Ahmad Zaki Wasiq
The harassment of women in public spaces has always bothered me. Several times I have placed myself in the shoes of women who are harassed and stalked daily simply because they have dared to exit their houses and felt shock and despair. I have witnessed and heard from women around me that intimidation, glares, verbal harassment, insults and even physical harassment are every-day realities of the lives of women and girls in our cities.
If you grow up a man in this society, you will know for a fact that our society’s moral standards for men has degraded due to war and instability. There are many men who are so lacking in morals that they imagine that any woman who is outside the house is immoral, sexually promiscuous and therefore open to their advances. These men claim to respect their own mothers, sisters and wives by keeping them at home. They see ownership as equivalent to respect and do not know that above all, a woman should be respected because she is a person, not only if and when she is someone’s mother, sister or wife.
This lack of respect for women as individuals is one of the root causes for street harassment. Understanding that a woman must be respected regardless of whether or not she is walking with a man or related to a man is a concept many in our society still don’t grasp. Some men even believe that if a woman is walking on the streets without a man, her body and her existence is up for grabs and theirs to claim. The automatic response for them is that she doesn’t have an owner, I must be it. Any kind of street harassment, and especially physical harassment, is rooted in this mentality and in the belief that our masculinity depends on owning, using and controlling women’s bodies in public spheres.
Many harass women because they are bothered by women’s public appearance. There are many men who prevent their daughters from going to schools yet they demand that their wives go to female doctors. Ironically it is those who insist that their wives should visit female doctors who believe that women who exit their houses and work outside the home are immoral and hence deserving of harassment. Should women object to being harassed by them, these men will be quick to say: “If you were a good woman you wouldn’t be out on the streets. You would be at home like my wife.”
It is startling how weak this argument is. Those who harass women often prevent their own female family members from leaving their houses because of harassment. These men tell the women of their families that men are immoral, the society is corrupt and the best way to stay safe is to stay home. Meanwhile they are the ones who are making society unsafe. If instead of restriction women’s public participation, they reflected on their own behavior, this problem would be taken care of entirely.
Street harassment is illegal in Afghanistan. It is also against Islam, but our society seems to only be an Islamic society on the outside. In reality, our public behavior with women is one example of how we behave in contradiction with Islamic teachings. Our religion tells us not to look at a woman who is not related to us twice, but because so many men do not follow this and other moral principles, women and girls are not safe regardless of whether they are wearing burqas or they are children under the age of twelve.
We must understand that this problem will not go away by its own or only through governmental efforts. Every single one of us must fight against street harassment. If we cannot do that for some reason, at least we should abstain from harassing women ourselves.
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Read this piece in Persian here.