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About Me
- Mo-ha-med
- I'm an economic consultant, perpetual expat, often lost, curious, religious, secular, illogical and hesitant. This blog is somewhat of a travelogue, a political and economic commentary board. Your comments and emails are both welcome and encouraged; this blog is meant to be read and it's nice to know that it is! Agree, disagree, object, discuss... Thank you for wasting your working hours here.
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"Occupation 101" series - Daily life tales from Occupied Palestine
- Welcome to Hebron!
- Blocking access to the Aqsa mosque: It's just another day in East Jerusalem
- The Israeli army raid on my street ruined my shawarma
- Israeli elections, Arab style: fear, vote buying, and other tales from East Jerusalem
- Iftar at the Aqsa mosque
- The Golan Heights: Israel, Syria, and everything in between
- The killing of the Palestinan cameraman was "justified"
- Meet the Israeli army
- “Next year in Jerusalem” - inshallah
- Borders
- Checkpoints
- Brunch in Jenin: cheese pastries and prison memories
- Introduction
These searches brought folks here. Seriously.
- inshallah in jewish
- fucking instrument condom information in urdu
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- Jeffrey sachs and mahmoud darwish
- can i get reinfected with swine flu?
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Follow the oil price rollercoaster
Recommended blogs
- Ami Kaufman's Half-and-Half
- Back on the Road
- From my Balcony
- Global Themes
- Keri - Ocicat Bengals
- Khadija Patel
- Le Jour de Gloire est Arrivé
- Lisa Goldman's blog
- Nizo's blog
- One Sentence
- Overheard in New York
- Post-Western World
- Rabbi Barry's Blog
- Raising Yusuf and Noor
- Ramblings of the Disoriented Mind
- Rami's Wall
- Rantings of a Sandmonkey
- Something something
- Stuff White People Like
- Tarek Shalaby
- The Confessions of a Multicultural Muslimah
- Unnecessary, and not very diverting, musings
- Vertigo
- You Made my Day
- زغرودة
Development / Economics
- Alain Gresh, Le Monde Diplomatique
- Alanna Shaikh - Blood and Milk
- Brad Delong
- Brad Setser
- Chris Blattman
- Dani Rodrik
- Economists do it with models
- Freakonomics, the blog
- Gary Becker
- Gregory Mankiw
- Pyjama Samsara
- Tales from the Hood
- The Modern Young Lady's Guide to Coups, Contagions & Calamity
- The road to the Horizon
Websites of Interest (to me, that is)
The Corpse Count
No more Genocide on our watch!
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The original text and photos on this website by Mohamed - travellerwithin.blogspot.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
13 comments:
Ya salam! This made the news in Syria a few days ago....
Syrians don't care for such stuff. They've got a new hobby since a while ago. So they've got better things to do that make Chinese artificial hymens largely irrelevant to them.
Yes, I read various feminist blogs and they have been talking about it (the call for ban in Egypt, for example). It is a very interesting topic, indeed. Not only the call for the ban but how men view women as only valuable if they are virgins...etc.
Oh dear! Can't someone just use berries and cherries instead?
How about not focusing on not needing one?
Premarital sex is lame. Whats worse? Being hot and horney? Or having a bunch of bastard children and a whole lot of STD's?
But all people can think of now is....'oh...lets be like the white people...they are oh so happy and free'
Moronic.
I am quite interested in knowing how it can be procured in Egypt. Damn, the sheikhs will have a field day with this one!
Problems won't be solved with an artificial hymen. It'll just fuel more mistrust, lying, hypocrisy and dishonesty. And it'll lead to more restrictions on women's movements by their brothers and fathers. If marriage wasn't such a huge obstacle in Egypt maybe such a product would not be so much of a necessity.
At the risk of sounding incredibly naive, why not be a society based on love, tolerance, acceptance and mutual respect? Why must we continue to feed a culture that forces us all to be hypocrites?
It is purely coincidental, but somehow I think the quote you have at the top of the page is very fitting for the topic at hand!
"When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road."
@shackman
You said "How about not focusing on not needing one?"
While that isn't my personal value, I think it's a far better goal than using a fake hymen...Just so long as the burden is on both men and women.
Very interesting to see not only Mo's blog but the comments and where they come from. I am not living in the middle east, nor do I have any links with it, being Spanish,grown in Belgium, and always having lived in Europe and subsaharan africa. I am just a social anthropologist interested in the middle east and in societies I see as convulsing and complex. But I permanently feel like an expat, so I guess I can relate to Mo's blog in a way :-)
I am also learning a lot, by clicking on links to blogs of people who comment here. initially found this blog by searching about palestine and israel issues, and it's good to see how people with such different backgrounds and lives converge to discuss here :-)
The artificial hymen thing would be a failure in western europe, where it is considered a burden and stigma to remain a virgin after, say, your 20th bday :-)
It's interesting (and sad, if we need to make a value judgement) to see still, and once again, women's bodies serve as battlegrounds for male power struggles and oppresion. This device says a lot about the complexities of societies who produce, condemn and use it, and in this sense it is enlightening to an ignorant laicist western european like me :-)
@shackman: I don't think sex before marriage is lame. Maybe it's nto what you're looking for but it's not necessarily lame. Why are people always afraid of sex? and I don't think marriage is essential. monotheist religions have always seen sex and body as ground for taboo, and we have inherited this shame and denial. Such a pity. not only it does not work, but it get women oppressed and men paranoid...
I think far too many people equate chastity with virginity. They're not the same thing. When looking for a spouse, the things one should look for are love, loyalty, selflessness, humor, a sense of perspective, shared goals, respect for other family members (even when you don't always like every other member of your families) and a love of children. Simply being pretty and virgin, or in the case of husbands, handsome and rich, is completely superfluous and a stupid way to choose a partner-for-life and parent for your children.
Mo is it in the market already??
Hello everyone,
I've been following the thread but avoiding to respond because i was waiting on my article, where I discuss many of those points, to be published, which it has. I'd be delighted if you'd check it out.
A few responses here, and I invite you to continue the discussion on the other thread:
Khaled, Nobody - I read Syria's the other big potential market for that stuff..
Vertigo (welcome back!) it's not just men. It's an entire society mindset..
KJ - I'll make sure to pass on the berries suggestion! :)
Shackman, Jillian - I fully respect your opinion, of course. But isn't a recourse to plastic and red ink just a silly silly way of maintaining our virginal image?
Egyptian - I think they're already having a good time with it, yeah.
And I don't think the artificial hymen will make it big enough to have a deep effect on society, but the discussion around it surely will.
Maria - I laughed at the "stigma to remain a virgin after, say, your 20th bday" :)
And indeed, you'd have hoped we'd have outgrown the narrow definition of physical morality.. apparently not.
Aliyah06 - proving your point about chastity not being equal to virginity... apparently premarital anal sex is not completely uncommon, just because there's no physical proof of it..
Yo - No, I ordered it online.. see next post! :)
Thanks people! please continue the comments on the next thread!
Brilliant article... Well done !
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