Sexuality, especially women’s, remains a largely taboo subject in the Arab world, as our writer learned the hard way.
Joumana Haddad
I got introduced to sex through the most shocking and dangerous initiation. I was eleven or a little over, an avid reader devouring all the books that fell into my hands, when one day I stumbled by chance upon a volume entitled Justine by a French writer called the Marquis de Sade. A book that it is appalling, to say the least, for a girl that age — I’d say even appalling for a person of any age, if one is not prepped, coached, and “vaccinated” enough to grasp it. I was also getting a very conservative upbringing — an upbringing akin to going through a “factory of complexes” as it would be phrased in perfect Arabic style — that forbade me from even thinking about such matters or mentioning them, let alone inquiring about them and daring to discuss them aloud with anyone.
In my childhood, I was addicted to reading a series in French entitled Martine, about the adventures of a cute and mischievous girl discovering the world: Martine Goes to the Beach, Martine Goes Camping, Martine At the Zoo, Martine Travels With Her Parents, and so on. Entertaining, funny stories, illustrated with beautiful drawings. So when I read the name Justine on the cover of the aforementioned book, the name Martine immediately popped into my memory, and I assumed that the work in my hands would be of the same style, but directed to an older age, since it did not contain illustrations (fortunately, that edition did not have illustrations, as I later discovered that many prints of Justine did, and today I own a large collection of them). But there was a huge difference, as it became clear to me from the very first pages, between Martine and Justine, and between the adventures of the first and the adventures of the second!
That dreadful, outrageous book was my first exposure to the subject of sex and sexual relations. Imagine the gravity of the situation: jumping all at once, without any kind of preparation, from a state of near-absolute ignorance (I would not call it innocence, I do not believe in this concept) into the realm of orgies between adult men (mostly priests) and helpless little girls, with constant doses of humiliation, oppression, torture, and all kinds of physical and psychological suffering. I was seeing, smelling, touching, hearing and tasting a cocktail of tears, blood, screams and semen that kept intensifying from one page to the next, without giving me one moment to breathe, of respite, to assimilate what was being described to me in words. Crude, obscene words that almost matched the brutality and terror of what they were conveying. And amidst all of these atrocities, there was obviously no mention of love, feeling, desire, attraction, etc. It was just a carnival of bestial instincts, tyrannical coercion, brutal subjugation, extreme egotism, and ferocious physicality: pure, unadulterated violence.
In a world completely parallel to this world — parallel to the extent that it was impossible for these two worlds to meet at that time in my mind and understanding — I received insinuations, sometimes subconscious, other times straightforward, about the meaning of love and the way to live it from the romantic novels, romantic films, and romantic songs that accompanied my childhood and adolescence: Overflowing emotions, poetic words, sweeping tenderness, generous attention, and longing seemingly untainted by sex. Also: soft kisses, platonic hugs, a hand gently caressing the hair to lift a stray lock from a blushing cheek: it was all sugar. So much sugar that it was stomach-turning. No lust, no nudity, no flesh, no genitals. Also: No pain, no insults, no cruelty of any kind. Sex, I was convinced then, was one planet, and love was another, in a completely different galaxy. Two extremes separated by an abyss. Black and white. That’s how they came to be shaped in my imagination, and that’s how I was initiated into them. For the record, this didn’t lead to me preferring one over the other — and I say this in order to do justice to my young self, her courage, curiosity and insolence, when she could easily have become sexophobic. But no: I wanted love and I wanted sex with the same intensity, and I craved experiencing them both with equal thirst, despite the horror of the second as it was introduced to me, and my great dread of it (or perhaps because of that dread). Indeed, I was yearning for this and that, but they were two completely different and separate experiences in my mind. I used to think: There are those whom we love on one hand, and those whom we fuck on the other.
Then life happened. Yes, life happened, and the two planets, the planet of sex and the planet of love, gradually converged and merged — not completely, and not every time, but in a good number of them at least. Story after story and one relationship after another, the two amalgamated in my perception, and my view of them became more balanced with the passage of time. In parallel, I also began to understand my body and my mind more, and better comprehend their needs and desires. Thus, I realized that I would not get rid of the early, formative influences of the Marquis de Sade on my sexual whims and fantasies, and I accepted that. Rather, I learned to love, appreciate and invest in this reality, after I read more about the subject and educated myself about it. We all have our own inclinations, kinks and fantasies, and there is nothing abnormal about these as long as they happen and materialize between two adults who are fully aware of what they want, and express it without fear or pressure.
If I’m telling you the story of my sexual awakening above, it is mainly to illustrate the fact that most of us in the Arab world get no sexual education whatsoever. There was such a course in school, but it turned out to be nothing more than mere biology: How the sperm fertilizes the ovule! Many of us learn about sex either from porn magazines (now the younger generations use porn websites), or from books, as in my case; or — and this is an epidemic — from incidents of sexual harassment and assault.
On that last point, I said above that I got introduced to sex at the young age of eleven. But truth is, I was introduced to the penis way earlier. I still remember everything clearly, as if it happened yesterday. I was seven or eight, returning from school, going up the stairs leading to our apartment on the fifth floor. Our elderly neighbor was waiting for me, standing behind the open door of his flat. He was wearing a shabby, beige robe with dark grease stains on it, tied around his waist with a clothesline-like sash. As soon as I passed in front of him, he quickly undid the girdle and opened the robe. The old man was, of course, naked, and it was the first time I saw a penis. Needless to say, the scene wasn’t pretty, and my introduction to men’s anatomy wasn’t the glossiest or most appealing. It also goes without saying that nothing in my upbringing, or in my parents’ conversations with me at that age — and even, by the way, in their conversations with me during the later stages of life — prepared me for the possibility of something similar happening to me, or for how to deal with it. I still remember how I ran up the remaining floors that day, overwhelmed with a suffocating feeling: A mixture of fear, shock, disgust and shame. I entered the house, put my school bag on the floor, took off my uniform, washed my hands, and sat down to have lunch. I didn’t tell my mom anything. Of course I didn’t tell her anything. That particular channel of communication wasn’t open at all between us.
I keep wondering: How many of us Arab women would have a saner relationship with our bodies and sexualities if we had a proper sexual education, both at home and at school? How many of us would be spared the traumas of sexual harassment, or worse, of sexual violence, if our parents, teachers and culture had the foresight, and the courage, to prepare us for such likelihoods? How much less stress on a woman’s virginity, and more emphasis on her sexual rights would there be, if we were brought up to discuss sex without fear or shame? And most importantly, how many taboos, complexes and hypocritical practices would disappear if our initiation were not merely left to chance, or to porn, or to dangerous books, or to next-door flashers?
Back to the start: I got introduced to sex through the most shocking and dangerous initiation, and I’m sure there are so many like me in my part of the world. And while I do believe that we are in dire need of political and economic reforms in many, if not most Arab countries, I am equally convinced that what we need first and foremost is a real sexual revolution. All this talk about equality and women’s rights and feminist agendas is surely important, but it won’t have an authentic long-lasting impact if we don’t start by the most basic act of rebellion: owning our bodies and our choices in the face of everything and everyone who keeps telling us that we shouldn’t, that we should wear this not that, do this not that, act like this not like that, etc., especially religion. Because whether we admit it or not, like it or not, we Arabs still live in a world where a women’s so-called “chastity” is so valued that crimes are committed in its name (they are falsely called crimes of honor), and in this same absurd world, a woman is supposed to ask a sheikh if it’s better to have a Brazilian or a Bikini wax of her pussy. So, let’s stop for a minute and ask ourselves: what kind of religion inserts its nose between people’s thighs?
A sexual revolution indeed. This matter is not a luxury. This is not a bourgeois view of women’s empowerment. This is feminism 101. Equality 101. Gender justice 101. Freedom 101. Let us always remember, wherever we are and whatever we do, our bodies, and everything they are made of (the blood, the flesh, the nerves, the dreams, the desires, etc). Let us remember, I say, that these bodies of ours are not the property of the family, nor the property of society, nor the property of religion, nor the property of tradition, nor the property of the nation, not the property of the culture, nor the property of the media, nor the property of the husband, nor the property of the boyfriend, and so on.
Our bodies, exclusively, categorically, and irrevocably, belong to us alone.
