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Egyptian men behaving badly |
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By Khaled Diab Egyptian women have broken their silence on sexual harassment and are
demanding the right to go out in public unpestered. |
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September
2008
The
harassment of women on Egypt’s streets has long been ignored as an ugly fact
of modern life. Whether on their way to work, study or play, millions of
women are pestered verbally. Of course, harassment is a challenge everywhere,
as recent debates on CiF have revealed. However, there is hardly a woman in
Egypt I know who has not been on the receiving end of unwanted male
attention. To prove
how widespread this phenomenon is, the Egyptian
Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR) recently conducted a survey of hundred
of Egyptian and foreign women of all backgrounds. Shockingly, 84.5% of them
said that they had experienced some form of sexual harassment, with most
reporting that they were bothered by men every day. By
highlighting the sheer magnitude of the crisis, the ECWR has managed to give
massive new momentum to its ‘Making the streets safe for everyone’ campaign.
“We have been running [our] campaign since 2005... When we started, we
couldn’t even say the words sexual harassment,” the ECWR’s Rebecca Chiao
said. As a sign
of the shifting tide, the group has just
released a number of radio spots by leading female and male celebrities
aimed at encouraging women to speak out and embarrassing men to “respect
themselves”. One
reason for women’s silence has been the profound sense of shame they feel
when harassed. An Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy decided to break the
taboo and tell of her own experiences, in a leading independent Egyptian
newspaper, al-Masry al-Youm. In her
article, she recounts some of the nastier incidents she has experienced,
including men groping her and exposing themselves. “I learned to push and
punch those whose hands thought my body was fair game, but I never found
anything to soothe the burning violation,” she confesses. My
brother, Osama, who is preparing a special in-depth feature on the issue,
calls harassment “the tolerated crime” because “the majority of Egyptian
men believe that women find being verbally harassed flattering”, even
though millions of them disapprove of it. While the
proper Arabic word for harassment is ‘tahroush’, in the popular vernacular,
it goes by the much more light-hearted term ‘mu’aksa’ which means ‘teasing’.
And a lot of the harassment is relatively harmless, ranging from passing and
unimaginative expressions of admiration along the lines of “Hello beautiful!”
to humorous banter and even lyrical poetry, and some of it may actually be
quite charming. But the
sheer intensity of the onslaught must make going out for many women feel like
psychological and emotional attrition. When you add to that the occasional
fondling hand and graphic sexual invitation, then it becomes intolerable. There is
a widely held belief that women somehow “ask for it”. In fact, in response to
ECWR’s campaign, an anonymous viral campaign has been calling on Egyptian
women to “protect themselves” with a hijab, comparing a scarfless woman to an
uncovered lollipop attracting flies. It’s hard to decide which is more
insulting: men as insects or women as boiled sweets. Perhaps
certain nightlife ‘hot spots’, where beautiful young women literally stop the
traffic, attract a greater concentration of pests, but the ECWR study found
no real correlation between dress and attention, as three-quarters of the
women who complained of harassment covered their heads. “I wore the hijab for
over nine years,” stresses Eltahawy, “and I never experienced more harassment
than during that time.” A number
of recent extreme incidents have sparked public outrage. In 2005, women,
including a few I know personally, at a pro-democracy demonstration
complained of being manhandled, groped and verbally abused by security
forces. One
phenomenon that has particularly shocked is the growing number of serious
incidents in which passers-by fail to intervene. In a society which prides
itself on its safety founded on a strong sense of community and an attitude
of collective intervention, such inaction provokes widespread public
indignation. On one
reported occasion, a woman was attacked by 16 men on a busy street and no one
did anything until a courageous taxi driver leapt out of his cab, armed with
nothing but his belt, and proceeded to beat them off. This
incident prompted Kelemetna, an Egyptian magazine targeted at young people,
to launch a campaign
focusing on the perpetrators. Under the slogan, "Respect yourself: Egypt
still has decent men", the initiative has mobilised groups of young male
and female volunteers to tour the streets of Cairo and talk directly to men
and women about the issue of harassment, as well as to confront harassers. While it
is welcome that people are taking a stance, this type of initiative runs the
risk of provoking vigilantism or, if the members of these voluntary patrols
are not carefully vetted, of eventually attracting people who will abuse
their position. In addition, although protecting women is a noble goal, it
carries certain macho undertones. The last
few years have also seen a concerted campaign gather steam to introduce tough
anti-harassment legislation. However, such measures are merely scratching the
surface. The clash between modernity and tradition is creating some warped
concepts. The tide is unlikely to turn significantly on harassment, until
Egypt’s gender imbalance and sexual identity crises are addressed and
resolved. What Egypt really needs is a revolution in attitudes towards sex
that take the shame out of consenting sexual relationships and equalise the
sexual status of men and women. |
ã2008
– Khaled Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the
copyright of Khaled Diab.