Near the end of watching a “60 Minutes” segment last week, I practically shouted at the television during an interview with investigative reporter Lara Logan.
While my heart goes out to her for the trauma she experienced in Egypt, 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, given the attitude of Arabic men toward pretty, blonde, blue-eyed, Western women?
And then she answered my question near the end of the interview. Logan: “I had no idea how endemic that it is so rife, so widespread, that so many Egyptian men admit to sexually harassing women and think it’s completely acceptable. In fact, blame the women for it.”
How on earth could an intelligent, savvy reporter not know this predilection? The moment she wandered into that hysterical setting, she put herself in harm’s way.
What happened to Logan 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 who don’t know how to control their urges around white women.
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. The girl didn’t report the assault until she was five months pregnant.
Although such cases are reportedly beginning to change attitudes toward rape, such attacks, while illegal, are more commonly viewed as a family misfortune rather than a crime. On the website , 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. You have to change them bit by bit.”
The 11-year-old was one of 20,000 women or girls raped every year, according to Egypt’s Interior Ministry. That’s an average of about 55 women every day. However, owing to the fear of social disgrace, victims are reluctant to report rape 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. “It’s hard to tell [exactly how many women are raped] because there aren’t a lot of statistics. Most people won’t come out and say it happened because culturally it is not accepted.”
We might be living in the 21st 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 is the fact that 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. Such women are insulted all over again in so-called “honor killings,” where a father or brother kills the victim to preserve the family’s honor.
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 70s — 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.
Retired Post staffer Ellen Sweets is a freelance writer now based in Austin, Texas.
