"God is going to punish me for you being like that!”
I was sad that my brother, who is the closest person to me
Is treating me like I was a sin that God is going to punish him for.

When I was in the eighth grade, there was a boy with me at school who was blond and fair-skinned. He was a grade younger than I was.
Wherever he went, the other students would harass him. He was absent a lot because of this. His father came in to complain more than once but to no avail.

When my father died,
My brother decided he’d be the man of the house.
That didn’t mean that he’d help us.
It meant my sisters and I would be his servants.

I don’t remember how old I was at the time, but I remember being old enough to understand what was going on. Old enough to say something. But I was too scared.
gender violence, sexual violence, masculinity, the street

I was walking around in Downtown with my friends
when 12 guys appeared. They were walking towards us.

I kissed two women for the first time in my life today at a party.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a kiss on the mouth.
It was a peck on the cheek.
Just a normal kiss; the way you’d kiss a guy friend.
You’ll think it’s weird,
But when you know my story,
You’ll applaud me.

It was me and two or three other girls on the bus.
Two of them were veiled and one was wearing the niqab.
We were all standing in a corner.
We were surrounded by men.
There was a man sitting with his legs wide open and laughing loudly.
It was as if he was the owner of the bus and could act any way he liked.

No one would have told me:
“That’s a really effeminate way of sitting.”
“Why do you cross your legs when you sit?”

They started searching our bags.
Of course, I was travelling with my girlfriend,
And I had to prove to her and her friends that I’m a man.

The problem is that my voice has always sounded like a baby’s.
I’ve gone to well-known doctors in Egypt.
They told me that this was just what my voice was like.
Nothing more or less.
body image, bullying, masculinity