Thread by @monaeltahawy

A story about patriarchy and punishment.

Many of you know that in Nov 2011, #Egyptian riot police beat me, broke both my arms and sexually assaulted me during a protest.

In 2016/7, while at a Cairo market, a man sexually assaulted me. I was fighting back, a plainclothes police officer (who I later realized was probably following me) came out of nowhere and asked me if I wanted the man arrested. I was so fed up of incessant assaults I said yes.

It was back in the day when the regime pretended it cared about sexual harassment and assault and before it jailed women who exposed it.

At the police station, it became clear that the officers were especially keen on doing something about it because the only form of ID I had on me was my US passport & when they asked what I did I said journalist and when they asked who I wrote for I said I’d been published in NYT

It became obvious that even though I was speaking to them in fluent Egyptian Arabic that an American who is published in the NYT was there. One officer offered to “beat him up good” for me while at the same time telling me he thought many women “wanted to get groped.”

After I described what had happened, they told me I had to go to the district prosecutor’s office the next day so that the case could enter the system.

I left the precinct and kept thinking what a fucking farce the whole thing was: Patriarchy with a big P pretending it was punishing patriarchy with a small p for me.

Ha!

Back in 2012, a feminist group in Egypt asked me if I would sue the State for what the police assault on me in 2011. They told me at least 12 other women had been assaulted in an identical manner to mine but that those women couldn’t speak because of shame or family silencing.

I said of course I would. I got a letter from the orthopedic surgeon who operated on my left arm, I got xrays, I spoke to their lawyers and broke down in retelling what had happened to me. And they filed a case with the prosecutor general who was pro regime and who ignored it.

So when I left the precinct that night in 2017, that was on my mind.

I was like - those fuckers are promising “justice” from some piece of shit nobody who had assaulted me while at the same time denying me that justice fo what riot police sent by the regime did to me? How?

It was reminder of Patriarchy with a big P and patriarchy with a small p and how it is always women and queer people ensnared in their fuckery ame who will never find justice because that system is rigged.

So I didn’t go to the prosecutor the next morning because I wanted nothing to do w/their “justice.” Nonetheless, they still charged the piece of shit AND gave my phone # & address to his lawyer who gave them to the guy’s family so they could harass me to drop a case I didn’t want

The next time a man sexually assaulted me was in a club in Montreal and I beat the fuck out of him. I didn’t want security or police or anything.

And when a club manager asked me why I didn’t let my “husband” (my beloved - a man) take care of it, I told him that first of all he wasn’t my husband and that I owned my body and I take care of it.

I don’t want to be protected or taken care of. I want to be free of patriarchal violence and few of men’s fuckery.

I want to be free of patriarchy with a big P and with a small p.

I don’t know what perfect ending to this thread you were hoping for or expecting.

No one has been held accountable for what was done to me in 2011. And I doubt anyone ever will.

I am alive. And I am free.

And the riot police who assaulted me are not the ones I want held accountable. They are victims of the regime too. They are the poorest of the poor & the least educated in Egypt. The way the State has treated them and their families is in and of itself a crime.Crimes upon crimes

I am free. Those men are not.

What does justice and accountability look like now?

During my detention at the Intetior Ministry (police), I insisted they acknowledge I’d been sexually assaulted. I kept saying it over and over. Finally, the Big Boss, the man in the expensive suit, snapped and said “Go point kit who assaulted you and I’ll put them on trial.”

I told him he knew it was impossible because they were wearing helmets and I couldn’t see the faces of the men whose hands were all over my bed and whose hands I was taking out of my jeans.

Then - appealing to what he though would be to class solidarity and elitism he said: “You know who did that to you? Those men are scum. We raised them from filth and opened a tiny door in their mind.” He thought I would nod along and call them monsters.

I asked him instead “And who left them living in that ‘filth?’ Who left them living in that poverty? And then trained them to be attack dogs? And you wonder why we’ve risen up in revolution?”

He looked at me as if I were insane.

Fuck the Patriarchy with a big P and the patriarchy with a small p.

That was WAY longer than I’d intended!