"If you really want to know people, start by looking in their
bedrooms," says Shereen El Feki, author of the new
book, Sex
and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab
World.
El Feki, who was raised in Canada and is a practicing Muslim, is
the former vice chair of the U.N.'s Global Commission on HIV and
Law. Born to an Egyptian father and Welsh mother, she was motivated
by September 11th to seek a better understanding of her Arab and
Islamic heritage.
El Feki found that demonstrators for political freedom in Tahrir
Square during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution had little interest in
also promoting sexual freedom. That's because most Arabs derive
their sexual mores from their religious beliefs. The only way to
bring more sexual freedom to the Arab world, she argues, is through
Islam, which was far more tolerant of the needs of the flesh a
thousand years ago than it is today.
On March 13, 2013, El Feki joined novelist and former sex worker
Tracy Quan for "Sex and the
Citadel: Does the Arab Spring need a Summer of Love?," an
event hosted by the Reason
Foundation at New York City's Museum of Sex.
In an hour-long conversation, El Feki and Quan discuss why
political freedom won't necessarily lead to sexual freedom (4:30);
why the rise of Islamism could lead to more sexual freedom (6:00);
the Egyptian phenomenon of "summer marriage," in which wealthy
travelers from the Gulf states enter into temporary marriages with
prostitutes as a way to get around Islam's ban on sex out of
wedlock (11:00); a Medieval Arabic dictionary called "The Language
of Fucking," which had over 1,000 verbs for having sex (13:30); the
rise of gay rights activist groups in the face of the Arab world's
brutal homophobia (26:00); the sad state of sex education in the
Arab world (33:30); the sexual frustrations of married Arab women
(36:30); why women are the primary advocates for female genital
mutilation in Egypt (42:00); why virginity is still "a big fucking
deal" in the Arab world, leading some prostitutes to perform anal
sex exclusively as a way of preserving their hymens (44:30); how
attitudes about sex in the Arab world will eventually change by
"pulling down the citadel from the inside" (49:00); and the
still-common view that masturbation will lead to blindness,
deformation, insanity, and hell (1:06:00).
About 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Shot by Jim Epstein and Naomi Brockwell, and edited by
Epstein.
Scroll below for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube
Channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes
live.
0 σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου