 One thing that surprised me when I was in Egypt at the end of September was that so many of the young female activists that I met were actually very uncomfortable with the term feminist and seemed to resist it. How do you read that Mona? Do you feel that there's a sense that this is just not the time that we have too much else to fight for? Is it a generational thing? I think the same would happen if we asked a lot of people in this room, are you a feminist or not? I constantly get this when I give public talks about women's rights or women's issues. And there's always this, so do I identify as a feminist? Must I identify with the F word? I don't think this is specific to Egypt. When I was in Egypt in July, during the sitting that was happening in Tahrir Square, and Nazra for feminist studies, this feminist movement that I mentioned, one of my friends, is leading, is a feminist movement that was launched by men and women. And ironically enough, this New York Times story that I'm obsessed with right now, used as an example of how it's the men who are out there helping to rescue the women. I think it's a positive thing that a feminist movement was launched seven years ago in Egypt, seven years ago by men and women, because it's a clear understanding that in order to get women's issues, and not just women's issues, because they also focus on LGBT rights, they focus on masculinity studies, they talk about gender issues. It's important to have men and women, and all the various other identities that people use to describe themselves, to work together on this. And so Nazra hosted me for a discussion, and they brought together a lot of the community that they work with, not just people in Nazra itself. And we had a very robust discussion about feminism and who identifies as a feminist, and what happened when women and men tried to hold a march in Egypt to coincide with International Women's Day last year, and it was a disaster. And women were assaulted, and women were threatened with rape, and it was a really, really bad time that day, it was very depressing for everybody. And the kind of discussions that came out were incredibly deep, and incredibly understanding, excuse my voice, I'm fighting a cold, incredibly understanding of the kind of issues that Egyptian men and women have to navigate, because they had a whole team, for example, working across Egypt, north, south, east, west, with female candidates who wanted to run for president, I mean for the parliament. And one of them was a Christian woman, and to understand the kind of the multiple layers of challenges that this Christian woman is facing to run for parliament in Egypt, she's running as a woman, she's running as a Christian, she's running as someone from the countryside, a very conservative part of Egypt. It's a very, very in-depth discussion that isn't just about, am I a feminist? That's why I mentioned Mona Safe, because for me it's not so important that she identifies as a feminist. I don't want to impose on her a label that for me is the centre of my identity, because what she's doing by being a 24-year-old Egyptian who is also a woman but is going out there in the public field and standing up to the military or running for parliament in the very conservative parts of southern Egypt, as this other woman does, what she's doing is she is normalizing the idea that a woman is this gender mainstreaming, you know, you have all these jargon that people use that really means nothing unless you see women actually on the street doing it. What is gender mainstreaming? It means to be able to look and see women and men and all the other labels that we use doing everything and look at it as a normal thing. And so when you see Mona Safe out there in Tahir Square, and she's going out to taxi drivers who might not necessarily support the revolution and gives them a sticker that says no to military trials and persuades them to put it in their cab so that the next time someone comes into their cab they see this sticker for no to military trials. That for me is the ultimate feminist act because it's a woman who's gone out into the public sphere, has created a space for herself in the public sphere and has said I am going to change what I don't like in this public sphere. That for me is feminism. If she goes around calling herself a feminist or not, that's not my prerogative, that's her prerogative. But so you sit around the table with these young men and women and also there were those who were in charge of their masculinity project. Now to sit there and listen to Egyptian men and women talk about masculinity and the pressures on Egyptian men and what it means to be masculine. Just as I fight the pressures of what it means to be feminine and I get to define my femininity when I want it and when I don't, it is also part of that struggle is for an Egyptian man to determine what it means to be masculine. What does it mean to be a man because a lot of the pressure in Egypt today and something that is disturbing me is when the police broke my arms, when I was sexually assaulted, when this woman was dragged through a tahliyud, a lot of men would write to me and say I can't look you in the eye, I can't believe they did this to you and I wasn't there to save you. What kind of men are we that we allowed them to do this to you? We have to fight this head on. It's not about a man and another man fighting over my body to ensure that I'm okay. This is the last thing that we want and this is why these women who are going out in the public sphere are so important and that's why these ideas of what is masculinity. Are you just a man because you've come and rescued my honour which has been ruined by the sexual assault? No, because my honour is not ruined by the sexual assault. Everything belongs to the man who sexually assaulted me and you as a man, your masculinity is not derived from saving my honour. All these kind of discussions are happening in Egypt every day and so again that for me is the heart of feminism. Whether they identify as feminist or not is not about a word, it's about taking the concept of that word and living it and Egyptians are living it, whether they're in Suez, whether they're in southern Egypt, whether they're in a desert oasis, watching men and women together fight against military dictatorship and fight against Mubarak, that for me is feminism in motion.