This is a guest blog post for International Anti-Street Harassment Week, by Amani Massoud in Egypt.
In January 2011, inspired by the nuisance of sexual harassment that women in Egypt are subject to every day…correction…every minute…of their waking hours, I wrote “What to wear on a revolution”. It was only a few days before January 25th that I sat down and had a serious discussion with some friends over what best to wear to the protests, which, even if we didn’t know it at the time, were to mark the start of the Egyptian revolution. Now I suppose if a bunch of people were to sit down and discuss that same topic anywhere else in the world, they would have talked: light or warm clothes depending on the weather, comfortable shoes or a practical outfit for the long day out, red shirt or yellow shirt, symbols, etc… but not us…we were intensely and meticulously discussing to the minutest detail how we’ll make ourselves immune to highly probable harassment. There we are at one of the greatest turning points in the history of our nation and our greatest concern was wearing “nothing that gives way to sexual harassment or a chance to have your clothes pulled off” ? Something isn’t right.
And while I’m in the business of writing great things in my head that only ever stay there, there are those rare incidents when I get my thoughts actually…well…written. Say when your country is ridding itself of a 30 year old corrupt regime or on Blogging and Tweeting Day Against Sexual Harassment to name a couple. Do I need to elaborate on how immensely I feel against sexual harassment? I guess not. I am revolting now against sexual harassment as I revolted then against political harassment.
I do not however claim to have lived for 30 of my 34 years in a country where sexual harassment against women is as frequent as the horning, beeping, cussing and cursing coming out of thousands of cars (barely) driving through the densely populated streets of Egypt. I would like to think that the intensity of the problem of sexual harassment is not as old as Mubarak’s regime and I’m pretty sure I could walk the streets of my hometown Alexandria some 12 years ago without reaching that level of frustration that makes me want to just strip naked in the middle of the street and throw myself right in front of the next passing bus…on a good day.
Yet the body adapts, and just as your ears learn to filter out the sound of horns and beeps, only enough so the noise doesn’t drive you crazy, you learn to adapt with the cat-calls and the stares. You get your vaccine in multiple dozes and you become immune. Days will go by when you just walk around in a daze completely unaware of your surroundings, humming even, until the effect of the vaccine wears off again. Then you start using all the tried and true tactics: you dress big and ugly, only to realize it has nothing to do with what you’re wearing…you stare back, only to find their stare turning into a victorious smile…you stop em in the street and give them the meanest cruelest insult you can think of, only to find them answering back meaner and crueler…you crack a joke…you say hello…you stop and pretend to ask for help (which believe it or not is by far the most/only/slightly reliable tactic)…nothing works…none of the tactics are evidence-based and if they’ve worked once with a girl you know they won’t work with you again…and if they’ve worked against one guy, they won’t work against another. And so it hits you, no matter what you do, they win, and their immunity to our tactics is growing as ours to harassment is waning.
In India they’ve got a word for this, Eve-teasing, which includes anything from street harassment, molestation, sexually suggestive remarks, groping, perverted teasing and cat-calling. There too, traditionalists blame it on the way a woman behaves or wears in public. Men are increasingly being drawn into this World they have collectively imagined up where women actually enjoy being humiliated on the streets like that. Well guess what, we don’t, and no, it has nothing to do with what we wear. I could be wearing Firefighter Coveralls and I’d be “eve-teased” if some of those men had a remote suspicion I might be a woman.
The saddest part is that none of this is news for practically anyone, and the problem of sexual harassment is growing at the same rate as shouting out against it. Perhaps we’re not being explicit enough? Here we are trying again:
“Breaking News: It is NOT OK to Sexually Harass Women on the Streets!”
Amani is the Human Rights Education and Campaigns Director at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Follow her on twitter.
