Thread by @monaeltahawy

In 1995, I took a month off work - was a Reuters correspondent in #Cairo - to go to #China for the UN Women’s conference. Being with feminists from around the world was heaven. To mark 25th anniversary this year, I’m planning on going to anniv events in Mexico City and Paris.

Other than my time at the NGO summit in Huairou and at the official convening in Beijing, I also went to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Chengdu. I tried to go to Tibet and Xinjiang but was barred because I’d been at the women’s conference.

This is 27yo me outside the Forbidden City in #Beijing

I went to 1995 UN Women’s Conference to report for a feminist newspaper.

I will go to the @UN_Women 25th anniversary events in Mexico City & Paris not to report for anyone but to be with feminists from around the world again and to see, reflect and document my feminist journey.

The #Beijing conference was the last one after ones in Mexico City and Nairobi, each one a decade apart. The same forces fighting the Beijing agenda - esp reproductive rights - are the same ones that remind us of the urgency for feminism: global authoritarian patriarchy.

The unholy but utterly patriarchal alliance of conservatives: e.g. the Vatican, the US administration, conservative Muslim majority and Catholic majority countries.

Fuck anyone and anything that hurts women, girls, and gender nonconforming people.

I fought those forces back then and I always will. Feminism saved my mind and feminism will always be my revolution.

Here’s one of the articles I wrote for a feminist newspaper that published daily at UN women’s conference in #Beijing in 1995, which @IBJIYONGI found and also coincidentally mentions her mum and aunt selmajames.net/2015/11/11/wom…

I love to think back on that 27yo who went to #China alone, for feminism, for solidarity, to be by myself for half of that month and with sisters and comrades for the other half.

5yrs after that picture & my trip to #China, I moved to the US - also alone, to be with a man I disastrously married. I left him after 2yrs.

So it’s 25th anniversary of going to China for UN Women’s Conference.

And 20th anniversary of moving to the US (for another thread)

My photo albums are in #Cairo, but here are pictures from my time in #Beijing in 1995 with fellow reporters on the feminist newspaper at the UN Women’s Conference. 25 years ago!