Nationalism, Education and the so-called Community
Being the enlightened person that I am, I never had the wide spread problem of many people in Cairo
For being post-colonial children all of us, we associate our native tongue with everything that is backwards and lowly. We were brought up to believe that those who come from good families send their children to good school, and good school instantly translate into the institutions established by the former colonizers where they teach their systems and their language.
The term 'national school' became a pseudonym for a corrupt, inefficient, underdeveloped pedagogical environment, where teachers are underpaid, classrooms overcrowded (some stories go as far as 60 students per class) and children do not receive any kind of education, making their experience one where they are exposed to the most negative role models and the worst of all social ills a society can produce.
With that in mind and of course the notion of class and affluence, only those who can afford to send their children to said good schools are also the ones who can afford to. For such institutions do not provide this kind of education for free.
Its foolish to generalize, but statistics speaks louder than words, and the majority of those who are unfortunate enough to pass through the public school system, do not end very far in terms of personal development or the knowledge they acquire.
Making everyone in general and the gay community in particular to think of anyone who could not master one language of the white race an inept and mediocre human being.
Myself included. I try very hard to surpass that bias, but most of the time I succumb to my own biases and other times I try to remind myself that education is not acquired in classrooms or university halls, its cultivated somewhere else completely. That’s why I try not to place much stress on the level and quality of education someone had. For I know many a gentlemen who had degrees here and there, and whose personal development ceased altogether at the mental age of three.
For that reason, when I was approached by a "gentleman" whose educational background was in great question, and whose general demeanor showed a little commonness and callousness, a certain level of coarseness, I did not object. Out of my benevolent nature I acquiesced and plunged myself into the matter heads on.
And my "gentleman caller", and an alleged sportsman, who enjoyed the simple things life, wanted the simple things in life, and desired no complications or disturbance, challenged me to let go of my postmodernist, postfeminist stands and try to reach this level of "simplicity". And I found the experience quite intriguing I tell you my reader.. !!
Yet I could not be so trusting. And one benefit of the so-called gay community in Cairo
Those individuals who have little scrupulousness about their image or reputation, and yet who at the same time have a very thorough inventory of nearly all the people who confess a preference for men.
For days at a time, I talked endless hours with my "gentleman caller". My sister once told me that simplicity makes beauty. That might have been true, but simplicity not crudeness, and not shallowness.
One of my dear, dear friends is one of those “celebrities”. Wanting to make sure that my "gentleman caller" is “genuine” in his claim to stoic masculinity, I made him check his online profile. And lo and behold, my gentleman caller was thoroughly exposed.
My “celebrity” friend shot right away, “I hate to disappoint you darling, but that sweet hunk of yours has been seen all over the trashiest cruise areas in town, and lets put it this way, he is not the epitome of gentlemanliness”!
I was not surprised dear reader, for rarely does one find this specimen of “genuine masculinity”. Such image only existed in the old western films, and that genre died long ago, along with this monosyllabic, linear and uncomplicated masculinity.
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