Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
Feb 10 10 tweets 6 min read
cw: sexual asssault.

Four years ago this week, I beat up a man who groped me in a club. It was fucking glorious. And I started #IBeatMyAssaulter.

Celebrate that anniversary with me! feministgiant.com/p/i-beat-my-as…
I chased him down, sat on him and punched and punched and punched. I wanted him to know that next time he thought he could assault a woman, she too could beat the fuck out of him.

My hand was bruised, I had to ice it the next day--it was worth it. #IBeatMyAssaulter 📷 @rerutled Mona's forearm in a bowl of ice
B loved @rerutled & I then went to the bar to get some water and a club manager actually asked me "Why didn't you let your husband take care of it?"

I almost beat him up too. I don't want to be protected. I want patriarchy to stop protecting cis men's violence #IBeatMyAssaulter
Here's @rerutled's thread from that night. Note that he did not intervene because he saw that I had it under control.

#IBeatMyAssaulter
I don’t want to be protected. I want to be free of violence. I want patriarchy to stop enabling and protecting cis men’s violence.

From April 2020 🎥 @rerutled

#IBeatMyAssaulter
Please read the whole essay before you ask me things like "Don't you think you overreacted, etc blah etc."

And sign up for my essays here. My newsletter is free. If you can pay, it helps to keep it free.

feministgiant.com/p/coming-soon?…
I always repeat the club manager's "Why didn't you let your husband take care of it?" because it's reminder that our bodies don't belong to us.

Patriarchy enables men who assault us and patriarchy allows only "our" men to defend us. #IBeatMyAssaulter feministgiant.com/p/i-beat-my-as…
And woe is the woman who dares to think she can fight back. Many do, and they are punished more severely for fighting back than are the men who beat or assault them.

Prisons around the world are full of women who fight back and the streets are full of the men who assaulted them
I know that we can’t always fight back. My priority is to survive. I never want what I have shared here to make anyone feel guilty for not beating up her assaulter.

I also know that we are not socialized to fight back.

Cis men are not socialized to expect us to fight back.

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More from @monaeltahawy

Feb 10
Jan 6 2021:white supremacists stormed seat of govt in US capital
Today:white supremacists holding hostage Canadian capital. In both cases, past & present military & police were involved; in both cases fascists weren’t taken seriously because they’re white cbc.ca/news/canada/co…
U.S. white supremacists who supported & planned Jan 6 support the white supremacists holding Ottawa hostage..

In both cases, these fascist fucks are emboldening white fascists around the world.

How the fuck did the Canadian capital become besieged like this? White supremacy
And this is ostensibly in the name of “freedom.”

White fascist fucks in the US and Canada and across Europe and Australia are increasingly laying claim to a word and a concept that their very ideology denies to anyone who doesn’t look like them. “Freedom Convoy” “Freedom Fries.”
Read 4 tweets
Feb 9
Bit late with this: In January, the new president of #Chile, Gabriel Boric, named a progressive, majority-women cabinet; 14 women and 10 men were named ministers. It is also the youngest cabinet in the history of Chile; seven members are in their 30s. theguardian.com/world/2022/jan…
Boric, a 35-year-old former student leader, will replace the billionaire rightwing president Sebastián Piñera on 11 March as he becomes the youngest president in Chile’s history.
Chile’s new defence minister is the granddaughter of the socialist president Salvador Allende, who was deposed in Pinochet’s bloody 1973 coup d’état. Maya Fernández, 50, will preside over long-overdue reforms of the military that overthrew Chile’s democracy.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 9
So now we know: footballers and their fans in England can get away with sexual violence and racism. The red line is animal abuse. How about accountability for all forms of abuse? h/t @rerutled
You all know by now, I’ve supported Manchester United since 1976, when I was 9. My next essay will be about #MUFC, football and gender-based violence. Until then, here’s one I wrote for the Euros last summer feministgiant.com/p/essay-when-f…
And hearing now via @RosebellK that women were sexually assaulted during African Cup of Nations victory celebrations in #Senegal is reminder of what I say in my essay: football is one of the many outlets that patriarchy offers to cis men as an excuse to treat us like shit
Read 6 tweets
Feb 6
And just like that, I buzzed my hair.

#ThisIs54. It's not my birthday. It's my reset, refresh, and my contribution to pictures of a woman in her 50s doing whatever.

Buzz cut and 📷 @rerutled Mona from the waist up with her hands on her hips. She is weMona from the knees  up with her hands on her hips. She is w
I'm dubbing these Saturday night #ThisIs54 my #BloodyHell Hour because it's when I tell you about the menopause anthology that I'm editing for @unbounders. Check it out and help us publish it by pledging. It's basically pre-ordering with goodies on top. unbound.com/books/bloody-h…
I watched all 8 episodes of And Just Like That is because rare is the show that revolves around 3 women in their mid 50s.I will shred it apart in an essay soon. But until then,I'm eager to see this about a mid-life woman who hires a sex worker theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/… #BloodyHell
Read 9 tweets
Jan 31
In the world’s most powerful country, the anti-abortion women of the Christian Brotherhood–be they violent or non-violent–stand on the verge of a victory that is the opposite of a social revolution–it is a social regression.
Read, like, and share my new essay--thank you!
Unless the United States develops the stomach for a long-overdue reckoning with the white supremacist Christian theocracy that has been unabashed in its destruction of Roe v Wade, abortion rights will not be the only rights it destroyed. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-te…
My new essay is the latest in which I examine theocracy in the United States feministgiant.com/p/if-amy-coney…
Read 5 tweets
Jan 30
Manchester police said they had arrested a man on suspicion of rape and assault on Sunday after Manchester United suspended England forward Mason Greenwood following allegations on social media. h/t @rerutled #MUFC #MasonGreenwoodOUT
sports.yahoo.com/police-arrest-… Mason Greenwood with his hands on his hips wearing the red s
There's a reason that this is the second most read of all my FEMINIST GIANT essays. I wrote it just before the Euros finals last year and I began it with news of another #MUFC legend, Ryan Giggs, who is on trial for abuse feministgiant.com/p/essay-when-f… #MasonGreenwoodOUT
"Sunday's statement regarding the arrest of a man on suspicion of rape and assault comes just under a fortnight since Manchester United great Ryan Giggs's trial on charges of assaulting his ex-girlfriend and her sister was delayed until August because of a backlog in the courts"
Read 4 tweets

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