Western Colonial Egyptian Patriarchy

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In 1979, civil rights activist Audre Lorde criticised the feminist movement in the United States for its exclusion of minorities with the declaration that true equality between the sexes could not be attained until differences could be turned into strengths, and that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” (footnote) This quote communicates that implementing the methods of an authoritarian society would prove ineffective in producing positive social change. Seventy years earlier in Cairo, Egypt, a woman under the penname of Bahithat al-Badiya would grapple with maintaining a similar stance in order to engage two differing fronts of patriarchy – the Western colonial and the Egyptian traditional – while endeavoring to extract

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