Note: I will not disclose the identity of the persons involved, despite the torment they cause. They’re the only ones who can acknowledge their own identities, while my phone acknowledges their threats.
It started when I was 17; I had been working at the fashion retail industry for a year and was saving up for an internship in Switzerland. I was offered a summer job at the sales department of one of Egypt’s prime real estate companies. After passing my interview, I got called to a private meeting with the head of marketing. A door was closed, and a deal was on the table.
– “You will come to work with me in Beirut. I will make you rich and capable of your own independence.”
– “Beirut? How?”
– “Me and you. I will change your life”
– “Rich? At seventeen?”
– “Yes. We will go there and do some private business, both of us”
– “So the company funds this?”
– “What company? No, it’s a private deal”
– “I’m sorry my father taught me to never sign anything of the sort. But I may show him the contract if you please”
– “You are a very pretty girl and a stupid one too”
(Meeting over)
The usual assumption is that the typical victim of harassment is a woman from the middle or upper class and unveiled, while the typical harasser is a poor, possibly homeless or a mentally ill man. Today street harassment is on the rise. Everybody knows it. Everyone talks about it. What no one talks about is the harassment in the boardroom, the fancy corner office, or at your friend’s home.
Is it because it’s disguised as flirting? Or as a helping hand? Is it because of the branded cufflinks on those sleeves? Or do we know what’s going on and we’re simply too scared to talk about it? Is it their money? Power? Yet something you have not?
“There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.” – Denis Diderot
At 19, I was promoted as assistant operations at a luxurious fashion retail agency. With the owner’s son taking a liking at me, I did not last much longer.
Advertising. 20 years old. Exposed to the then unthinkable, from drugs, to atheists, hippies and homosexuality, out there in the open. And nobody would warn you of married men harassing the new girl, hiding their identities and asking her out, only for her to find out the truth days later from everyone else at the agency. But nobody would tell her, no. “Atta Boy!” He would get the compliments and she would get the shame.
“Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men’s eyes when deciding what provokes It.” – Naomi Wolf
It’s about time someone speaks up. It’s about time someone notes down that education or class are not preventing men from stooping low… lower than humanly possible. And I didn’t even get started on abuse. You would have thought this stupid behavior was a low class thing, purged from the educated and wealthy…
From requests for escorts by clients, business owners, friends and friends’ parents to pseudo lesbian violent friends… Where does that leave us? Why isn’t anyone speaking up?
A bunch of us know all about the famous businessmen roaming clubs, waiting to prey on the next girl. Can anyone tell me why they are still allowed near people in public areas when their purpose is clearly known to all? Is it because they own the entire tower? Does that make it ok?
(Do we encourage this?)
“I can’t work or focus when you’re around. I want you. I can’t work with you”. – Says the ex-boss that tried to request a blowjob in his car.
The vexation one goes through when talked to like that is indescribable. Was it what I was wearing? Or the way I spoke? My emotions would go from humiliation, self-loathing, self-blame, to feelings of emptiness. “Comfortably numb”.
The higher I climbed up the corporate ladder, the tougher it got. It felt like people would smell it. You’re on your own, in this country, and it’s tough. Independence for them means you got no one and no support. But didn’t anyone teach you “It’s not about who you are, it’s about whom you know”. And there ain’t one scumbag in this city that I didn’t stumble upon.
Me, being a young independent woman, proud to have purchased my own matchbox on wheels, my own clothes, my own post-grad certificates, am not perceived by this horde as a person, no. I am perceived as a little piece of ass to be bought, showered with offers of a better car, travel, even apartments. Because being independent doesn’t make much sense for them.
Women are not to be independent. They either get passed on from the property of their father to the property of a husband, or to be bought with jewelry and gifts and promises, against sexual favors, or even an S&M contract, and you thought “Fifty Shits of Grey” was just a book? It’s a man’s world. All you need to do is be cute and choose between the prude and the slut.
I am neither.
I always drive men insane. I must be a superior being as to have such a power on them.
But why am I writing this? Why now? Because as it happens, I have just received the picture of a live penis on my messenger. AGAIN. From someone’s dad. “I WANT YOU”
For women in this country, there is no middle ground. One way or the other, when harassed, as a pair of walking curves, you take the fall. When women talk about deep personal issues, the response they receive ranges from deeply critical to offensive. And being a catholic just makes you cheaper blood for some (words from the mouth of a wealthy educated harasser). And for someone who never wears religion as a personal identity, this was just another bad surprise for me.
So those are the educated men, the ones who actually have the world at their fingertips. The ones who are open minded? Questionably so. The ones you trust. The ones you live amongst. It’s so sad when you know you’re more at risk and in danger between the walls of a friend’s home or a big corporation than in the nastiest alleys of Cairo city.
(Breathe)
This shit, it breaks you. It makes you doubt yourself as a young woman. But once you realize it is not about you, and you distance yourself, once you take a stand not to be classified as a piece of meat or auctioned for a quick fuck or a bride for sale, once you feel that you are complete as a person and as a woman, you are then left with an even larger void, a place where friends are not friends, and opportunities are not opportunities.
They are traps, games, hunting games, and you are the prey. A fool. And this is real life.
And your fellow female friends will look down on you. Because you are a fool. Because you don’t want a man’s protection.
Of course harassers and abusers do things they know aren’t cool to intentionally freak you out or make their targets uncomfortable, and the second they’re called out for it, they claim innocence and say that they’re just misunderstood people trying to engage in behavior that is acceptable, like pranks or flirting. But a prank is sending pizza to someone’s house, not pictures of your erect penis. Flirting is engaging someone who wants to be engaged in a social situation, not making you “an offer you cannot refuse”.
(I see the world through pink colored glasses)
“A successful woman is one who can build a foundation with bricks others have thrown at her.”– Unknown author
I am out
I am free
I am alone
I can only write what and how I feel
I feel anger
I feel compassion
Yet I still look at me, stare at the bits and pieces and the tit-less chest and I do not comprehend till this very day, how I could be perceived as a sex object.
And then I understand. It’s not about me. If in their eyes I am an object, how can it be me? There is no me. It’s about a bunch of fools that yes, can buy the world, but will never know the true beauty and essence of a woman. Because a real woman cannot be bought, and real companionship can only be given. And I ain’t giving it to them.
And my fingers will never stop typing.
You’re next.