Interesting article here on sexual harassment in Egypt. 62% of Egyptian men admit to sexually harassing women What constitutes sexual harassment? “The forms of harassment reported by Egyptian men, whose country attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, include touching or ogling women, shouting sexually explicit remarks, and exposing their genitals to women. “Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis”. Most women do not report harassment, up to and including rape. It ruins their reputation. The men see it as the women’s fault, so do many of the women. “most Egyptian women believed the victim should “remain silent.”
It sure is easy to bash Muslims. They make good fall guys and no one, hardly, is willing to take their side. Some of this may stem from the fact that our cultures are very different. Some of it stems from our unpleasant habit of killing each other and mucking in each other’s politics.
This one rings kind of true though, at least to me. Shortly after landing in Saudi Arabia for Desert Storm, we had to put up our mobile air hospital. A lot of hauling, hammering and digging ensued. As an officer I was entitled to just “supervise”. That means sit in the shade for you have yet to make management level yet. Anyway, I love building stuff and hammering and most anything with power tools, so I was out there with the guys and gals in the Saudi heat. In the heat, we were all allowed to take off our outer shirts. Women still had on their long BDU pants, a bra and the brown military issue T-shirt over that. Saudis used to stop and just leer at our women. It was an all out, weird, to me, over the top I want to sex you up stare. We had to hold back some of the enlisted guys who wanted to go defend their honor. Women who went too far away from a group, had Saudis expose themselves. We registered complaints and this stopped, or at least diminished enough that I did not see it anymore. The official word was that the Saudis thought any woman dressed in such a provocative manner must be a whore.
One night after a rousing scorpion vs cockroach fight, one of the young guys asked me why people who were so religious, who had prayer calls five times a day would behave in such a way? I am not sure there is really a good answer.
Steve
Cultural premature ejaculation?
I’ve often thought that the asceticism necessary to survive in such harsh climes as the primitive Middle East had some direct connection to that sort of behavior, or rather to the structures of modesty and thus to the travesties attending their unanticipated collapse as you describe. To force oneself to do without that sip of water, without that glimpse of womanhood, those ascetic virtues forcing one to accept self-imposed hardship upon a time likely made the difference between life and death in a lethal environment where succumbing to softness or immediately prompted pleasure might have proved fatal.
But then I got to thinking of the Inuit and, as far as I know, there aren’t the same cultural taboos, even though the environment is every bit as lethally harsh. Of course, the option to present the female form and its temptations in the Arctic doesn’t arise on the ice pack in forty below winds, only in sheltered environs effectively private anyway. So maybe I’m right anyway.
All the shows one sees on the Discovery Channel or such dealing with indigenous peoples and their nudity seem to reveal that in such situations sexiness becomes more than skin deep, even though relative differences in female physical attractiveness are still keenly parsed from the get go. Because all women are topless, for example, it simply takes more than mere toplessness to ignite passion. Then again, and even though the women are often paid for at great real values, that sense of abusive entitlement present in the Abrahamic tribes seems much less in evidence. Or maybe everyone’s just behaving for the cameras.
Anyway, until Red comes along and cleans my clock on this, I’ll stand on my first hypothesis, that what you’ve got there is a culture of Holden Caufields who, with a sufficient infusion of casual sexual culture would prolly soon grow out of it.
There for a minute I thought Steve was discussing what it’s like to work around framers, especially now that most of the framers are hispanic.
In fact I believe the incentive for framing going piece work was because otherwise they would never get anything done if the job was where there were women.
The behaviors Steve has described define one thing, immaturity. The reason I know this is I work construction. It is a young man’s game. And not just because you need the strong back and weak mind either. You have to have a young at heart attitude to appreciate the work.
I believe Robert pretty well nailed it. What we’re looking at is men who haven’t a clue because they’ve never been taught. Which says not having sexual conversations in a society is as bad as only having sexual conversations.
I guess it is hard to understand how Islam, the religion, or at least its appearance, permeates culture in the Middle East. There is prayer call 5 times a day. They broadcast it over big speakers so you always hear it. Mosques everywhere. Religious police patrol the streets. Any merchant who does not close his store soon enough after the call to prayer is subject to penalties if caught. Virtually every newspaper article has multiple references to Allah. Then you have this kind of behavior, which is not limited to just the young or uneducated. Reaction to severe repression? Culturally inherited behavior separate from religion?
The Inuits do have a brief summer. American Indians had similar conditions and as far as we know did not develop similar attitudes.
Steve
My hypothesis was that, where the lethality of the environment approaches 100%, loss of control becomes a profound survival issue. Indulgence in pleasures or other things that require one to lower ones defenses, such as seduction by a woman’s charms and subsequent compromises (Mo drops thawb to nail Daliya, Hammad chops Mo’s spine in twain), or, say, drunkenness, outside of strictly self-protected proactive situations can all too easily lead in marginal situations to getting selected out.
The more survival latitude available, those relatively balmy Arctic summers, the more latitude to be seduced or otherwise involuntarily forfeit self defense control and still survive.
As I said, just a hypothesis. OTOH, there could just be some incomprehensible idiosyncratic element of misogyny written into the cultural heritage itself somewhere we can’t yet tease out satisfactorily to our Western understanding. Radical feminists might claim that all men are inherently abusers, but if that were the case we’d see those Muslim elements universally, but we don’t.