From The Independent:
It begins as a tender love letter to the sons who have given her the “greatest, most enriching adventure of all”– motherhood. But, writes Joumana Haddad, there is something she needs to tell her two boys as they become adults. She is tired. Tired of the never-ending battle of the sexes, of being made to feel guilty for working, of faking orgasms, of commitment-phobic partners, of worrying about her appearance, and of not initiating sex for fear of being labelled aggressive or pushy. “We (women, most of us),” she writes in her new book, “are tired of you (men, most of you) seeing us as only your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, your lovers, your wives, your properties, your accessories, your servants, your toys … we are tired of you needing us to cover up with a black cloak, or to over-expose ourselves like cheap sex objects, in order for you to feel secure in your manhood.”
Haddad's polemic is the credo behind Superman is an Arab: On God, Marriage, Macho Men and Other Disastrous Inventions, the soon-to-be-published sequel to I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman (2008) in which she tackled Arab machismo, which she says makes men think they are as invincible as superheroes, and is responsible for many of the evils perpetrated in the region. And, if it unleashes another avalanche of opprobrium, Beirut-born Haddad is bracing herself; she has already spent most of her 41 years swimming against the tide.
More here.
