Of sex and other demons
Pssst! Lina Mahmoud answers back
"Thank God someone's asking, at last..." Such is the standard response of young women queried about being harassed on the streets. "It happens every time I leave the house," Yasmine, an Ain Shams University student, complains. "Just because you're a woman, you can't walk the streets in peace -- it's humiliating."
Mariham, an 18-year-old American University in Cairo (AUC) psychology student, is similarly frustrated. "I have no car, and it's impossible to walk anywhere without being harassed," she says. To establish her point, Mariham recounts a particularly telling episode: "I was walking along the sidewalk minding my own business when suddenly I found myself surrounded by seven young men -- who started badgering and eventually hitting me. When I finally managed to escape I realised that a whole family had been sitting in a Mercedes within sight of it all, and had not bothered to do anything about it. So I went up to the man and I said, 'If you saw your daughter being treated this way, would you stay around happily in your car and take no action?'" Ten minutes later, that same day, Mariham was harassed by a security guard.
According to Crime rates in Egypt: a comparative study , a book-length report published by the National Centre for Social and Criminological Research in 2000, 91.9 per cent of the women interviewed (the research team worked with a representative sample of 542 women) suffered sexual harassment on the street. In another, more recent survey, undertaken by the New Woman Research Centre, every woman out of 400 interviewed suffered one or more forms of harassment. Harassment is defined in terms of certain modes of behaviour. In the latter survey this includes, among other things, offensive comments (45.1 per cent) and unsolicited physical contact (37.5 per cent). Fear of rape on the street is one of several side effects of harassment, which 39 per cent of the women displayed. In the same survey 70 per cent of the men interviewed (100) expressed the same fear concerning their female relations, an indication of the fact that men are even more conscious of harassment than women.
It can be argued that harassment, even rape, are not necessarily a function of the victim's behaviour or dress code, as is often claimed, since the very men who argue that it is a woman's attitude that results in her being harassed would not question the attitudes of their own relations.
The malaise in which harassment is rooted is even more difficult to make sense of. Many explain harassment in terms of economic dispossession -- poverty and unemployment -- but just as many make an equally relevant point about gendered attitudes and patriarchal society. Men need to prove their masculinity, demonstrating their belief in convention at a time when society does not accept any manifestation of difference. "Sexual frustration, unemployment and poverty lead to drugs," Ali Fahmy, a sociologist and legal consultant, opines. "This makes young men act violently, often irrationally -- which explains why harassment is more of a problem today than it used to be in the past."
The views of Maha, a Misr International University (MIU) student who wears hijab, would seem to corroborate this line of thinking: "I think men harass to prove that they are masculine and macho, and it's also why they smoke and drink." Samah, another Ain Shams University student who wears hijab , agrees: "Men are crazy. They'll get their frustration out on any girl they pass. It doesn't matter whether that girl is liberated or conservative, good- or bad- looking." Others put forth variations on this basic argument. "A lot of men are sexually frustrated," Inji, a 6 October University student, argues, "a lot of the time because they can't afford to marry. What they fail to remember is that the girls they take it out on are victims of the same dilemma."
For their part the perpetrators express a disturbing perspective. Hossam, for one male MIU student, holds the view that it is normal for men to want to harass women -- even if he does not readily admit that it should be called harassment. "When I comment on how beautiful you are I am not harassing you," Hatem, a Ain Shams University student, contends. "I am merely stating an opinion."
Some even believe that it is the women who want to be harassed. "If a girl meets a man and he does not flirt with her, she will see him as weak and unmanly -- she won't want him," Ashraf, a medical student at MIU, argues. One group of students observed in action at the Ain Shams University campus are not embarrassed when asked about their behaviour. "What do you mean why -- it's just for fun," Ahmed, their spokesman, says. "Of course," he adds quickly, "a good girl should ignore these comments. Laughing, even smiling in response are go-ahead signals, the same as saying, 'I like what you're doing'."
According to Ashraf, the way a girl responds to harassment affords a key to her character. The young man postulates three kinds of reaction, corresponding to three character types: "those who react quickly, revealing weakness ('what do you want?' for example); those who give a daring answer that shows a strong personality; and those who ignore you."
The women interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly had by and large only one message to communicate, however: "Leave us alone." Many resort to a variety of methods -- wearing long, loose skirts or trousers, tying up their hair, even taking up hijab -- to avoid harassment. Yet all their efforts seem to be in vain.
Sarah, another AUC student, approaches the issue with a different mindset altogether. "Harassment has nothing to do with clothes, social class, looks or anything else," she says. "Men are sexually frustrated, many are jobless." Her argument is that, the more dispossessed the men, the more harassment they perpetrate; in her own experience the worst harassment has tended to come from blue-collar workers on campus. Nawla Darwish, a New Woman Research Centre activist, questions this view, however: "Upper-class women may provoke the poor who also suffer sexual frustration. But are the poor the only harassers? Don't upper-class youngsters harass and even rape?"
Whether upper- or working-class, few people are aware of the existence of a law against molesting women "in a manner offending their modesty by words or deeds on a public road", with penalties including up to one year's imprisonment and a range of fines from LE200 to LE1,000. "No witnesses are required for legal action," Tareq El- Awadi, a lawyer, explained. "The problem is that it is often difficult to drag the man in question to a police station, or to persuade the police to help you."
Concealing an urge to laugh, one policeman, on duty outside the AUC main campus, demonstrates the extent of that difficulty. "Security forces are not responsible for harassment," he says. "I've seen a lot of harassment, but I never interfered." He even admits that policemen themselves harass women, lamenting the fact that "it can only be done verbally because policemen cannot leave their posts."
Not that the vast majority of Egyptians would want to hold a perpetrator legally accountable. "When I was young, I used to scream and cry," Sherine, a Cairo University student, says. "Now I just don't react. I don't want to be at the centre of a scandal. I've learned my lesson by now: to react is bad for my reputation."
