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Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
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16 Sep, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Until we divorce patriarchy from ambition and ambition from patriarchy we will forever force women and girls to shrink their ambition to fit that asinine phrase “women can do whatever men can.”
I don’t want to do anything a man can. My ambition is much bigger than doing whatever a man can. Men are not my yardstick. feministgiant.com/p/essay-my-amb…
If men themselves are not free of the ravages of racism, capitalism and other forms of oppression, it is not enough to say I want to be equal to them or to do whatever they can.

My ambition is for much more. I want to be free.
Ambition is defiance. Ambition is the middle finger up to patriarchy’s insistence that we shrink ourselves.

feministgiant.com/p/coming-soon?…
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More from @monaeltahawy

Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
17 Sep
Here I am--a 54yo old woman saying I deserve attention.
#ThisIs54 📷 @rerutled Mona from the chest uo in a...
You need a robust ego to be a feminist. You need a massive amount of faith in yourself and your right to be seen and heard in order to be a warrior against patriarchy. feministgiant.com/p/a-vindicatio…
One of my literary heroes, the Chicana lesbian poet, writer and feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa wrote in This Bridge Called My Back, "A woman who writes has power. A woman who writes is feared. In the eyes of the world this makes us dangerous beasts." A black and white photograp...
Read 6 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
17 Sep
Attention whore.

Attention is power. When you command attention, you command power. And so patriarchy has muddied the waters around attention with the word “whore," a word intended to shame. feministgiant.com/p/a-vindicatio…
Like sex, attention will always be used against you.

Maybe it’s because you want the “wrong” kind, or maybe it’s because everything you do is “just for attention.”

Always a whore.
There is nothing shameful about wanting attention.

There is nothing shameful about wanting sex.

There is nothing shameful about sex work.

There is nothing shameful about being a whore.
Read 11 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
16 Sep
It is my ambition to liberate ambition from accumulation, be it wealth or the crumbs of patriarchy’s approval.

We must rewrite what ambition means and what its aspirations are. feministgiant.com/p/essay-my-amb…
What does ambition look like during these days of immense loss and grief, when a global pandemic has pushed so many women out of the workforce and into lockdown with abusive partners?
What is ambition when you are a woman of colour? What is ambition for a woman whose goal isn't to become a CEO?What does ambition look like for a woman whose goal is not to become rich? What is ambition liberated from corporate success? What is ambition for a working class woman?
Read 6 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
15 Sep
September 15, 1963--38 years before 9/11--the bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killed four young Black girls who had just got out of Bible class.
“I had it in my mind to go out and kill someone,” Nina Simone said about her reaction. “I didn’t yet know who, but someone I could identify as being in the way of my people.”

It took her an hour to write “Mississippi Goddam.” feministgiant.com/p/the-day-afte…
September 30, 2012--11 years after 9/11--my four niblings were in their local mosque in the Midwest for Sunday school just hours just hours before a man set the building on fire. They were nine, six and four years old.
Read 4 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
14 Sep
"The Church has relinquished too much authority to government. We should not be taking orders from the government. The government needs to be looking at the Church and saying "How do we do this effectively?" Lauren Boebert.
If they were not white, from any other country, or certainly if they were Muslim, women like Lauren Boebert would be called fanatics, thus is the privilege of whiteness. feministgiant.com/p/a-white-supr…
They might not have been among the fanatics who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6, but Greene and Boebert’s views very much make them fanatics within that same building.
Read 11 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
12 Sep
Three and a half years after 9/11, a Black American feminist scholar of Islam called Dr. Amina Wadud became the first woman imam to lead a mixed-gender Friday congregational prayer--100 of us--50 women and 50 men. #20thanniversary911
It was one of the most moving moments of my life. The prayer was co-sponsored by the (now defunct) Progressive Muslim Union of North America (PMUNA), of which I was a board member. #20thanniversary911 A hall with rows of people prostrated in Muslim prayer
The PMUNA had come to be in the aftermath of 9/11, as part of the vigorous internal Muslim arguments and debates those awful attacks had shaken into being. Remember: al-Qaeda has killed more Muslims than non-Muslims. #20thanniversary911 feministgiant.com/p/the-day-afte…
Read 10 tweets

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