Exploring Taboos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and research centers in Egypt do not speak about

we saw that nobody speaks about taboos.

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

and the issues related to general sexual culture

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

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

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

My name is Nawara Magdy Belal

I joined the first round of the Exploring Taboos project

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

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

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

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

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

You’re not only trying to give people some principles

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

And other ideas that cannot be changed easily

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

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

and it also represented me and my sexual and emotional needs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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