There are few interesting blogs in English that deal with Moroccan cultural issues, but we have just discovered a blogger that has gone to the trouble of translating some French language posts about sex before marriage.

The blogger is Marcel Côté who, in his own words, describes himself as... Born to a daughter of immigrants and a failed priest, Marcel Côté is the author of thousands of pages of unpublished treasures, some of which are collected at Radiant Days. He has been a pizza delivery driver, political activist, radio news reporter, student of philosophy, Wall Street executive secretary, photographer, vagabond in Paris, Visual Basic programmer and web designer. He has lived in Ohio, New Mexico, San Francisco, New York, Paris and Morocco. He has visited 49 states and 14 countries. He dislikes hospitals and airports, television and air conditioning. He prefers marginal neighborhoods and poor countries. He feels that Americans are living in a bubble of self satisfaction, which even the tragedies of terrorism and war have failed to puncture. He wants to live in a global democracy, where money serves people and not the other way around. He is a Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Jew. He recently completed a draft of his first novel, Vanishing Point.

His blog has the intriguing title Eatbees blog and we will provide a link at the end of this post.

Here is an edited quote from his recent post:

I’ve often wondered about the double standard among Moroccan young people, in which the men are free to have sexual adventures and indeed take pride in it, while at the same time showing the most lively disgust at the idea of marrying a woman who has done the same. As it happens, I just stumbled on a web forum called Jeunes du Maroc (Moroccan Youth) where this very question was brought up and handled with an amazing spirit of fair play.

Here is the original question, posted by “virgule67″ on September 2, 2006 (I am translating from French):

We often speak of equality between the two sexes, but the problem is that our culture still blocks the realization of this equality. In this forum I’ll take the following example, which I want to debate with you. A woman will accept that her husband had relations with other women before their marriage. She might even demand it. A man tends to be proud of his former experiences with women. On the other hand, a man wants his wife to be clean, meaning without any relationship before him. Is this reasonable? Can we change these ideas?

What follows is a description of the debate and it makes interesting reading.

You will find it here: Young Moroccans debate morality

As a footnote, as a novelist I was interested to note that Marcel has not only completed a draft of his first novel, but has taken the brave step of posting it on the web. You will find it here: Vanishing Point.

Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news