Friday, September 22, 2017

Abaad - the men's helpline

Abaad, the NGO which promotes "sustainable social and economic development in the MENA region through equality, protection, and empowerment of marginalized groups, especially women" has a new campaign aimed for their men's helpline. It is no secret that men - specifically in Middle Eastern societies end up bottling their feelings only to let them explode on their female partners - with the "explosion" in question being either physical or with the aid of a weapon of any kind.
Usually psychological counselling and helplines are not very well seen, only men "incapable of dealing with their problems on their own" resort to such means. So only a "lesser man" in the usual assessment would use such a service. The old saying went "hit your wife once a day, if you don't know why, she does" - so coming from such a gender-skewed setting I am not sure how successful the service will be.
However if I am to judge the ad for the ad's merit, I can see a very beautiful line "mest3edin nesma3 hake": it literally means "we are ready to listen to you talking" but implicitly "nesma3 hake" means "ready to be gossiped about", however the line is buried inside the "do not lose your family" which headlines the campaign and is one half of the line used in the TVC (the other half being "do not lose yourself"). So I am a bit on the fence here.