Thread by @monaeltahawy

I met a young man in #Cairo in 2012 on a felucca with his friends. Tonight at the reception for the Arab abstraction exhibit at @NYUGrey that same young man found me and we took our 2020 picture. Hello, Ahmed!

https://twitter.com/picotyko/status/218848609167360000

And this is @omaralbusaidy at the same art show

On Wednesday night after a reading at the Strand, an #Egyptian man recognized me and said hello and a South African man also said hello and said he followed my talks at @Abantu_ in Soweto in December -he’d been to the inaugural one.

It’s good to hear solidarity from male allies!

I appreciate the solidarity from male allies. I appreciate that they know that fighting patriarchy frees us all.

It’s good to hear from cis men - some het some gay - that they are fans and support my work. It gives the lie to intentionally ignorant and disingenuous shits who conflate patriarchy with men and try to portray my work as incitement against men in general. That’s ignorant fuckery

Before I went on tour for my 1st book, I was invited to speak at a university in northeast Egypt by a 19yo male student who wrote to me “My community needs a feminist like you to shake it up.” I agreed and he and fellow students fought with State Security to get me clearance.

That was in 2015. Later that year, a Bahraini man studying in the UK invited me to speak at his university and told me that when he went to Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage, he told the imam of his community traveling with them that he should read my work and get to know my feminism.

When I’m asked at events “What about men? How do we get them to change?” my answer is I don’t give a fuck about the men. I write for cis and trans women and girls, non-binary, gnc people, trans men. I am not waiting for the men to change. How long do we wait?!

The men who appreciate my work know I’m not saying “We must kill men!” They know they are not free. Patriarchy & its oppressions fuck them over too. And I say equality is not enough. I don’t want to be equal to someone who is not free. I want to be free. We should all be free.

And several of the men who more recently have been saying hello and telling me my work is important for them have specifically mentioned what I said on the Australian TV show Q&A and how shocked they were that the episode has been banned from rebroadcast.

I’m not a fan of the rash of books, surveys on men, masculinity. I want to focus on fighting back,destroying the patriarchy,not centering men yet again. Men will not change because women write books saying they should.And I am done waiting for them to change.Fuck the patriarchy