Male voices in a Cairo social movement
This ethnographical study explores the role of the male voice inside a volunteer movement fighting al-taharrush al-ginsy (sometimes translated as “sexual harassment”) in the public sphere in Egypt, through dialogue-based awareness-raising activities and non-violent direct intervention. The movement...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ema, |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Publié: |
Égypte/Monde arabe
2015
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| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | This ethnographical study explores the role of the male voice inside a volunteer movement fighting al-taharrush al-ginsy (sometimes translated as “sexual harassment”) in the public sphere in Egypt, through dialogue-based awareness-raising activities and non-violent direct intervention. The movement treats the phenomenon of taharrush as a continuum of verbal and physical violence, defined as “any speech or action that is unwelcomed by another person and of a sexual nature, and infringes on the individual’s privacy or body or makes them feel lack of respect, trauma, insult, fear or exploitation.” This group has specifically sought to incorporate men into actively addressing taharrush, and changing how other men think about inter-gender interactions. Thus, masculine vocality plays a key part within the movement’s gendered struggle for public space, both as a support to the female voice and as a new and distinctive type of male voice, standing out from other masculine positions performed on the street. Through volunteers’ narratives, this paper analyses how the movement has become a laboratory in which new models of gender identity are elaborated, then are performed in a socially constructive way in the street through the struggle against taharrush and the negotiation of women’s share of public space. |
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