حول إلحاح الحاجة لثورة جنسية* فى مصر و العالم العربى

*ملحوظة: المقصود بثورة جنسية مش إن الناس تنط على بعضها فى الشارع و لكن المقصود هو إعادة النظر و من ثم تغيير منظورنا للجنس و كيف ننظمه كمُجتمع.

-Also, jump to the conclusion if in a hurry. Academic writing is totally time-inefficient, I know!

Modes of Resistance to Discourses of Sexual Repression in Egypt and The Arab World
Paving The Way to A Sexual Revolution

            Last week, the Egyptian community on social media has been shocked over a horrible rape accident of Anastasia. Anastasia is a bitch that was found in a terrible condition and rescued by a young woman last month. After medical tests by veterinarians, it was confirmed that the dog was raped, allegedly by three human males. Controversy arose whether they directly raped her or used an external tool to abuse her, but the result is the same: young men sexually abusing a dog on the streets of Cairo (Hassan). On a more extreme note, a few weeks back, a video recording of an ISIS senior militant in Syria and a Saudi subordinate of his went viral on the internet. The video shows the senior eulogizing the younger terrorist, who  was on his way to suicide-bomb himself against some of the Syrian regime's troops. The Saudi young man, named Abdulrahman as heard in the video, seemed cheerful with the bombs all over his shirt, and started smiling with joy as his leader spoke to the camera about the virgins waiting for him in heaven as he bombs himself against the enemies of Islam (Suicide). Abdulrahman is only one of hundreds of other young men who bomb themselves every year believing in a rewarding afterlife, of which the 72 virgins awaiting them in heaven constitute a great part of how much better that life is going to be. Another concerning phenomenon, which is far more frequent than suicide bombing among youth in the region, is sexual harassment, which is committed by millions instead of just a few hundreds. Sexual harassment has made our streets unsafe and violent against women. In Egypt alone, in a survey done by the UN in 2013, 98% of Egyptian women admitted to being sexually harassed on the street before (El Deeb). In all of the three distant examples given above, one common factor stands out as a potential culprit, which is the erupting repressed libido. In the case of Anastasia, we see three young men interested in a female dog's genitalia experimenting with it. In the case of Abdulrahman, we see a young man in his twenties throwing himself smilingly to death in anticipation of some fantastical heavenly virgins he is allegedly going to sleep with after he blows himself up. And in the third case, we see millions of our young men miserably snatching a few distorted moments of 'love' from non-consenting victimized females. In all three cases, one can easily distinguish some error in how we, as a larger society, view and organize sex.  Thus, this paper is set out to deconstruct the discourses, which, as argued below, have led to unsustainable levels of sexual repression in this region. This repression has been naturally met with numerous forms of resistance, mostly of a negative nature. Hence, an urgent need arises for a fast and revolutionary change in how this region views and organizes sexuality.

Background

i.          A sad nation: correlation between happiness and sex

            It's a hardly ever contested fact that romantic love, that is usually consummated into sexual one, is positively correlated with our happiness. It could be argued that the major part of literature and art of our collective human civilization has been revolving around this subject reflecting its importance to the wellbeing of the human condition. From ancient Egyptian mythologies of Isis and Osiris, to Greek tragedies and epic poems depicting legendary heroes waging wars for their lovers (think The Illiad), to classical Arab poets who wrote hundreds of flirtatious verses commemorating their beloved ones and the most-detailed passionate moments they had with them, to Italian renaissance paintings illustrating lovers in Florentine meadows, to eighteenth century's most celebrated operas and ballets and nineteenth century's literary masterpieces describing imperishable love stories, to Hollywood's most breathtakingly popular pictures (think Titanic).

            In the 21st century, science has also set off to confirm the thoughts of hundreds of humanity's most influential artists and men of thought. Last year, a team of economists, building on the work of two others ten years ago, have confirmed a strong positive correlation between sexual activity and happiness (Cheng, 26). In the older paper, Blanchflower and Oswald set their pioneering messages: "There has been little research by economists into how sexual behavior affects the structure of happiness equations, or how economic forces interact with sex and well-being. Some may object to, or be embarrassed by, research into intimate aspects of people's behavior. Yet this area covers an important part of life. The implicit message of the paper is that it can be studied through normal statistical methods" (Blanchflower, 411). The pioneering work of Blanchflower and Oswald inspired younger Cheng and Smyth to pursue an extension and confirmation of the older paper in 2015. They found that, "First, frequency of sexual intercourse is positively related to happiness. Second, the quality of sex matters" (Cheng, 31). Since Blanchflower and his successors were able to devise a proxy measure to quantify happiness, it would be safe to conclude that less frequent (down to a zero) sexual intercourse indicates less happiness, as measured by the economists' proxy measure.

            Building on this scientific findings, in addition to the history of human art and thought on sex, this paper was inspired to go forward into researching sexual repression as a major cause of unhappiness. It is safe to say to that much of the misery and violence committed directly or indirectly for sexual reasons in Egypt and the region is due to  the population, especially the male population, not having enough sex, or none at all; thanks to established sexually repressive discourses. In Egypt, the  Egyptian Cabinet's Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) issued a report on youth in 2010, which showed that among the 62.4% of the population under the age of 29, 77.1% of males and 42.8% of females have never been married before. (Population Council, 16) This would not have been an alarming report, had Egypt not been the conservative country it is, where premarital sex and any sex outside the umbrella of marriage is highly disapproved and frowned upon, which dispels any speculations about frequent, if any, sexual activity of the 77.1% single males and the 42.8% single females. Consequently, these figures lead us to the conclusion that a majority of Egyptian youth lack a significant factor of happiness, that is frequent sex, which, considering that youth comprise an absolute majority of the nation, leads us to conclude safely that this is, at least partially, a sad nation because of sex.

ii.         Theoretical basis (1): Foucault's subject, power, and resistance

            How the Egyptian society views and organizes sex, and the various repressive discourses it uses for that sake, which have led to sexual frustration and some serious complications, are analyzed through the paper using Foucauldian analysis as presented in Foucault's work, The Subject and Power.  The topic of the paper is especially appropriate for Foucauldian analysis, since Foucault himself applied it primarily to sexuality, as he describes the motivation for his work on subject: "Finally, I have sought to study­—it is my current work—the way a human being turns himself into a subject. For example, I have chosen the domain of sexuality—how men have learned to recognize themselves as subjects of sexuality" (Foucault, 778). According to Foucault, "There are two meanings of the word 'subject'. Subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge" (Foucault, 781) In that Foucauldian sense, millions of sexually repressed young women and men are 'subjects': to the state, the religious institution, the society as a whole and its norms, and finally subjects to their own identities, which, especially for women, autonomously repress their sex drives and cause them a sense of guilt and self contempt, if they ever commit adultery or other premarital sexual acts, or even if they come to enjoy marital sex as some research and surveys illustrated below show. The other side of the coin, which falls within the scope of this paper, is the growing resistance modes to these discourses. These modes of resistance are struggles against power, which confirm the dual nature of every power relation, that which Foucault has prophesied in his analysis. According to Foucault, this type of resistance belongs to the third type of struggle he identified as: "[struggle] against that which ties the individual to himself and submits him to others in this way (struggles against subjection, against forms of subjectivity and submission)" (Foucault, 781).

iii.        Theoretical basis (2): Freud's libido, repression, and defense mechanisms

            The approach of this paper to analyzing sexual frustration among Egyptian youth and its consequences depends in large on some of the early concepts within psychoanalytical theory. In his work, Three Contributions to The Theory of Sex, Sigmund Freud describes sexual need in man as an instinct analogous to his need to being nurtured. He, then, defines the 'libido', a seminal concept to this paper as: "the sexual expression corresponding to hunger, for which science uses the expression, libido" (Freud, 521). Just like hunger, libido, being the sexual energy within each of us, has to be satisfied from time to time via sexual activity. If repressed, however, it has to be released in one way or another. As Anna Freud, celebrated psychoanalyst and daughter of the late Sigmund Freud, describes in Ego and Mechanisms of Defense, if one's libidinal forces are not satisfied, they are then released through either displacement or sublimation (Freud, 22). Displacement is satisfying an impulse with a substitute object, while sublimation is doing so in a socially acceptable way (Freud, 43).  This psychoanalytic theories of defense mechanisms are used as psychological backgrounds to Foucauldian resistance discussed in the previous subsection.

An Investigation of  Sexually Repressive Discourses in The Region

i.          Religious discourses

            For centuries, religion has been a defining feature of society in Egypt and the entire region. Thus, religious discourses have dominated the mainstream views of how the society should organize sexuality, which is a largely repressive view. This repression could be illustrated via numerous example discourses, out of which four are going to be discussed in this subsection: virginity; adultery; circumcision; and masturbation.   

            In Egypt and dominantly Muslim societies, having sex is not about two consenting adults, but rather about a consenting God first, approving society second, and then maybe just one consenting adult. This is the result of a long-established reprimanding discourse against sexuality outside marriage or Islamic sex slavery. Legal researcher, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, explains this discourse in a paper illustrating the struggles against criminalizing sexuality in Mulsim societies: "Islamic legal tradition treats any sexual contact outside a legal marriage as a crime, Zina" (Mir-Hosseini, 7). The traditional punishment for the Zina crime is: "a 100 lashes for the unmarried and death by stoning for the married" (Mir-Hosseini, 32). Naturally, these religiously established discourses have had a strong deterrent repressive effect on sexuality in the region. Furthermore, they were translated into laws in Muslim countries punishing adultery, fornication, and any sexual act outside marriage for Muslims and even non-Muslims and foreigners visiting.

            Another significant repressive discourse of sexuality in Egypt and the region is the glorification of virginity [of a woman]. Virginity has always been the major concern for Egyptian families raising female children. This, of course, is interconnected with the discourses on Zina, as a female who is not a virgin before marriage must have committed the crime of Zina. In her book on the need for a sexual revolution in the Middle East, Egyptian feminist activist and academic, Mona El-Tahawi, depicts this ugly truth of Egyptian families: "If they could, I'm sure many in our societies, families, and clerics would tie girls' legs together until their marriage nights" (Eltahawy, 115). Furthermore, this discourse has been so hegemonic that it transcended being an Islamic discourse to being an established interreligious social discourse. El-Tahawi explains that, "the god of virginity is popular in the Arab world. It doesn't matter if you're a person of faith or an atheist, Muslim or Christian—everybody worships the god of virginity" (Eltahawy, 114). Hence, it's not only Muslim families that are obsessed with their daughters' virginity, but also everyone living in these societies, including atheists of no religion. This is a loud example of the Foucauldian concept of self-subjugation, through which people become institutionalized beings internalizing the power exercised on them in what resembles the panoptical prisons of former ages.  The repressive effect of this sanctification of virginity is that it completely disables women from answering to their sexual needs, if they don't get married early enough. An example of that is an answer of one respondent to a survey on sexual expression in Egypt, in which she says: "I am a 35-year-old unmarried woman. I have a very strong desire to have a proper

sexual life. I am suffering from this because I never got married (or had intercourse),

and can’t have sex otherwise. I am in a difficult dilemma between accepting and

having pleasure in my life before I grow too old, and feeling guilty when I think of

all the religious and social reservations and the sense of shame and all that. Nobody

can understand how much I am suffering except God (Allah)" (Feki, 1). In one section of El-Tahawi's book, the culprit behind this respondent's suffering is described metaphorically as: "at the altar of the god of virginity, we sacrifice not only our girls' bodily integrity, but also their right to pleasure" (Eltahawy, 114). Not only that, but this effect extends to males, who won't find female partners to engage in coitus with. Hence, this discourse disables the sexual lives of unmarried population in total.

            In order to support the past two discourses promoting virginity and disabling uncensored sexuality, discourses of circumcision for both males and females have prevailed in the region. Circumcision primarily aims at curbing sexual desire, i.e. libido. Awareness has specially been spread against female circumcision, which is scientifically known as female genital mutilation (FGM), given its serious complications for females. It was also criminalized by the United Nations. According to El-Tahawi, "In some countries, communities cut off perfectly healthy parts of girls' genitalia (the parts intended for pleasure), to curb sexuality until the girl and her intact hymen are handed over to a husband" (Eltahawi, 115). El-Tahawi, then, confirms the main motivation behind FGM as: "it is believed to reduce a girl's sex drive, thereby helping to maintain her virginity and, later, her marital fidelity" (Eltahawy, 117). Male circumcision, on the other hand, and despite being comparably criminal, did not enjoy an equivalent attention similar to that given to female circumcision.  According to medical historian, Robert Darby, male circumcision arose as a measure to combat masturbation in the first place (Darby, 755). Furthermore, medical evidence shows that male circumcision ablates significant erogenous tissues in male genitalia, all which decreases sexual pleasure among circumcised males (Taylor, 292).

            Finally, religious discourses of organized religion in Egypt have consistently been denouncing masturbation, thereby blocking any sexual release of libido other than through the religiously sealed marriage. In Islam, the most practiced faith in the country and the region, masturbation is forbidden, since it defies the Qura'an, which only permits sexual acts with a wife or a sex slave (Qaradawi, 232). This has also been agreed on by the four major interpretations of Islamic Shari'ah law (Qaradawi, 234).   

ii.         Secular discourses 

            One might be tempted to think that the sexually repressive discourses are mainly religious in the 21st century's modern societies. However, in Egypt, social discourses on sexuality have consistently either magnified the repression exerted by religious discourses, or have indirectly worked on their own to repress sexuality. An example of the first case is the spread of crimes of honor, where male members of the family of the girl engaging in zina kill her, and also kill her lover if possible, because the girl has allegedly tainted their honor. (İlkkaracan, 21). This discourse has definitely been a deterring force against sexuality, in fear of loss of one's life, although, even religiously, sex acts are not punishable by death. Unfortunately, discourses on crimes of honor are largely legalized in the Arab world. Several countries through the region do not criminalize beating and murder of women (and sometimes also the men they are involved with), if the crime was committed in defense of the family's 'honor'. (Khalaf, 86).

             As for the other case, the society has indirectly been effectively repressing sexuality by blocking the only unanimously and religiously approved channel of having sex, that is marriage. In a patriarchal society, where women are treated as property of their families, marriage is not possible without the permission of the bride's family. However, Egyptian families seemed to have reached a consensus on economically disabling conditions for marriage, which favor only the wealthiest of young men, who belong to wealthy families already, or older men who have spent at least ten years of their adult working lives saving to get married, all which explains the excessively high percentage of unmarried young men in Egypt. This discourse has effectively disabled marriage for the vast majority of Egyptian young men for at least 10 to 15 years of their adult lives. The question here is, with masturbation and other channels of releasing sexual energy blocked, are these restraining discourses sustainable over such a long span of time extending to over a decade of one's adult life?

Displacement: Negative Modes of Resistance and Defense Mechanisms against Repression

            The answer to the above question is definitely negative. As per Foucauldian analysis, resistance  has to evolve within every power relation, that is advanced by a discourse (Foucault, 780). In the case of resistance against sexual repression discourses, it would belong to a third type of struggle that he identified as: "[struggle] against that which ties the individual to himself and submits him to others in this way (struggles against subjection, against forms of subjectivity and submission)." (Foucault, 781)  However, the next question of interest to this research is, how do this resistance takes form?

            Unfortunately, in many cases, resistance takes a negative form, which harms the society, in what resembles the Freudian defense mechanism, displacement. Instead of releasing libidinal impulses through natural sexual activity, a repressed person might be inclined to engage in activities that would satisfy his impulses, but not necessarily be approved by society. A stark example of this displacement is sexual harassment, which has proved to be a serious national problem in Egypt. According to a UN report in 2013, 99.3% of Egyptian female respondents to their survey admitted to have experienced a form of sexual harassment in their lives (El Deeb). This has been explained by psychodynamic theorists as: "an expression of wishes for dominance, virility, and mastery in an effort to combat deep seated feelings of vulnerability and insecurity" (Henry). These feelings of vulnerability, insecurity, and lack of a sense of virility are direct results to sexual repression and social discourses curbing sexuality, and harassment, in that sense, comes as an apprehensive form of resistance to these feelings and discourses.

            Another illustrative example of resistance by displacement is the addiction to pornography among Egyptians. Several news websites have shown Egypt ranking among the top ten countries searching for pornographic websites (Postober). However, that was later confirmed by scientific research, when just 3 months ago a statistical study was conducted in Menoufeia University on sexual fantasy and pornography was published. The study concluded that 73.3% of unmarried males and 68% of married ones regularly use pornographic materials (Kasemy, 630). The conclusion of the study is problematic, since it does not show a discrepancy between the percentage of married and unmarried porn users, all which sheds light on the pathologically addictive nature of pornography. Beside social problems that pornography might cause regarding to expectations between married partners, quality of their relationships, and other social concerns relating to morality for example, neurological research have confirmed hazardous effects of addiction to pornography. In a paper published by the department of neurosurgery at the University of Texas, two neurosurgeons confirmed that: "addictions create, in addition to chemical changes in the brain, anatomical and pathological changes which result in various manifestations of cerebral dysfunction" (Hilton, 3).  

            A last example, albeit of a headmost concern globally and not just nationally, is the spread of revisionist radical Islamic movements and the increasing numbers of their young suicide bombers, who blow themselves up among other people and targets to execute terroristic goals. Despite the complexity of motives behind radicalization in the region, addressing the issue from the perspective of sexuality and sexual repression could offer some valid insights on the causes of these phenomena. Most of the young men joining these criminal organizations come from countries, where sexually repressive discourses are prevalent like in Egypt. By joining these organizations, Islamic State (IS) for example, they are offered a new channel, through which they can release their libidinal energy for sex and violence. Namely, IS and other radical Islamic terror organization have revived ancient Islamic traditions of sex slavery, in which their militants have divine access to their female 'infidel' prisoners of war. Furthermore, should their militants die during aggression or as they suicide-bomb themselves into the enemy, they, then, would be rewarded by going to the Muslim paradise, where they would be welcomed by at least 72 virgin wives of their own. This twisted and sexually driven rationale for radicalization has been confirmed as a major incentive for suicide-bombers and terrorists in a paper on the Theology of Martyrdom, as Charles Mueller, professor of social psychology, reports that: "the reported incentive for those who actually carry out these clerical orders is the promise of immediate transport to 'paradise'-where the 'martyr' (killer of infidels, along with himself) will be greeted by '72 black-eyed virgins.' For young males, what could be a more potent 'sales pitch'?" (Mueller, 31) Mueller's research indicates that we can safely conclude that sexual repression contributes to radicalization and the rise of terror in Egypt, the region, and the globe.

Sublimation: Positive Modes of Resistance and Defense Mechanisms against Repression

            Resistance to repressive discourses could also take legal and socially approved forms, in what might be described as sublimation according to psychoanalytical literature. The major example of sublimation from Freudian literature is art and works by artists as a diversion of unsatisfied libido into works of higher social value to the entire civilization. In his book, Civilization and its Discontents, Freud described sublimation as: "an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilized life" (Freud, 80). In Egypt, too, sexually repressed young men and women resort to consuming and creating art to satisfy their libidinal energies. Two prime examples of this artistic sublimation are film and music. An example of a resistance film project is El-Libido, created by 22-years-old Egyptian director, Youssef El-Imam, as his graduation project from the Higher Institute of Cinema. The movie quite boldly discusses sexual frustration spread among Egyptian youth, and the futility of solutions provided by society to deal with its youth's repressed libidinal energy (Libido). By tackling such a taboo topic in a liberated and open-minded way, El-Imam has generated a resistance discourse against the traditional sexually repressive discourses. Additionally, by tackling sexuality and sexual knowledge in a film, El-Imam has been diverting his libidinal energy and the energy of his film's viewers to appreciating art, film, cinematography, and to tackle social and intellectual prevailing discourses repressing sexuality instead of getting involved in a displacement process, in which they commit illegal and/or socially unacceptable behaviors to release that energy. The second example is the hegemonic presence of love songs on the stage of Egyptian pop music, and the popularity of underground music, which tackles sexual love shamelessly and vulgarly (Hubbard). This, also, generally represents a resisting behavior among young men and women discontent with the existing discourses on sexuality in a legal and socially acceptable manner.

            A second form of sublimation is the flourishing of feminism and feminist movements in Egypt. Starting the beginning of the past century, a few Egyptian women started going out of home and attend schools, and by 1919, women participated for the first time in political life in the revolution against the British, and finally by the second half of the 20th century, there were some well-established, although not very popular, feminist movements defying the existing repressive discourses against women and sexuality. Nowadays, with globalization, literacy, and increased awareness, feminist issues are becoming more popular among Egyptian women and men alike. With regards to sexuality, a specially influencing figure is feminist writer and activist, Nawal Saadawi, who began her activism in the 1950s and was later imprisoned in 1981 because of her controversial writing (Younis, 463). As for now, and especially after the uprising in 2011, hundreds of Egyptian young feminists inspired by Saadawi and other predecessors are expressing their thoughts against repressing women's rights, among which sexual rights are an important component. They lay out their dreams of changing the status-quo and its smothering discourses someday.

            Finally, and most recently, social media and the internet have provided a new widely accessible arena of resistance in the society in general, and resistance to sexual repression in specific. This special relevance to resistance against discourses of sexuality is because the internet provides a safe space for expressing oneself on such a taboo topic like sex, while having his/her identity secret and privacy intact. Two examples of this form of sublimation are the website, Al-Hubb Thaqafa, and the Facebook page: Sexology.  The website was launched in 2013 as the Arabic version of an initiative aimed at educating youth in developing countries about healthy sexual and love habits (Feki, 4). According to Sherine Elfiky, Egyptian sexual and reproductive rights activist, "Al-Hubb Thaqafa’s innovative combination of content, design and interactivity has proved highly successful in catalyzing unprecedented debate around sexuality on the Arabic internet. Its delicate balance of boldness and cultural sensitivity, reflected in a language which is both scientific and accessible, respectful yet areligious, has succeeded in appealing to both conservative and liberal points of view" (Mansour). As for the other example, Sexology was first established two years ago by a group of Egyptian young journalists and medical experts to serve as a social media outlet on Facebook openly discussing sexuality to the Arabic-speaking audience. In an interview with its co-founder and fresh graduate of Cairo's school of medicine, Ahmed Mansour, he claimed that the vision of Sexology's founders is that any change in the prevalent repressive discourses won't be effective, let alone available, without sufficient knowledge and awareness on sexuality first, and that knowledge would pave the way for critiquing the existing discourses to eventually alter them (Mansour). In these two examples, we see resistance by free expression and online social networking that challenge the hegemonic sexually repressive discourses in a legal and socially acceptable way.

Conclusion

            By investigating a subset of the sexually repressive discourses in Egypt and the Arab world followed by a brief illustration of their mischievous complications, the above analysis suggests an urgent need for a sexual revolution. What is meant, in this paper, by a sexual revolution is: a radical change in the discourses, by which the society views sex and organizes sexuality. According to Evelyne Accad, Lebanese-American professor at UIUC and cited writer on sexuality in the Middle East, "Change is fundamental at the level of sexual intimacy. We need to develop an exchange of love, tenderness, equal sharing, and recognition among people. This would create a more secure and solid basis for change in other spheres of life—political, economic, social, religious and national as they are often characterized by similar rapports of domination" (Accad, 39) Yet, the question remains, how would such a gigantic change occur?

            Depending on the nature and respective conditions of each society, several paths for a sexual revolution could be proposed. For example, the sexual revolution in the west in the 1960s was not necessarily the best model for how the Chinese society adapted to more lax sexual codes in the 1990, and definitely not the way by which Iran's passionate uprising is happening. Each society with its very special culture has to find its own mechanisms for change, in order to be able to achieve that change, and with the least amount of costs.

            As for the case of the Egyptian society and the larger Arabic-speaking society, short-term radical changes are possible only within the firmly established religious discourses, which, if not hindered by secular discourses, have a sufficient space for leading a normal and fulfilling sexual life. More specifically, if we relaxed the restrictive secular discourses on marriage and alleviated its costs, while integrating it in the lives of our young men and women as a legal and religiously appropriate mould for long-term (not necessarily permanent) dating, we could solve the problem without getting into a bloody conflict with religion and its brutal protectors. The mechanism of such a change taking place would be the easiest, if sponsored by state legislation, that is aware of the sensitivity of sexual repression and the outreach of sexuality to all aspects of our lives, as per Accad's argument.