Being Female in Cairo

This is taken from a facebook note of an American female friend who has been living in Cairo for almost two years now.  The body of it is from a blog that I've never heard of, and while I don't really understand the first references, this is the best thing I've ever read about the experience of being female--especially as a non-Egyptian--in Cairo.  I've included my friend's introduction because I think it provides a great illustration of exactly what the author says about the effects of living in cities where female sexuality is looked down upon.

Being in Cairo can be frustrating for me as a guy, but it's nothing compared to what the girls I know here go through.  Cairo really grates on the girls I know living here, (Americans and Egyptians alike often times).  Even for the ones who have fallen in love with the city, it is a constant struggle not to let the harassment and sexism of it weigh them down.  This article explains it all perfectly.

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On Street Harassment
by Chelsea    May 23, 2011 at 7:16am
"Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning." - AN
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I lament that most men I know (and love and respect) won't continue reading upon seeing the following words: bitch-face and feminism - today's real "F" word. Don't be that (predictable) guy.

I urge you to read through.

The author has eloquence that I can't come by, particularly after I've exploded at friends when they disparagingly express concern as I become more confrontational with grabbers, pssssst-ers, air-lickers and the like.

Regular suggestions of ways that I can better avoid street harassment escalates conversations to that same level of confrontation, because hypervigilance against that ideology on the street cannot be divorced from that same ideology when it's spouted from a familiar face.

Without realizing it, this suggestion (making even more changes to how I dress, where I live, walking alone, even smiling in public) makes harassment my personal responsibility - as if somehow, I could stack the deck to not be harassed, or not as much, or harassed in a more preferable way.

Annie covers it all - from identity, to relationships, to the simultaneous love and challenges of the city.

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Don’t Let The City Destroy Our Agency

May 19th, 2011

Annie Rebekah Gardner listens to “The City” on repeat as she maintains her bitch-face and barrels on down the street.

I squealed with glee when I read Emily Manuel’s piece about Patrick Wolf’s song “The City” in Tiger Beatdown, mostly because this man’s music affords me so much nostalgic joy. (Just ask a certain editor here at Canonball about how we choreographed a dance to“The Magic Position” during summer 2007, a summer of eternal youth and hedonism and friendship and happiness. Novel forthcoming!)

Manuel speaks to the problematic of being queer in The City, the simultaneous freedoms and restrictions that come with it:

The city is at once hostile and home to queer love. Every one of us knows how city space—and especially suburban space—is almost entirely heterosexual, that it demands we regulate how we hold ourselves, how we touch our lovers, what we can say and do and when.

I am a mostly hetero lady, so I cannot speak to the queer urban experience beyond what I hear from friends — being leered at for holding hands with a girlfriend even in the queer-friendly urban confines of San Francisco, for instance — but what particularly struck me about this meditation on the urban space and how it interacts with and affects love and expressions therein was that feeling of oppression, the feeling where your long-time home is not your own because of others’ attempts to dictate your choices and your actions.

A week or two ago, over steaks, I was with a lady friend and a man friend, and the topic turned, as it often does, to dating and girls who love boys and this kind of thing, and the man friend made this extremely crucial real talk remark, largely specific to dating in Cairo, but maybe applicable anywhere that there is excessive street harassment and structural sexism (read: everywhere, really). He pointed out that one reason we single ladies are so neurotic and seemingly not datable is because in our day-to-day, in our enduring the constant leers and vulgarities of almost every dude on the street (but not carpet-maker dude! I love you and your motorcycle and your craftsmanship, carpet-maker dude! Same to you, Maged of Stella Bar. Swoon, swoon, swoon.), we make huge efforts to desexualize ourselves and our bodies, to, as best we can, make ourselves invisible to the male gaze. Brittany Julious does a phenomenal job of expressing this lack of sexual agency in a recent post on This Recording:
The reality of getting older was not that I craved sexiness less, but that I recognized my sexualized being was beginning to be enough. Not that I am particularly beautiful or attractive, but that just existing warranted attention — usually lascivious, definitely unwarranted — from the men around me.
Yes, this is it. I could be in niqab, or I could be in the tiniest of booty shorts, and in either instance I would walk two blocks and be subject to the rudest of advances and commentaries. We are women and we exist in this male-dominated urban space, and even in our homes we only open the door to men we know, and we grow ever-resentful of our male companions and their ability to go where they want, when they want, dressed however they want. Our revenge fantasies become the stuff of Quentin Tarantino’s nightmares, and when the dude we’re making out with asks why so self-deprecating, obviously we’re beautiful, and sexy, and tra-la-la, all we can do is shrug and smoke our cigarette.

The week before I moved to Cairo, I sat in my room with my mom as we sorted my clothes into two piles: appropriate for Cairo, not appropriate for Cairo. The woman’s a seasoned professional when it comes to strategic dressing, this from a lifetime spent abroad in Pakistan and Egypt. “This will be okay for fancy parties,” she said, as she picked up my favorite black dress. “So long as you take a taxi there.” I felt frustrated and overwhelmed. I felt like the whole of my sartorial identity was in this discarded pile of sequined hot-pants and neon rompers. I looked at it and started crying, and my mother chided me. “Your identity isn’t just in your clothes, you know,” she said gently, but she understood. This sundress, that pair of high heels. I was trading them in for t-shirts and acid-washed jeans. I was going to deflect harassment by looking as boyish as possible (which, by the way, doesn’t work).

A lady in Cairo knows that no matter your dress, you will at some point fall victim to unwanted attention. Within three days of arrival, I had already had my ass grabbed by an eight-year-old (an eight-year-old!). I’ve gotten used to walking quickly; male companions observe that I barrel through crowds, that I “walk like a dude,” that I scowl. Male companions, both home and abroad, also observe a newborn hostility in me. The slightest touch or innuendo that would have made me guffaw two years ago now will get your throat ripped out. When I meet new dudes I avoid eye contact. After one or two dates, I disengage from contact. The short skirts that had come to define my peculiar style are now layered over leggings, but only on days when I feel like being scandalous. I’ve almost always — since high school, anyway — dressed to stand out, but nowadays this sartorial desire is far outweighed by the discomfort I associate with standing out and the impossible dream of blending in. The reality is that as deviants — deviant ladies, deviant queers, deviant what-have-you — there is no “blending in” in a world of jeers and cat-calls.

Would that I had some kind of solution to the problem of street harassment, or the psychological effects of never feeling wholly safe in your own home. The closest I get is by the holy trinity of dark glasses, loud music, and violent thoughts, but these aren’t sustainable because they begin to affect my interpersonal relationships. Street harassment doesn’t make life any easier for dudes, either. Sorry, dudes I know and love. It’s not you. But it’s not me, either. This is where joyous, raucous, youthful music comes in, though. Blasting Patrick Wolf on my headphones does little to deflect unwanted hollering, but somehow it is spirit-raising and skip-inducing.

“The City” is a joyous anthem against repression, a call to arms of sorts. The City — for me it’s Cairo, for you maybe it’s New York, or Kabul, or London, or Delhi — is in so many ways a liberating, electrifying, joyful space (just walk down Shari’a Sherif at sunset, and you’ll see what I mean), but in so many ways it still exists to berate and mock our own sexuality, our own agency. I love Patrick Wolf because he expresses, with urgency, the need to disallow The City’s repressive norms from affecting and destroying our own agencies.

Original blog online here.