In Cairo and New Dehli, smart phone apps are being used to map sexual harassment and report sexual assault. Farah Jassat reports. She recently graduated from Newnham College and is currently a freelance journalist who has written for The Guardian and Huffington Post. She regularly blogs at www.farahjassat.com

My friend was once walking down a street in Cairo when a stranger in a nearby bus stuck his head out and shouted: “You’re a pretty girl but take your glasses off!” If that doesn’t provoke a ‘who-the-hell-are-you?!’ reaction I don’t know what does!

Most women who have lived in Cairo will be used to scenes of men hanging about on the streets (sometimes for no apparent reason). And unfortunately, a culture of attempted chat-up lines, catcalls and leers tends to go with it. Although incidents such as my friend’s experience are harmless, not everyone is so fortunate. It is a thin line that separates innocuous interjection from turning into offensive behaviour.

The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights in Cairo called harassment in Egypt a “dangerous social cancer” in a survey in 2008. The survey’s results report that 83% of Egyptian women and 98% of foreign women experience sexually harassment throughout Egypt. The recent cases of sexual assault of journalists such asEgyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy have renewed security of the pressing need of increased public safety for women in Egypt.

Take back the tech continued »

Wrongheadedly, I visited Anne Summers the other day. Hidden at the back of the store next to the ‘Dominatrix’ range (exclusively advertised with pictures of submissive women – I don’t think they get it) was the section marked ‘Porn for Women’.

A less interesting porn section could scarcely be conceived of. Whoever is designing this porn seems to think that women will descend in droves to purchase any porn which replaces the ‘for men’ signifiers ‘slutty/anal/hungry/cock/bitch/fest’ with the more delicate, pleasant, feminine word ‘couples’. As if ‘couples’ is any draw in a film that conforms in every other respect to the male subject/female object binary.

All I want for Xmas is a stocking full of really arousing feminist porn continued »

Snow spat against the window. It
Refused to let it in;
Though water was covering the inside pane.
Delving out mucus I threw it out
Opening the window
A wasp and snow flew in.

Of seminal importance to my present interest in gender was my first piece of non scientific vaginal literature: Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, discovered while rummaging through my sister’s room. I was 13 then and it was seven years later when I saw the monologues live on stage. I saw that performance with a whole new knowledge, both carnal and intellectual. I was shellshocked by the the visceral portrayal of gender based sexism and began to doubt the legitimacy of calling myself a feminist. This is one of the many questions that my status as a male supporter of feminism brings up. I never come to meaningful conclusions on them. It’s these endlessly circular issues that characterize a man and his feminism.

Soul of a Man under Feminism continued »

This article may contain triggers for survivors of sexual assault and rape.

Some passages of this article also imply a heteronormative model that I don’t mean to assume – consent is obviously an issue in homosexual relationships, but just isn’t the focus of this article.

I have had sexual encounters that were not consensual with many men in my life, and none of them have been strangers in an alley, and none of them have involved physical force. And though this article will skim over the details of some of those incidents, it will not be the focus. The focus will be why. The focus will be who can stop it. The focus will be how it can be stopped.

Where we all agree

The first incident was when I was ten. A family member sexually abused me, and that I suppose, is the most clear cut case, the incident(s) that can be described as sexual assault, as ‘wrong’, and as blameless, with widespread agreement by most of society. The fact that I was sometimes asleep when it began, or wouldn’t move when I woke up (due to biological fear/awareness of the impact of acknowledging what had happened) would not, I think, change that perspective. It is more prevalent than you would think: 65% of women that contact rape crisis centres are adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Consent: sharing testimony and looking for change continued »

Santorum in the tub with love

touch me my accumulation
touches on the top of the napalm
of the trickle down of the kiss of the lip
figerlets turn everything from a to b
and touch upon the reched rhythm
the calculated decision
hear me say morendo as before
oh! to war! to war!

in ditch half a head of hair
three fingers of ditchwater
half a hair of head extends
‘bove surface water extends
to crossroads where signage declares
oh! to war! to war!