this is real rape culture
http://egyptianstreets.com/2015/03/0...ally-harassed/
In the past few years, Egypt’s streets haven’t been the most welcoming of spaces to women of all ages. Getting the simplest things done now require them to constantly think about what to wear, how to walk and when the right time is to run an errand.
It isn’t easy when they feel that every eye is checking out their bodies. Sadly, justifications for doing so like “She was the one asking for it with her tight blouse and jeans” or “What am I supposed to do without any money to marry someone?” are still advocated and widely accepted by our society up to this day.
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According to the survey released in April 2013 by The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on sexual harassment, 99.3 percent of Egyptian women are sexually harassed in one way or the other, 96.5 percent of whom said that harassment was physical, and 95.5 experienced sexual harassment through verbally abusive language.
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Despite having a more concrete definition among those who are young of age, there’s no wide consensus on the reasons causing this phenomenon due to “the lack of studies before 25th Jan revolution,” as Ibrahim pointed out.
Some attribute it to the lack of education, lack of public safety, and poverty, but there’s a major focus on the societal acceptance of sexual harassment as being one of the main drives behind its growth in our society. The streets witness a high level of tolerance towards sexual harassment especially when it comes to justifying the act. Accordingly, the most influential way to fight it is by rectifying the society’s perception of it, argued Ibrahim.
Fortifying what Ibrahim expressed about harassment, Menna Azmy, a lead organizer in the upcoming anti street harassment event, “عرض الشارع”, provides her insight on the role of public space in sexual harassment.
According to Azmy, “Sexual harassment could be brought back to the idea of repetition.”
Under the right circumstances, the prolonged exposure to the same scenery makes everything look meaningless and abstract, people lose their identity and faces become the same to the harasser.
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With societal acceptance of sexual harassment reaching critical levels, and public spaces being rendered as unsafe spaces for women of all ages, harassment is sometimes used as a tool to serve other goals. This was obviously seen in mob assaults on female activists and protesters back in 2011 in order to prevent and scare them from participating in 25th Jan revolution.
Aside from the above, others have attributed sexual harassment to the notion of gender power dynamics as phrased by Nouran Maher, a Political Science graduate as: “An expression of power or domination; many men in Egypt would not harass a woman from their neighborhood or close community because they have no perceived sense of power over her, or they know that she has an effective male accompaniment (someone of equal power to himself).”
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Unfortunately, the heightened focus on sexual harassment did not lead to an increase of rejection from the bystanders’ point of view. According to said study, only 17.7 percent intervene upon witnessing an incident of harassment, with male respondents showing more proactivity than women on this matter.
In addition, men’s perception towards women and harassment showed no clear signs of change. Nearly half of the male population who were involved in the study blamed women for their tight clothing when asked about the reason behind harassing them. Furthermore, 37.1 percent said that women wanted to be harassed, and were asking for it.
Results from the study also show that males from different educational backgrounds practice one form or the other of harassment. Nevertheless, respondents with secondary education (81 percent) are more likely to harass women than those with higher education degrees.
