CAIRO: Lets just get a couple of things straight first, disturbing the peace of random women walking in the street and in public transportation by cat calling, yelling out sexual acts you'd like to do to them, groping their breasts and slapping their ass is not flirting. These aren't things that help us feel better about ourselves and they are not compliments we enjoy hearing and experiencing; they're acts of sexual harassment and they're degrading, insulting and make us feel like sexual objects with no brain. Walking down a street in tight pants and a t-shirt isn't an invitation for random sexual acts, and forcing yourself on a woman isn't a newfound approach to starting new relationships, it's sexual assault and its a crime. Women here are sexually harassed and assaulted on a daily basis, and just when they think they've survived the worst experience they'd ever have to endure, and they've gathered up the courage to speak of their trauma, they enjoy the disgusting reactions of the Egyptian public. We've all heard them, “what were you wearing? Why were you there? What time was it?" those despicable questions that are the core of today's blame the victim strategy. Well, if I was wearing a bikini on a stranded street at 3am it still isn't an excuse for rape, assault and even sexual harassment, it's not consent. And don't give me any of that it's not an “excuse" its a “reason" rant, because currently unsuspecting veiled women are attacked in broad daylight and during rush-hour. What you wear and where you are, are no longer even remotely relevant. If a guy's religion, ethics, upbringing and common decency, do not stop him from attacking a woman, it won't be the time on the clock or the extra sleeve length. The whole cover up, men can't help themselves cultural demand is more insulting to men than it is to women! One of the main things that differentiates humans from animals is self-control, so if you want to live with the claim that men can't and women need to cover up, then maybe they should be treated like animals and kept in cages. There, problem solved. If your dog insists on urinating on the living room carpet, do you change your whole living arrangement and turn the living room into the bathroom to suit a dog? Or do you punish the dog and train it to live by your rules? Same thing applies here; when facing sexual violence we shouldn't be looking at women and asking them to change their lives just because we have gangs of horn-dogs loose in the street. Taking precautions is one thing, but restricting women's lives and embedding those restrictions in the culture is another thing altogether. The bottom line is sexual harassment has become a cultural norm. It's as accepted as is wearing sunglass on a sunny morning. It has become part of our daily life and the rare persons who speak against it are faced with cynicism and small minded attacks. This is partly because we've stayed quiet about it for so long. Ever since we were 5, as women we've been told to not engage, look in the other direction and ignore, and by that we ignored a problem, a life threatening social disease. Instead of facing it and trying to kill it we created temporary solutions and slapped sloppy Band-Aids on it like early curfews and conservative attire. Things that only prolonged our denial and gave the social disease a chance to mutate, leaving us with old remedies that have little or no effect on that social disease called sexual violence today. As a society we've failed, instead of hearing the cries of survivors and empathizing with them, society takes another stab at the victim and blames them. Instead of condemning cruelty and punishing the predator, society promotes excuses and gives them the green light to go ahead and do it again. Sexual violence is a crime and it is time we acknowledge it as such. It's time we treat it with the same stern laws as we do any other crime that violates a human being's rights.
