132 Quotes by Mona Eltahawy

I was traumatised into feminism – there’s no other way to describe it.

I do wonder, sometimes, if I had had a daughter, how I would have brought her up. How – when it’s taken me so long to unlearn the things I believe are most damaging to the cause of women’s liberation and equality – would I have raised my daughter to disobey?

Words are important – the fight silence, alienation, and violence. Words are flags planted on the planets of our beings; they say this is mine, I have fought for it and despite your attempts to silence me, I am still here. Just as important, words help us find each other and overcome the isolation that threatens to overwhelm and to break us. Words say we are here.

But it is the job of a revolution to shock, to provoke, and to upset, not to behave or to be polite.

The battles over women’s bodies can be won only by a revolution of the mind.

When Westerners remain silent out of ‘respect’ for foreign cultures, they show support only for the most conservative elements of those cultures. Cultural relativism is as much my enemy as the oppression I fight within my culture and faith.

Being a woman anywhere is dangerous.

We will have a reckoning with our culture and religion, with military rulers and Islamists – two sides of one coin. Such a reckoning is essentially a feminist one. And it is what will eventually free us. Women – our rage, our tenacity, our daring and audacity – will free our countries.

I am DELIGHTED that I upset you so much.