One of the core messages of The Hidden is female empowerment, a subject very close to my heart. When I was writing the novel I was in a bad space. I had become hyper-alert to sexism, misogyny and the repression of a woman's right to live her life in the way she felt best for her. I had become a mother and was expected to 'act' in a certain way. I was applying for jobs and was being treated as a second class citizen because my children were my top priority. I was also supposed to possess a toolbox of stereotypical female attributes and characteristics to make me acceptable in the eyes of society. I tried to play the game but obviously wasn't very successful.
During this time I stood back and observed the world I was living in, and felt able to judge from my months and months of research into the lives of Muslim women in Egypt during the early 20th century, that despite the fact I was living in a supposed 'western' country that not much was really that different from Huda Shaarawi's time.
Huda Shaarawi was an Egyptian feminist and Nationalist. She lived from 1879 to 1947 and saw radical change occur in her beloved Al-Qahire. She fought for women's rights in Egypt and refused to accept the roles assigned to her by religion, by tradition, by culture. She was the first Egyptian woman to refuse to veil, tearing off her veil in Cairo, out in public at the train station to the shock and horror of onlookers. She was the head of the Egyptian Feminist Union in Cairo and educated girls on the importance of independence and freedom.
Harem Years - The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist - Huda Shaarawi
Decades later, a lonely mother (me) used the legacy of Ms. Shaarawi and all she stood for, as a spiritual balm to soothe me as I walked through hell. When I say 'hell' I will paint a vague impressionist picture to preserve my privacy, using the words: custody battles, a bullying male, geographic isolation and poverty.
I was reading feminist writers but something still didn't add up for me. For one, I didn't like the term 'feminist'. It had been hijacked by the women-haters (and many women are actually women-haters) to mean something unattractive, unfeminine.
It's such a defining term, that caged its subjects, that I grew to hate the word. I feel less strongly about it now, and have reclaimed it for myself.
Back then I started an erotic small press to challenge the stereotypical view that women were looking for a love-marriage and male wealth, and were only interested in a passive role in life. I published four small prose poetry books of female erotica and set about selling them at literary festivals. The response was great but out came the male voyeurs, perverts and misogynists who wanted to damn me for suggesting that women could live out their sexuality on their own terms.
I will always want to challenge expected 'norms' in society. Men and women suffer because of tradition, religion and lack of progress. I remember vividly once, as a journalist, interviewing a famous feminist from Israel. She was visiting Australia to give a series of lectures on women's rights around the world. She told me that lack of women's empowerment is tantamount to a country walking on one leg. It's hard to get very far walking on one leg.
I grew up in an era when all that was expected of me was marriage. I damned that notion at the age of three! I was never a very pleasant little girl.
During this time I stood back and observed the world I was living in, and felt able to judge from my months and months of research into the lives of Muslim women in Egypt during the early 20th century, that despite the fact I was living in a supposed 'western' country that not much was really that different from Huda Shaarawi's time.
Huda Shaarawi was an Egyptian feminist and Nationalist. She lived from 1879 to 1947 and saw radical change occur in her beloved Al-Qahire. She fought for women's rights in Egypt and refused to accept the roles assigned to her by religion, by tradition, by culture. She was the first Egyptian woman to refuse to veil, tearing off her veil in Cairo, out in public at the train station to the shock and horror of onlookers. She was the head of the Egyptian Feminist Union in Cairo and educated girls on the importance of independence and freedom.
Harem Years - The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist - Huda Shaarawi
Decades later, a lonely mother (me) used the legacy of Ms. Shaarawi and all she stood for, as a spiritual balm to soothe me as I walked through hell. When I say 'hell' I will paint a vague impressionist picture to preserve my privacy, using the words: custody battles, a bullying male, geographic isolation and poverty.
I was reading feminist writers but something still didn't add up for me. For one, I didn't like the term 'feminist'. It had been hijacked by the women-haters (and many women are actually women-haters) to mean something unattractive, unfeminine.
It's such a defining term, that caged its subjects, that I grew to hate the word. I feel less strongly about it now, and have reclaimed it for myself.
Back then I started an erotic small press to challenge the stereotypical view that women were looking for a love-marriage and male wealth, and were only interested in a passive role in life. I published four small prose poetry books of female erotica and set about selling them at literary festivals. The response was great but out came the male voyeurs, perverts and misogynists who wanted to damn me for suggesting that women could live out their sexuality on their own terms.
I will always want to challenge expected 'norms' in society. Men and women suffer because of tradition, religion and lack of progress. I remember vividly once, as a journalist, interviewing a famous feminist from Israel. She was visiting Australia to give a series of lectures on women's rights around the world. She told me that lack of women's empowerment is tantamount to a country walking on one leg. It's hard to get very far walking on one leg.
I grew up in an era when all that was expected of me was marriage. I damned that notion at the age of three! I was never a very pleasant little girl.
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