Hello friends! On Monday, January 17, I will be turning twenty-nine. W00t! This year, I am asking you for a special wish that will make me and my loved ones (you) very happy. Instead of buying me gifts and wishing me happy birthday on my Facebook wall, please consider donating a book to the newly-formed Nasawiya Library of awesome activist resources.

If you are in Lebanon, head down to a bookstore this weekend and buy a book (you can still gift-wrap it) or if you are abroad, please order using the Antoine Online bookstore and they will deliver to Nasawiya (heik you don’t have to pay shipping charges). That way we fill up the library with some great books for me and all of our activists to read. #creativefundraising

Here are a few suggestions with links to help you out. Or pick something you think our library should have of your own choosing and *cough* make sure it’s exchangeable *cough.* Oh, and email me or message me on FB when you’ve done so, so I can make sure it arrives at the Nouse. My goal is 29 books!

The Nasawiya address to use is: 1st floor, Braidi Building, Chahrouri Area, Achrafieh. Facing Laure Moghaizel School for Girls. Telephone: 01 216 984.

Or you can just send me a gift certificate and I’ll buy the book with it.

Thank you very much! And Happy Birthday to me

I just finished customizing the otherwise bland WordPress theme (Impulse from WPZoom.com) and SawtAlNiswa.com is looking good! Also check out my first post there, a photo I took in Hamra of a new slimming capsule for women called “Starvex.” True (and sad) story.

The very talented (and extremely sweet) Maya Zankoul gave us a workshop at Nasawiya on how to express our feelings & document our everyday life through illustration. Those of us (like me) who lack the talent and finesse can still use basic drawings to deliver messages. It is not the sophistication of the artwork but the ability to communicate a message powerfully that counts. During the workshop, Maya asked us to draw an incident that bugged us, so I drew a true story that happened to me & Ran last week. Yes, 3am darib 3ala Maya Zankoul Enjoy!

Some pics taken by the awesome @69mirs from @naeema‘s fantastic workshop on optimizing images for the web at Nasawiya happening live right now. Special thanks to @monajem and @smexbeirut for lending us the projector.

@naeema is very funny when giving workshops

participants learning how to optimize images

me laughing so hard at @naeema's workshop jokes

As you know, I am a little obsessed with WordPress and will be giving workshops and tutorials to friends & fellow activists. As part of building a Gender & IT program at @Nasawiya, the feminist collective, we are kicking off this Saturday, February 6 with a WordPress training. It’s free, you can learn more & sign up here.

Truth be told, the purpose of the training is to upgrade the nasawiya.org website to wordpress

The training is will take place at the IndyACT office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions) with a wireless connection for those of you who want to try out features during the workshop. To register, please email farah@nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. We have 15 places available and priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.

Within hours of my posting a blog on Top 12 Reasons Why the Billboard Campaign, “Sois Belle et Vote,” Is Offensive to Women, I had already received more comments, phone calls, and messages than any time I’d ever done anything feminist before. This is undoubtedly because it was the first time I made feminist remarks against Lebanon’s politics in a targeted manner besides “all Lebanese politics sucks.”

The post spread more widely than I initially thought it would and attracted both the supportive and the angry. If you browse through the comments on the post, you will see some very pointless, angry, ad hominem arguments, which I really don’t know how to (or if I should) respond to. It got me thinking.

It is mind-blowing how we got the same attacks that feminists across the globe have been getting for years: that’s we’re “angry,” that we’re “ugly,” that we need to get laid, that we’re missing the point, that we should just shut up, and that we’re taking sides. Ad hominem par excellence. At one point, after too many disgruntled phone calls from my friends (who are mostly FPM supporters), I began to question whether or not the Feminist Collective should have spoken up at all. I wondered if I actually was pushing it too far or making a big deal out of it. I saw Deems working from the kitchen when I went in to make some coffee (I don’t know why, but she seems to like working on the kitchen table) and asked her: Are we right, Deems? Or are they right?

Concise and matter-of-fact as always, she replied: Of course we’re right, Nadz.

Of course we’re right. I have always criticized women’s and “peace” organizations for not speaking up about happenings specifically and for presenting themselves too guardedly, fearing that anyone might stop liking them. They hide behind the “apolitical” stand and the obviously humanitarian slogans in order to keep friendly ties with everybody. But friendly ties never get us anywhere. They maintain the power dynamic and fear factor as it is. We are scared of politicians and men of power. We don’t want to piss them off. We want to ask them kindly for our rights.

I knew in my head that no power is ever given up easily. It is taken by (preferably peaceful) force. I have always known that, but to experience it is a totally different ballgame.  To put one’s opinions out there as radically against something that enjoys much popularity is more tough than I had imagined. But in the midst of my personal discomforted thinking, two things came out as crystal clear:

1. We must always put our opinions out there, even at the risk of being misunderstood, ridiculed, and called names. We must speak up even at the risk of making enemies. It is having enemies that shows us if we are being taken seriously.
2. A lot of women had a gut-instinct that something was wrong with the ad campaign, but didn’t know how to put their discomfort into words. They are feminists, whether they know it or not. And putting our feminism out there makes them feel supported enough to speak up as well. We may be few, but we will grow in numbers, and the more we grow, the stronger we become as a Collective.

And so I believe, with a much deeper understanding now, that we, as feminists, must stand up for the voice of the minority – no matter how tiny it may seem right now. And right now, to me, it seems really really tiny. I leave you with a quote from Audre Lorde:

I have come to believe over and over again, that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood…. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you…. and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.

- The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Sister Outsider