Three decades of incitement against women
The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights did a study on sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment of women in Egypt is on the increase and observing Islamic dress code is no deterrent, according to a survey published this week…ECWR head Nihad Abu El-Qoumsan said that even veiled women who were victims of harassment blamed themselves. Western women who took part in the study demonstrated a strong belief in their entitlement to personal safety and freedom of movement, she says, but this was totally absent among Egyptian respondents. No-one spoke about freedom of choice, freedom of movement or the right to legal protection. No-one showed any awareness that the harasser was a criminal, regardless of what clothes the victim was wearing.
So…’Western’ women believe strongly that they ought to be able to walk around outside without being pestered by men, and Egyptian women don’t believe that. Well I guess I’m one of the first kind then, because I certainly believe I ought to be able to walk around outside with no pestering or opposition or impertinent interruption of any kind. I think I was almost born with that belief. I’m serious – I had a habit of bolting when I was a child. I did it once when I was about three – we lived in the country and one evening I was playing innocently outside among the apple trees and then simply turned that into a long walk up Bedensbrook Road and along the Great Road. I was brought home by a stranger, which must have been exciting for everyone. I did it again when I was about five, we lived in town then and were walking up Mercer Street and I just turned around and rushed off for a more private walk of my own. I’ve been like that ever since. The idea that women are in some way public property, subject to interference from strangers, as soon as they go outside, has always been anathema to me. We’re not children, we’re not broken, we’re not feeble in our intellects, we’re not ill, we’re not weak, we’re not damage, we don’t need help or supervision or attention or moral instruction, and we don’t need men just helping themselves to us. Women of Egypt: tell them all to piss off.
After Noha’s story was published in the Badeel daily, editor-in-chief Muhammad El Sayyed Said wrote that the behaviour of the crowd was characteristic of oppressed societies, where the majority identified with the oppressor. He blamed the increase in sexual harassment on what he said were “three decades of incitement against women” from the pulpits of some of Egypt’s mosques. “This verbal incitement is based on the extremely sordid and impudent allegation that our women are not modestly dressed. This was, and still is, a flagrant lie, used to justify violence against women in the name of religion.”
Women of Egypt: push back.
“No-one showed any awareness that the harasser was a criminal, regardless of what clothes the victim was wearing.”
They are right in the regardless part: the harassers are always criminals. It sickens me dress code is still seen as a reason for … I thought that we had evolved enough to distinguish between arousal & fumbling, or worse.
“Three decades of incitement against women” from the pulpits of some of Egypt’s mosques”
I deduce, when all this prevocational agitation against women was stirring, women (and girls) in mosques everywhere were by them forced to hunch on mats in adjacent anterooms, like dogs waiting for their owners to come and collect them after the shows…
No women or dogs allowed!
I watched Channel 4’s documentary on The Qu’ran the other night. A cleric (Sheikh Yussuf al Badri from the Al-Azhar Islamic University, Cairo) defended female genital mutilation (almost universal in Egypt) in these terms:-
“Circumcision is the reason why Muslim women are virtuous unlike Western women who run after their sexual appetite in any place, with any man. I hope I don’t insult or embarrass the English nation where adultery occurs on a large scale. With circumcision it would refine, rectify, purify.”
Evidently chopping off bits might make the harassing chaps a bit more sexually virtuous as well. But no-on ever suggests it.
It makes me sick with anger, that kind of harassment and how it can make walking down the street an ordeal.
Clerics need to “restore the dignity of women,” Juan Jose Tamayo, director of theology at Madrid’s Juan Carlos III university, told a roundtable on Thursday, July 17.
“Restore”, what is there to restore? This “dignity” thing, (whatever it signifies) in the first place, was never given to women.
Clerics need to mend women like they do broken shoes.
I wonder too were there any females present at the roundtable?
Here is where I start to like the idea of handguns – to be carried by the women for use on the attackers. If men kill for honor, why should the women not be free to do so before the crime against their humanity is completed?
Handguns not necessary at all. A little safety pin works wonderfully. I twisted one such that the sharp bit stuck out through a clenched fist and used it to great effect on delhi’s public transport when I was there some years back. The level of harassment there is unrelenting and you get tired of making a public fuss everytime some asshole rubs up against you or attempts to grope you. A quick jab or two conveys a succinct message. On the streets, walking with your elbows jutting out deters men walking too close. Indian female friends advised me on techniques to deal with gropers on trains – even on an upper sleeping berth! All the methods involved inflicting a satisfying level of pain.
But of course, women must value themselves enough to fight back, even surreptitiously, and sadly, it appears that Egyptian women are not yet at that stage.
Ah, that’s funny about the elbows. Mine swing out like a pair of shutters whenever people (of any gender) walk too close. Get out of my space.