Sexual assault: an issue for women in ecology? Or for everybody, everywhere?

I am, by nature, an optimistic person with a positive outlook on life.  Any experience I have, whether good or bad, I manage to find a beneficial consequence.  This blog post is not so much about being a woman in ecology, but about being a person.  More specifically, a person who has been subjected to sexual assault and how this can impact a positive attitude to life and work.  It just so happens that my life and work is ecology and conservation.  I suppose sexual assault is a topic more commonly associated with impacting people of my gender, but I would like to propose that it is not, and that ignorance of this fact is, if anything, making everyone more vulnerable.

My Story 

Alone at night in a developing country – was I asking for it?

Let me give you some history.  I am a woman.  I work in conservation, primarily in the developing world.  Recently, I spent six months living and working in Sinai, Egypt.  As a western woman living in a small but relatively touristy town, despite always wearing modest clothes (at least by my standards, i.e. covering my shoulders and upper arms and my legs to at least below the knee), I was subject to constant attention, from wolf whistles and honking cars to frankly obscene comments.  All of this was irritating, but didn’t really feel threatening and was just something I tried to ignore and reduce the provocation for as much as possible.  Incidentally, the one time I covered my head with a scarf, I was openly laughed at.

 One evening, I was walking home from seeing friends.  It was dark, but as Egypt gets dark between 5 and 6.30pm throughout the year, this was not something that could be avoided so was not usually a problem.  It was full moon, and for once the wind that usually tears through the Gulf of Aqaba had abated and the sea was beautifully calm.  I chose to walk home along the quieter sea front to enjoy the peaceful sound of the waves before I got back to my dark and stuffy home.  There is only a small portion of the seafront that lacks street lamps or doesn’t pass in front of either restaurants or houses, so I didn’t think I would be in any danger.

However, as I rounded a corner onto the only dark strip, I saw a man standing facing the wall.  I assumed he was urinating (not uncommon) and ignoring him, kept walking.  From what happened next, I had clearly been mistaken.  The details are unnecessary, but suffice to say, I believe I escaped rape only through good luck, my level-headedness and a few choice words of my very basic Arabic, which maybe illustrated that I was not ‘just’ a young tourist who would leave without telling anybody.

The Consequences

Freedom, confidence and trust stolen

I was extremely fortunate to escape with relatively little physical or emotional harm, but the consequences have stayed with me.  For the following couple of weeks, I was unable to walk down the street past young Egyptian men calling out their usual ‘greetings’ without my heart racing, my chest going tight and struggling to breathe.  As I had not got a good look at my attacker’s face, he could have been any of those people I walked past on a daily basis.  My implicit trust in human nature was damaged, and has still not been fully repaired.

Whereas I used to feel confident and almost invincible, I lost the freedom I used to feel to be able to do anything or go anywhere I wanted.  I wondered how many other women it affected; if it could happen to me then surely it could happen to anyone, and not everybody would feel they could tell someone.  I thought of the thousands of women who are assaulted everyday, all too often in ways much worse than me, and how that must affect the collective psyche of women on earth.

I don’t want sexual assault to be a taboo subject.  I don’t want women who have experienced it to feel that they are alone or that they cannot overcome the consequences.  On the other hand, I do not try to pretend that I have any notion of what it is to deal with cases worse than mine.

The Other Side – An Egyptian males view

Are some women provoking the assault of others without knowing?

When I described what had happened to me to a male Egyptian friend, he was sorry, but gave me an insight into the other side of the story.  As a diving instructor, he claimed that he and his friends experienced sexual abuse at the hands of western women on a regular basis.  He said that, all too often, women came to Egypt to dive, to get drunk and to have sex with young Egyptian men.  They would seemingly purposefully change directly in front of their dive guides and make sexually explicit comments.  After a days diving, my friend received a phone call from his client saying, “Where do you live? I’m coming to have sex with you.”  Other women regularly touch their dive guides inappropriately underwater where they can do little to defend themselves.  One woman, whilst my friend was driving her to a dive site, apparently grabbed his crotch.

The majority of dive guides and instructors come from distant parts of Egypt, which are often more conservative than the town I stayed in, and infinitely more than the western world.  If they are not married, many of these men have never even held a girl’s hand, let alone had any kind of sexual relationship, so the presence of young women in bikinis, drinking and dancing provocatively in bars in the evenings and coming on to them is understandably extremely uncomfortable and disturbing.  To the naïve newcomer, the overriding perception of a western woman is one with very few morals who is happy to have sex with any person at any time.  So is it really surprising that my attacker considered it acceptable to do what he did to me?

The sexual assault and rape of women in Egypt, both Egyptian and others, is a relatively well-publicised problem.  But I have never heard any mention of the abuse tourists inflict on the men they visit, which is potentially an equal if not greater problem.  Additionally, it can only exacerbate the potential for abuse of women.

Looking Forward

Consequences for my career, and maybe yours too

After my experience in Egypt (although I should state that I believe it could just as easily have occurred in Britain, or anywhere else in the world I have worked), I no longer feel happy to walk home alone after dark, or in places I do not know.  As a woman working in ecology and conservation in the developing world, I often have to work unusual hours in remote places in cultures very different from my own.  Whereas before I would have gone into these places carefree, now I might think twice, only go with other people or at certain times, or even not at all. 

Sometimes I am angry with the person who attacked me for taking that freedom away from me.  But other times I am grateful.  I came away relatively unharmed, but more aware of the potential dangers in the world.  Perhaps my awareness now will prevent something far worse happening to me in the future.  And I hope that by sharing my story, I might make some of you other seemingly invincible young women (and men) a little more cautious and safe, and maybe think a little about the image of western women you contribute to when working in different cultures.  As I said, I always try to find a positive outcome from every experience.


What do you think?

I do not claim to be an expert on any of the topics covered in this blog.  I speak only from my own experience and from discussions with friends, male and female, British and Egyptian, so I would love to hear anyone else's thoughts or experiences which are relevant.