in the uae, where she undergoes her first experience with government censorship
The UAE is mostly great. I suppose I’ll update this better later when I have my handwritten journal and I can just copy what I thought at the time. Who knows though… i’m still waybackdated on Poland.
I’m very depressed today. I wrote a poem about it. I think it’s lack of really sweet emails to make me feel really happy and very missed at home. Who knows.
I wish I didn’t need medicine to function like a human being. This is also what the poem was about.
Someone please remind me to take my medicine when we land in Frankfurt so I’ll be back on American time. And I would really love some Lipton Rasberry Lipton tea as well.
I really feel like I’ve grown up a lot on this trip. I think I’m more emotionally balanced and more mature about my decision making process. I also think I’ve gotten really grounded in terms of what I want to do in the community and how I think my life should look. I’m very excited, all-in-all, to return to Topeka and try to enact some of my big dreams. It should be great.
I think that also my opinion on Western Feminism has changed a lot. In the end, I think that Western Feminism is just as paternalistic as everything else western. I mean, really. We act like giving someone “These rights” liberates them when really they just then become enslaved to us. Or oppressed by us. Man, we’ve gotta figure cultures out before we decide what they need and what they want. And I think that Women’s History scholarship fundamentally lies in judgemental realm of what female rights should have been int hose times. I mean, clearly, men should not be able to beat their husbands but if a woman is secluded and men are in power it does not necessarily mean that that woman is oppressed if she chooses to be secluded. And further, women have the power to remove themselves from the situation if they work together. And the women GET that over here. To them, to all of them, it’s just a matter of the women here supporting each other. I think they know that they could start a revolution, but they just don’t because they’re alright with it. Even in Al-Ain which is a more traditional arabic city, we were able to talk to the women at the museum and they asked where we were from and then why we were here and we said that we attended the Women as Global Leaders conference in Abu Dhabi and they were like “Oh yes” and smiled at us. and seemed genuinely happy that the conference was going on. I’ve learned so much about myself and about the nature of women and the importance of bonding here that it’s just surreal.
I love it. Peace be on you.