Why do people care about what I think when it comes to their virginity - their very own virginity? Why do they care if I am for or against premarital sex? Why do they keep asking me about my beliefs? Why do they attack me personally when they disagree with my ideas?
I am sick and tired of people telling us what to do. I am trying hard to avoid turning into one of those people who dictate what is right and what is wrong - and people follow. My mission in life is to get you to think. Yes! You! I neither want to take decisions on your behalf nor do I want you to blame me for the consequences of your actions. I do not want to be dragged along on your guilt trips.
Stop asking me the wrong questions ... it is not about me or what I believe in ... it is about you and what you can handle. So here is my attempt at helping you decide which paths to take and which to avoid.
Take the quiz
Showing posts with label premarital sex in Egypt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label premarital sex in Egypt. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Thursday, November 13, 2008
What if the SEX is not Good?
Male voice: Hello, is that Marwa Rakha?
Me: Yes! Who is that?
Male voice: A ... I have a problem.
Me: Sure, how can I help?
A: I have been married for six months and I hate my wife. I hate how she walks and talks. I made a mistake and I want to get a divorce.
Me: Ok ... slow down and start from the start.
A: I am 25 and she is 22. I met her through friends. She was a nice polite girl. We dated for a few months. I proposed. We got married. We live with my mother.
Me: Why do you hate her?
A: She is SLOW ... too damn slow!
Me: What do you mean by "slow"? (That was a first for me)
A: She wakes me up every morning to go to work. I sit in bed and watch how slow she is preparing my breakfast, ironing my shirt, fetching my bag, and giving me my lunch basket.
Me: Go on! (I hated the guy ... but I held my peace)
A: I come home from work and I watch how slow she is preparing lunch or dinner. I even told her to learn from my mom but she is still not good at anything. She takes forever to bring me something. It is like having a useless turtle at home.
Me: Did you tell her how you felt about her?
A: Yes ... I even told her that when I go out with my friends I flirt and I am willing to have a relationship.
Me: How is the sex?
A: Excuse me?!
Me: How is the sex?
A: This is embarrassing!
Me: I need to know the answer.
A: BAD.
Me: Are you satisfied?
A: Of course not!
Me: Is she satisfied?
A: Of course!
Me: How do you know?
A: I know ... I am a man. Can you stop the questions and tell me what to do?!
This is just one example of the problems that I deal with almost on daily basis. I know that sex and any sex-related topics are very sensitive issues and I also know that there are people out there waiting for me to make a mistake and declare that I am pro pre-marital sex. Tough luck! I will not!
Read More
Me: Yes! Who is that?
Male voice: A ... I have a problem.
Me: Sure, how can I help?
A: I have been married for six months and I hate my wife. I hate how she walks and talks. I made a mistake and I want to get a divorce.
Me: Ok ... slow down and start from the start.
A: I am 25 and she is 22. I met her through friends. She was a nice polite girl. We dated for a few months. I proposed. We got married. We live with my mother.
Me: Why do you hate her?
A: She is SLOW ... too damn slow!
Me: What do you mean by "slow"? (That was a first for me)
A: She wakes me up every morning to go to work. I sit in bed and watch how slow she is preparing my breakfast, ironing my shirt, fetching my bag, and giving me my lunch basket.
Me: Go on! (I hated the guy ... but I held my peace)
A: I come home from work and I watch how slow she is preparing lunch or dinner. I even told her to learn from my mom but she is still not good at anything. She takes forever to bring me something. It is like having a useless turtle at home.
Me: Did you tell her how you felt about her?
A: Yes ... I even told her that when I go out with my friends I flirt and I am willing to have a relationship.
Me: How is the sex?
A: Excuse me?!
Me: How is the sex?
A: This is embarrassing!
Me: I need to know the answer.
A: BAD.
Me: Are you satisfied?
A: Of course not!
Me: Is she satisfied?
A: Of course!
Me: How do you know?
A: I know ... I am a man. Can you stop the questions and tell me what to do?!
This is just one example of the problems that I deal with almost on daily basis. I know that sex and any sex-related topics are very sensitive issues and I also know that there are people out there waiting for me to make a mistake and declare that I am pro pre-marital sex. Tough luck! I will not!
Read More
Monday, September 24, 2007
The S-Word
Like a sword the s-word cuts through our lives; starting and ending relationships; labeling and tagging people; torturing some and relieving others. I grew up watching our Egyptian cinema turning sex into a shameful repulsive act where the woman is defeated and the man is delighted. The message was very clear: women who “give in” to men without a legally binding document end up suffering one way or the other. The s-word turns them into social outcasts, black sheep, or infamous notorious creatures of the night. The man usually vanishes leaving behind a bereaved creature pulling her hair and tearing apart what’s left of her clothes as a sign of intense remorse. Some of those women were portrayed to show further suffering when the seed of the affair blossoms into a child. With nothing but disdain and a curled lip, the voice of our intact society would echo in our ears saying “I told you so!”
In our modern cinema, girls can flirt and tease as much as they pleased but the s-word is still frowned upon. Those engaging in premarital sex strive throughout the movie to set two wrongs right – and of course it is the girl who is always doing her very best to get a ring on the damn finger. Other tragic heroines, whose character flaw is their lustful nature, have to go through a painful catharsis whereby they are humiliated, rejected, mortified, and eventually forgiven, or killed in an accident. In the first dénouement, being forgiven in this sense means that they have learnt their lesson and that they will lead a life of penance and “virtue” until a fine gentleman sees how far they have changed and kindly accepts to give them a ring. In the second scenario - where they die - they have paid in full for their mortal sin and now they can just die to set an example for the living.
Today a fellow writer, in a casual chat, asked me why girls refuse and adamantly resist getting intimate with their beau. He complained of the fact that girls feel that the s-word impacts the interest, or the lack of interest, of a guy in a girl. He bluntly asked me why girls fear losing the guy once they have sex with him. I was not the only one watching those movies; I could even consider myself lucky because I was a late bloomer in my relationship with the silver screen. Decade after another, such movies spread the guilt culture in our shame society. As if FGM (female genital mutilation) was not enough to create lifetime barriers between our girls and their sexuality, we have a whole culture preaching the virtue of a hymen.
Arabic movies, books, and anecdotes planted a deeply rooted conviction that girls who are “dishonorable” are not fit for being wives or mothers. The same influences caused men to believe that a girl who expresses her love physically is loose; hence the famous analogies between a girl’s honor and a match stick, a brand new car and a second hand car, and the famous piece of meat covered in sticky flies. My maid once noticed that my cats were not playing together and threw me a casual comment saying “why would he want to even see her face … he already took what he wanted … he is just a man!”
I have many male friends who, in my presence, share their success stories and conquests in the female world. Their verbiage and jargon are of the most offensive type; verbs like jumped, humped, and scored are very popular. So even if a guy is sitting there all polished and cleaned up for his girl, she could still sense the jump-hump-score sequel. Our men are known to be sweet-talkers and to be very expressive in the beginning of the relationship; an American friend of mine, who laments ever getting married to her educated Egyptian hubby, told me that he swept her off her feet with his words, attention, and passion – this is what our men do.
But once the girl loses touch with the ground, she falls … she falls hard and is most likely to break her neck, smash her head, or crack her back. She survives the fall only to live with a permanent disability. Experience taught girls to hold back; they learnt to disguise their feelings in a cloak of callousness for self preservation purposes. Our generation of men and women are confused; everything that they were taught as kids is being questioned as adults. Our very same inhibited women and our very own conservative men, once in the presence of a foreigner are transformed. The women no longer feel judged and the men no longer feel pressured and questioned – what a mess!
I am not for or anti premarital sex. There are so many variables in the equation and our society is not ready for a generalization of any sort at this point of time; if I tell girls to go ahead and to release their inhibitions, I will be damned. If I tell them to resist and to fight the natural urge for intimacy, I am a lying hypocrite. I will just leave it at the point where it is a case by case scenario and I will conclude on a final note to the guys: mental shackles are way worse than metal shackles. We will get out of our dungeons, when we no longer fear your dragons.
In our modern cinema, girls can flirt and tease as much as they pleased but the s-word is still frowned upon. Those engaging in premarital sex strive throughout the movie to set two wrongs right – and of course it is the girl who is always doing her very best to get a ring on the damn finger. Other tragic heroines, whose character flaw is their lustful nature, have to go through a painful catharsis whereby they are humiliated, rejected, mortified, and eventually forgiven, or killed in an accident. In the first dénouement, being forgiven in this sense means that they have learnt their lesson and that they will lead a life of penance and “virtue” until a fine gentleman sees how far they have changed and kindly accepts to give them a ring. In the second scenario - where they die - they have paid in full for their mortal sin and now they can just die to set an example for the living.
Today a fellow writer, in a casual chat, asked me why girls refuse and adamantly resist getting intimate with their beau. He complained of the fact that girls feel that the s-word impacts the interest, or the lack of interest, of a guy in a girl. He bluntly asked me why girls fear losing the guy once they have sex with him. I was not the only one watching those movies; I could even consider myself lucky because I was a late bloomer in my relationship with the silver screen. Decade after another, such movies spread the guilt culture in our shame society. As if FGM (female genital mutilation) was not enough to create lifetime barriers between our girls and their sexuality, we have a whole culture preaching the virtue of a hymen.
Arabic movies, books, and anecdotes planted a deeply rooted conviction that girls who are “dishonorable” are not fit for being wives or mothers. The same influences caused men to believe that a girl who expresses her love physically is loose; hence the famous analogies between a girl’s honor and a match stick, a brand new car and a second hand car, and the famous piece of meat covered in sticky flies. My maid once noticed that my cats were not playing together and threw me a casual comment saying “why would he want to even see her face … he already took what he wanted … he is just a man!”
I have many male friends who, in my presence, share their success stories and conquests in the female world. Their verbiage and jargon are of the most offensive type; verbs like jumped, humped, and scored are very popular. So even if a guy is sitting there all polished and cleaned up for his girl, she could still sense the jump-hump-score sequel. Our men are known to be sweet-talkers and to be very expressive in the beginning of the relationship; an American friend of mine, who laments ever getting married to her educated Egyptian hubby, told me that he swept her off her feet with his words, attention, and passion – this is what our men do.
But once the girl loses touch with the ground, she falls … she falls hard and is most likely to break her neck, smash her head, or crack her back. She survives the fall only to live with a permanent disability. Experience taught girls to hold back; they learnt to disguise their feelings in a cloak of callousness for self preservation purposes. Our generation of men and women are confused; everything that they were taught as kids is being questioned as adults. Our very same inhibited women and our very own conservative men, once in the presence of a foreigner are transformed. The women no longer feel judged and the men no longer feel pressured and questioned – what a mess!
I am not for or anti premarital sex. There are so many variables in the equation and our society is not ready for a generalization of any sort at this point of time; if I tell girls to go ahead and to release their inhibitions, I will be damned. If I tell them to resist and to fight the natural urge for intimacy, I am a lying hypocrite. I will just leave it at the point where it is a case by case scenario and I will conclude on a final note to the guys: mental shackles are way worse than metal shackles. We will get out of our dungeons, when we no longer fear your dragons.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
