43 culture shock I just watched a bunch of tiktoks of young women in niqab talking about the patriarchy And how annoyed they are by niqab fetishists And how creepy muslim men are trying to center themselves in women's worship It's so COOL I grew up watching things like Bill Maher and Sam Harris debating BEN AFFLECK about Islam Like Ben Affleck was our voice And good on him for saying hey that's icky bad and racist But wtf And now seeing queer, hijabi and niqabi muslims speaking for themselves And being really fucking funny and sassy too It makes my heart squishy Cause these groups' voices are marginalized in their own communities And Islam was such a caricature (and still is in some places) I could've never imagined there was any hope for this kind of nuance to have a platform I saw queer muslim Ted talks So cuuute And so deeply threatening to everybody, the homophobes and misogynists at home and the racists abroad The internalized orientalists who need those clean lines When it's all bullshit really Of course people are people everywhere No groups are monoliths Muslims, Arabs --they have their internal conflicts and shades and cognitive dissonances Awkward family holidays It's very strange to see the changes in the States too I grew up in Riyadh, repressive laws and misogyny and violence I didn't think I'd be more scared to navigate some areas in the States than to go back to Saudi Arabia -- where they're holding Kpop concerts and women are driving now It still creeps me out when I hear American celebrities talking about low crime rates in the Emirates I understand western governments have also done and still do fucked up things -- I'm not making a double standard, it creeps me out when that stuff is sanitized too This is why I love gen z and social media and tiktok And their language and their humor I never belonged to a country in the same way other people did And young people today are so alienated and so tuned in to each other And they're into cultures that were previously very remote They're disenfranchised and they have a gut understanding of what it means They feel so familiar to me |