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Exploring Taboos

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My name is Ramy Raoof and I am working with Nazra for Feminist Studies as media consultant

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I’m Mozn Hasan, the Executive Director of Nazra for Femininst Studies

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My name is Fatma Emam, a researcher with Nazra for Feminist Studies

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The idea of the Exploring Taboos project simply came to us because we, as the Nazra team, have ideas and specific principles.

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During the time that we’re trying to work on these subjects,

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we search for others in the surrounding society to see who else believes in the same ideas

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And we were thinking about how to find other people to discuss with them about topics that are often taboo

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and how we can help them to express their opinion by using different tools

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Our opinion within the Nazra team is that we must speak about things that nobody speaks about, issues that the civil society, governorates, foundations,

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and research centers in Egypt do not speak about

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we saw that nobody speaks about taboos.

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The most important things that people discuss is their strong opinion about topics related to religion or gender

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and the issues related to general sexual culture

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We thought that in order to start to break these taboo, we must try to explore the taboo and to try to know the taboo

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and to know about the background that makes it forbidden to speak about

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The first round in Exploring Taboos project was comprised of four participants who decided to create their own blogs

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My name is Nawara Magdy Belal

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I joined the first round of the Exploring Taboos project

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for me, the idea was very interesting because I do not work in a feminist organization

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but all of my life, I thought about topics we normally don’t speak about with people except for in internal discussions

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From the beginning, we had the idea to gather men and women with one another

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in order to give them the chance to speak about things they don’t speak about!

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The idea is that one is trying to break through the ground to find something underneath, it’s the same here

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You’re not only trying to give people some principles

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But you face culture and long lasting traditions. And other ideas that have been built in their minds all their lives.

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And other ideas that cannot be changed easily

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I posted in my blog and one of the posts was titled "I Am Not an Asexual Creature"

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which is my expression of a person who was passing through difficult circumstances related to my weight

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and it also represented me and my sexual and emotional needs

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and how i deal with this and how other people deal with the same issues

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Twitter was the first website that allows for micro blogging since it was launched in 2006

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the idea is simply to give the user the chance to publish news or information in 140 characters

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and there are also other websites that allow for 200 character limit like Watwat.

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The Nazra team is very caring and stands behind the participants through technical and information support

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we are always discussing with youth and with the participants by exploring taboos

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by discussion of any topic without any worries from themselves or society

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Exploring Taboos is not a project with specific dates or funding dates

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This project will be always a safe space for all interested people to come and share their ideas