Angry Biologist

"Niqab was never a choice. Anyone who claims that it is, is privileged. I myself don’t wear niqab, I wore it once in my life, when I was 12, “by my choice” because I thought I could accept it if they didn’t force it on me. And thats the reality, most women “choose” to wear it before their families force it on them, because it becomes easier to convince yourself that you chose it than to face the fact that you never really had a choice. But, It was never a choice Thanks to the strong women in my family who fought against it, we all took it off. But I still see this reality everywhere around me. I still see the misery, the shame, and the insecurity in women who have been taught that their faces are something sinful, shameful, and something they MUST hide. I still see girls hiding the fact they got their period because they’re terrified that their families will force them to wear it, I still see girls terrified when someone threatens to post their faces. Since when is your face something that can be used to blackmail you? Since when is a cute selfie of you something shameful? Since when did showing the face you were born with become a threat? And the same men who blackmail these little girls are often the same men who cover up their mothers and sisters, because the problem was never the woman’s face. It was always the way men were taught to look at it, and the actions they choose to take because of it. This is how corrupted our reality has become. I can never excuse privileged women who defend niqab as if every woman experiences it as a free and harmless choice. I’m considered privileged myself for being able to live without niqab or hijab. But I will never deny the misery and suffering the strong women in my family went through, nor the suffering so many saudi women are still going through. You should never have to be ashamed of your own face Your face is not shameful You face isn’t a sin your face isn’t something that should be used against you. Their actions are shameful, Their eyes are the problem. Stop teaching girls to hide themselves, stop teaching women to be ashamed of existing. SPEAK UP."

"I am a 20-year-old Saudi woman, and this is my story about a freedom I came to understand too late, and a childhood that never truly felt like mine. Ever since I was a child, I watched my twin brother live a life that was completely different from mine. He was allowed to ride a bicycle, ride horses, swim in the sea and in swimming pools, and go out with his friends. He was allowed to simply be a child, to experience things, and to explore the world without fear. I was never given that same opportunity. I watched him live the life I wished I could have lived, and I would quietly ask myself: Why can he do these things while I cannot? Why did being born a girl mean that there were so many things I had to be denied? I did not understand what discrimination meant at the time, but I could feel it. When I was nine years old, something else happened that changed the way I saw myself and my appearance forever. My mother forced me to wear the niqab. I was only a nine-year-old girl, yet I began to learn that my face was something I should be ashamed of. I was bullied by male relatives who called me “the black garbage bag.” My mother would repeatedly tell me, “Your face is shameful. You have to cover it.” Imagine being a little girl and repeatedly being told that your face is something shameful. Little by little, I stopped feeling ashamed only of my face. I began to feel ashamed of myself as a whole. I started seeing my face as something wrong, something that had to be hidden, as if simply being seen as I was was something disgraceful. But how can a person ever feel at home within themselves if they were taught from childhood to be ashamed of their own face? When I was fifteen, I got my first phone. Through it, I discovered a world I had never known existed. I saw women from different places living their lives without covering their faces. I saw women looking at themselves in the mirror and being proud of their appearance, seeing their faces as a natural part of their identity rather than something that needed to be hidden. For the first time, I began asking myself: What if my face was never something shameful in the first place? What if I am beautiful just as I am? What if I have the right to see the world, and to let the world see me? From that moment on, my desire for freedom began to grow inside me. I was not looking for rebellion for the sake of rebellion, nor did I want to hurt anyone. I simply wanted something very basic: the right to decide how I live and how I present myself to the world. I tried going outside without my niqab just once. But I discovered that the freedom I had dreamed about for years could be terrifying when I finally experienced it. I walked outside feeling like a lost cat. I kept looking from side to side, watching everything around me in fear. Every car I saw looked like my father’s car. Every woman wearing a niqab reminded me of my mother. I was not experiencing freedom in that moment. I was experiencing years of fear that had been planted inside me since childhood. Every time I tried to talk to my mother about wanting to take off my niqab, she threatened to kill me. And at that point, it became about more than just a piece of fabric. It became about my life, my fear, and my right to be myself. I am now twenty years old, and sometimes I feel like I am still trying to reclaim the little girl I once was. A girl who never got to ride a bicycle, never learned to ride a horse, never learned to swim, never experienced a normal childhood, and instead learned to be afraid of herself and of the world around her. I did not get to live the childhood I wanted. But is it fair for me to lose my youth too? I am not asking for a perfect life. I am not asking for anything extraordinary. I simply want to live my life like any other woman. I want to be able to walk outside without feeling as though I am committing a crime simply because my face is visible. I want to look in the mirror without feeling ashamed. I want to see my face and feel that it belongs to me, rather than feeling that it is something I must hide. I want to live without threats, without oppression, and without fear. I have spent years learning how to hide. Now, all I want is to learn how to live. I want to be myself, before more years pass and I realize that I spent my entire life being afraid to be who I am."