Egypt

[lobelia321]

This is fantastic although I'm still holding my breath. Still, no matter what happens now, one moment of people-power will change the minds of generations to come. I do believe that.

On the other hand, is this really 'the people'? Whenever I see photos of Egyptian 'people', they are actually overwhelmingly men (and therefore not 'people' but just 50% of a demographic). This disturbs me. Where are the women? Now and again you glimpse a few, and the media are clearly falling over each other to find women to interview.

My brother-in-law is half-Egyptian.

Comments

[msilverstar]

According to various tweets, there are quite a few women out on the streets!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am clearly in the wrong part of the internet and the tweet-o-sphere gives you much more of an insight. You'd think I'd know a bit more, what with the family connections and all, but he's not that kind of a brother-in-law, :-)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

In my innate need for balance, I assured i_f that there had been lots of women (and children) in the square, there had even be a photostream - except I couldn't find it later on. From my own experience though I know that "of course" this was no business for women. My colleague's wife doesn't even go to a doctor without him, having lived here for 14+ years, nor ever to her children's school, and he's oh so modern but its her choice (and she hates it here). I wanted to stop talking and thinking about it but this highly popular video demonstrates both sides of the coin: this young woman supposedly helped start the revolution, she's outspoken and smart and brave, yet she agrees it's normally not a woman's place to go out protest (just because they might get hurt, she seems to say) and that of course god and children are the main objective. ETA: in fact, she is "taunting" the men with their manliness, saying if they watch her and other helpless/weaker females get hurt on that square, it is their fault for not being men enough. But even if you watched a peaceful western documentary about the international city of Alexandria last year you could see hardly a single woman in any of the crowds back then. *typestypedeletetypedeletes*

vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjIgMdsEuk

[ook.livejournal.com]

Women have been out among the protesters (often with their husbands and kids) but are smart enough to stay out of the rioting and fighting. When things look like they might get rough, the women (and kids) leave and get inside.

There's a lot of female bloggers in Egypt. I saw a fantastic short interview with one young woman just a few hours ago on ABC's Nightline program. She had been one of the organizers (through her blog) and had even been injured on the Square and is shown verbally arguing with a guy from the government.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/

She appears in the 2nd segment: "The Revolution's Leaders"

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for this. I will follow all of these links up once I've had breakfast. You'd think I'd know more what with my family connections but as I was saying to msilver, they're not that kind of family connection, :-)

I guess I've also not been following this on the blog- and tweet-o-sphere only via Radio Four and the odd TV clip.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I'm recasting my mind over protesting crowd-images of the past decades. I'm sure there were women in East Germany in 1989 but am now not so sure about Tiananmen Square or even, to go back further, Russia in 1917.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

I was following a lot of the Egypt-news via Twitter and there were definitely mentions of women protesters, women in the square etc.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

Oh! And on BBC news site ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12434787
click on Kindergarten

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I love and am moved by the kindergarten tag, and I love those pictures! But, having now clicked on all of them, I have to say I saw a total of six women.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

I don't see many, but I do note that they are not absent, and I agree with other commenters that they might be less likely to be visible either by avoiding areas of tension or by dressing inditinguishably.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

There are rather more women in BoingBoing's photo gallery -- still very much the minority, and often apart from men, though not always.
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/11/egypt-dance-dance-re.html
The third one down is ... lovely. Her expression.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

How do you use Twitter? I'm signed up (of course) but how on earth do you find people telling you stuff about Egypt??

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

#jan25 (par example) -- hashtags (easier when I'm online, but when I'm reading on phone I trust various people I'm following to retweet important stuff)

Egypt Twitter feeds

[ook.livejournal.com]

There's a list of Twitter feeds with news from Egypt here:

http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_political/7713928.html

If you want to dig through the older ONTD_Political posts, just click on their "Egypt" tag. I think there were other Twitter links in earlier posts. This link I just posted was the most recent "Live" Egypt post from that community. People were encouraged to constantly post new and updated links for news.

FYI: Women's Rights in Egypt program

[ook.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if the entire episode is online, but you might be interested in Al Jazeera's interview on the Riz Khan show with activist/writer/doctor Nawal el-Saadawi who has been fighting for women's rights in Egypt.

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/

The show/article is "Mother of the revolution"