On February 24, 2013, several hundred protesters marched on the streets of Beirut to call on the Lebanese parliament to pass the Law to Protect Women from Family Violence, which would criminalize physical, mental, and sexual abuse, marital rape, and honor crimes.

Protesters marched from the Sanayeh Garden, facing the Ministry of the Interior in Hamra, to Ain el-Tineh, where the residence of Speaker Nabih Berri is located.

The turnout was likely to be bigger had the police and Lebanese Army not blocked major roads leading to the capital, in anticipation of a sit-in in Downtown Beirut, organized by Salafi cleric Ahmad al-Assir and his followers to protest delays in the release and trials of Islamist inmates.

But it wasn’t just al-Assir who dampened the proceedings of the march. To me and several other participants at the march, the presence of representatives from political parties, just added insult to injury. These parties, who don’t exactly have a track record of supporting the legislation, turned the march into a platform for their usual hypocrytical speeches, in a desperate bid to win some votes ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections.

The protest was part of a campaign called “The protection of women is more important than your seats” launched by the National Coalition for Legalizing the Protection of Women from Family Violence.

The campaign started with an open letter from a survivor of family violence addressed to Speaker Berri, telling him her ordeal and asking him to put the law back on parliament’s agenda.

Other letters from survivors addressed to MPs were published in different newspapers and aggregated on the blog Hayde 7Keyte.

No, electoral laws are not more important than the laws we’re demanding. They are not more important than the Law to Protect Women from Family Violence. – Zoya Rouhana, director of KAFA

During the march, speakers blasted at full volume a key part in Nabih Berri’s 2009 acceptance speech, in which he said: “The new parliament must enact the necessary legislations to guarantee women’s full participation in the government and society, and their protection from violence, and amend the discriminatory laws in this respect in the Lebanese law.”

With the parliamentary elections around the corner, MPs had scratched the Law to Protect Women from Family Violence off their agenda to discuss a new electoral law (the Orthodox-Maronite Gathering law, which reeks of sectarianism, being one of the proposals).

“We’ve always heard them say that the time is not right to raise issues they consider to be secondary because the fate of the country is at stake,” said Zoya Rouhana, director of the NGO, KAFA, that worked on drafting and promoting the law. “And we’re here to say that our issues and other livelihood issues are not secondary, and that our fate, us women, is at stake.”

On average, one woman dies every month as a result of family violence in Lebanon, according to logged reports.

“Women are being killed and nobody utters a word,” Rouhana said. “Women are being tortured and nobody utters a word. Our patriarchal society has long buried these crimes underneath so-called “sanctities” and “privacies” of the family, which you’ve imposed on us in order to tighten your grip and control our lives as you please.”

Rouhana continued: “No, electoral laws are not more important than the laws we’re demanding. They are not more important than the Law to Protect Women from Family Violence.”

A draft version of the family violence bill was approved by Lebanon’s Cabinet in 2010. But it has since been languishing in parliament, mainly due to the objections of Sunni and Shia authorities.

Last year, the parliamentary committee reviewing the bill presented a report in which it diluted the language of the law, thus defeating its purpose. Key provisions, including language that would criminalize marital rape, were amended or removed.

The bill – whether revised or in its original form – still has to be put up for a vote before parliament to pass.

Click here to view the Photo Gallery “Protest to Demand Domestic Violence Legislation” on Flickr, or browse through the thumbnails below.

On January 16, 2013, I deactivated my Facebook account. I’m not the first one to do so, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. Before I deactivated my account, my home page looked like the photo above.

In a lot of ways, my decision has been a long time coming because Facebook was bringing me down, one update at a time, one feature at a time.

Over the past months, most of the stories and links on my newsfeed involved the following:

Gender-based violence, sectarianism, racism, bigotry, zionism, patriarchy, sexism, misogyny, corruption, injustice, flooded roads, submerged neighborhoods, refugee camps in peril, car explosions, people dying, hypocritical governments, failed governments, friends going places and doing some amazing things with their lives…

As for me, I just sat behind my screen, watching. Little by little, everything started to get under my skin. The deluge of bad news wasn’t stopping. I didn’t feel particularly strong, inspired or driven to take on the systems of control and oppression I wanted to fight. I felt somewhat defeated. On a more personal note, I didn’t feel like I was going places or doing something amazing with my life. When you’re feeling down, it’s distressing seeing cheerful people around you, no matter how well-meaning you are. I knew that soon enough I’d find myself before another crucial crossroads in my life. This made me increasingly anxious and stressed. So hope for better things to come wasn’t exactly booming. I was beginning to suffocate.

And then there were the annoying ads and notifications that screamed for my attention, the companies that I had no interest in and that invaded my newsfeed, and Facebook’s ongoing pursuit to make everything my friends and I did and liked public. I’m glad I left before I had to deal with Facebook’s new Graph Search, which is seen as another hungry monster that is after users’ data. (Remember to review your privacy settings before you start using this tool when you eventually get it.)

It’s no secret that Facebook is designed to open you up and lock you in. So when you do escape, odds are you’ll somehow feel that something’s missing, depending on what you use Facebook for, of course.

So What Will I Miss Without Facebook?

• Updates from expatriate friends or friends living abroad.
• The occasional intriguing links and stories.
• The occasional tag that reminds me that I still cross people’s minds, that I’m not a forgotten connection.
• Notifications and discoveries of art events, and social and political talks, conferences and discussions.
• Updates on transformational movements or movements for change, which I’m part of or I follow.

This last note is probably why I’ll have to go back to Facebook at some point. For all its shortcomings, the social network still plays a major role in raising awareness, mobilizing people and amplifying voices – albeit mostly among those with Internet access. To a certain extent, some things exist only on Facebook. If you want to be involved in “activism,” you cannot ignore Mark Zuckerberg’s creation completely. This is how important it has become. But when I do return to the social network, I’ll be using it differently (e.g.: no more sidebar on the right, better sorting of newsfeed, better filtering of connections, no more game requests, no more joining groups and pages and forgetting all about them later, provided that I have the patience, interest and Facebook’s permission to do all these things).

For now, I just know that I need a break from life on Facebook so that I can take care of my real life away from it.

Some time this January, I’ll be turning one year older. So for my birthday in 2013, all I want is to go on a discovery road trip across Lebanon. Who says birthdays are just one-day celebrations?

The thing is, I’ve always felt like a tourist in my own small country. Those who know a few things about me know that my relationship with the so-called Land of the Cedars has been on the rocks ever since I came of age in my very own way. Even though I’ve tried to fight them and shield myself from them, Lebanon’s all-mighty Octopus and all the associated forms of oppression and nuisances still find a way to hold sway over many aspects of my life. In my head, I’ve even called it quits more times than I can remember. These are the times when change was something I no longer wanted to be part of. I just wanted to go back to my bubble, where I could reconnect with Denial (yes, Denial with a capital D), and try to restore my sanity. But hey, since Lebanon and I are still in each other’s faces, I might as well give it another chance.

And so, “Operation Rekindle the Flame with Lebanon” is on. Who wants to take me on a guided tour of their home town or a place they know really well and I don’t? I’ll do the driving, you do the talking.

Here are some of the towns and regions I’d like to visit:

If you want to be my guide, make yourself heard in the comments section below, or message me on Twitter.

There’s a huge power in acknowledgment, recognition and praise, but because we are often uncomfortable with it, we avoid it. And when we avoid it, we rob ourselves and others of the benefit that it brings.

- Christopher Littlefield

TEDxBeirut have started uploading the talks from the 2012 edition on their website and YouTube.

For those of you who missed the live event, if you watch one talk online, watch this one by Christopher Littlefield.

Littlefield is a street researcher and consultant who has spent the last four years conducting over 350 street interviews around the globe in an attempt to understand the human experience of giving and receiving recognition.

In this lively talk, he exposes our hidden, conflicting relationship to recognition. He discusses how we actually aren’t very good at accepting compliments and how we often don’t even know it, and explains how a simple act of recognition can make a difference in someone’s life.

In late October 2012, I enrolled in the 6-week course Introduction to Infographics and Data Visualization with Alberto Cairo, an internationally renowned expert in the field. The course is offered by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.

For our final project, Professor Cairo gave us the liberty to do whatever we want. All we had to do was choose a topic, gather the appropriate information, and present an idea to show that in graphic form.

So I decided to explore happiness through the blog OhMyHappiness by my friend, Raja Farah. Raja describes himself as “just another regular out gay, atheist, activist, pacifist Arab living in Beirut.”

Background information on the situation of homosexuality in Lebanon: Even though Beirut is often portrayed in the international media as a gay haven in the Middle East, homosexual acts in Lebanon are punishable by up to one year in prison under Article 534 that criminalizes “sexual intercourse contrary to nature”. In addition, homophobia – be it institutionalized, internalized or social – is still widespread in the country.

In his introductory post published on January 16, 2012, Raja explained his intentions behind the blog:

“There’s only one thing I hope to get out of this blog: Show people that one can live in Beirut, be openly gay, and be happy, surrounded by a strong support system. Simply put, this blog aims to portray the often quite boring, sometimes really exciting, life of an out gay man in Lebanon.”

When I saw Raja a few weeks ago, he told me that he felt he was veering off track and that his blog posts were no longer as positive as he had hoped. Actually, his most recent posts went beyond giving gay people in Lebanon – and possibly beyond -  a sliver of hope through his experience to address a horrible experience at the doctor, dependence, the problem with an LGBT organization in Lebanon called Helem, an independent platform hoping to take back the Lebanese parliament in 2013, music and the movement for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and bigotry and homophobia on TV.

Raja was no longer simply blogging about his life as an out gay man in Beirut, nor was the silver lining he was trying to show his readers that obvious.

I told Raja that even so, people were still getting something out of his blog, because to me, happiness means different things to different people. Raja agreed. “It is impossible to define happiness, because everyone has his or her version of it,” he later wrote me in an email. “The problem with that is that if we can’t all agree on what happiness is, then universal happiness is impossible, because people are always after their own happiness, even if it can harm other people. If we could all agree on the definition, then we would all aim for it. Of course, the definition is impossible to obtain because we are selfish idiots.”

But what if we went back to basics? What if we all turned to one universal reference? Dictionaries.

Dictionaries describe happiness as “a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.”

When Raja talks about “happiness” on his blog, what exactly does he talk about?

Raja hasn’t tagged all his posts. So I didn’t focus on working on tag-based visualizations, which would have probably helped highlight the topics addressed in his blog.

This is a Wordle (Word Cloud) of all of Raja’s 52 posts*:

Wordle generates “word clouds” from texts. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

* Until the time of writing this post.

When people comment on Raja’s posts about “happiness”, what exactly do they talk about?

This is a Wordle of all the comments on Raja’s blog*:

 * Until the time of writing this post.

Clearly, there are similarities between the Posts Wordle and the Comments Wordle, because the comments are directly related to the posts.

Alternatively, this could be an interactive comparison inspired by Jeff Clark’s News Spectrum, a visualization of the words used for two topics in the latest results from Google News. Chris Clark’s work is itself based on Chris Harrison‘s series of visualizations that explore word associations.

What do Raja and his readers talk about when they talk about “happiness”? (Sketch)

In this interactive visualization, when users click on a word, a pop up opens with the complete related post or comment from Raja’s blog. This will allow them to see in which context each word was used.

OhMyHappiness Tag Cloud with Posts and Comments

I used the the Tag Cloud visualization tool on Many Eyes to explore the popularity of words in both the posts and comments. The first view includes the content of posts and comments together. Once you mouse over a word, you can see the number of times it was repeated with some context. When you tick the “compare” button, you’ll be able to compare occurrences of words in the posts to occurrences of words in the comments.

For security reasons, WordPress does not support the embedding JavaScript code of the live visualization and automatically strips it out. To explore the live visualization, click here or or click on the image below. This visualization is best viewed in Firefox, Safari or IE.

OhMyHappiness Comments Word Tree

In another experiment, I used the Word Tree visualization tool on Many Eyes to explore links between words and phrases strictly in the comments. The Word Tree lets you pick a word or phrase and shows you all the different contexts in which the word or phrase appears. The contexts are arranged in a tree-like branching structure to reveal recurrent themes and phrases. I chose the Word Tree because I thought it would help to investigate “positive emotions” Raja’s readers may have inferred from his posts, like thankfulness, gratefulness, love, appreciation, wonder, amazement, and relief.

Again, for security reasons, WordPress does not support the embedding JavaScript code of the live visualization and automatically strips it out. To explore the live visualization, click here or click on the image below. This visualization is best viewed in Firefox, Safari or IE.

Conclusion

In the case of Raja’s blog, “happiness” could come from having a forum to share opinions readers otherwise can’t. For example, LGBT readers who aren’t publicly out can express themselves on OhMyHappiness and talk to its author. In fact, Raja told me of young readers who reach out to him by email to discuss personal issues about all things gay away from the blog. “Happiness” could also come from having an online resource like OhMyHappiness that works on fighting homophobia and bigotry, and dispelling myths about non-conforming sexualities. These are two notions of a positive state of well-being that are inferred from the blog, rather than found in it, and cannot really be visualized as such.

This post is more about exploring data and experimenting with tools than drawing an indisputable conclusion. Raja’s blog served as a case study or the information source for my project. It is in no way an exhaustive resource to explore happiness. If I were a programmer or I had the technical support of one, I probably would have been able to try other ways of presenting the information. One of the things I thought of, for example, was creating a rating system for the comments to look at how positive or negative they were. Another thing I thought of was tagging comments myself. But I was worried I’d be “subjectively interpreting or feeding” the data. As I recently learned from Professor Cairo, there’s a broad discipline called “digital humanities” that is dedicated to such efforts. In any case, I certainly felt the need to do more data mining and processing. In a recent blog post about the different subject areas and disciplines involved in data visualization, data visualization architect and trainer Andy Kirk talked about the 8 hats of data visualization: Initiator, Data Scientist, Journalist, Computer Scientist, Designer, Cognitive Scientist, Communicator and Project Manager. This is all to say that there are other ways of looking at Raja’s blog, just as there are other ways of exploring happiness. (See how Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvarcall visualized human emotion, in six movement with We Feel Fine. It is awesome.) I’m open to suggestions. And I’m extremely curious to learn more about “digital humanities.” I may or may not return to this post and the idea behind it and build on it at a later stage. But I can say one thing, analyzing texts with words is more challenging than analyzing data with numbers.

Sex and nudity have been used in advertising to sell products since the medium’s beginning. But while the female nude was largely common, the male nude didn’t appear until 1967. According to the authors of the book, Born in 1842: A History of Advertising, the boldness wasn’t in the nudity itself, but in the absence of the product.

Rosy lingerie advertisement, 1962

Here are two of Publicis’ campaigns in which the product is conspicuous by its absence. The first advertises Rosy lingerie, a brand established by the hosier Leon Josephson in 1936. Josephson turned to Publicis for his advertising in 1947. Inspired by a phrase from the English poet John Ruskin, “The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers (…) Her feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies rosy,” Publicis invented a symbol comprising a woman and a rose. This was captured in Jeanloup Sieff’s 1962 photograph, which portrayed not the product, but the reasons to buy it: luxury, elegance and seduction. Publicis was using inspiration from Ernest Dichter’s “Strategy of Desire” which had been published in Paris in 1961. However, for men it was a totally different matter.

Selimaille men's underwear advertisement, 1967

In 1967, Selimaille came to Publicis for the launch of the men’s underwear. At the time, it had registered the name of a type of white underpants with a “black belt” intended to conjure up the idea of martial arts. Just as the advertisement showing the underpants was about to be aired, there was a ruling that prevented the product from being shown, as one of the firm’s competitors had already registered underwear with a waistband in a contrasting color. What was Selimaille to do? The advertising had intended to show the first designer underwear for men. Now there was nothing for it but to choose between showing the Greek model Frank Protopapa, clothed or unclothed. Thus the photographer, Jean-François Bauret, took the first advertising picture of a naked man.

Source: Born in 1842: A History of Advertising

Seeing the Bodies…The Exhibition in New York last November reminded me of how fascinating the body I inhabit is.

Featuring over 200 actual human bodies and specimens, meticulously dissected and respectfully displayed, the exhibition provides an intimate and informative look deep inside the systems of the body: Skeletal, Muscular, Nervous, Respiratory, Digestive, Urinary, Reproductive, Circulatory and the Treated Body.

Organizers used a revolutionary process called polymer preservation to permanently preserve the specimens. Through this process, all human tissue has been replaced with liquid silicone rubber. This prevents the natural decay process, making specimens available for study for an indefinite time period.

The exhibition is a great place to explore the wonders of the human form. As I walked from room to room, contemplating the specimens, I couldn’t help but take notes. Here are 65 facts about the human body.

Skeletal System

1. Our skeleton contains approximately 206 bones.
2. Children’s bodies grow faster in the springtime.
3. Babies have 300 bones, adults have 206.
4. Bone is a matrix of hard minerals built and maintained by bone cells. If you removed the minerals and kept the cells, you could tie your bones in a knot.
5. Bone is five times stronger than mild steel.
6. Bones make up only 14% of our total lean body mass.
7. The marrow inside certain bones of the adult skeleton creates about 2.5 million new red blood cells each second.
8. While standing, the bones of the foot lock together to form an unmovable pedestal. When walking begins, the bones unlock and change the foot into a mobile system of levers.

Muscular System

9. There are three types of muscle tissue: skeletal, cardiac and smooth.
10. Skeletal muscles move and support the skeleton. They make up about 50% of a person’s body weight.
11. There are 20 muscles in the foot that give it its shape and contract to relax and impart movement.
12. A stunning array of muscles, sometimes four layers deep, work together for bodily support and movement.
13. The muscles that run along the spine are some of the most powerful muscles of the body; they keep us upright and provide the strength for lifting and pushing.
14. Muscles produce heat to help maintain body temperature.
15. The largest muscles in your body are those in your buttocks.
16. The body’s smallest muscles are found in the ears; they are attached to the body’s smallest bones.
17. If all the muscles in your body worked together, you could lift more than 10 tons.
18. Every bodily movement and function – from breathing and digestion to running at top speed – depends upon the muscular system.
19. Muscles attach to bones via the tendons, which are often 500 times stronger than muscle and act to prevent strained muscles from tearing.
20. The most active muscles in the body are located in the eye.

If all the muscles in your body worked together, you could lift more than 10 tons.

Sensory System

21. The human body is made up of approximately 100 billion nerve cells or neurons.
22. The brain and spinal cord make up your central nervous system. All other nerves comprise the peripheral nervous system.
23. The brain’s right cerebral hemisphere governs artistic ability.
24. The brain’s left cerebral hemisphere is the center of logic and language.
25. Weighing only 1.4 kg in an average adult, the brain contains upwards of a trillion nerve cells, which are in constant communication with each other and the body. Some brain cells make connections with over 10,000 others in a split-second.
26. The cerebral cortex – gray matter – is responsible for the brain’s higher functions, such as thinking, speaking and storing memories. In fact, most of the information processing in the brain occurs in the cerebral cortex.
27. The total area of the brain is too large to fit in our uranium, so the cerebral cortex consists of folded bulges (gyri) that create deep furrows (sulci). The folds in the brain add significantly to its surface area, increasing the amount of gray matter and the amount of information we can process. It also gives the brain its “wrinkled” appearance.
28. Each of us has a unique wrinkled pattern.
29. Every person has a unique tongue print.

Nervous System

30. Faster than the world’s most powerful computer, the human nervous system uses billions of interconnected nerve cells to regulate all of the body’s vital fictions while also serving as the seat of all thought and feeling.
31. The adult spinal cord is roughly 45 centimeters long.
32. The limb system is a group of interconnected brain structures involved with different behaviors: the hippocampus, the amygdala, the seal area and the hypothalamus.
33. The hippocampus is an area buried deep in the forebrain that helps regulate emotion and memory. The hippocampus doesn’t just file away memories; it also connects related memories and gives them meaning.
34. The amygdala, which is located directly in front of the hippocampus, has a strong link to the olfactory system and is essential to the expression of emotions.
35. The seal area is a tiny region above the amygdala that is thought to be a pleasure and reward center and may be important in addictive behavior.
36. The hypothalamus, which is connected to all parts of the limit system, regulates the activity of he body’s organs and is responsible for the visceral changes due to the emotions, such as increased blood pressure.

Respiratory System

37. The alveoli are tiny air sacs within the lungs where the exchange of O₂ and CO₂ takes place. Each lung contains 300 million alveoli – if stretched out they’d cover a football field. The total surface area of the lungs is equal to a tennis court.
38. The lungs are actually divided into 20 functionally separate regions which receive their own blood supply and continue to operate if another segment is removed, this ensuring that breathing will continue if one region of the lung becomes diseased.
39. We speak by pushing air from the lungs into the larynx and vibrating the vocal cords. The more the vocal cords are stretched, the higher the pitch of your voice.
40. On average, a pack of cigarettes takes 3 hours and 40 minutes off your life.

On average, a pack of cigarettes takes 3 hours and 40 minutes off your life.

Digestive System

41. On average, adults have 22 feet (6.7 m) of small intestine, 5 feet (1.5 m) of large intestine.
42. To gain 1 pound (0.5 kg) you must consume 3,500 more calories than your body can burn.
43. To lose 1 pound (0.5 kg), you must burn 3,500 calories more than your body needs.
44. The heaviest single organ in the body, weighing close to 1.6 kg in an average adult, the liver is the largest organ inside the body as well as the one of the most important.
45. The liver is also the only organ that can regenerate itself in as much as 75% of the liver can be removed and it will still grow back to the same shape and form.
46. Gut theory stipulates that the gut organs of our ancestors used to be larger and required more space and energy. With evolution, the body began to divert more energy to the brain as it rapidly expanded, forcing the gut organs to become smaller and more efficient.
47. Humans eat far more meat than any other primate, which in turn has reduced the size of the human body’s digestive system.
48. The brain consumes between 20-30% of the calories you need.

Reproductive System / Urinary System

49. Every day, a person’s kidneys process about 200 quarts of blood to sift out 2 quarts of waste products and extra water.
50. The actual removal of wastes in the kidneys occurs in tiny units inside the kidneys called nephrons. Each kidney has about 1 million nephrons.
51. Though females are born with all the eggs they will ever have, men continue to produce sperm throughout their lives. The average healthy male produces between 1,500 and 3,000 sperm every second.

Fetal Development

52. Beginning life as a zygote in a single fertilized cell – the human body develops into a remarkably intricate system made up of an estimated 75-100 trillion cells.
53. After conception, everyone spends one half hour as a single cell. By the 11th week, all major organs have formed. The heart of an embryo begins to beat during the 5th week.
54. Human growth is divided into two stages: embryonic and fetal. Embryonic stage begins at conception and continues until week 8. It is characterized by rapid growth in which the external features of the embryo form.
55. Week one of the fetal stage begins around the 9th week after fertilization and ends at birth (which marks the 28th or 30th week of fetal growth). It is characterized by the development of the major organs and the systems of the body.
56. Fetal cells may remain within the mother decades after birth, helping her fight disease and stay healthy.

A heart beats roughly 100,000 times a day.

Circulatory System

57. No cell in the body lies more than a few kilometers from a blood vessel.
58. There are 100,000 miles (160,934 km) of blood vessels in the human body.
59. Pulse is an artery wall stretching with each heartbeat.
60. Every drop of blood in the body passes through the heart once per minute.
61. The brain requires 20% of the body’s total blood supply.
62. Blood’s red color comes from the hemoglobin in red blood cells, which turns red when it binds with oxygen.
63. A heart beats roughly 100,000 times a day.

Treated Body

64. Nerve cells create electrical impulses that reach speeds exceeding 270 miles per hour.
65. Many prosthetic implants are no longer solid but contain a honeycomb arrangement of open spaces coated with bone cells. This helps implants fit more securely into the existing bone.

On January 14, 2012, hundreds of people defied the rain and took to the streets of Beirut to protest against rape.

Protesters marched from Sanayeh to Riad El Solh square in Downtown Beirut, where security officers cordoned off the area to prevent them from reaching the Lebanese Parliament.

As the crowds gathered in the square, organizers read statements that called upon the Lebanese Parliament to:

1. Pass the draft law for the Protection from Family Violence as it has been written and with no delay.
2. Intensify punitive measures against rapists and those who attempt rape, amending the respective law.
3. Treat verbal harassment as physical harassment, especially in the work place, making it a crime subject to judicial penalties.
4. Deal with complaints related to sexual violence with rigor and consistency. The Interior Ministry and the Municipalities should also apply those measures. The three bodies should work to make the streets and neighborhoods safe, especially during the night-time, by ensuring proper street-lighting, and permitting women to carry tools of self-defense, like taser guns and pepper spray.

The march was organized by the Beirut-based feminist collective Nasawiya.

The Lebanese Parliament rejected a draft law to protect women from family violence last year. The bill, which would criminalize physical, mental, and sexual abuse, marital rape, and so-called honor crimes, was vehemently opposed by religious leaders and a number of MPs, who insist on the need to “keep the institution of the Family”, and not “question and challenge the authority of the Father.”

Since 2007, the organization KAFA (Enough Violence and Exploitation) has worked on drafting and promoting the family violence bill. A coalition of 41 legal and women’s organizations, including KAFA, has been pushing for legal protections against violence against women.

In Lebanon, which officially recognizes 18 sects,  religious courts deal with personal status matters such as divorce, custody, and inheritance, but are not mandated to protect women from violence.

Articles 503 and 504 of the Lebanese penal code allow for marital rape, or rather, do not even consider it as rape.

Article 522 of the Lebanese penal code stipulates that charges are dropped against a rapist if he marries the victim.

The sentence for rape, according to Article 503, is forced labor for at least five years or for at least seven years, if the victim is under 15 years of age.

Lebanon lacks legislations to protect women from sexual harassment wherever it may happen.

For a round-up of the analytical articles, op-eds, commentaries and background information on rape and sexual violence in Lebanon, click here.

Click here to view the Photo Gallery “Fight Rape Protest” on Flickr, or browse through the thumbnails below.

In search for a human connection, we lay our souls bare only to find that people’s interest in us is only skin-deep.

If I had the choice of taking a piece from the New York Museum of Modern Art‘s collection, it would be this chest of drawers made by Dutch designer Tejo Remy in 1991. Aptly called “You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory”, the dresser is featured as part of the Standard Deviations exhibition of objects and designs in the Museum’s collection that belong to families. It’s made from mismatched second-hand drawers held together by a rough belt. It looks a lot like a pile of suitcases bundled together for travel, the kind you’d use to keep tokens and souvenirs (all memore fragments) and carry them around from one place to the other.

Remy was one of the first members of Droog Design, the Dutch collective founded in 1993 by artist and designer Gijs Bakker and curator and critic Renny Ramakers. Many Droog objects celebrate ingenuity and an apparent poverty of means, elevating them to an aesthetic philosophy – a response to the exuberance and excess of 1980s design. Remy’s dresser has the visual impact and provocative intent of a Dada assemblage. “The chest can be seen as a statement targeted at profession, trade and public alike, putting our overproduction and over-consumption into question,” Droog founder Renny Ramakerssaid. “The chest is ‘formless’ and imperfect, a memorable presence in a world where all emphasis has been on form and perfection and still is.”

Soon after designing it, Remy (the most rebellious and idealistic of the group) left Droog Design in order, he has said, to maintain autonomy from the collective and “their power to decide which objects can see the light on the basis of marketing calculations.”

This article is part of a series of posts about my visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Click here to read the complete series.