
Annons
Nehal: I’ve been harassed since I was 13 or 14. It's annoying and makes me feel insecure, unwelcome and repressed, but we have to live with that if we want to survive. Mass harassment of women in the street at festivals particularly has started to become very common. Stalking them, running after them, touching their bodies and encircling them.
Annons
Yes, I think so. When people become more conservative, they get more fanatical about sexual things. Egypt has been tagged recently as the highest country for Googling the word "sex". There's a lot of sexual frustration, but it's always underground – never explicit.So Conservatism makes it worse?
Not necessarily. I think people are mixing this newfound idea of revolution and freedom with a more general freedom, or relaxation of morals, at least. There are teenagers with little hope and lots of frustration, not to mention lots of sexually-fuelled fantasies because of the internet.The BBC has branded the situation an epidemic, and it certainly bears the characteristics of a social illness. Women are frequently assaulted by gangs of men in broad daylight, surrounded by undisturbed onlookers. France 24 recently interviewed Mahmoud, a bus driver in Cairo, whose encouraging input was: “Harassment? Personally, I do it! I do it every day on this bus! And between you and I, what does a girl expect when she goes out in the street dressed in tight clothing?”Exactly right, Mahmoud! What girl doesn't expect to have her arse smacked by a stranger for wearing jeans?Maia, a 22-year-old British student who lived in Cairo until June, remembers the little things, like "men asking you if you’re from Russia, which is kind of their way of asking whether you’re a prostitute” and the other, slightly larger things, like “a couple of people getting their dicks out in the street, which was not very nice”. Perpetrators generally stick to the archaic defence that their victims are "asking for it", though first-hand reports from Egyptian women show that fully veiled women are just as likely to be harassed as woman in a Western get up.
Annons