Atria Books

We told our father we didn't want to be girls. It wasn't fair that we • weren't allowed to go out with him and do all the things that Mahad could. Abeh would always protest, and quote the Quran: "Paradise is at the feet of your mother!" But when we looked down at them, our mother's bare feet were cracked from washing the floor every day, and Abeh's were clad in expensive Italian leather shoes. We burst out laughing every time, because in every sense of the word, Paradise was not at her feet but at his. He was important, he was saving Somalia, he had lovely clothes, he went outside when he wanted to. And we, and she, were not

allowed to do as we wished.

Womanhood was both irresistibly desirable and essentially filthy,

The notion of “bi privilege” overlooks the serious issues bisexual people face. To name a few of those: Nearly half of bi women are r-pe survivors (compared to 17 percent of straight women and 13 percent of lesbians), and bi men earn an average of 15 per