Women in Cyberspace: Talk at American Univ, Cairo

On Monday, November 5th, I went to a panel discussion at AU on "Her Space, Our Space: Girls and Women Pushing the Boundaries of Cyberspace." The panel was chaired by Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian journalist whose writings on the Arab world appear regularly in Arab and U.S. media. (see her website at http://monaeltahawy.com/). The discussion threw a fascinating perspective on the spaces women are using to assert their voices, and the subversive potential of blogs and internet use. Here are some of the highlights of the discussion:

Mona Eltahawy opened the discussion by describing how she became addicted to blogs – first through Kuwaiti, and then Saudi bloggers. She fell in love with one blog in particular: one that was written by “Saudi Girl”, a woman who dreamed of the day she could wear flip-flops and show off her toe ring and nail varnish. “I loved this girl!” Mona said. After giving a paper on blogs to a prestigious meeting of journalists, and urging those present to check out Saudi Girl’s site to discover the way women were using cyberspace to push boundaries, Mona discovered that Saudi Girl was actually Saudi Guy…. “But,” Mona said, “I wasn’t disappointed.” Instead, Mona described how she was thrilled at the layers of subversion and gender blurring that was at the heart of this particular blog. You can still read saudigirl’s “outing” on her/his webpage at http://saudigirl.blogspot.com/. S/he writes:
“It first started when I became livid by some of the idiotic arguments that certain public men were using to justify, or make apologies for, the dearth of women's rights in Saudi Arabia. I decided to write to these men in a public fashion. Why not write as a man you ask? Well, I thought it would be more effective (for the cause) if a woman demonstrated the total absence of logic in their arguments. So Alia, a character created for an angry email, became my Arab Amazon, fighting for her rights, and for the rights of all downtrodden Saudi women.”

The discussion at AU also touched on the fact that blogs were a good place for women to reinvent themselves, and to speak out in a way that was not allowed within day-to-day life. One veiled woman described how she started a blog after she spoke out in class and was met with cries of “What! A veiled woman speaking out! You should be quiet…” Writing a blog, she said, was part of her refusal to remain silent. On a blog, you cannot tell if a woman is veiled or not – indeed, you cannot even tell whether it is a woman or a man who is writing. In this way, the blog can override many initial social prejudices.
The discussion also touched on whether blogs were an effective way of changing society. Some of the older members of the audience argued that blogs were a form of escapism, and that it was important to travel and talk to people face-to-face. Just because you blog with two or three people from America or Australia, for example, did not mean you actually knew those cultures…
Can blogs really depose dictators like Mubarak? Who knows… but, as the panel pointed out, blogs were becoming a new media and a new way for the younger generation to assert their voice. We were reminded that two policemen were jailed on Monday for the torture of a prisoner in Egyptian jails – and they were prosecuted principally because an Egyptian blogger spread the video footage of the torture (see my posting on this story – Nov 6). So, the overall theme of the night was: blog! And get your voice heard…