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Street Harassment Snapshot: February 20, 2011

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Read stories, news articles, blog posts, and tweets about street harassment from the past week and find relevant announcements and upcoming street harassment events.

Street Harassment Stories:

I accept street harassment submissions from anywhere in the world. Share your story!

You can read new street harassment stories on the Web from the past week at:

Street Harassment in the News, on the Blogs:

Events:

Announcements:

New:

On-going:

10 Tweets from the Week:

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Lara Logan and Egypt’s Next Revolution

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Building on my blog post from last night, I wrote an article for Ms magazine about the attack on Lara Logan and how Egypt’s next revolution should be to address street harassment and public sexual assault!

An excerpt:

As disappointing as it is to see that street harassment is back—and even more devastating, to know through Logan’s story that so is public sexual assault—I see a glimmer of hope.

The people of Egypt, including women, know their power. I hope their next revolution will be to end gender-based harassment and assault. And I know that many there hope for the same.

After the Logan news broke, these were some of the Tweets I read:

This morning Mohamed Safi created a Change.org petition asking Egyptians to resist sexual harassment. Ending gender-based harassment and assault is the kind of revolution that every country needs.

You can also read similar cries for a revolution to end street harassment and assault in Egypt at CNN.com and The Daily Beast.

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The movie 678

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It’s no secret that public sexual harassment is a big problem in Egypt, for both Egyptian and foreign women. A new Egyptian film called 678, released this month, is putting the spotlight on this problem, as well as the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Via Facebook

Via Gulf News:

In the film, popular actress and singer Bushra plays the part of an employee who suffers from harassment and is regularly molested while travelling to and from work on the public bus service. It marks the directorial debut of Mohammad Diab and is named after bus route No 678, which the heroine uses.

“The claim that the film harms Egypt’s image is a silly joke. Keeping silent on this phenomenon is what really harms Egypt’s name,” Bushra said in a recent interview.

Via The National:

Mohamed Diab, the director of the film, believed it to be among the most important movies he had produced.

Speaking at the seventh Dubai International Film Festival ahead of the gala screening of the film last night, Diab said: “I have made commercial movies before, but 678 was a risk. I have a strong belief in it and will continue its campaign, because it is not just a movie.” …

Egyptian singer Bushra, who was cast as one of the leading ladies, said the movie was about all women from all social classes.

“This film is about women’s rights, human rights and the invasion of privacy. We are discussing it from an Egyptian perspective because this is how we experienced it, but there is no doubt that this is a universal problem,” she said.

“Women of all ages and social class can [fall victim] to harassment, so the issue is how each relates and handles it,” she said.

Bushra also noted a surge of serious films which surpassed commercial motivation. “Politicians alone do not create change. It is high time for us actors and filmmakers to also participate,” she said.

Great!! I would love to see many more movies about sexual harassment that portray it in a negative light (instead of as a joke, compliment, or minor annoyance). Movies are powerful mediums for shaping public opinion. (Update: here is another article that describes more of the movie plot)

Another exciting new resource for changing the social acceptability of public sexual harassment in Egypt is HarassMap, which allows them to report harassers to a map tracking system.

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Update on Egyptian anti-harassment law

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In early January, a draft anti-sexual harassment law was introduced to parliament in Egypt. This week, a bill was presented to parliament’s legislative affairs committee and another bill was approved by the Justice Ministry so it can be presented to the committee in days.

Nihad Abu Al-Qumsan, head of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), applauds this update and said, “It shows the state is responding and changing … They are now understanding the significance of the issue.”

Efforts by the ECWR has shown that sexual harassment in public places is a big problem in Egypt. Bravo to them for all their work!

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Covered from head to toe, groping continues

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Women in Cairo. Image via the Boston Globe

I’m sick of hearing people blame women for street harassment by saying things like, “if only women covered up it wouldn’t happen.”

In many countries where women ARE completely covered, harassment occurs. 90 percent of women surveyed in 2009 in Yemen had been street harassed and most women wear a veil. Egyptian woman Hadeel al Shalchi wrote a great opinion piece for The National about the insane amount of street harassment in Egypt, and the following section discusses the issue of being covered and still being harassed:

“The onus in our society has largely lain on women to prevent sexual harassment. If a girl doesn’t cover her hair or wear very conservative clothing, then she’s obviously asking for it and wants the harassment, the prevailing attitude seemed to be.

As a result, more women began to cover up. The hijab and niqab became common in Egypt, not purely for religious reasons but also because women wanted to avoid the unpleasantness of being glared at by the opposite sex.

But when the harassment continued, Egyptian women knew there was something seriously wrong.

Covered from head to toe in black, they were still being groped, propositioned and annoyed. What more could they do? …

Three years ago, an amateur video of women in hijabs being attacked in downtown Cairo during a holiday event was made public. Shocked Egyptians were brought face to face with the ugly nature of harassment. Some mobile-phone images showed men tugging at young girls’ clothes. Others showed the girls being physically attacked.

This was real evidence of a very real problem. Those who had ignored what every woman knew could deny it no longer.

Women’s groups were emboldened to launch anti-harassment campaigns, teaching women that the problem was not their fault and encouraging them to persist in bringing complaints – even small ones – to the police. They were also urged to take self-defence classes and to use what they were taught on men who abused them in the street. …

In Egypt, sexual harassment will, most probably, continue to exist for a long time to come. Attitudes that allow such behaviour appear culturally ingrained. But increasingly women are waking up to this reality and beginning to reject it.

Women here are saying it loudly: enough to being groped on the subway, to being undressed with a look, to being followed to work. This must stop!“

Amen. Enough!! Street harassment MUST END and it will not end by requiring women to be completely hidden from view. Instead, men must stop harassing women and there must be cultural respect for women. What can you do? Here are a few ideas, feel free to share more in the comments.

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