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Shereen el Feki: So when I was in Morocco,
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in Casablanca, not so long ago,
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I met a young unmarried mother called Faiza.
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Faiza showed me photos of her infant son
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and she told me the story of his conception,
pregnancy, and delivery.
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It was a remarkable tale,
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but Faiza saved the best for last.
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You know, I am a virgin, she told me.
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I have two medical certificates to prove it.
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This is the modern Middle East,
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where two millenia after the coming of Christ,
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virgin births are still a fact of life.
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Faiza's story is just one of hundreds I've heard
over the years, traveling across the Arab region
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talking to people about sex.
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Now I know this might sound like a dream job,
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or possibly a highly dubious occupation.
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But for me, it's something else all together.
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I'm half Egyptian, and I'm Muslim.
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But I grew up in Canada, far from my Arab roots.
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Like so many who straddle East and West,
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I've been drawn, over the years, to try to better
understand my origins.
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That I chose to look at sex comes from
my background in HIV/AIDS,
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as a writer, and a researcher, and an activist.
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Sex lies at the heart of an emerging epidemic
in the Middle East and North Africa,
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which is one of only two regions in the world
where HIV/AIDS is still on the rise.
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Now sexuality is an incredibly powerful lens
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with which to study any society,
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because what happens in our intimate lives
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is reflected by forces on a bigger stage:
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in politics and economics, in religion and tradition,
in gender and generations.
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As I found, if you really want to know a people,
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you start by looking inside their bedrooms.
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Now to be sure, the Arab world is vast and varied.
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But running across it are three red lines --
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these are topics you are not supposed
to challenge in word or deed.
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The first of these is politics.
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But the Arab Spring has changed all that,
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in uprisings which have blossomed
across the region since 2011.
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Now while those in power, old and new,
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continue to cling to business as usual,
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millions are still pushing back,
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and pushing forward to what they hope
will be a better life.
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That second red line is religion.
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But now religion and politics are connected,
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with the rise of such groups as the
Muslim Brotherhood.
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And some people, at least, are starting
to ask questions
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about the role of Islam in public and private life.
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You know, as for that third red line,
that off-limits subject,
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what do you think it might be?
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(Audience members: Sex.)
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SEF: Louder, I can't hear you.
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(Audience members: Sex.)
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SEF: Again, please don't be shy.
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(Audience members: Sex.)
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SEF: Absolutely, that's right, it's sex. (Laughter)
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Across the Arab region, the only accepted
context for sex is marriage.
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Approved by your parents, sanctioned by religion,
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and registered by the state.
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Marriage is your ticket to adulthood.
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If you don't tie the knot, you can't move out of your
parent's place,
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and you're not supposed to be having sex,
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and you're defnitely not supposed to be having chidren.
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It's a social citadel, it's an impregnable fortress
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which resists any assault, any alternative.
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And around the fortress is this vast field of taboo,
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against pre-marital sex, against condoms,
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against abortion, against homosexuality,
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you name it.
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Faiza was living proof of this.
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Her virginity statement was not a piece of wishful thinking.
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Althought he major religions of the region
extoll premarital chastity,
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in a patriarchy, boys will be boys.
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Men have sex before marriage,
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and people more or less turn a blind eye.
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Not so for women,
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who are expected to be virgins
on their wedding night,
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that is, to turn up with your hymen intact.
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This is not a question of individual concern,
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this is a matter of family honor,
and in particular, men's honor.
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And so women and their relatives
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will go to great lengths to preserve
this tiny piece of anatomy:
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from female genital mutilation,
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to virginity testing, to hymen repair surgery.
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Faiza chose a different route:
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non-vaginal sex.
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Only she became pregnant all the same.
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But Faiza didn't actually realize this,
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because there's so little
sexuality education in schools,
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and so little communication in the family.
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When her condition became hard to hide,
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Faiza's mother helped her flee
her father and brothers.
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This is because honor killings are a real threat
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for untold numbers of women in the Arab region.
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And so when Faiza eventually fetched up at
a hospital in Casablanca,
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the man who offered to help her,
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instead tried to rape her.
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Sadly, Faiza is not alone.
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In Egypt, where my research is focused,
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I have seen plenty of trouble
in and out of the citadel.
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There are legions of young men
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who can't afford to get married,
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because marriage has become
a very expensive proposition.
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They are expected to bear the burden
of costs in married life,
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but they can't find jobs.
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This is one of the major drivers
of the recent uprisings,
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and it is one of the reasons for the
rising age of marriage
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in much of the Arab region.
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There are career women who want to get married,
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but can't find a husband,
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because they defy gender expectations,
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or as one young female doctor
in Tunisia put it to me,
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the women, they are becoming more and more open.
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But the man, he is still at the prehistoric stage.
(Laughter)
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And then there are men and women who
cross the heterosexual line,
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who have sex with their own sex,
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or who have a different gender identity.
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They are on the receiving end of laws
which punish their activities,
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even their appearance.
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And they face a daily struggle with social stigma,
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with family despair,
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and with religious fire and brimstone.
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Now it's not as if it's all rosy
in the marital bed either.
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Couples who are looking for greater happiness,
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greater sexual happiness in their married lives,
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but are at a loss of how to achieve it,
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especially wives who are afraid of being seen as 'bad women'
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if they show some spark in the bedroom.
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And then there are those whose marriages
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are actually a veil for prostitution.
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They have been sold by their families,
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often to wealthy Arab tourists.
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This is just one face of a booming
sex trade across the Arab region.
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Now raise your hand if any of
this is sounding familiar to you,
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from your part of the world.
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Yeah. It's not as if the Arab world
has a monopoly on sexual hangups.
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And although we don't yet have
an Arab Kinsey Report
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to tell us exactly what's happening
inside bedrooms across the Arab region,
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It's pretty clear that
something is not right.
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Double standards for men and women,
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sex as a source of shame,
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family control limiting individual choices,
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and a vast gulf between appearance and reality:
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what people are doing
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and what they're willing to admit to,
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and a general reluctance to move
beyond private whispers
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to a serious and sustained public discussion.
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As one doctor in Cairo summed it up for me,
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here, sex is the opposite of sport.
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Football, everybody talks about it,
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but hardly anyone plays.
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But sex, everybody is doing it,
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but nobody wants to talk about it.
(Laughter)
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(Music and Arabic narration)
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SEF: "I want to give you a piece of advice,
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"which if you follow it,
will make you happy in life."
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"When your husband reaches out to you,
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"when he seizes a part of your body,
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"sigh deeply and look at him lustily."
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"When he penetrates you with his penis,
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"try to talk flirtatiously and
move yourself in harmony with him."
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Hot stuff!
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And it might sound that these handy hints
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come from the Joy of Sex or YouPorn.
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But in fact, they come from
a 10th-century Arabic book
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called the Encyclopedia of Pleasure,
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which covers sex from aphrodisiacs to zoophilia,
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and everything in between.
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The Encyclopedia is just one in a long line of Arabic erotica,
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much of it written by religious scholars.
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Going right back to the Prophet Muhammad,
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there is a rich tradition in Islam
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of talking frankly about sex:
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not just its problems, but also its pleasures,
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and not just for men, but also for women.
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A thousand years ago, we used to have
whole dictionaries of sex in Arabic.
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Words to cover every conceivable sexual feature,
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position, and preference, a body of language
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that was rich enough to make up the body
of the woman you see on this page.
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Today, this history is largely unknown
in the Arab region.
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Even by educated people, who often
feel more comfortable talking about sex
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in a foreign language than they do
in their own tongue.
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Today's sexual landscape looks
a lot like Europe and America
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on the brink of the sexual revolution.
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But while the West has opened on sex,
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what we found is that Arab societies appear
to have been moving in the opposite direction.
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In Egypt and many of its neighbors,
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this closing down is part of a wider closing
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in political, social, and cultural thought.
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And it is the product of a complex historical process,
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one which has gained ground with the rise
of Islamic conservatism
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since the late 1970s.
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"Just say no" is what conservatives
around the world
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say to any challenge to the sexual status quo.
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In the Arab region, they brand these attempts
as a Western conspiracy
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to undermine traditional Arab
and Islamic values.
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But what's really at stake here
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is one of their most powerful tools of control:
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sex wrapped up in religion.
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But history shows us that
even as recently
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as our fathers' and grandfathers' day,
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there have been times of greater pragmatism,
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and tolerance, and a willingness
to consider other interpretations:
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be it abortion, or masturbation, or even
the incendiary topic of homosexuality.
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it is not black and white,
as conservatives would have us believe.
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In these, as in so many other matters,
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Islam offers us at least 50 shades of grey.
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(Laughter)
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Over my travels,
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I've met men and women
across the Arab region
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who've been exploring that spectrum.
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Sexologists who are trying
to help couples
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find greater happiness in their marriages,
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innovators who are managing to get
sexuality education into schools,
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small groups of men and women,
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lesbian, gay, transgendered, transsexual,
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who are reaching out to their peers
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with online initiatives and real-world support.
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Women, and increasingly men,
who are starting to speak out
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and push back against sexual violence
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on the streets and in the home.
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Groups that are trying to help sex workers
protect themselves against HIV
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and other occupational hazards,
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and NGOs that are helping unwed mothers like Faiza
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find a place in society, and critically,
stay with their kids.
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Now these efforts are small,
they're often underfunded,
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and they face formidable opposition.
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But I am optimistic that, in the long run,
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times are changing, and they and their ideas
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will gain ground.
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Social change doesn't happen in the Arab region
through dramatic confrontation;
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beating, or indeed baring of breasts,
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but rather through negotiation.
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What we're talking here is not about a
sexual revolution,
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but a sexual evolution,
learning from other parts of the world,
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adapting to local conditions,
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forging our own path,
not following one blazed by another.
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That path, I hope, will one day lead us
to the right to control our own bodies,
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and to access the information
and services we need
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to lead satisfying and safe sexual lives.
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The right to express our ideas freely,
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to marry whom we choose,
to choose our own partners,
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to be sexually active or not,
to decide whether to have children, and when,
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all this without violence or force or discrimination.
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Now we are very far from this across the Arab region,
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and so much needs to change:
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law, education, media, the economy,
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the list goes on and on,
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and it is the work of a generation, at least.
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But it begins with a journey that I myself have made,
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asking hard questions of received wisdoms
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in sexual life.
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And it is a journey which has
only served to strengthen my faith,
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and my appreciation of local histories and cultures
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by showing me possibilities
where I once only saw absolutes.
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Now given the turmoil in many
countries in the Arab region,
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talking about sex,
challenging the taboos,
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seeking alternatives might sound like
something of a luxury.
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But, at this critical moment in history,
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if we do not anchor freedom and justice,
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dignity and equality,
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privacy and autonomy in our personal lives,
in our sexual lives,
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we will find it very hard to achieve in public life.
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The political and the sexual are intimate bedfellows,
and that is true for us all.
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no matter where we live and love.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)