Near the end of watching a 60 Minutes segment recently I practically shouted at the TV during an interview with investigative reporter Lara Logan.
My heart goes out to her for the trauma she experienced in Egypt. But the minute I saw her wander into that emotionally charged mob of men my heart was instantly in my throat. Why on Earth would a pretty blonde, blue-eyed, Western woman wander into such a crowd?
And then she answered my question near the end of her interview: “I had no idea how endemic, that (rape) is so rife, so widespread, that so many Egyptian men admit to sexual harassing women and think it’s completely acceptable.”
This is a tragic example of the horrible consequences of not knowing a country’s history.
It also throws gasoline on the fire of bigotry that brands men of a certain ethnicity, fueling the notion that all white women are in danger from “those” men.
I know writing this runs the risk of infuriating feminists who hold that no matter what a woman does men should control themselves. Well, take a close look at the setting in which she found herself. Better yet, take a look at what Egyptians said about themselves in 2008 when an 11-year-old was allegedly raped by a 21 year-old.
Such attacks, while illegal, are commonly viewed more as a family misfortune rather than a crime. On the web site womensphere.org, Rania Hamid, manager of the family counseling unit at the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, is quoted as saying, “These traditions are not 20 years old, they’re ancient.”
The 11-year-old was one of 20,000 women or girls raped every year, according to Egypt’s Interior Ministry, a figure which implies that an average of about 55 women are raped every day. However, owing to the fear of social disgrace, victims are reluctant to report cases, and experts say the number may be much higher.
“If the Ministry of the Interior gets 20,000 then you should multiply it by 10,” said Engy Ghozlan of the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights anti-harassment campaign.
We might be living in the 20th century, but too many regions are socially entrenched in the 15th. There are still parts of the Middle East where marital rape is not acknowledged as a crime. Even worse, in some instances female rape victims are victimized again at the hands of male relatives, who consider raped sisters to be damaged goods and therefore unworthy of proper marriage.
Did Logan deserve what happened? Absolutely not.
Were the men who attacked her animals? For sure.
But we almost always pay a terrible penalty for not appreciating cultural behavior that deviates from that with which we are familiar. As a black woman in her 7th decade and a retired reporter, I can promise you that the women who rescued her had isolated themselves from the men in Tahrir square for a reason: they knew what she should have.
Mercifully, Lara Logan lived to tell the tale. Now let’s hope the Egyptian authorities are listening.
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