Chewing Viagra Gum, the Audio Version!

15 March, 2022

“Chewing Viagra Gum”—Mai Ghoussoub’s groundbreaking essay on culture and Arab media, begins with the Israel plot to undermine “the Arab body” with sexual chewing gum, a story that was first reported in Middle Eastern newspapers in 1996.

Ghoussoub’s essay also critiques patriarchal attitudes in the region, medieval Islamic sexual manuals and Egyptian cinema. Ghoussoub (1952-2007) was an author, artist and publisher known for her writing on gender issues, her plays and art performances. She co-founded Saqi Books, the first Middle Eastern publishing house and bookstore in London, with André Gaspard. Saqi, which means the water-carrier in Arabic, published titles no other Middle Eastern publisher would touch at the time, such as Brian Whitaker’s “Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East” (2006) and Ammar Abdulhamid’s debut novel, “Menstruation” (2001).

“Chewing Viagra Gum” first appeared in Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East, an anthology of essays she coedited with Emma Sinclair-Webb, which Saqi published in 2000. The essay was abridged, in this special reading for the TMR by Malu Halasa, with music by Justin Adams.

 

Malu Halasa, Literary Editor at The Markaz Review, is editing the anthology Woman Life Freedom, Voices and Art from the Women’s Protests in Iran, to be published by Saqi Books, September 2023. She curated Transit Tehran in London: Art and Documentary from Iran, the Atrium Gallery, London School of Economics, 2009; and Culture in Defiance: Continuing Traditions of Satire, Art and the Struggle for Freedom in Syria, the Prince Claus Fund Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2012. This exhibition toured and was shown in Rich Mix, in London, as part of the 2013 Shubbak Festival; and at the Rundetårn, Copenhagen. Malu was the gofer for Syrian graffiti artists, in the Victorian & Albert Museum’s exhibition Disobedient Objects, 2015. She participated in Nope to Hope:Graphic and Politics 2008–18, London’s Design Museum, an exhibition that was taken down off museum walls by the artists and participants, after the Design Museum held a reception at the exhibition for the UK arms trade. She worked with Venetia Porter at the British Museum to bring Syrian artists and their work to the museum’s permanent collection. She is currently working on an anthology of writing, art and photography from the women’s protests in Iran.

Arab sexualitychewing gumMai GhoussoubMalu HalasaViagra

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