Cat walk feminism

Posh women’s rights in the Arab World

Gutterpoetry goes on a rant about a new Arab women’s forum in Beirut, which she describes as “an elitist club for ladies who lunch.” She writes of how when attending as a journalist last year she was given “a luxury leather note-book holder,” in “fashionable pink and brown,” and how the event took place at the ultimate symbol of opulent excess – the Intercontinental Phoenicia Hotel. “Perhaps Nawf” didn’t get the memo, gutterpoetry writes, “that it is women who make up the bulk of the Arab world’s illiterate and impoverished citizens.” She writes of gilded doors, big name speakers instead of grassroots activists, and of the “gruesome parade of plastic surgery operations and couture outfits on the relatives of male political leaders than anything remotely to do with women’s empowerment.” The post then goes on to discuss women’s issues in Lebanon, and the fact that miniskirts don’t necessarily translate into greater empowerment.

Infanticide and Gulf Migrant Workers ~1

Honor killing is one issue receiving lots of attention online, but Caledoniyya raises another which he believes is just as important – infanticide. He writes of an African women who have birth in an airport toilet. She killed the child, and then took a flight home. He suggests that the maltreatment of migrant workers in the Gulf has reached a new nadir – could this sort of thing be a consequence?

Streets of Beirut XXV

Never leave home without your chair.