Chosen by God, Men Are the Ones

Perhaps now is not the moment to dismantle gender constructs once more—not while the world teeters under fascism, ethnic cleansing, systemic violence, and visible forms of oppression.

And yet, here I am: writing. Reflecting. Living in a place where gender is not just performed, but structurally divided. I write not with answers, but with a quiet, persistent discomfort—one that sits in the body, in the gym, in the café, in the boardroom—always watching, always separating.

Through this conventional construct, I often find myself physically placed in male-dominated environments. And in that, a loop forms—an absence that is loud. The absence of what is not a man. This absence feeds into a cycle of separation, of societal alienation, of invisibility.

I remember the other day at the gym, surrounded by men, when my trainer casually dropped one of the oldest sexist metaphors around: women as meals. His point, whether serious or half-joked, was that men tire of eating the same thing every day. Therefore, by that logic, one woman is never enough.

Later that night, I went to a nearby café and ran into a friend. He was venting about work—specifically, about a female manager. She was, according to him, “bossy” and “man-like” simply because she had been assertive, bold, and the loudest voice in a room full of men. Yes, she was the only woman in that meeting. But no, she did not fit their definition of what a woman should be, as he and his colleagues later agreed.

“Why would we treat her like a woman if she chooses to act like a man?” one of them said.

That’s when I remembered what an older man told me, just a week earlier, in a mall in Riyadh, an echo, of course, of the Adam and Eve creation story:

“Men are naturally selected by God to lead. Women were made to follow—to be part of the whole. The man is the image of God.”

As that night ended, I laughed—genuinely. Because the concept of gender, in this context, isn’t just a social norm. It’s a sacred architecture. It bleeds into every conversation, regardless of who’s speaking. Whether it’s a man justifying multiple relationships, an employee complaining about his female boss, or an elder claiming divine entitlement, the root logic remains: man as the default. Woman as deviation, and that all within a limited binary course, that does not even include other non-binary identities.

And so the question becomes less about how to deconstruct the system—and more about how, as individuals, we can stop seeing “the other” through a gendered, racial, or classist lens. How we can decenter ourselves from that logic of hierarchy. How we can resist the instinct to place the self, or the familiar, at the center of what is worthy, normal, or chosen by God.

Riyadh,

8 . 5 . 2025