This is a shocking, appalling, sickening account by a British journalist, Natasha Smith, who was sexually assaulted the other day by hundreds of men on the Kasr al-Nil bridge in Cairo, near Tahrir Square. Such attacks on women have become a banal occurrence in Egypt. Movies have been made about it. Read Smith’s account and be angry. It’s barbarism, pure and simple. There is no other word for it.
(h/t Mark LeVine)
Quite a story indeed. Difficult to find anything sensitive to say. Ms Smith has been the victim of a particularly vicious form of rape while doing her job, and she carries on with great courage and stamina. Writing is a part of the reconstruction process, and I wish her the best.
As to generalizing conclusions to be drawn, the comments under her post seem to run the gamut of possible reactions quite extensively. From a Western point of view, there should be a path between idealizing what happens in Egypt and considering all Muslims/Arabs as barbaric ragheads with anger and dick issues, unfit for civilization. What one can say is that sexual misery (“misère sexuelle” – how would you translate that?) seems to be a feature of the contemporary male arab world, with dreadful consequences suffered by women. Shameful, simply.
La misère sexuelle: I heard this regularly from Algerians during my time there, as an explanation for all sorts of social and political ills, including the rise of Islamism. Viewed social scientifically, there’s something to it.