Yemen, Sexual Harassment & Women

 

I want to use this blog to write about issues that matter to me, my first subject is about sexual harassment. I lived in Sanaa, the capital city of Yemen for seven years as a teenager and then moved to the UK. As a woman it is difficult to escape from sexual harassment, men masturbating in narrow alleyways, rubbing themselves against women in markets and crowded buses, shopkeepers asking you to come to the back of the shop was all too common an experience. I can’t count the amount of times I saw men attempt to expose their private parts to me. I have had men whisper to me “beautiful”, do you want cock”. When I talk to female friends and relatives who lived in Yemen about this issue they all have a story to tell. The incident two years ago where mobs of men went on a sexual assault frenzy in Cairo sparked a debate as to the causes of harassment. The high unemployment among the youth who spend most of their time in cafes watching raunchy music videos, diffculty in getting married were some of the reasons given . This might apply to Egypt but not Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

The problem in Yemen and Saudi in my opinion stems from the sexual objectification of women and a culture that views them as inferior, not only are they physically weaker but intellectually and morally inferior. A woman’s function and existence is one of sexual pleasure for men. This is the reason why a woman always needs a guardian in their eyes, if left alone she would fall into sexual sin and be a public fitna. It is not uncommon in Yemen to see a mother walking behind her 13 year old son who is her guardian. A woman is an incomplete human (muwadin nakhis) who is defined and judged in light of her sexuality, she should not appear on TV because of her feminine shape, she should not speak in public because her voice is awra (shameful) etc.

The strict segregation is part of the cause as well, it creates lack of interaction and familiarity between the sexes. I consider it unhealthy that relatives for example cannot mingle with each other, instead females retreat hastily in another room if a man is approaching without even a greeting. Curtains are used to separate the sexes when talking to each other, those situations sexualise a perfectly normal environment. Any interaction between the sexes is deemed to be sexual. Rather than letting sexuality develop naturally, men are raised to see women as sexual objects and have unhealthy views towards sex. In one of the arab cafes in my city there is a homosexual guy from the Gulf who dresses as a woman but everyone knows he is a man. This guy receives so much attention from some arab men who ask for his phone number or to take him out. He explained that as a transvestite other men consider him to be loose and willing to offer them quick sex, being a man was not important to them as long as they are able to get sex. It is no surprise that a majority of men in arab gay chatrooms are from Saudi.

The excessive covering of women with a niqab and hand gloves adds to the sexualisation of women, the columnist Yasmin Brown wrote “these coverings are physical manifestations of the pernicious idea of women as carriers of Original Sin, whose faces or hair turn Muslim men into predators. In truth, half-naked women and veiled women are both solely defined by sexuality. One group proffers it, the other withholds it. A young girl in a boob tube and a young girl in a hijab are both symbols of unhealthy sexual objectification“. I dont believe that the niqab or hijab alone sexualise women but it does have a negative effect in a culture where women are considered to be inferior in every sense of the word. It is this attitude towards women that has caused the death of 15 girls in Mecca when religious police stopped them leaving a burning school because they were not properly dressed.

I have written about this topic because I hear many muslims in the West going on and on about women in the West being portrayed as sexual objects and try to paint a rosy picutre of muslim countries. Some converts and second/third generation muslims in the West try to imitate and import Saudi culture and lifestyle through fatawa without understanding the damaging potential consequences of their behavior. It’s important that we strike a middle and balanced ground in order to have a healthy society and when pursuing virtue not achieve the opposite.