132 Quotes by Mona Eltahawy

I was traumatised into feminism -- there's no other way to describe it

The niqab represents a bizarre reverence for the disappearance of women. It puts on a pedestal a woman who covers her face, who erases herself, and it considers that erasure the pinnacle of piety.

What would the world look like if girls were taught they were volcanoes, whose erruptions were a thing of beauty, a power to behold, a force not to be trifled with?

Why is violence significantly less traumatizing than our naked bodies?

To the girls of the Middle East: Be immodest, rebel, disobey, and know you deserve to be free.

Candy in a wrapper, a diamond ring in a box – these analogies are commonly used in Egypt and other countries to try to convince women of the value of veiling. They compare women to objects that are precious but devalued by exposure, objects that need to be hidden, protected, and secured. When it comes to what are described as the Islamic restrictions on women’s dress, women are never simply women. There.

The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters.

I believe it’s the writer’s job to tell society what it pretends it doesn’t know.

They ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.