You mean to tell me if a woman has acid thrown on her in the street and her face is disfigured, then so long as her organs are still functioning, the charge will still be ‘physical assault of a woman?’”

Mama was paranoid about harassment.
She thought it was everywhere.
She wanted to protect me.

I was walking down a busy street one day,
When I felt someone press against my back.
There was someone embracing me from behind.
I thought it was someone I knew.
gender violence, harassment, the street

To my big nipples,
Why do you lose all feeling in bed?
Don’t you know you’re supposed to be an erogenous zone?
I feel nothing from you.
It’s as if you’re not connected to my breasts.
Not connected to my heart.
You disconnected yourself from my heart so I wouldn’t feel pain.
But I’m lacking confidence now.
beauty stadards, body image, harassment

You said I was only pretending to be a liberal,
And I turned out to be a conservative woman who had issues,
Just like any other Egyptian woman.
You said that because I refused to do what you wanted.

I was a senior at the time. I was wearing a long blouse over a skirt. A microbus passed by and the driver said, “What a huge a—”, and you can imagine the rest!
gender violence, harassment, the street

I’ll tell you what happened but don’t tell anyone else.
Last week, when I was going home,
There was a guy who wanted to get into the elevator with me.
He looked strange.
I refused to get into the elevator with him.

We were in middle school.
It wasn’t a very good school—Omar el-Khattab School.
Sadly, it never lived up to its name.
A third grade teacher was molested in class.
Everyone heard about the incident.
She saw some students masturbating in class,
gender violence, sexual violence, harassment, mass sexual assault, sex, school, sex education

A girl was walking to a supermarket near her house after iftaar  when a kid—no older than 18—said the most disgusting things to her as he fondled himself.

I was on my way to college, and I was  in a hurry. I was looking around for an available microbus to get on, when a little boy sexually harassed me.
gender violence, harassment