via VectorStock
Here’s a sad reality: Egyptian women get sexually harassed and catcalled all day. This isn’t something new or unknown; it’s been going on for years. This crime sadly also affects visiting foreign women in distinct, sinister ways.
Think of it this way—visiting another country is already a challenge in itself. Usually, you’re scared, and you barely know anything about this new place. You don’t even know the language most of the time! All of these factors make the way certain Egyptian men treat foreign women particularly atrocious, as they might even use the fact that these women trust them to be even more awful.
Noticing this pattern of horrendous behaviour made us something else: the way many Egyptians treat visiting foreigners in general. So, let’s talk about that.
How Egyptians Treat Visiting Foreigners
This might sound (and potentially is) very embarrassing, but Egyptians tend to have the same reaction to foreigners, no matter where they are—we tend to become easily amazed and enchanted, though none of us knows why. Anything the foreigner in question does becomes instantly awesome and admirable, but if an Egyptian does the same, then it might be ridiculed or completely overlooked.
That phenomenon is called O’det El-Khawaga. This phenomenon clearly shows itself when we act too westernised or speak in another language all the time because “Arabic isn’t cool”.
Other than the odd treatment O’det El-Khawaga brings, foreigners usually get scammed, especially at touristic locations. At some sites, foreigners are expected to pay double the price of everything, and no one treats them as anything but walking bags of money. They’re sometimes even mocked by being called names in Arabic that they simply don’t understand.
Overall, these points of view reflect poorly on us, as a country and as people.
How Egyptians Treat Foreign Women
While Egyptians’ treatment of foreigners is questionable at best, the treatment Egyptian men give foreign women is in a league of its own—it’s basically sexual harassment. With sexual harassment reaching epidemic levels in Egypt with millions of Egyptian women suffering from it every single day, we want this horror to stop happening, period—not have it also affect visiting women. One of the most recent examples of this behaviour can be seen in a European woman’s video about her time in Egypt, in which she said that Egyptian men in the streets keep catcalling her in the same way they call dogs back in her country.
