Sex and the Citadel (50 page)

71
. U.S. Department of State,
Egypt: Country-Specific Information
.

72
. Hassan,
Clouds in Egypt’s Sky: Sexual Harassment from Verbal Harassment to Rape
.

73
. El-Kogali, Krafft, and Sieverding, “Attitudes Toward Gender Roles,” p. 167.

74
. An overwhelming majority of young Egyptian women said that personal choice, rather than direct parental or peer pressure, motivated them to wear hijabs. However, they drew the line at niqabs, with only 5 percent opting for a full-face cover (El-Kogali and Krafft, “Social Issues, Values and Civic Engagement,” p. 135).

75
. Harbour and Barsoum, “Health,” pp. 24–25.

76
. Hassan,
Clouds in Egypt’s Sky
.

77
. For more on creative attempts to tackle sexual harassment, see
www.harassmap.org
and
www.ecwr.org
.

78
. Amar, “Turning the Gendered Politics of the Security State Inside Out?”

79
. For more on honor killings across the Arab region, see Kulczycki and Windle, “Honor Killings in the Middle East and North Africa.” For weaknesses in the law covering honor crimes and related “crimes of passion” in Egypt, see Abu Komsan,
Egypt Violence Against Women Study: Violence Against Women and the Law
; and for the situation across the Arab region, see Welchman and Hossain,
“Honour”: Crimes, Paradigms and Violence Against Women
.

4. Facts of Life

  1
. For more on masturbation across the Arab region, past and present, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

  2
. Other innovative uses of technology to communicate the facts of life across the Arab region can be found at
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

  3
. Krafft and El-Kogali, “Education”; and Silatech and Gallup,
The Silatech Index
, 2011.

  4
. For more on the high drama of teaching sex in the classroom, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

  5
. On a countrywide level, less than 15 percent of boys and 5 percent of girls
in Egypt said they learned the facts of life from school (Harbour and Barsoum, “Health,” p. 39). For more on where young people elsewhere in the Arab region are learning about sex, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

  6
. International conventions and agreements covering sexuality education are discussed in UNESCO,
International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education
, pp. 30–33.

  7
. For more on historical debates over sexual education in Egypt, see Jacob, “Overcoming ‘Simply Being’: Straight Sex, Masculinity and Physical Culture in Modern Egypt.”

  8
. For more details on whom young people talk to about love and sex, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

  9
. More information on tongue-tied parents and the facts of life is available at
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

10
. Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
.

11
. For more on the making, watching, and sharing of porn in Egypt, see Leonard, “Of Masculinity and Men: Exploring Ambivalence, Pornographic Consumption and Sexual Desire in Cairo.”

12
. The long view on Egyptian cinema and its treatment of women and their sexuality is presented in Shafik,
Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class, and Nation
, pp. 119–238.

13
. For a discussion of the rise of “clean cinema,” see Tartoussieh, “Pious Stardom: Cinema and the Religious Revival in Egypt.”

14
. Ezzat, Zain al-’Abidine, and Mubarak,
Taqriir Hurriyya al-Fikra wa-l-Ibda’ fi Misr
[Report on freedom of thought and creativity in Egypt], pp. 20–25.

15
. For some spectacular examples of censorship through subtitling, visit
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

16
. A few examples of Arabic’s rich repertoire of sexual insult, past and present, can be found at
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

17
. Geel, “Improving Adolescents’ and Youth Reproductive Health in Egypt.”

18
. Wahba and Roudi-Fahimi,
The Need for Reproductive Health Education in Schools in Egypt
.

19
. UNESCO,
International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education
. One country in the Arab region well on its way to a comprehensive sexuality curriculum is Lebanon; for more on the challenges of this lengthy and complex process, see Baydoun, “Sex Education in Lebanon”; and
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

20
. For more on Muntada Jensaneya, visit the forum’s website at
www.jensaneya.org
.

21
. Flaherty, “Reconstructing Sexuality and Identity Through Dialogue: The Muntada’s Actions for Palestinian Arab Citizens of Israel,” p. 165.

22
. Ibid., p. 159.

23
. In Arabic, this book is known as
Kitab al-Nikah fi al-Lugha
, by Ibn Al Qatta’ (as detailed in Al-Munajjid,
Al-Hayat al-Jinsiyya ‘ind al-’Arab
[The sexual life of the Arabs]), p. 142.

24
. For some of the more remarkable misconceptions in Egypt regarding contraception, even after decades of widely publicized family planning campaigns, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

25
. Omran,
Family Planning in the Legacy of Islam
, pp. 85–112.

26
. The grounds for contraception in Islam are discussed in detail in Musallam,
Sex and Society in Islam
.

27
.
El-Zanaty and Way,
Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008
, p. 93.

28
. There is little published research on how much unmarried Egyptians understand or use contraception; for more on use by young people elsewhere in the Arab region see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

29
. El-Zanaty and Way,
Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008
, p. 93.

30
. There is a debate as to whether condom use abrogates the need for ablutions after sexual intercourse. Some religious authorities argue that if there is a barrier (such as a condom), the male and female “parts” do not technically come in contact, and therefore washing is not required; others maintain that condom or not, it’s penetration all the same, and therefore ablutions are necessary. For more on these varying opinions, see “Islam QA,”
http://islamqa.info/en/ref/37031
. Showers and hairdos aside, many Egyptian wives I know dislike condoms and complain (as do their husbands) that they reduce their own sexual pleasure.

31
. For more on condom use and sex outside of marriage in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab region, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

32
. For a comprehensive review of the epidemiology of sexually transmitted infections in the Arab region and what this says about sexual behavior, see Abu-Raddad et al.,
Characterizing the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the Middle East and North Africa
, pp. 151–69.

33
. The predicament of HIV-positive women in the Arab region is explored in El Feki,
Standing Up, Speaking Out
.

34
. Asman, “Abortion in Islamic Countries—Legal and Religious Aspects,” pp. 85–87. Second-trimester abortion is also available in Tunisia, but on more restricted grounds, such as risk to the mother’s health or fetal abnormalities, because of the greater clinical risks associated with a later-stage procedure.

35
. For more on the difficulties faced by young people turning up at Egypt’s three dozen or so public clinics for youth sexual and reproductive health, see El-Damanhoury,
Exploratory Study of Attitudes and Communication Behaviors of Providers in Youth Friendly Clinics in Egypt
.

36
. Selma Hajri, personal communication, 2012; Blum et al., “The Medical Abortion Experience of Married and Unmarried Women in Tunis”; and Bouchlaka, Bouaziz, and Smida, “Profil des Femmes Célibataires Bénéficiaires d’IVG dans les Structures de l’ONFP” [Profile of unmarried women using ONFP abortion facilities].

37
. “Do not kill your children for fear of poverty. We shall provide for them and for you—killing them is a great sin.” Qur’an 17:31.

38
. Qur’an 23:12–14.

39
. The extensive Islamic discourse on abortion can be found in Bowen, “Contemporary Muslim Ethics of Abortion”; and Katz, “The Problem of Abortion in Classical Sunni
Fiqh
.”

40
. Huntington, “Abortion in Egypt: Official Constraints and Popular Practices,” p. 180.

41
. For more on Egypt’s abortion laws, see Lane, Jok, and El-Mouelhy, “Buying Safety: The Economics of Reproductive Risk and Abortion in Egypt”; and Asman, “Abortion in Islamic Countries—Legal and Religious Aspects.”

42
. For more on medical work-arounds and restrictions on abortion, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

43
. A selection of prescriptions can be found at
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

44
.
El-Damanhoury,
Why Do Women Abort? The Determinants of Induced Abortion in Egypt
.

45
. A comprehensive discussion of abortion laws in the Arab region is available in Hessini, “Abortion and Islam: Policies and Practice in the Middle East and North Africa”; and Hessini, “Islam and Abortion: The Diversity of Discourses and Practices.”

46
. Dabash and Roudi-Fahimi,
Abortion in the Middle East and North Africa
, p. 2.

47
. El-Mouelhy, “Maternal Mortality in the Last Two Decades in Egypt.”

48
. Because of the way UN agencies divide the world into regions, this figure includes several non-Arab states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, Israel, and Turkey (World Health Organization,
Unsafe Abortion: Global and Regional Estimates
, p. 19).

49
. For more on such trade-offs, see Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy.”

50
. See AMPF (Association Marocaine de Planification Familiale),
Étude Exploratoire de l’Avortement à Risque
[Exploratory study of risky abortion], for further details on the scale of abortion in Morocco.

51
. For more on the legal process that applies to abandoned children in Egypt, see Thomason, “On the Steps of the Mosque.”

52
. See World Values Survey at
www.worldvaluessurvey.org
.

53
. Loza and Social, Planning, Analysis, and Administration Consultants, “Experiences, Attitudes, and Practices: A New Survey of 4,408 Women, Men, and Female and Male Youth,” p. 31.

54
. For more on the Islamic stance on adoption, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

55
. For more on “Girls of Agadir,” an infamous porn CD, visit
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

56
. Moving accounts of the lives of unmarried mothers, and the organizations that are trying to help them, can be found in Naamane Guessous and Guessous,
Grossesses de la Honte
[Shameful pregnancies].

57
. According to a study by INSAF (Institution Nationale de Solidarité avec les Femmes en Détresse) and UN Women, unmarried mothers accounted for roughly 4 percent of all recorded deliveries in Morocco in 2009 (INSAF,
Le Maroc des Mères Célibataires
[Unmarried mothers in Morocco], pp. 109–19).

58
. For more on the official obstacles facing unmarried mothers, see Willman Bordat and Kouzzi, “Legal Empowerment of Unwed Mothers: Experiences of Moroccan NGOs.”

59
. Karam, “Moroccan Single Burns Herself in Protest.”

60
. My thanks to Jamila Bargach for bringing this aspect of SolFem’s public positioning to my attention.

5. Sex for Sale

  1
. For more on a recent attempt to revive this practice in Egypt, see Suleiman, “First case of ‘what your right hand possesses’ marriage.”

  2
. Ali,
Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence
, pp. 56–74.

  3
. Laws covering sex work in Egypt are detailed in Al-Kardousi and Magdoub,
Darasa li-Shabakat al-Bagha’ fi Misr
[Study of prostitution networks in Egypt].

  4
. Oyoun Center for Studies and Development,
Modern Slavery: Tourist Marriages in Egypt
, pp. 62–66.

  5
. Sieverding and Elbadawy, “Marriage and Family Formation,” p. 119.