Woman at Point Zero follows the life of Firdaus, a woman awaiting execution, from her youth to her present condition. It’s a novel that plunges deep into the pit of patriarchy, abuse of power, failures of feminism, and the sex workers industry.
El-Saawadi’s narration is clever and precise. At times she infuses a formal mechanism to her poetic form that is both beautiful and horrific to read. It was frustrating that while she can be quite vivid in some places, the things left unsaid in small moments of silence left my imagination running wild. And this is not a novel where you want your imagination to chart it’s own course.
Firdaus’s story is gut-wrenching and echoes a corner of society that we’d prefer not to acknowledge. Her story is disturbingly true to life. I don’t agree that there is any amount of exaggeration here. I come from a country where 14 year old girls take to the streets to sell their bodies because the system ignores them and Firdaus’s story pales in comparison to the narratives of why those girls in the real world chose to do this.
Time and time again Firadus tells us why, despite the rapes and abuses she goes through, she prefers to use her body to her advantage. It’s uncomfortable. It’s unnerving. But her reasoning is not wrong. Nor is her assertion of the way society functions in many parts of the world at all off point. Only recently did the Weinstein scandal regenerate the hushed secrets of Hollywood’s blatant ignorance of sexism. And that’s as solid a proof as one can ask for—whether it’s Egypt or America, women are are often seen merely as livestock.
That’s not to say the fault is entirely on the side of anti-feminists, non-feminists, or active misogynists either. Feminism has a long standing history of excluding others, but even at its most fundamental level it fails harder then it should. What does it say about feminism and feminists when a woman, not unlike many thousands of women in the word today, would rather reject the ideology that claims to empower women to embrace a structure built and maintained by the patriarchy which keeps us all under?
I’ve long battled to main my passion about feminism. As a woman of color who’s sexuality isn’t fitting to a box, mainstream feminism doesn’t always like that I exist. It would rather I support white women than the brown women and has been quick to dismiss me as racist and sexist.* And it’s hard when a movement constantly rejects you to still stand up and say, no, you don’t get to take this away from me.
If feminism is all inclusive then when we march to earn the same as men do, we need to march to stop penalizing sex workers. We need to acknowledge what they do and why they chose to do it. If feminism is ever to reach it’s potential, it needs to start working from the bottom. It needs to start by making women like Firadus, admittedly fictional, the heart of the movement.
*Check the history of the suffragette movement. As well as the numbers on how many white women voted for a white supremacist in 2016 US elections. Numbers speak volumes here.
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