#NudePhotoRevolutionary

Very rarely does a subject come up where the right and wrong sides are so clearly demarcated and yet a debate goes on. Aliaa Magda Elmahdy is a young Egyptian woman who, in full control of her senses and with the intention of making a point about her freedom to do so, posted a photo of herself, wearing no clothes bar a pair of stockings, on her blog.

http://arebelsdiary.blogspot.com/


Clearly this has caused a fuss among those who say that the bodies of women are profane by nature, but frankly; fuck 'em. What really concerns me is the pseudo liberal attitude that says, 'This girl doesn't know what she's doing - this will only inflame anger.' You're damn right it will. That's why she did it and yes, she did understand that that's what it would do. She is now a known dissident. Her blog has now been viewed over 2,600,000 times and the counter is rising all the time. That's what I call getting your point across.

If you are tempted to downplay the significance of this, then let's remember what censorship and sexual repression did to the UK. The Victorian era saw examples of the most hideous immorality and cruelty it is possible to imagine. It took eighty years for the people warped by that sensibility to die and leave us alone.

Who misses that era? Who misses jail for homosexuals? Who misses the requirement to cover their flesh? Who misses the terrifying otherness that a female body represents to a young man before he discovers their touch?

Yet these oppressions and worse are being foisted upon people every day of their lives in countries of conservative culture and law. In the article below, Mona Eltahawy gives an account of the cases of women who live their lives under the rule of men. I don't really have the stomach to describe it here. Suffice it to say that it involves one of the most shameful combinations of two words imaginable: 'virginity test'.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/18/egypy-aliaa-mahdy-patriarchs-mind?newsfeed=true




As Bill Maher has been shouting at anyone nearby the last couple of days, the only adequate moderating influence on the reptilian instincts of the male brain is the presence of empowered women. Look at the industrys, institutions and cultures where women are marginalised. Leave aside that particular injustice for a moment and then look at the health of the subject. Catholic Church, anyone? Football? Freemasonry? Investment banking?

What is finally going to lift the middle east out of its two hundred year spiral of decline is the empowerment of the other half, not the restoration of a lost empire. That's what lifted the UK out of the exhaustion of the postwar era and it is the only thing that has ever healed an injured society anywhere. So show some solidarity with Aliaa Elmahdy. She's exposed herself in more ways than one.