When Forsooth wrote her posts about how revolting it is to live through a Ramadan where men thought it was acceptable to demean women some people seemed to think that she was being too harsh. Let the women dress more appropriately, especially during the holy month when the men are trying hard to be pious. She seemed to be looking forward to Eid, when everyone would be able to sin openly in public again and she and her fellow countrywomen wouldn't have to deal with the bullshit of being harassed because they own a pair of tits.

I hate reading accounts like that. I hate knowing that Egypt has not only NOT gotten better with regards to how it treats its women in the streets, but that it's gotten a hundred times worse. It's one of the reasons I left Cairo eight years ago. I hated not being able to walk in the streets. I hated that in order for me to avoid the shitty comments or avoid being inappropriately touched I'd have to have to maneuver my way through the city in a car; basically playing a game of dodge ball and hoping not to be hit. I wasn't allowed to exist in Egypt and I wasn't about to negotiate my existence there by trying to make the best of a really bad thing.

This is unacceptable. Women being attacked like this is UNACCEPTABLE. I don't care what the underlying causes are. The academic in me might be able to put it all in context, but the woman in me doesn't give a shit how sexually frustrated people are, how modernity and tradition are reconciling themselves, or how uneducated people have become. I don't care about any of these reasons. Typical apologist crap for what should simply be condemned as fucked up behavior. Are some of the accounts exaggerated? Maybe. But it doesn't make this any less outrageous.

It is entirely unacceptable for men to think that they have the right to demean women like this. This was not about sexual frustration. It is about the total disrespect for women's bodies, their right to exist in the public space, and men's desires to assert their macho behavior. "I am man, hear me roar".

Those of you who have never been sexually groped will never know how disgusting, demoralizing, and depressing it is. You have no idea how disgusted it makes you feel with your body, how hard it is to try to hold back the tears. You have no clue how it feels for some asshole to try to twist your nipples or try to finger you. How enraged you become and then how impotent you feel when you can't do anything about it. People who are offering rationales are ones who have never had to go through this.

Yes, I know that when people are in a mob they stop thinking. And yes I know that this isn't confined to Egypt. Six years ago at the Puerto Rican Day after-Parade a mob of men harassed and sexually assaulted women in Central Park. But this incident is a culmination of the shit that's been happening in Egypt and I can't understand how long this is going to be allowed to go on.