Diaa Sersawi

“when the United States and Britain denied their non-propertied classes and their female citizens suffrage, or when the US operated a colonial system of slavery, genocide, and racial apartheid, no culturalist arguments were advanced to explain this grave democratic deficit among white Euro-American property-owning Protestant Christian men either (the only exception was the use by antebellum Northern white abolitionists of culturalist arguments against Southern whites as sexually excessive and libertine—on account of having learned such traits from their Black slaves and from living in a warmer climate—and confining of women, but no arguments were offered to explain the racism of Northern whites against Blacks and Native Americans, let alone Northern intolerance of Catholics and Mormons or discrimination against women).”
― Joseph A. Massad, Islam in Liberalism

“and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.”
― Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language

“أخي يبكي, يتلوى ألماً, يبكي الخبز. يصغرني. أبكي معه. أراه يمشي إليه. الوحش يمشي إليه. الجنون في عينيه. يداه أخطبوط. لا أحد يقدر أن يمنعه. أستغيث في خيالي. وحش! مجنون! أمنعوه! يلوي اللعين عنقه بعنف. أخي يتلوى. الدم يتدفق من فمه. أهرب خارج بيتنا تاركاً إياه يسكت أمي باللكم والرفس. اختفيت منتظراً نهاية المعركة. لا أحد يمر. أصوات ذلك الليل بعيدة وقريبة مني. السماء مصابيح الله شاهدة علي جريمة أبي. الناس نائمون. مصباح الله يظهر ويختفي. شبح أمي. صوتها خفيض. تبحث عني. تنتحب. الظلام يخفيني. لماذا ليست قوية مثله؟ الرجال يضربون النساء وهن يبكين ويصرخن”
― محمد شكري, الخبز الحافي

“Women have been driven mad, "gaslighted," for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each others' sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.

Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”
― Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Selected Prose 1966-1978