Over the past year, I have criss-crossed the Arab global for the BBC, making a series of short films on some of the women plus men who are rewriting the rules – in plus out of the bedroom.
It’s easy to look at the sexual landscape of the Middle East plus North Africa plus see only doom plus gloom, from family preoccupation with female virginity to crackdowns on LGBTQ populations to fasilitas censorship ostensibly in response to online porn.
Such hardline attitudes are reflected in opinion polls, such as the recent survey for BBC News Arabic of 10 countries in the region plus the Palestinian Territories.
Carried out by the Arab Barometer research network, the survey generated a few surprises – most respondents, for instance, accepted a woman’s right to lead their country – but the overall picture was conservative plus closed-minded on matters of sex plus gender.
Most still think the husband should have the final say on family matters, plus “honour killing” is deemed more acceptable than homosexuality in six of the seven places where this question was asked.
Reclaiming identity
And yet this is not the whole picture. If you know where to look, green shoots of openness plus tolerance are beginning to push their way up between the cracks.
Take Safa Tamish, co-founder of Muntada Al-Jensaneya, a non-governmental organisation. Muntada promotes sexual rights in Palestinian society plus encourages rethinking sex education – not just cut-and-dried reproduction but the messiness of love plus intimacy. From its start among Arab communities living in Israel, Muntada has since branched out into the occupied West Bank.
Without formal sex education, the only Arabic words for sex that most people across the region have at their disposal is street slang which, for women in particular, compounds shame about the subject with embarrassment around the language.