A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a critique of a LA Times blog post about and Egyptian organization that is working to combat sexual harassment in Egypt. The BBC News has now has a piece on its website about Egyptian women and sexual harassment as well. The two articles are different. The LA Times story was written as a more traditional story that did a profile of Egyptians, male and female, working to stop sexual harassment. The BBC piece is a collection of stories told by Egyptian women exclusively in their own words. While I liked the first person perspective of the BBC feature, I found the feature to be a mixed bag. I’ll focus on the positive aspects first before offering a more critical critique.
One of the things that I liked about the feature was that the stories were told by a variety of women: hijabi and non-hijabi, middle class and working class, etc. (Posy Abdou, one of the women, is pictured left). Sexual harassment affects women of every social stratum in Egypt so it’s great that the BBC was able to get the perspective of women from different classes. Also, I appreciate how hijabis and non-hijabis are shown because it reinforces the point that sexual harassment is not about the clothes. The more focus that is taken off of women’s clothes, the more focus can be placed on men and how they use sexual harassment as a form of power over women.
Additionally, I appreciated the first person accounts of the women. Too often the stories of Muslim women are filtered and told through the viewpoint of some other party, whether it’s Muslim men or non-Muslim men and women. The women’s interviews were probably edited. However, it is still nice to hear first person accounts from Muslim women.
While reading the women’s account provided insight into the daily battle with sexual harassment in Egypt, what I found lacking was any stories of women who fought back and became activists against sexual harassment. Only one of the women profiled, Noha Wagih (pictured right), mentioned anything about activism. She mentioned that she wanted to make a TV program about sexual harassment. While the voices of victims need to be heard, I found it rather curious that the BBC didn’t have one profile of activists such as the one done by the LA Times. All of the stories tell us about women’s experiences with harassment, but that is the extent of the coverage. All of the stories reinforced the image of the oppressed Muslim woman who is helpless. It also reinforces the image of the aggressive, misogynist and violent Muslim man.
Also, the exclusive focus on women takes away the focus that should be placed on men as well. It makes sexual harassment seem like it is only a problem for women, when it is a problem that affects both genders. There’s no examination of patriarchy or ideals of hyper-masculinity that are affecting the perpetrators’ views of women. There’s no look at how twisted interpretations of Islam maybe affecting these men’s idea of women either. By just centering on the experiences of victims, readers are left with no context. They have no idea why this phenomenon is occurring and what is being done to stop it.
Thus, I was left wondering why the BBC did this particular feature. Was it to inform readers about this issue, was it to give the women a chance for their voices to be heard, and was it to reinforce ideas about the superiority of Western gender as compared to gender norms in the Arab world? I honestly was not sure. The only thing I was sure about was that I ultimately finished reading the stories with the eerie feeling that I had just read yet another Orientalist-influenced piece that only served to reinforce stereotypes rather that promote any thing positive.
Tweet
Tags: Egyptian women, Muslim women, News, sexual harassment
[...] Faith from Muslimah Media Watch discusses the news reporting style of the issue here. [...]
I think the reason why there are only women who shared their views and experiences because not only does it highlights the extent of the abuse, but it adds ‘shock value’ when it comes from the victims themselves. They are all victims of sexual harassment, whereas men are generally not. To be fair, men whose daughters, wives, and sisters who have sexually harassed by right are victims too. But men are generally silent from shame.
There is a good article by an Egyptian man i.e.Khaled Diab about this issue:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/03/egypt.gender
Cycads–thanks for the link! I’m putting this on our Friday link list.
I think Faith’s point about the story’s point: “to reinforce ideas about the superiority of Western gender as compared to gender norms in the Arab world” is a great one. Without context, the story just ends up fueling the “culture-clash” argument by constructing Egyptian (or, in a larger sense, Muslim) men as inherently bad boogeymen.
I actually think interviewing regular women probably provides a clearer picture of what is going on in Egypt than interviewing activists. The fact of the matter is that there is very little anti-harassment activism in Egypt today. Most of the onus is placed on women–to dress more conservatively, not chat on the internet, etc etc. Onus, but not blame…the reigning philosophy is that women are not at fault, but that men are uncontrollable. People think that by encouraging women to become more conservative, they are encouraging them to protect themselves. Men are seen as ravening beasts until they are civilized by marriage. The ads that encourage women to veil (you’re candy, you’re meat) portray men in an even more unflattering light–as disgusting carrion flies, slinking alley cats, satanic seducers. (Literally, satanic…there is a series of ads that show a red-horned devil standing over the shoulder of a man as he chats on the internet with an innocent but gullible young girl.)
Ironically I think men in Egypt struggle with problems similar to the ones African American men face here. Jobs are scarce, the government is demeaning and oppressive, and the conservative Islamic establishment has told single men that they are rapacious and untrustworthy so often that they have begun to believe it. They have no impetus to behave respectfully–they have no prospects, no respect, and, in their own eyes, no future. Their only path into respectable adult society (and into healthy sexual relationships) is marriage, which is an astronomically expensive affair in Egypt. Many of them live with their parents–unemployed, single, and in a state of enforced chastity–until well into their thirties. They are *miserable*.
Egyptian women are screwed because Egyptian men are screwed. The solution to this problem will have to be sweeping, because it is rooted in poverty, oppression and a religious establishment that curtails and stigmatizes male sexuality just as ferociously as it does female sexuality.
Willow, you make some great points.
But I don’t think your comparison of Egyptian men to African-American men is apt; Egyptian men are not a minority group in Egypt. They are mainstream society, and they shape their own media/culture/religions. In the U.S., black men are not the majority and are placed outside of mainstream culture/media/etc. by the majority.
Your point about poverty is a good one, but again the comparison between Egyptians and African-Americans doesn’t work. Plenty of rich American men (of any race) harass women. And men of all ethnicities harass women despite their income level.
But they don’t shape their own media/culture/religion. That’s the whole point. It’s a dictatorship. Every aspect of life is regulated by the government, from what you can eat to what you can drive to what you can say to who you can associate with. It even controls what religion you can be, and the subsequent laws by which you must live. (It’s illegal to be an atheist, a Baha’i, or a Hindu–you can pick from one of the three Abrahamic religions and that’s it.) The reason the fundamentalists are so popular is because they’ve discovered that religion is the aspect of life over which the government’s control is weakest–but it’s still control.
In other countries, men of all races and social categories harass women when and if they can get away with it. It’s not systematized and constant the way it is in Egypt. When I’m there I get hissed at or propositioned literally every 50 feet. Women complain about men masturbating next to them on the subway. We’re not talking about occasional catcalling here, we’re talking about an institution. VERY different from casual harassment in the rest of the world. We can’t just blame it on patriarchy because it is much, much more complicated than that.
The parallel I drew between the pressures faced by African American men here and Egyptian men in Egypt is largely psychological–obviously their histories and unique situations are very different. But the level of disenfranchisement and the immense pressure that places on them has, I think, emotional similarities. They seem to complain about similar stresses and feelings of being rejected and pushed out by the mainstream establishment. But in Egypt there’s the added pressure of sexual oppression and religious expectation. (No matter what your gender, I think being forced into celibacy until you’re 35–not just celibacy, but strict social separation from the opposite sex–is oppressive.)
I agree with every word Willow said…except i place more blame on these disenfranchised men. Just because they are bullied and kicked, does not mean they must bully and kick us. It is not OK.
A few years ago I would have made the same analysis as the author.
“All of the stories reinforced the image of the oppressed Muslim woman who is helpless. It also reinforces the image of the aggressive, misogynist and violent Muslim man.” I hope you’re aware that everyone is harassed here, not just Muslim women. In fact, Christian women are harassed even more because our revealed hair makes everyone think we are loose. Also, the harassers aren’t all Muslim either. The point that Willow made stands: the harassment is JUST SO BAD that it bears no comparison to anything that is going on in the Western world. And there’s so little we women can do, so very little. I am so very, very tired of crossing the street and wearing my ipod to avoid the vile whispers of these men who lean in. I’m so tired of feeling unsafe. I’m so tired of men exposing themselves to me. I’m tired of them lecturing me about being immodest, de rigeur in Ramadan. If it wasn’t so unbelievably pervasive and everywhere and all the time, I could venture a comparison. But I’ve been and lived in several places and, yes, western gender norms ARE better than the ones in the Arab world. I don’t even see how the two can be compared. Oh, the media tells you you have to be thin? How tragic. Try being groped on your way to work. Or not leaving your house. Or being beaten by your husband without any legal recourse. These are problems. Burying our head in the sand is played out.
[...] and women had a right to dress as they pleased (read more about the study in Faith’s post here and about the“Respect yourself” campaign against sexual harassment in [...]
[...] and women had a right to dress as they pleased (read more about the study in Faith’s post here and about the “Respect yourself” campaign against sexual harassment in Egypt [...]
[...] posted at Muslimah Media Watch Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Loden [...]
[...] and women had a right to dress as they pleased (read more about the study in Faith’s post here and about the “Respect yourself” campaign against sexual harassment in Egypt [...]