Gender

People are obsessed with women’s virginity. AND HOW, are they obsessed. And it’s fucking disheartening. I wrote a blog post about the time I was tested for virginity and because of that, the highest single search term to lead people to my blog ever is “virginity test”. Multiple times more …

Life and love post-hijab… …wherein also I reveal a bunch of my faces [Content Note: Body image, dissociation, mental illness, also small spoiler from Disney’s Frozen] More from the ‘what it’s like to be a…’ series here, here, and here. Some nights, I wish for remnants of that old Muslim …

In this final part of the International Women’s Day project, I want to share five ExMuslim women’s writings who wrote open-ended pieces.

Question: What are the privileges you DO have as an Exmuslim woman that you did not have as a Muslim woman?

Question: What are the privileges you do NOT have as an Exmuslim woman that you did have as a Muslim woman? (e.g. speaking openly about your beliefs, etc.)

Question: What do you wish women who have never been Muslim would understand about your experiences of being Exmuslim?

Question: What do you wish you could tell your former Muslim self?

Question: What are some parts of Islam (scripture or practices) that made you feel inferior as a woman?

Question: What do you know now about your self worth or self image as a woman that you didn’t know when you followed/believed in Islam?

To mark today’s International Women’s Day, I have invited ExMuslim women, from EXMNA and everywhere, to tell their own stories in their own voices. For too long, women from Muslim backgrounds who no longer follow Islam and related cultural norms have remained silent. Sometimes they are kept silent by force. …