Mona Eltahawy Profile picture
Feb 21 15 tweets 9 min read
The magnificent Nina Simone would have been 90 years old today. My love for her is boundless. Throughout the day I will share some of my favourite things that #NinaSaid for my annual appreciation and respect 💜✊🏽❤️ (Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) A closeup black and white photograph of Nina Simone, showing
“I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear!” #NinaSaid

In a 1999 episode of BBC HARDtalk, Tim Sebastian asked Nina Simone “Tell me about music as a political weapon.” Here’s what #NinaSaid Text: It has helped me for 30 years defend the rights of Ame
Asked “So you sing from anger?” #NinaSaid “I sing from intelligence.” Read 👇🏽 Text: "No, I sing from...intelligence...from letting th
On her friendship with playwright Lorraine Hansberry, #NinaSaid: “Lorraine started off my political education, and through her I started thinking about myself as a Black person in a country run by white people and a woman in a world run by men.” lithub.com/young-gifted-a… Text: Although Lorraine was a girlfriend. . . we never talke
Sept 15, 1963, a bomb killed 4 young Black girls Birmingham, AL. #NinaSaid “I had it in my mind to go out and kill someone...I didn’t yet know who, but someone I could identify as being in the way of my people.” She wrote Mississippi Goddam in an hour newyorker.com/magazine/2014/…
She wrote Mississippi Goddam in an hour #NinaSaid Text: It took her an hour to write “Mississippi Goddam.”Text: participation”), and, above all, the continuing admo
“When they killed those children is when I said ‘I have to start using my talent to help Black people...When they killed those little girls in Alabama, that’s when I changed,” #NinaSaid
In the mid-1960s Vernon Jordan, the head of the Urban League, asked Nina Simone how come she wasn’t ‘more active in civil rights’.
“Motherfucker, I am civil rights,” lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/… Text: As social unrest began to rumble through America in th
“The first time I wore my hair African was after Pastel Blues...It reflected black pride, and that’s when I changed it. I identified a lot with Africa, and learned what they did, and started wearing my hair in an Afro,” #NinaSaid issuu.com/publishingscot… Black and white photo of Nina Simone sitting on her hunches,
“All my songs, the important ones, have razor cuts, I call them, at the end. I cut you, I make you think and it’s immediate... When any Black woman hears that song, she either starts crying or she wants to go out and kill somebody,” #NinaSaid about her song Four Women Text: That's it. When any black woman hears that song, she e
Happy Born Day, Nina!

Nina Simone is revolution!

What an incredible legacy she left us.

I am spending today listening to and celebrating her and what #NinaSaid.

What are your favourite #NinaSimone songs?
As you listen to #NinaSimone songs today, take 8 minutes to watch this clip from BBC Hard Talk to see some of what #NinaSaid to Tim Sebastian in 1999. Nina died four years later.
And I realise the very first video way up there didn’t post properly so here it is:

“I’ll tell you what freedom is: no fear!” #NinaSaid
I post this #NjnaSaid thread every year to celebrate Nina Simone.

Thank you all who share it.

And all who share their favourite Nina songs.

Spending the day listening to her magnificence 💜✊🏽❤️

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More from @monaeltahawy

Feb 21
According to the Menopause Foundation of Canada, one in 10 women will leave the workforce because of their menopause symptoms.

thestar.com/life/2023/02/2…
"For most of us, it will happen when we need to be firing on all cylinders at work.

'There’s a real overlap between when menopause tends to happen and the moment when a lot of women are poised for leadership positions that could take their careers to the next level...'
'If they’re also experiencing common menopausal symptoms like depression, fatigue or anxiety, it could prevent them from making it to top-tier positions, even though they were on that trajectory.' thestar.com/life/2023/02/2…
Read 16 tweets
Feb 17
I launched my newsletter FEMINIST GIANT to highlight global feminist resistance to patriarchal fuckery. Such resistance includes the fight vs transphobia, which contributors Inaara Merani and Samiha Hossain highlight in their weekly Global Roundups.
Love and solidarity to trans and gender expansive friends around the world.

Zero tolerance for transphobia.

feministgiant.com
The New York Times and other publications that platform transphobia are not the only media out there.

As Samiha and Inaara's Global Roundups show, there are plenty of media out there that report without hate on issues that affect our trans and gender expansive friends.
Read 5 tweets
Feb 16
I am 55yo and childfree by choice, happily so. And you know what has made that choice possible? My two abortions. feministgiant.com/p/abortion-is-… #Childfree
In 1996, I had an “illegal” abortion in Egypt and in 2000, I had a “legal” abortion in the US.

I use inverted commas because the State can fuck off with its opinions about what I can and can’t do with my uterus.

That control belongs to me.

feministgiant.com/p/abortion-is-… #Childfree
I was not raped.

I was not sick.

The pregnancies did not threaten my life.

I did not already have children.

I just did not want to be pregnant.

I did not want to have a child.

And so I had two abortions.
#Childfree
Read 5 tweets
Feb 16
It is good to see articles about being childfree by choice. This one features mostly white people bbc.com/worklife/artic… h/t @rerutled #Childfree
I wrote this essay on being childfree by choice because we need to hear from more women of colour and women from different cultural and faith backgrounds as well as trans men and non-binary people who choose to be childfree. I have my own book planned. feministgiant.com/p/unmothering
I'm happy with the life I have created. I have never wondered what it would have been like to have children.

I say that because we often hear “you’ll regret it when it’s too late.” Well, here I am on the other side -- it is “too late” -- and I am here to say: I do not regret it
Read 19 tweets
Feb 15
Researchers found that more than half of Republicans believe the U.S. should be a strictly Christian nation, either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%). h/t @inpoco npr.org/2023/02/14/115…
According to the survey half of Christian nationalism adherents and nearly 4 in 10 sympathizers said they support the idea of an authoritarian leader in order to keep these Christian values in society
The survey also found correlations between people who hold Christian nationalist views as well as anti-Black, anti-immigrant, antisemitic views, anti-Muslim and patriarchal views.

npr.org/2023/02/14/115…
Read 25 tweets
Feb 15
First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon is resigning
nytimes.com/live/2023/02/1… h/t @rerutled
Nicola Sturgeon is not the first woman to lead a country. But it is telling that the only other cis woman leader that she can compare her experience of the menopause transition with is fictional. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-po…
Because other than Sturgeon and Danish TV series Borgen’s Birgitte Nyborg, you would think that being elected into office rendered female political leaders immune from a life transition that affects everyone who has ever had a uterus.

#nicolasturgeon
Read 5 tweets

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