Nasawiya is kicking off its Gender and IT program with a workshop on how to build websites using WordPress. WordPress is a leading open source publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a user-friendly workflow, a rich plugin architecture, and an advanced templating system.

Using WordPress, you can build a website or blog with lots of interactive features really easily. See our Arab Feminisms website as an example.

The training will take place over two days:

Saturday, February 6 from 11am – 1pm
Introduction to WordPress and its different features: themes, plugins, integration, customization.
A practice homework.

Monday, February 8 from 7pm – 8pm
Recap of workshop + presentation of practice homework for comments

The training is free, and will take place at the IndyACT office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions) with a wireless connection for those of you who want to try out features during the workshop. It will be given by Nadine Moawad.

To register, please email farah@nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. We have 15 places available and priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.

The Feminist Collective is proud to invite you to the launch of “Bareed Mista3jil,” Lebanon’s first book of stories from the lives of queer women and transgenders in Lebanon.

Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 6pm at Masrah Al Madina in Beirut. Read more about the event here: www.bareedmista3jil.com

The Feminist Collective is initiating a series of talks on issues related to the female body in its personal, social, and political manifestations. Writer and university teacher Lina Mounzer will be giving these talks, the first of which will take place in the FC on Friday at 7 pm.

We will be exploring issues related to the female body and the regulation of its appearance in all social contexts. As women, we’ve come to take it for granted that we must hate our bodies for one reason or another. Probably one of the most effective global programs of social control has been this internalization, in women, of shame for our bodies. How can we begin to undo all this damage, understand how we are being manipulated and what we have internalized, and ultimately come to own our bodies without shame?

The first talk will tackle how body image is fundamentally related to women’s self-esteem. Subsequent talks will deal with the body in relation to different issues, such as the body and sex, the body and consumerism, and the heterosexual and homosexual female body in relation to heteronormativity (a tag team talk given by Lina Mounzer and anthropologist Rasha Moumneh). The topics will be flexible enough to incorporate the most pressing issues that will be brought up during the discussions.

Because these particular issues touch upon very personal and often difficult aspects of our lives, we have decided to make these sessions open to women only in order to allow them to express themselves more freely.

Space is limited to 25 people only, so please confirm your attendance as early as possible by emailing r.moumneh@gmail.com. For directions to the Feminist Collective, please email n.moawad@gmail.com or call 03-487051.