I've fought against my submissive nature my whole life. I rebelled against the fact that man and woman are different, and have different strengths and roles to play. I joined the Feminist League while at the University of Ottawa, and the women in the group fostered in me a hatred of men, of their place in the world, and in a way, they taught me to hate my femininity. At long last I rejected all of these silly notions, and found inner peace. I am a woman. I am submissive to the man I am with. It's how mother nature intended things to be. My name is Annabelle "Fatima" Kensington-Suleiman and I am a new Muslim convert living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, with my Muslim husband Djohar Suleiman.
Anyone looking at me would see a five-foot-eleven, chubby and big-bottomed, blonde-haired and green-eyed white woman in her thirties. These days I wear the hijab and I have traded in my trousers for an ankle-length skirt. Before I met my husband Djohar Suleiman, I was lost. When I think back on those days, I shudder with dread. I was involved with the Feminist League of Ottawa, as I said before. Come to think of it, I was fodder for the women in the league. An easy recruit. You see, my whole life I've done nothing but reject my femininity and my natural place in the world as a woman. I joined the all-male wrestling club at my old high school, and being the only female wrestler on the squad, I made headlines. I appeared in the town newspaper, and I got interviewed by reporters far and wide. I only won thirteen out of my thirty six matches during my first season on the wrestling team but I was called a pioneer, a role model and a game changer by pretty much everyone I encountered.
While on the wrestling team, I met a young woman named Catherine Thaddeus, the daughter of our head coach, and she became my first female lover. Getting involved into a lesbian relationship appealed to me because I was sexually curious about women and I also wanted to defy the male-dominated culture of Canada which saw women as property of men. No woman rebels against the social order like a lesbian, a woman who only loves other women. I cut my hair short, got a ton of tattoos and adopted a masculine style of dress. Thus I became a butch lesbian, and I was proud to be one. My relationship with Catherine Thaddeus lasted three years, then we went our separate ways.
I rebelled against anything I saw as patriarchal, eventually rejecting the Catholic faith I was born into. My parents, Paul and Myriam Kensington were appalled, but there was nothing they could do to stop me. After graduating from the University of Ottawa with a degree in civil engineering, (a major I chose only because it was male-dominated and thus a challenge for me as a woman ) I decided to join the Canadian Armed Forces. While stationed in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan, I saw and experienced a world I never knew existed. The world of women who submitted to their men according to the Will of Allah. The world of Muslim women. Clad in hijabs and long robes or full-body covers known as burkas, the women of Afghanistan were unlike anything I'd ever seen before. In this country, where Islamic law was the rule of the land, male and female roles were clearly defined. No room for tomboys, butch lesbians or other rebellious women in Afghanistan. Islam wouldn't allow it.
I became fascinated by Islam, which surprised me because I was a butch lesbian atheist who hated male authority, the polar opposite of what a Muslim woman was supposed to be. When the Canadian Armed Forces asked us Canadian women soldiers to wear the hijab while going into Afghanistan's rural areas, the more conservative parts of the country, many of us staunchly refused. I was given a hijab and for some reason I didn't toss it like I said I would. I went to my bunker, and after making sure I was alone, I tried on the hijab. I looked at myself in the mirror, and shuddered. I took off the hijab and tossed it, swearing that I would never become one of those submissive women in the Islamic world who bowed down to men and did everything men told them. No, I wouldn't be like those weaklings. I am better than them. I am not only a lesbian, I'm butch on top of it. I'm above and beyond such things. Islam was definitely NOT for a butch lesbian atheist soldier like me!
