"She Had a Pretty Body": Sexual Harassment on the Streets of Jordan

She walks by, and the men on their cigarette break jeer at her.  "Hey beautiful!"  "Hey sexy!" they say.  The hissing sounds made to call cats are now for her.  Yet, she giggles to herself, making the men continue their calls and words out to her.  " ايش عسل" (Iesha assel!) which means "Hey honey!"  She wears skinny jeans, a long sleeved shirt and some makeup – nothing really revealing – even if she does not wear the hejaab (head scarf).  Another girl is behind her and passes the same men.  The men begin their jeering at her, calling her inappropriate names.  They say her eyes are beautiful, observing that her mascara highlights their color.  What is she wearing?  An all black robe, a hejaab (head scarf) and a nekaab which covers here entire face except her eyes left open to the public.  Different appearances, yet same treatment from the men on the street.  Welcome to the streets of Amman, ladies.

Sexual harassment is not a widely discussed subject in public Jordanian culture among the sexes, but it is definitely encouraged sometimes by the men.  Both sexes understand the reality of sexual harassment; it exists as "cat-calling" to Jordanians, but under the law it is interpreted as sexual harassment. 

Independent Jordanian filmmaker Dalia Kury asked some profound questions about the reasons for sexual harassment in Jordan and sought to find answers to her questions.  She interviewed men, young and old, on their reasons for cat-calling, and she also an imam from a mosque to understand if cat-calling was acceptable in Islam.  Kury also interviewed women who were recipients of cat-calling to understand their perspective on the issue. 

What did Kury define as cat-calling?  To begin, flirting occured when both sexes agreed to engage amorously whereas cat-calling occurred when only one sex, usually the man, agreed to engage amorously and the other (in this case, the woman) did not.  If a woman notified the police of such acts, then it discouraged some men to stop the cat-calling.  Other men found a way of paying off the police to avoid punishment for an action that they believed was acceptable for most men in Jordan to do. 

What Kury discovered from her interviewees was that it didn't matter what the women were specifically wearing to initiate the cat-calling.  Cat-calling was more psychological for men who sought to fulfill a sexual desire out of sexual frustration because of the prohibition of physical contact between the sexes before marriage in Islamic society.  Yet, according to psychologists, cat-calling did not satisfy the sexual desire for men because that desire was not fulfilled in the proper way, and it left men even more frustrated in a way.

The double-edged sword is this for the woman: if she laughs when the men cat-call her, then it only encourages them more to continue paying her undesired attention; if she remains silent and does not condemn the men, then she only reinforces the system in which men are socially condoned and accepted when they cat-call.  Some women ask the men, "Don't you have sisters?" and for some men, that is the reason to not cat-call after women because they know that a pretty lady in the street is also someone's sister, daughter, and/or mother. 

Society cannot change without change from the inside.  Islam already does not allow cat-calling, and it states that men should respect women.  Yet, why do so many men still do it?  From personal experience, there are many times when I want to stop a man, look him in the eye and ask him if he has any respect for women and if he has any sisters.  Yet, too many times I continue on my way, ignoring the jeering, only reinforcing the acceptance and condoning of the cat-calling.  Even though I am a passive perpetrator of the harassment, the change must start within the community of men, according to Kury, and they must respect women first as people who deserve respect.