In the UK, my mother had been the breadwinner. I could not get a grasp on why women were treated like this. Being a 15-year-old girl anywhere is difficult - all those hormones and everything – but being a 15-year-old girl in Saudi Arabia…it was like someone had turned the light off in my head. My family moved to Saudi Arabia from Glasgow when I was 15.
You write that you were “traumatised into feminism” as a teenager. It was triggering for me, especially when writing about sexual assault because of my own experience, not just of the assault but of misogyny. Many times, I literally had to walk away from my laptop. You mention cases of female genital mutilation and rape. Your book is part-manifesto, part-memoir and includes testimony from Muslim women who have experienced abuse throughout their lives. She has now expanded the original article into a book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution. The following year, her examination of misogyny in the Muslim world entitled “Why Do They Hate Us?” became a viral sensation. In November 2011, while covering the protests in Egypt, she was physically and sexually assaulted by riot police, and detained for 12 hours by the Interior Ministry and Military Intelligence. Born in Port Said, Egypt, in 1967, she moved to the UK with her parents (both doctors) when she was seven and then to Saudi Arabia when she was 15. M ona Eltahawy is an award-winning journalist and commentator on Arab and Muslim issues and global feminism.
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