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Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
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Dec 18 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
#Argentina just won the mend’s #WorldCup. It’s the first men’s World Cup I have not watched since the 1978 tournament held in Argentina that I followed with my dad and brother from our living room in London. feministgiant.com/p/essay-footba…
That was my 1st #WorldCup and, though I did not know it at the time, my introduction to sportswashing.

feministgiant.com/p/essay-footba… #Qatar2022
That 1978 World Cup was held in a country ruled by a military dictatorship which held thousands of political prisoners in clandestine detention centres across the country theguardian.com/football/in-be…
Including the largest just a few blocks from the stadium where that year’s World Cup final was held.  I might not have known that but I’m confident that FIFA did.

papelitos.com.ar/nota/las-presa…
I might not have known that but I’m confident that FIFA did.

Just as I am confident that FIFA knew what selling the 2022 #WorldCup to the absolute monarchy that runs #Qatar meant. feministgiant.com/p/essay-footba…
The more authoritarian the better. FIFA has told us that’s what they prefer.

In 2013, its then-secretary-general Jerome Valcke said too much democracy can be a hindrance when organising a World Cup. bbc.com/sport/football… #FIFAWorldCup
Remember that as you celebrate the month of football that just ended.

And more importantly, remember the 6,500 migrant workers who died to make this men’s #WorldCup possible feministgiant.com/p/essay-footba…

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More from @monaeltahawy

Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
Dec 18
It is grim irony that today's #WorldCup final is being played today, Dec. 18, which in 2000 the UN General Assembly proclaimed International Migrants Day. At least 6,500 migrant workers died in #Qatar to make #Qatar2022 possible. feministgiant.com/p/essay-footba…
Some workers plunged to their deaths building the city that did not exist but which has hosted #QatarWorldCup, some died in the hellish heat of Qatar’s summer (a heat the footballers & fans were spared by the unprecedented decision to hold this World Cup in November and December
Others, men who left their home countries healthy, died a few years after repatriating from conditions directly related to the abusive work conditions they endured in Qatar.

The families of those men who died to make this men’s World Cup possible have not been compensated.
Read 7 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
Dec 18
This men’s #WorldCup represents the apotheosis of #Fifa fuckery. The more we let Fifa get away with, the lower it dragged our moral bar with it until we arrived here, the Qatar World cup, the apotheosis of fuckery and the nadir of a moral standard. #FIFAWorldCupFinal
Authoritarianism: check. Misogyny: check. Homophobia: check. And yes all that checked for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. I am guilty of playing along with sportswashing. I claim no higher moral ground here.

But.

feministgiant.com/p/essay-footba… #WorldCupFinal
Qatar WC took that fuckery & plunged further into that nadir because even for those who play whataboutery game, for whom no country is free of sin, the 6,500 migrant workers who died while making this WC possible was our loudest moral alarm bell & collectively we failed the test.
Read 10 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
Dec 17
This Sunday, a projected 1.5 billion people will watch the men’s #WorldCup final between cupholders France and Argentina. I will not be among them. I explain in my latest essay why this is the first men’s World Cup I have not watched since 1978,l.

open.substack.com/pub/feministgi…
Football is never just about what happens on a pitch for 90 mins between 22 players. It’s a microcosm of a greater story in which we each find a place to stand. 

I’ve written of the spike in intimate partner violence associated with men’s game feministgiant.com/p/essay-when-f… #WorldCup
And I take on those issues further in this open letter to Manchester United, the team I have been supporting since 1976, when I was nine. 

feministgiant.com/p/essay-femini… #WorldCup
Read 4 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
Dec 15
The highlight of 2022: becoming postmenopausal, finally.
I will say it again and again: perimenopause kicked my fucking ass.

Especially so because I had no idea what to expect, or even that I was going through it.

It was a steep steep learning curve.

I was unbecoming to become. feministgiant.com/p/essay-menopa…
And so I celebrate, delight in, and dance with joy that I am here, on this side of the menopause transition.

feministgiant.com/p/postmenopaus…
Read 8 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
Dec 15
“Time remains a central concern for all women writers. It is not simply a question of finding time to write–one also writes against time, knowing that life is short,” bell hooks, who was 69 when she died Dec. 15, 2002

I wrote this inspired by her.

feministgiant.com/p/essay-avenge…
From “women who write too much," in Remembered Rapture.

“Annie Dillard urges us to ‘write as if you were dying.’ A large number of black women writers both past and present have gone to early graves. To know their life stories is to be made aware of how death hovers."
“My writing was an act of resistance...,” bell hooks wrote in a chapter called “class and the politics of writing.” in Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work. Text: “My writing was an act of resistance not simply in r
Read 7 tweets
Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
Dec 15
So glad to see #EverythingEverywhereAllAtOnce on so many nominations list.

One of my favourites this year.

I wrote about it here feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-me…
To see an Asian woman in her 50s ponder her other selves & the lives she could have had,is subversive. During a time when pandemic bigotry & violence in the U.S. targeted Asians, esp women & elders, a film that centres Asian woman in her 50s is subversive feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-me…
Talking of older women and subversive, disappointed that Good Luck To You, Leo Grande didn’t get more nominations so far. feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-…
Read 8 tweets

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