). Akram Fouad Khater describes the changes in peasants' economic patterns, where “French mercantile houses” would lend farmers money to purchase silkworms, thereby tying them to debt. In addition, with the monopoly over the industry, farmers were no longer growing food that sustained them, they had to borrow more money to buy basics, such as wheat and other grains (328). Fluctuating prices (and French control of these prices) meant that farmers were not prospering (328).

The poorest of the peasants, threatened by debt with the loss of their lands and livelihoods, had no choice but to send their daughters to work in the factories. For those who could not--or would not, have their daughters work in factories, male immigration to the Americas was the only other option (329). Yet women were also seen by the French industrialists as better options for industries. They were considered more submissive and therefore less likely to protest their conditions than men; they were believed to be naturally endowed with “nimble fingers”; and they were undervalued, and could thus be paid less than their male counterparts for work they were supposedly better suited at (329-30). Fawwaz Traboulsi also writes that the girls and women recruited from orphanages were not paid at all (Hareer wa Hadeed 128).

By the 1880s, “one out of every five families had a daughter working in these factories” (Khater 330). And they worked in horrible conditions. Girls (some as young as seven) and young women labored in the cramped, dark, unventilated, hot spaces for ten to twelve hours. On the one hand, the money they earned did eventually give them “the power of independent and individualized decision-making” in their families, which they did not have before (333). On the other hand, their work in factories “tainted” their reputation. Eyes followed them disapprovingly when they passed by the village. Their job, which included contact with men, meant that their morality was questioned. As a result, their chances of marriage were also jeopardized (334).

The image of the factory woman/girl turned into a salient image in Lebanon, and it was one that attracted negative connotations. Parents would reprimand their daughters by yelling at them “are you going to behave like a factory girl?!” (331). Thus, the “factory girl” became a queer presence in her context, a representation of what “good girls” should not be and behave like. Khater describes this change in gender and class dynamics as a “crisis in patriarchy” (332). Yet a crisis in gender relations was also a crisis in heteronormativity, as the “factory girl” disrupted gender roles and sexual norms, and triggered anxieties of family's “honor”. Thus when Rida, the organizer in Abouzaki's piece declared that “we are from good families,” her statement carried the hauntings of this past, where women working outside the house damaged their reputation as good women, just as agitating for their rights damaged their reputation as good workers.

Patriarchy may have been challenged, but not smashed in the process of these economic and gender changes in 19^th century Mount Lebanon: in fact, it was women’s work in the factory that allowed men to not work there, and to continue to do the more socially accepted labor in the fields (331). Still, when we look at the intersection of sexuality, gender relations and class positions, we see how this historical period created a new queered segment of society, and an image of the factory girl that represented this crisis. It may be worth noting here that after the decline of the silk industry in the early 20^th century, some of the factories were said to have been turned into brothels (Al Raida Women and Work editorial 3), another venue that only the more impoverished women would work in, and would be further queered by. One factory was converted by the educator, Emily Trad (whose father was the owner of the factory), into a school that was devoted to orphans (Al Raida 3; Khairallah 235).

One may also wonder about the shifts in relations amongst women workers, as what bound them was not blood relations, but shared spaces of exploitation and struggle. Even though the factories were commonly too loud to allow conversations during work (Khater 333), it is likely to have produced different ways of relating to women from outside one's immediate kin networks. What were those relations, and how were they lived, sanctioned, and forbidden? While such homosocial relationships are not the focus of my project, they are worth pointing out to. Though we may never have answers for these questions, they are nevertheless part of a shadow feminism because they are part of the histories, relationships, and resistance that have been erased, particularly because they were threatening to heteropatriarchy, and to colonial domination.

In addition, given that women were seen as less likely to defy those in power at the factories, the threat they posed was both effective, and unexpected to colonial and local patriarchal powers. Women in the silk industries gained awareness of competition among different factories, and started to negotiate their employers for better salaries. The women would have factories compete for them, as they chose the factory that offered better wages (Khater 332). Women workers came to recognize the value of their labor to the capitalists, and they were thus able to exert agency in the hiring process. Workers also slowed down the pace of the work, in order to slow production. Yet women's resistance was also direct and public: they resorted to strikes to demand better working conditions. In one particular strike, the workers were able to secure their demands within a week, as the managers agreed to grant them “twenty days of paid vacation and fourteen months of pay per year” (332).

Moving in a serpentine motion to connect past and present, when we come to understand the direct and indirect ways that women workers in the 19^th century resisted exploitation, we can start to recognize similar patterns of resistance in later decades. Furthermore, we can begin to see recurrent anxieties around gender and sexual norms that working women provoked. In the 1940s, for example, while women in factories pushed for justice based on gender, class and national independence, many elite women's rights activists stood in opposition to changing gender roles. The 1940s was a watershed decade in Lebanese (and Arab) history. It was the decade that began in the midst of the Second World War, and ended with the loss of Palestine. It was also the decade that saw the independence of newly formed Arab nation states, including Lebanon. Elizabeth Thompson shows that the 1940s was a turning point in terms of colonial/nationalist and gender relations in the region. Class based struggles interconnected with nationalist aspirations, and gender dynamics. In the early forties, communist groups-- among other parties, organized hunger marches in Lebanon and in Syria, and women were at the center of organizing (233).

The Aleppo march went on for several days, as the women chanted, “We’re hungry, we want bread!” In Beirut as well, thousands of women filled the streets, and their slogans called for low bread prices (Thompson 233-4). These public acts of defiance focused on workers’ livelihoods, and were influential enough to lead to changes in the politicians’ rhetoric (which is what I also observed from the 2012 EDL strike). One main reason that women played a large part in those mobilizations was the dire economic circumstances created by World War II, which propelled them (back) to work in the factories (Thompson 238-9). Anxieties were high that time: World War II had triggered memories of the famine and locust invasion that had devastated Lebanon during that previous transnational war (233), but many women may have also been carrying traumatic histories of genocide, exodus, rape and forced marriages, such as what Armenian women had experienced in the early 20^th century before they settled in Lebanon (Tachjian 66).These histories, from Armenia and from Palestine, also have to be remembered in the feminist history of Lebanon.

Thompson and Abisaab point out that well-off women responded to the economic difficulties of the forties mainly through charities, and through writing about socio-economic issues in women's magazines. Yet it was frequently a discourse where women’s domesticity was emphasized rather than challenged. Thus, well-off women supported those working in charities and in schools, but distanced themselves from women laboring in factories. It was more important, they stated, to make men appreciate the work women provide in the home “before even thinking of replacing men in the job market,” as Al Mar'a al Jadida stated (Abi Saab 40).

As in the 19^th century, more women were entering the paid workforce in the early 1940s, which provoked (yet again) a crisis in gender relations, challenging the dynamics of the home and workplace (Thompson 238). It is through this crisis, Thompson argues, that in 1942, Mother’s Day became an official holiday in Lebanon—to remind women that their personal glory and their patriotic contribution should happen through motherhood. In 1943, birth control was outlawed. In that year too, the first president of the independent Lebanese state, Bshara El Khouri, refused to grant women the right to vote. And that same year, the Women’s Social Democratic League was formed by school teachers as a forum to reprimand working mothers (240-1). Simply put, in the midst of the struggle for national independence, colonial rule and the anti-colonial Lebanese elite were working together to ensure the institutionalization a specific concepts of gender that was upheld by elite women. Simultaneously, the activism of working class women, struggling against gender and class inequality, as well as against colonialism and capitalism, were being erased, even by women's rights activists.

Upper class women were therefore acting as the guardians of class-based heteropatriarchy and respectability. While they called for education and medical care to be available for all segments of society—it was more of a charitable stance than any of a desire for social change and cross-class coalitions. Instead, they considered only the well- off as the ones deserving of political participation. Rose Shahfa for example, head of the women’s delegation to the 1944 Arab Women’s conference in Cairo, stated her belief that educated women have “more right to political privileges than the ignorant man who enjoys these privileges” (Thompson 273). Clearly this was not an analysis of socio-economic conditions and their effect on access to education for all, but an offense at the idea of “ignorant” working class men having more rights than upper class women[x].

These classed dynamics are predecessors of what contemporary feminist activist, Leen Hashem, calls “"حركات فنجان القهوةor the “cup-of-coffee movements.” Referring to the social custom in which Lebanese/Arab women regularly visit each other and talk over coffee, Hashem sees a branch of organizing that is similar in its social conformity. The “cup-of-coffee” movements consist of socialites, wives and relatives of wealthy men, who meet in luxurious spaces, take part in charities, and then advertise their charitable donations in magazines. Their organizing is thus centered on a politics of respectability, on maintaining their social positions and on preserving the status quo. These women, Hashem declares, seclude themselves from communities outside their socio-economic class and individuals who are not like them, including individuals and communities who defy heteronormativity (“Cup of Coffee”, Sawt al Niswa).

Hashem's critique of the wealthy and charity-based facet of the women’s movement is crucial, because it challenges the privileged position of elite women as the primary women's rights activists. However, paying attention to working class women's struggles also reveals that women-centered practices such as visitations and meetings over coffee has been mobilized by working class women too, as I will later show. That is, less privileged women may also meet over “cups of coffee” and use these meetings as grounds for politicized and mobilizing for their communities; these tactics may additionally hold some potential for alliances amongst feminists of different age groups and political orientations. Indeed, since then, Hashem herself has come to self-reflect on the term, and to see the potentials of “cup-of-coffee” organizing beyond that of “wealthy charity wives.” But she has also come to critique movements that see themselves as radical and inclusive, and to see the elitism at work in them (personal correspondence, August 2013).

Historically and presently then, it would be too limiting to circumscribe feminism only within upper class women’s organizing—or only within self-identified feminist circles. Searching for women's participation in various struggles also opens up different aspects of gendered relations. AbiSaab shows that in the 1930s, bourgeois women tied their anti-Regie discourse (Regie being the tobacco company, Régie Co-Intéresse Libanaise de Tabacs et Tombacs) to their position as mothers of their family and their nation. The women who worked in factories, on the other hand, had a different discourse and a different way of organizing, as their activism drew correlations between anti-colonial protests and demands for better working conditions (42-6). Abi Saab lists, describes and analyzes a number of strikes from the 1920s till the 1960s. One of the more prominent action was the 1946 strike in the Hadath branch of the Regie, which was predominantly organized by women (and which was helped by the solidarity of the workers in Syria).

During this particular 1946 tobacco strike, the management wanted business to go on as usual, distributing cigarettes to the market despite the protest. Yet the workers, in Lebanon as in Syria, disrupted the trucks’ movement. In Beirut and its suburbs-- Mar Mikhayil then Furn el Shebbak, the strikers—predominantly women, lay on the ground to block the truck from unloading, as they shouted, “let the truck pass over our bodies!” The police, in line with management interests, rejected this act of rebellion, and they clashed with the protesters. One woman worker and prime organizer, Warda Butrus Ibrahim, was killed. As unionist, Dr. Mary al-Dibs, recounts, “some workers that day backed down [and] Warda yelled at them to return to their positions and stay put. Suddenly, a policeman stepped forward, drew his gun at Warda’s chest, and fired” (qtd. in Al-Hajj, Al Akhbar 2012). Sixteen other women and thirteen men were wounded and rushed to Hotel Dieu hospital in Beirut. To help their injured peers, the workers raised money to cover the costs of their hospital bills and to provide support for their families (75-6).

This deadly confrontation between workers and authorities, as I have shown earlier, would emerge again in the late sixties and the early seventies, as with the 1972 Ghandour strike where women also sacrificed their lives and their jobs. Yet as I've also argued earlier, women are seldom remembered in these histories. Women workers are absent, for example, in the monograph of union leader, Aziz Saliba, whose work is an otherwise meticulous documentation of the history of the Lebanese syndicate movement in the agricultural valley of Beqaa. When Saliba mentions women, it is usually in official women’s rights organizations, such as the branch of the Lebanese Women’s Rights Committee in Zahle (in Beqaa, a region east of Beirut). Through the Women’s Rights Committee, women mobilized mainly around issues of teaching and education, gathering petitions and meeting with the Minister of Education around issues such as free education and building more public schools in the region (65-6). While Saliba notes women's participation in labor rights events (143), he does not address their contribution to labor movements in Beqaa.

Saliba does mention the renowned writer Emily Faris Ibrahim and her involvement in a festival for Labor’s Day in 1946, though he does not give any details of what she may have said during her speech at the event. Ibrahim was an icon of the mainstream women’s movement, as she headed the Lebanese Women’s Council (LCW) for twenty one years. Like many mainstream groups, the LCW, which was launched in 1952 and which is currently an umbrella group for hundreds of organizations, is focused on legislative changes. Its tactics include forming close connections with politicians and figures of power to lobby for change.[xi] In 1966, Ibrahim published an important manuscript that documents individuals and organizations across Lebanon, and in different parts of the world, that are dedicated to women’s rights. Her book, الحركة النسائية في لبنان, or The Women's Movement in Lebanon, was useful, for example, for my own research into groups that once worked on women in prisons, and on labor rights; her inclusion of intellectuals and artists was also informative; and her documentation reveals another significant issue: that women’s rights organizers understood the importance of being aware of each other’s work and networking with each other, despite their different approaches and backgrounds (Zeidan 44). That, however, may not always have translated across class lines (38). Because despite women's networking with each other, what should we make of the fact that Ibrahim was part of the Regie administration, working as its head of publicity?[xii]

But there are, and have always been, feminists (whether or not they identify as such) in different sites of protest,[xiii]from different backgrounds (though many of them were working class), who were able to articulate their position as women and as workers. Linda Matar is an icon who represents such a segment that held both feminist and class consciousness. Coming from a working class background, she has also been part of the Lebanese League for Women's Rights since 1953,[xiv]and she headed the Women's Rights Committee in 1978. In one radio interview, Matar recollects how she left school at the age of 12 to work in a factory. Later, she would go to night school and work during the day. Having been employed in a silk factory as well, Matar experienced the realities of the workers. Their arduous labor, the discrimination they faced, long hours and minimal pay deeply impacted her politics(Sharika wa Laken episode 5).

Thus, despite the ideological distance between the mainstream women's movement and the workers' movement, there were few women who connected these positions, and contributed to a feminist thought that is steeped in socio-economic justice as well gender equality. As I've been developing an analysis of these struggles historically, I also connect them to more contemporary organizing. That is, these histories relate to contemporary feminism that connects different struggles and multiple margins together. Present day manifestations of such connections were evident in 2012, as a feminist perspective revealed that women were principal organizers in the EDL strike, as Abouzaki did. In 2012, many feminists in the Beirut-based feminist anti-racist collective, Nasawiya, were at the forefront of the supporters, with members often joining the strikers and propagating the workers' perspectives and their demands. Farfahinne Kob, member of Nasawiya who constantly blogs on workers' rights and resistance in Lebanon, continues to follow up on this particular story despite its disappearance from mainstream news.[xv]And in March 2012, journalist Fatin El Hajj reminded readers of women's accomplishments in Lebanese unions, historically and in the present day, by including the story of labor organizer Warda Ibrahim and her death during the 1946 strike (Al Akhbar March 2012).

As the events of the 2012 strike were unfolding, Hashem wrote the essay “I am the (Female) Contract Worker… and My Tent Reaches the Sky,” (my translation), a feminist article that was published in Assafir, a mainstream Lebanese newspaper. In it, she personalized the workers’ struggles, identifying with the contract workers, working women, and working class women. Through this identification with different struggling groups, Hashem linked the struggle for labor rights to the feminist push for a legal protection of women from domestic abuse—another urgent cause that feminists in Lebanon are working towards. Hashem’s title phrase, “reaching the sky,” is indicative of workers’ pride, but it also represents expanding an issue as widely as possible, by showing its connections and parallels with other struggles.

The attack on women’s rights is therefore, she shows, similar to the attack on women’s bodies. She writes:

I know that who ravages my body by force and arrogance, supported by power dynamics that privilege men, is the same as that who abuses our rights as workers, male and female, supported by power dynamics that place its very wealthy corporations and its protectors on the necks of the hard workers (my translation).

In what is a clear feminist coalitional stand, Hashem makes connections between different groups who are oppressed and exploited by entrenched power structures. In her essay, she urges the exploited and abused to stand together in solidarity, as she also defies the shame and repression that keep both women and workers from rebelling against those who abuse them (Shabab Assafir). I find her essay another example of shadow feminism that connects different struggles against the social-economic and political system by aligning with marginalized groups.

In conclusion, the methodology that I put forth here allows us to question assumptions of women's passivity, whether they are working in factories or in their homes. Instead, I look for resistance to different aspects of violence and exploitation. Another facet of shadow feminism, for example, questions the absence in documenting women's resistance to familial and domestic violence. As activists Rasha Moumneh and Ghoulama argue, women in abusive situations are more often portrayed as passive victims by Lebanese feminist and women's rights organizations (Moumneh, “Queering the Domestic Violence Law” May 2010; Ghoulama, Rihla 'ala Mal'ab al Dahiyya” Oct 2011). Also hidden inside the homes are the migrant workers, who have been historically Lebanese, Arab or Kurdish women, but since 1990, increasingly come from non-Arab Asian and African countries (Jureidini 77). Their stories and struggles, as I show in another chapter of my dissertation, for example, may also intersect with feminist and queer struggles in Lebanon. Migrant women, forbidden from creating or joining unions, as Amrita Pande argues, also form collectives that resemble unions in their resistance against exploitation and isolation (385-6). Whether in collectives or as individuals, the work that migrant women provide, and their resistance to exploitation and abuse also has to be a central aspect of shadow feminism from Lebanon.

Therefore, a feminism that is informed by the shadows presents a different picture of women's activism in Lebanon, and represents women who challenge norms of gender, sexuality, and class. As I will show in part two of this study, shadow feminism may also find its roots in histories of women's militancy,in the narratives of Communist women, for example, who were reputed to be sexually liberated, and prone to have “free and easy amorous exchange[s]” (Bechara 55).

This paper is dedicated to Sara Emiline Abu Ghazal, Faouziea AlChahal, Nia Witherspoon, Samia Abou-Samra and Lamia Moghnie.

I would also like to thank the wonderful members of my dissertation committee: my advisor, Guisela Latorre, and committee members Theresa Delgadillo, Nadine Naber and Cricket Keating. It was also Cricket who came up with the term "shadow feminism" and-- along with my friend, Yu Chen (Brena) Tai, encouraged me to think more about this term.

[i] Banat Tariq can be translated as Daughters of Tariq, or daughters of the morning star. The anthology also shows how the term refers to “a tribe of Arab warrior women who lived on the periphery of the new-found Islamic community” (Banat Tariq CFP).

[ii] In Sri Lanka, the 1970s saw a feminist longing for a mythic pre-colonial past (Jayawardena and de Alwis 250). See also Robin D.G Kelley's Dreams of Freedom for a discussion of Black activism through looking at the past.

[iii] See also Stephan, Rita. “Women’s Rights Movement in Lebanon” in Mapping Arab Women Movements: A Century of Transformation from Within edited by Nawar Al-Hassan Golley and Pernille Arenfeldt. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2012.

[iv]My methodology resembles that of Maylie Blackwell, whodocuments Chicana feminist history through an intersectional lens grounding it in multiple sites of oppression and resistance (25-9). Nadine Naber also looks at the “multisited feminist” strategies of “diasporic feminist anti-imperialism” embraced by Arab American feminists in the Bay Area. These are strategies, she writes, have long been part of radical women of color and third world women's politics (221-2).

[v] Anzaldua argued that the serpent was once revered, and that it represented the earth for the Olmecs (56). This reverence was lost with colonization, as Christian religion emphasized the body/soul split. Thus, for Anzaldua, to ‘enter into the serpent” means to get in touch with one’s instinctual ‘animal’ side (59; 48).

[vi] Here I am reminded of an online exercise by Black feminist Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who asks viewers about repressed violence in the places where we live. In her words, such exercise also asks “what are the voices of the forgotten, erased and violated ancestors teaching you today?” including what we can do to heal this violence http://vimeo.com/14916291

[vii]For newspaper articles that report biases against the workers, see Ibrahim Al Amin, “Lebanon's Electricty Crisis” Al Akhbar English. Jan 12, 2012. http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/lebanon%E2%80%99s-electricity-crisis last accessed Feb. 27, 2014; Farfahinne, “Intifadat al Mouyawimeen.” Farfahinne: Socialist from Lebanon. http://farfahinne.blogspot.com/2012/06/blog-post.html last accessed Feb. 27, 2014.

[viii]Abouzaki writes that three workers were killed, while Traboulsi names two, Fatima Khawaja and Yousef Al Atar.

[ix]Fawaz Traboulsi’s article is the source I use where he states that men and women—a hundred of them, were not allowed to go back to work, punished for allegedly leading the strike. http://history8archaeology.yoo7.com/t31-topic. Last accessed 20 April 2013. Fawzi Abu Mjahed, on the other hand, on the Lebanese Communist party website, writes that the company (and the government) terminated the jobs of four people, and not hundreds; yet he does not say if they were men and women. Abu Mjadeh, Fawzi. “A Nidaa 211: Mahatat Nidaliyya fi Tarikh al Tabaqa al Amila wa al Haraka al Niqabiyya.” Lebanese Communist Party. 8 May 2013. http://www.lcparty.org/website/index.php?option=com_content&id=2120:-211-. Last accessed 20 April 2014.

[x]In making this argument, I was influenced by Angela Davis' analysis of the women's suffrage movement in the U.S in her seminal work, Women, Race and Class, where she pointed the racism of the women's movement.

[xi]See the “Friends of LCW” page on their website http://lcw-cfl.org/en/Home/FriendsofLCW/tabid/319/language/en-US/Default.aspx. Last accessed 20 April 2014.

[xii]Be'ayni, Najib. “Emily Faris Ibrahim: Muhariba Anhakaha al Yaa's.” Assafir. 30 March 2011. http://www.assafir.com/Windows/PrintArticle.aspx?ArticleID=233098&ChannelID=0&ref=Toolbar. Last accessed 20 April 2014.

[xiii]See Walid Dao’s article on the history of workers’ struggles in Lebanon for these different sites of protest. Dao, Walid. “Al Haraka al Niqabiya wal Ummaliya fi Lubnan.” Al Thawra al Da'ima. March 2013. http://permanentrevolution-journal.org/ar/issue3/brief-history-oflabor-movement-lebanon. Last accessed 14 April 2014.

[xiv]Who is She in Lebanon? n.d. http://whoisshe.lau.edu.lb/expert-profile/linda-matar.

[xv]Nasawiya's headquarters was also a few-minutes-walk away from the EDL company; Kob, Farfahinne. Socialist from Lebanon http://farfahinne.blogspot.com/ last accessed Feb. 27, 2014.

Bibliography

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Abi Saab, Malek. Militant Women of a Fragile Nation. NY: Syracuse UP, 2010.

Abouzaki, Rasha. “Electricite de Liban: Striking Workers Test Their Powers”. Al Akhbar English. 29 May 2012. Last accessed 14 April 2014.

Abu Ghazal, Sara. “On Banat Tariq.” Message to anonymous mailing list. 30 Sept. 2011. Email.

Abu Mjadeh, Fawzi. “A Nidaa 211: Mahatat Nidaliyya fi Tarikh al Tabaqa al Amila wa al Haraka al Niqabiyya.” Lebanese Communist Party. 8 May 2013. http://www.lcparty.org/website/index.php?option=com_content&id=2120:-211-. Last accessed 20 April 2014.

Alexander, M. Jacqui. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory and the Sacred. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Al Sawah, Firas. Al Ustura w'al Ma'na: Dirasat fi Al Mythologia wal Diyanat al Mashriqiyya. Damascus: Dar Ala'din, 2001.

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Second Edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987.

Bechara, Suha. Resistance: My Life for Lebanon. Trans. Gabriel Levine. NY: Soft Skull Press, 2003.

Blackwell, Maylei. Chicana Power! : Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement. Austin: U of Texas P, 2011.

Davis, Angela. Women, Race and Class. NY: Vintage Books, 1983.

Forest, Akhi Simine. Dreaming the Old Council Ways: True Native Teachings from the Red Lodge. Maine: Samuel Weiser Inc., 2000.

Ghoulama. “Rihla ‘ala Ma’ab al Dahiyya.” Bekhsoos June 2011 http://www.bekhsoos.com/web/2011/10/a-journey-to-the-victim-playground/.

-----. “Niqash fi Aliyyat al Tanzim al Mithly wa Qawnanat al Jinsaniya fi Lubnan.” Helem May 2012 http://helem.net/?q=node/215. Last accessed 15 April 2014.

Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. “Atlantic is a Sea of Bones: Lucille Clifton Rebirth Broadcast #12.” Vimeo. Sept. 2010. Web. 9 Jan. 2015.

Al-Hajj, Faten. “Lebanese Women on the Frontline of the Trade Union Struggle.” Al Akhbar English. 8 March 2012.

Hashem, Leen. “Ana Al Mouyawima... wa Khaymati Tatal al Samaa.” Shabab Assafir. 12 June 2014. Last accessed 14 April 2014.

----.“'An Harakat Finjan Al Qahwa.” Sawt Al Niswa 22 June 2010. Last accessed 14 April 2014.

Jayawardena, Kumari and Malathi de Alewis. “The Contingent Politics of the Women’s Movement in Sri Lanka.” Women in Post-Independence Sri Lanka. Ed. Swarna Jayaweera. Delhi: Sage, 2002.

Jureidini, Ray. “In the Shadows of Family Life: Toward a History of Domestic Service in Lebanon.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. 5.3 (Fall 2009): 74-101.

Kelley, Robin D.G. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2002.

Khairallah, Shereen. The Sisters of Men: Lebanese Women in History. Beirut: Institute for Women Studies in the Arab World, 1996.

Khater, Akram Fouad. “'House' to 'Goddess of the House': Gender, Class and Silk in 19^th Century Mount Lebanon.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28.3 (1996): 325-48.

Khoury, Elias. Bab El Shams. Beirut: Dar al Adab, 1998.

Kob, Farfahinne. “Intifadat al Muyawimeen.” Farfhinne: Socialist From Lebanon. Last accessed 15 April 2014.

Matar, Linda. Interview. Sharika wa Laken. Sawt al Shaab, Beirut: 22 June 2012. Radio.

Moraga, Cherrie. The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry. Boston: South End Press, 1999.

Moumneh, Rasha. “Queering the Domestic Violence Law.” Bekhsoos 17 May 2010 http://www.bekhsoos.com/web/2010/05/queering-domestic-violence-law/Last accessed 31 Aug. 2014.

Naber, Nadine. Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics and Activism. NY: New York UP, 2012.

Pande, Amrita. “From ‘Balcony Talk’ and ‘Practical Prayers’ to Illegal Collectives: Migrant Domestic Workers and Meso-Level Resistances in Lebanon.” Gender and Society. 26.3(June 2012): 382-405.

Perez, Emma. The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999.

Saliba, Aziz. Tarikh al Harakah al Niqabiyya fi al Biqaa’. Beirut: Dar al Farabi, 1999.

Stephan, Rita. “Four Waves of Lebanese Feminism.” E-International Relations. 7 Nov. 2014.

Tachjian, Vahe. Gender, Nationalism and Exclusion: The Reintegration Process of Female Survivors of the Armenian Genocide.” Nations and Nationalism 15.1 (2009): 60-80

Thompson, Elizabeth. Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon. NY: Columbia UP, 2000.

Traboulsi, Fawwaz. A History of Modern Lebanon. London: Pluto Press, 2007.

---------. “Al Harakat al Ijtima’iyya fi Tarikh Lubnan al Hadith.” History8Archeology Forum. 3 March 2008. http://history8archaeology.yoo7.com/t31-topic. Last accessed 20 April 2013.

Witherspoon, Nia. Personal conversation. 17 April 2012.

Zeidan, Josesph T. Arab Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond. NY: SUNY Press, 1995.

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When Reality Strikes: Post #14Jan Reflections

deema kaedbey — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Sarah Hijazi

I do believe that change is possible. I do have hope for a better future in this country. But sometimes, reality strikes me. Sometimes, when I listen more deeply to my surroundings, I tend to lose hope.

We get to choose our friends and our entourage, fortunately for us. This choice is generally based on common ideas and politics. However, this selective process is not always a good thing. Being surrounded by people with the same ideas and fighting, generally, for the same causes, might create a bigger gap between us and the others, people around us who do not share our ideas and do not agree on our view of the world. By fighting for our common causes, we are fighting against these others. By standing against the patriarchal system, we are standing against patriarchal people. By asking for secularism, we are fighting against sectarian people. Nevertheless, sometimes I feel like there is too much disparity between both sides that our hope for a better world is exaggerated. Sometimes, when you try to cross this road and meet the others to ask them to join you so you can both build a better road for all of us to walk upon, you feel like you are both talking in different languages. Sometimes you feel like you just want to stay in your bubble where people are familiar with your language, where you can share your ideas, discuss them and fight for them.

On the 14^th of January 2012, a march against rape was organized to raise the voices of women against this patriarchal abusive system. As an AUB student, I worked on trying to mobilize people from my university to join us to take back our rights. I heard many positive feedbacks; a lot of people were excited and interested. Then again, some responses were so remarkably shocking that my optimism was dropping slowly. As I was distributing flyers, I came across a guy I know from a class we had together. I gave him the flyer and explained what this march was about. He looked very supportive and told me he will join “inshallah”. Then, I gave another flyer to the girl who was walking with him. She looked at me with this respectful fake smile and said: “No, thank you. I am against them.” I immediately checked the flyer to see if there were any name of an NGO she might be against or anything of that sort. “Against who?” I asked. She started walking away: “Women. I am against women. They are the source of all our problems” said this woman from AUB.

I also encountered one very optimistic guy while I was on campus. He told me he was certainly against rape but that we were wasting our time on such a cause since we live (and I quote him) “ in a very civilized country. There is no rape in Lebanon!! People are educated enough to know that rape is BAD.” This guy was obviously informed enough not to know of any rape case in Lebanon and to believe that a rapist is an uneducated and uncivilized person. Another funny encounter I had was with a guy who was patient enough to read the flyer, walk towards his class and then come back to give me the flyer saying: “ Why did you give this to me? Didn’t you see I am a man?” And to reclaim his manhood, he gave me back the flyer, in a very “man-ly” way. He also gave me what I suppose was meant to be the “man-ly”, intimidating but seductive look, and he walked away. I was petrified and ashamed for not noticing he was a MAN. For the sake of avoiding despair, I will stop here with my buoyant encounters.

Nevertheless, I was not the only one who had started to lose hope. While I was distributing flyers on the main gate of AUB, a policeman came to me and took one. After he finished reading it, he gave it back to me and nodded with his head: “It is a very important thing to do. I am sick of all the sexual harassment my sister has to endure every day”. Then, he added, desperately: “But do you think you can change anything in this country? We don’t have a state; we only have corrupted people controlling poor and helpless people. Do you think they would want a better country? Do you think they care about rape? Their daughters are protected, so as their money and resources. They wouldn’t want to protect anything else.”

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Collective Push of the Elephant

hiba — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Nasawiya

Sometimes it takes a collective of feminists to spot the patriarchal elephant in the room (and to show it to the door).

Battling patriarchy is difficult, particularly when you try to do it alone. If anything was learned from the Jan 14 March, solidarity is both empowering and inspiring. Change will only come if we work together to identify problems and construct positive solutions.

On Thursday 19 January 2012, Nasawiya member Sarah Abou Raad posted an image. It was of the ‘Parental Consent Sheet’ for the Beit el-Taibat (women’s dorms) at the University of Balamand. On this form the parent’s were asked what ‘level of freedom they would like to grant their daughter’. The options were ‘Full Freedom’, ‘Partial Freedom’, or ‘No Freedom’. Outraged, Sarah posted an image of the form with the caption ‘That’s how education is supposed to free our minds!! Im indignant!! I cant believe it!!’

Roughly an hour later, another Nasawiya member, Christine Lindner, saw Sarah’s post. Being an Assistant Professor at the University of Balamand, Christine was immediately frustrated by the image that she saw. During the past few months, Christine, with the help of many dedicated students, has helped start the debate about gender discrimination on campus. Farah from the Adventures of Salwa led a great discussion, while the student newspaper covered a number of important topics related to sexual harassment. Christine met with the Dean of Students to revise sexual harassment policies and felt a general interest for change. However, this form, it is language of ‘no freedom’ for female students was a huge step in the wrong direction.

An interesting exchange took place between Sarah and Christine that night, over the implications of the application and its wording. As a result, Christine sent an email to the Dean of Student Affairs asking questions about the application, which she posted to the Nasawiya wall. Other members posted responses to the image’s comment thread. Some mentioned that similar forms are used at dorms for other universities. This needs to be researched further and pursued for change.

Christine met with the Dean of Student Affairs and the university counselor on Monday 23 January 2012. Both positively received the complaint, stating that it was only when Christine had identified the strong language of the form that they realized how counterproductive it was to their goals of empowering the students. As such, a replacement form was created emphasizing not the disempowerment of the female students, but the level of supervision that the university would play, upon the request of the parents (many of whom live abroad). It was also agreed that this form would be signed by the parents of students resident at both the women’s and men’s dorms. The updated version can be found at

http://www.balamand.edu.lb/english/OSA.asp?id=2705&fid=160

So while this does not mark the erasure of patriarchy at the University of Balamand, it does mark a small victory, while illuminating a few important lessons:

Firstly, a variety of tactics are needed to bring down patriarchal systems. At times, large protest marches are needed. In other times, it is a stern email from a member of faculty asking questions about a problematic practice. Others, it is the threat of images going viral on the internet. Sometimes, all three. Patriarchy and social injustice manifest themselves in all facets of life. We need to keep all tools ready, harnessing the appropriate tool for the specific situation and specific audience.

Secondly, identifying and challenging patriarchy is a collective effort. Sarah’s posting of the image prompted Christine to write the letter, which illuminated the problem to the Dean, so that the form was changed and the discriminatory practice equalized. This is the collective at work. This is its strength. This is why it works. We cannot stand alone, for the elephant is too big sometimes to even see, let alone push out the door. And if one project fails, we are there to catch each other, provide an umbrella when it rains, or a tissue for the tears. This is the strength of the collective and this is why it will succeed.

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يوم ضربَنا مصرف لبنان: مبلى في بديل

Azadeh Faramarziha — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:00:00 +0000

By Wissam Andraos

جنى نخال

صراخ نساء وهراوات تعلو وتسقط ، تعلو وتسقط…لم نفهم ما الذي حصل. كنّا نحمل يافطات ونتحدّث ونهتف أحياناً . وبدأ“الخبيط” فجأة، دون أن نعي لماذا قبضوا على أحد الشبّان. جرّبنا أن نغلق الطريق الرئيسي في شارع الحمرا حتّى يعود الشاب. تقدمّت مع العشرات من النساء والرجال لإقفال الطريق، وهجم علينا رجال الدرك بعصيهم وأيديهم العملاقة. لا أذكر إلّا إحساسي بأنني صغيرة جدّا، يتدافعني من حولي، وإذ أنظر إلى أعلى أرى كعبي بندقيتين يرتفعان فوق رأسي. أغمض عيناي وأقول “خلص، أكلتها“، ولكن ثمّة من يدفعني بغير قصد فأفوّت الضربة. تتقاذفني المتظاهرات والمتظاهرون.

لم أرهم يوما ينهالون على متظاهرين بهذا الشكل. ضربوا ونكّلوا واستشرسوا. كنت أسمع صراخ النساء من حولي دون توقّف. صرخت بهم أنا أيضا إذ رأيت الغضب فيهم وهم يضربوننا “**** بأكبر أرزة على راس أكبر ضابط…يا حيوانات“. ركضوا وراءنا وانهال العشرات منهم على شخص واحد يفجّرون فيه حقدا لم أعرف في البدء منبعه.

“ضربوا أدهم وأخذوه“، قالوا لي، ضربوه، وأنا لم أكن هناك، واعتقلوه ولا أدري ما أفعل. تسمّرت مكاني وأنا أتنفّس ببطء، أحسست بعضلات وجهي تتشنّج. ضربوه، يعني “فجّموه“. لم أستطع الصراخ ولكنني هجمت أدفع بهم فأفشّ خلقي. تحوّلت المظاهرة من مطالبة بحقوق ورفض لواقع إلى لعبة سيكولوجية: تنفيس عن أحقاد وغضب ثم ردّات الفعل.

لأوّل مرّة أراهم هكذا وقد فقدت عيونهم جزأ من بشريتها، وانهالوا علينا بالضرب وكأنهم يفرّغون فينا كلّ غضبهم من الحياة وظلمها لهم…أو يفعلون ذلك لأنهم يدركون أننا على حق، وأننا بوجودنا هنا نخلق ثغرة في نظامهم.

كنت قد حضّرت يافطة صغيرة كتبت عليها “..مبلا في بديل“. كتبتها وأنا أتذكّر كيف، مذ بدأت أسأل عن تأثير هذا النظام علينا وأبحث عمّا يمكن أن يغيّره، كان الجواب يأتيني: “معك حق. نظام ظالم، بس ما في بديل“.مبلى في بديل، ولأنه “في بديل“، ضربونا.

ضربونا لإننا نزلنا إلى الشارع وقلنا لهم “مبلا في بديل“، لنظامهم الرأسمالي، لسياساتهم الإقتصادية، لهمجيّتهم، لمفهومهم المجزّئ للحياة، لفلسفتهم التي تقول بأحقيّة الأقوى، لنظرتهم إلى الأمور التي تقتل الجمال. البديل يدمّر منطقهم.

في كلّ مرّة تقع في سلسلة من تناقضاتها وأزماتها، تستشرس الرأسمالية أكثر. فمنذ أزمة ال2008 ونحن نرى الحكومات وهي تتخبّط في سياسات اقتصادية مجنونة، تقطع رعايتها عن الأكثر تهميشا، تسدّ ديون الشركات العملاقة، تسحق مدنا بكاملها وتبحث كمارد أعمى عن مخرج. لقد تعوّدنا على كوننا الجسد الذي يستمدّ منه هذا النظام قوته وحياته. لقد كنّا منذ البدء سوقا ويدا عاملة ومصادر ثروات لهذا النظام. وتقول الرفيقة والمناضلة والكاتبة أودري لورد “في مجتمع يكون فيه تعريف “الخير” اعتمادا على مفهوم الربح بدل الحاجة الإنسانية، يجب أن يكون هنالك دائما فريق من الناس –وعبر قمع ممأسس- يُنظر إليهم كفائض ويحتلّون المنزلة الأدنى لغير المؤنسن. في هذا المجتمع، هذا الفريق هو الملوّنون وأبناء العالم الثالث، العمّال، كبار السن والنساء.” اليوم نحن الفائض، نساء ورجالا وعمّالا وكلّ من فكّر خارج المفاهيم المعلّبة.

منذ 2008 إذا، والأمور تتضّح والشعوب تتحرّك. ونحن نشهد ليس ثورات فقط، بل طرح أسئلة ممنوعة ..وهذا ما يخيفهم. بالإضافة إلى فرضنا لحقيقة وجود البديل، يبدو طرحنا لأسئلة عن أشياء من المفترض أنهم أجابوا عليها وأقنعونا بأجوبتهم، هو التهديد الثاني لهم. “لم ندفع لنغطّي ديونكم؟ أين تذهب أموالنا؟ لم نعمل أكثر منكم ونتعب أكثر ونعيش تحت خط الفقر وأنتم تنعمون بالثروات؟ لم الله يحبّكم ولا يحبّنا؟…”هذا ما يجعل النظام مجنونا إلى هذه الدرجة، هذا ما يجعله يهجم كالمسعور علينا.

وفي اليوم الذي تظاهرنا فيه رفضا للسياسات الرأسمالية، فرضنا واقعا جديدا: إن وضوح فكرة هذه التظاهرة واتجاهها بالتحديد أي اتخاذها دون أي تردّد شكلا يساريا بحتا بشعارات ومواقف واضحة من حيث رفضها للمساومة على تغيير نظام ظالم، شكّلت استهدافا لقلب النظام،“فالوضوح هو الحقيقة“.

والواضح فيما جرى هو استعمال الشرطة كأداة عنفية للقمع، بيد المصارف. وقد ظهّر ذلك الصراع المطروح:فصراعنا ليس ضد الدولة كسلطة فقط، بل كتابع لطبقة بورجوازية عابرة للحدود. لقد لقّب المناضلون السود الشرطة ب“الخنازير“، لمعرفتهم أن هذا الجسم القمعي الذي يملك وحده حقّ استعمال القوة وضدّ من يريد، هو أداة سهلة بيد الدولة التي هي أصلا أداة للبورجوازية العنصرية آنذاك. الشرطة هنا ليست “حامية”المواطنة والمواطن و“حافظة” الأمن. هي ليست، كما يريدنا ليبراليو (عفوا للتصنيف، ولكن الأمور هي هكذا على الأرض) الحداثة والثقافة والخروج من الخيمة أن نظن، ليست ما يفصلنا عن العنف والفوضى وغياب المبادئ والقوانين. هي ليست المعيار للصح والخطأ، وهي ليست إذا من يجب أن أحني له رأسي فآكل الضربة من هراوة وأنا أشكره لتأديبه لي وهدايتي إلى الصراط المستقيم. لقد ضربوا “أدهم” ولم يجعلني ذلك أحبهم أكثر أو أتفهّم وجهة نظرهم أو أقتنع بأحقية ما يضربوننا من أجله. الشرطة هنا بكل بساطة موجودة لتنفيذ أوامر سلطة المال.

لقد ضربوا من ضربوا وذهبوا. ولكن الحقد الطبقي الذي كان يملؤني حين أتيت إلى هذه المظاهرة الآن، ازداد مرّات ومرّات. فهم ضربوا ما في القلب من ألوان وأخذوه معتقلا لديهم، موزّعي الشاي هؤلاء. وهم جعلوا ممّا كان فيّ من منطق يرفضهم، جعلوا منه جزء صغيرا ممّا أصبح فيّ الآن من شغف لرؤية هذا النظام ينهار وأدواته وعبيده والمدافعين عنه.

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Civil War: Will I Ever Consider Myself Lucky to be Born in Lebanon?

Lamia Moghnie — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Mayada Y.

As someone born by the end of the Lebanese civil war, I should consider myself lucky to not to have witnessed any of the brutality that took place back in those days. Yet, this is not exactly my take on things. It is enough for me to take a walk in my neighborhood, or to listen to a five-minute news bulletin on any given day to realize that this country is still far from getting over the scars of its civil war, and that I am still far from calling myself a true citizen of it.

We are still tangled up in a vicious cycle of hatred that continues to prevent us from building a solid nation. Every time one of the boys running our political scene is provoked in some manner, we are bombarded with threats of an upcoming civil war that could be even more invasive than its precedent. Taking into consideration that the Lebanese voters are the ones who have elected these boys in the first place, the possibility of verbal aggression translating into physical confrontation becomes very logical, as it has been proved on more than one occasion.

The truth of the matter is that we are all being manipulated, and it does not take much thinking to realize this fact. We are brainwashed to think that we can find no safety unless we remain sheltered within our religious clans, and that we should follow without questioning, be it the religious authorities of these clans or their political partners. We are socialized to believe that we are too weak to be able to make a difference, thus we should passively accept things as they come, making sure that the status quo is never vulnerable to real change.

However, I am dissatisfied with this situation, and I am angered about my own marginalization in it, as I am sure many are too. It saddens me to see that we are further drowning in our despair, and it breaks my heart to see twenty-something people, especially women, so committed to the ideas of certain political groups that they refuse to see that their relation with their state and its representatives is nothing short of abusive. This is why I, as a twenty-something Lebanese woman, choose to take part in another war, that differs from the meaningless war this country has lived through and continues to be on the verge of.

Contrary to the habit of carrying guns, knives, or sticks, and of course the famous tire burning rituals of traditional Lebanese gangsters, I am opting out for a war that is both human and environmentally friendly. While conventional war is largely driven by a male mentality and power that uses violence as its primary tool– a tool that never spares the lives of innocent bystanders, this war uses different tools and does not require destroying people or their lives to succeed.

This war requires people to view themselves as powerful agents of change, and it is powered by men and women who want to free themselves from the discriminative values embedded in their thinking, hoping to aspire others to do the same. This war views every person as important, and rebels against the dullness of conforming to group mobilization schemes. In addition, this war targets ignorance and misconceptions, and it seeks to build a nation on the basis of social justice and real democracy that respects the rights of all citizens.

Taking part in this war is not an easy task, for it is hard to let go of everything you grew up believing and to build a knowledge that defies all the twisted norms around you. This being said, I admit that I am yet to be immune from falling as a victim to my own prejudices, but I refuse to give up on my ability or the ability of others to turn our circumstances around. I just cannot resist the pulling force of liberation out of this humiliating state when this war will prevail, and I know that it is enough to keep me going strong, and to rise again when I fall. Who knows? maybe one day I will be able to consider myself lucky to be born in Lebanon.

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Audre Lorde, quote mining and rambles from an editor in despair

Lamia Moghnie — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 08:27:00 +0000

Sara Emiline AbuGhazal

It’s spring again. Unfortunately not everyone is in love and flowers are nowhere close to picking themselves[1]. Yet it’s a wonderful spring, Mubarak has been overthrown, Ben Ali has been kicked out and in our hearts we are jumping north, as Damascus is about to rise. Beirut seems half empty half full, an anti Sectarian trend is coming together every Sunday, with open sit-ins everywhere, and everyone seems to be so vocal about overthrowing the sectarian system.

What does that all have to do with me (you) as a feminist living in Lebanon? What does going to an anti sectarian meeting mean, where men hold their positions tight, where any suggestion relating to women’s rights and equality is either turned into a battle between men and women (the same old tactic of brotherhood), and where feminism becomes an agenda that is threatening to the fate of the revolution (patriarchy disguised in Secularism).

A (true) anecdote: a “comrade”, filled with half communist zeal, half patriarchal power, and an excess of aggressiveness completely silences another woman. She dared to propose a women- related matter for the march; he screams from the top of his lungs that “in these revolutionary times what are we talking about a ridiculous matter such as women rights”; an applause is heard- NEXT POINT IN THE AGENDA. (They move on, I see the woman shrinking, face goes yellow, and eyes shut but wide open). What do you do? The obvious: make a statement in their face and leave, while your supposed allies hide their faces from you, they become strangers, it’s that facial expression again, when you know you are being ignored on purpose because you are RIGHT. Yes, they know that they are repeating the same old story- where nation-state-collective desire is dominant, and liberties and emancipation of any form of OTHERNESS is by default a post revolutionary concern, so why bother by bringing it out now?

An anecdote’s conclusion: What’s the situation of the women in Egypt after the revolution?

3adi, [2] happens all the time. Happens everywhere, happens to all of us. It has happened everywhere and to all of us before.

I’m obsessed with knowledge. I realize this every time I speak. Sometimes I’d rather not attend meetings at all, and just send a recorded message that people can play if they want to hear what I have to say. It would say that we need to produce knowledge, and I know it’s not cool, and that it’s really far from the image of the radical feminist that is smashing patriarchy with a hammer, it doesn’t encourage you to go down the streets and chant. I mean, what would you shout out? “Produce Knowledge Now!” That’s boring and is easily attacked as elitist. But it’s not. Knowledge was hijacked by the elite, and I ( you) reclaim it, because (i) you come from the margins, the less privileged, the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. I want to produce knowledge because this is how I survive, and how I trace my radical non-confirmative ideas back to my (your) ancestors and those who came before me (you). It’s the only way that I can say: Whatever you want to call it, whether feminism or women in a constant state of PMS, separatists, men haters, lesbo dykes with a penis complex, aggressive bitch in need of anger management treatments, you name it. I can say: whatever it is that I’m saying is not something I invented but I am adding to it and I’m modifying it according to my experiences; that these injustices and wars on women’s existence and bodies have been happening for thousands of years, and that my sisters in ancestry have spoke about this and have passed it on. Feminism and the notion of understanding women’s situation and their position in the global, local and historical sense have always existed. And I (you) are just agents that are vocal about it, and continue and complete the knowledge around it until it’s fully exposed, and understood. My (your) sense of injustice is not different from the sense of privileges that the agents of patriarchy feel and keep on reproducing in various forms of ideologies and tragedies so that they can never lose them.

In my daily rants a friend reminds me of Audre Lorde, and if she doesn’t Audre Lorde reminds me of herself. Why do I mention an American (black lesbian) feminist? Because this is how struggles connect and knowledge gets produced? Because Audre Lorde’s work is a time capsule in a form of knowledge. Her work exposed silences and power struggles within the feminist movement, and her work made it possible for all of those living on the margins of movements (lead by the white middle class) to reclaim a space in it, and connect race, sexuality, and class with gender and justice. Here in Beirut, we need to know all, read all, but produce our own. But most importantly, we need to be very careful about quote mining and taking matters out of context (we are always out of context in the eyes of patriarchy). Because quotes are an idea in a context, context is as important as ideas and that means we need now, today and in core of our presence to take ourselves extra seriously; and that means we need to regroup, talk often with each other and be political about it. We need to start understanding the value of each and every one of us, by understanding that our struggles are intersecting.

It’s spring and I’m in despair. I want to produce knowledge. I want my sisters to come and join me by asking me, “how can this knowledge be part of our struggle and revolution”, and more importantly, “how can this knowledge set us free?”

[1] Check E.E Cummings Poem: who knows if the moon’s

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/361

[2] it’s normal

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“سمعتو صوت؟” “إيه، سمعنا”

Lamia Moghnie — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 09:15:00 +0000

Claudine Farah/ كلودين فرح

كنت أعيش في لبنان وكأنني لست منه ولا أنتمي إلى مجتمعه. لطالما كانت اهتماماتي وطموحاتي وأهدافي تختلف عن أي أحد آخر أعرفه وذلك لأنني أعتبر نفسي إنساناً، قبل أي أمر آخر بينما كان منطلق الآخرين يتوقف على جندرهم: أي درب يسلكونه وأي تفكير يتبعونه يرتكز على ما إذا كانوا إناثاً أو ذكوراً. وكلما أدركت كم التمييز شاسعاً بين الجنسين في لبنان، أكان في قوانينه أو مجتمعه أو طوائفه… كلما عزلت نفسي أكثر فأكثر فاقدةً الأمل في أن أنتمي يوماً. بحثت بين الجمعيات التي ُتعنى بشؤون المرأة وحقوقها وازداد يأسي أضعافاً. كان بعض تلك الجمعيات يُعنى بالمرأة انطلاقاً من كونها أماً وربة منزل فحسب وكأنّ لا نساء خارج نطاق الزواج والأمومة. وكان البعض الآخر يحصر اهتمامه بالمرأة المثقفة أو الثرية ما دون سواها وكل ما رأيت تلك الجمعيات تحققه هو إقامة المآدب الفاخرة.

في نهاية المطاف، لم أعد أبحث. والحمد للّه على الإنترنت إذ سمحت لي بالتنفيس عن بعض إحباطي من خلال التواصل مع أشخاص غير لبنانيين يجدونني أنا المنطقية والقوانين اللبنانية غير المنطقية، وإلاّ لفقدت صوابي فعلاً. ولكن ذات يومٍ وإثر نقاش في العمل، نصحتني إحداهن بتفقد صفحة مجموعة نسوية لبنانية على الإنترنت. وبعد تأجيل وتشاؤم وتوقع الأسوأ، زرت الموقع ولم أصدق عينَي! كانت المرة الأولى في حياتي التي أقرأ فيها مطالبة بمساواة حقيقية بين المرأة والرجل في لبنان، وأقصد أي امرأة، العاملة الأجنبية، المثلية، المتحولة الجنس، الفقيرة، المؤمنة، الملحدة، عاملة الجنس، المثقفة، المتزوجة، الأم… بل إنّ المجموعة تهتم في الوقت عينه بتوعية الرجل ولا تحاربه. إنها تدعوه إلى مشاركتها في تحطيم الذكورية المقيّدة لكلا الجنسين والمجحفة بحق أمه وأخته وزوجته وحبيبته وابنته.

ومن قلب هذه المجموعةالشاملة الفريدة، علا صوت لنشر التوعية ورواية تجارب النسويات المختلفة ومناقشة شتى المواضيع التي تلقي الضوء على مشاكل المرأة وحقوقها المنتقصة. نشأت صوت النسوة وكنت ما زلت أتعرف إلى المجموعة النسوية وأهدافها. واليوم، وبعد مرور سنة، أشعر بفخر شديد لأنني ألعب دوراً ولو بسيطاً في رفع هذا الصوت وجعله منبراً لتحطيم أوهام اللبنانيين واللبنانيات وجهلهم الواقع اللبناني على حقيقته وحثهم على النهوض والمطالبة بإنسانيتنا أولاً، قبل مناصب الرؤساء والوزراء والنواب والأحزاب والطوائف…

“سمعتو صوت؟” “إيه، سمعنا” وكم أنا ممتنة لأنني سمعته وكم أتمنى أن يسمعه جميع اللبنانيين واللبنانيات لعله يحفّزهم كما حفّزني وينفخ فيهم روح الأمل ليستمر النضال نحو حياة أفضل ودولة تعامل جميع مَن يعيش فيها بمساواة وعدل على أساس إنسانيتهم قبل أي شيء آخر.

سنة حلوة يا صوت وليبقى صداك مستمراً لأجيال بعد

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سِمعا صوت؟

Lamia Moghnie — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 09:03:00 +0000

Sawt al Niswa

نكمل السنة في صوت، وفي سنة واحد، نشرنا حوالي 300 مقالة وصورة واحتللنا جريدة الأخبار لسنتين على التوالي ، وكبرنا من فريق صغير “معجوء” بنفسه الى فريق من عدة محررات ومجموعة أوسع من الكاتبات وصاحبات الرأي . و قد استطعنا تنظيم ثلاث ورش عن الكتابة النسوية و“خلوة” للكتابة أقل ما يقال إنها كانت “سحرية“. نقول هذا لا للاستعراض بل للتشديد على أنّ صوت النسوة في عملية بحث دائم وحديث دائم عن تقديم معرفة نسوية عضوية تأخذ بعين الاعتبار اللغة و التاريخ والسياسة والمعرفة. صوت النسوة لا تزال في أول الطريق، رحلة قررنا القيام بها وها نحن نلتقي بالكثير منكن ، على مفترق طرق ، نكمل سوية لنلتقي بالأخريات.

تهيّئ صوت نفسها لسنة أخرى وستعمل في الأساس على جمع معرفة نسوية تتعلق بالجماعة و العلاقات التي تحكمنا كأفراد، الثورات العربية ومعارك النساء داخل هذه الثورات ومعها، إسقاط النظام الطائفي وتحديات النساء مع النظام نفسه وإنتاج أدب نسوي شخصي وسياسي، عاطفي وشديد البلاغة . صوت النسوة، هي موجة من الأصوات، أصوات غاضبة أحياناً ولاذعة غالباً، عالية بالإنكليزية وأكثر بالعربية. أصوات تكمل بعضها البعض، أصوات عفوية وغير مزيفة، تكون المرآة التي تتطلب الكثير من الشجاعة لننظر اليها. صوت النسوة هي سياسية بامتياز والسياسي في تعريفنا، يكون أوسع من 8 و14 و الطوائف أجمعين، السياسي في نظرنا هو كل خيار نقوم به كأفراد وجماعات كل يوم. كل ما نفعله هو سياسي. صوت النسوة في هذا العيد تشكر “نسوية” المظلة الأم والتي معها ولدت “صوت” بعد مخاض أليم .

فصوت النسوة كانت فكرة لطالما رفضها و لو بشكل مهذب وبكثير من فنون “الرفض” اللبنانية اللائقة، مَن التقينا بهن وبهم في رحلتنا ونحن نبحث عن الجماعة التي ستحضننا. و تعددت أسباب الرفض وكان أبرزها يتعلق أولاً بغرابة الفكرة، أي مجلة تتوجه من النساء وإليهن، تنتج معرفة “نسوية” تشابك السياسة و الجندر والاقتصاد والتجارب الشخصية بها. ففي ذاك الوقت لم نكن نحن الناشطات إلاّ افراداً في مجموعات سياسية لا تزال حديثة العهد في العمل السياسي وربما كنا لا نزال واقعات في فخ الذكورية الأشدّ، أي الخوف من عزلنا واتهامنا بالعمل ضد “الرجال” وبالتالي فقد أي امتيازات كنا قد حصلنا عليها بالعمل معهم. وثانياً، عدم وجود الجماعة ” النسوية” والتي كما نرى اليوم تشكل دعماً فكرياً ومعرفياً وعاطفياً للنساء الناشطات، كونها تقوم بالمعركة الأهم و هي تحدي “وصمة العار” أو “النبذ” والذي لطالما كانت النساء العاملات على حقوقهن يعانين منه وتقوم كجماعة بخرق حيز جديد في الوعي المجتمعي. الجماعة النسوية وتعمل عليها مجموعة نسوية تقوم بعمل تاريخي وإن ما زالت في أوائل عمرها.

اليوم، ننظر الى أنفسنا في صوت النسوة ونحن على دراية بالمسؤولية التي نحملها وهي إنتاج معرفة “نسوية” شاملة لا تساوم ولا تهادن وتصدر من قلب الحركة النسوية!

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hereandthere/من هنا وهناك

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