Sexual Abuse in the Middle East, the product of a Tyrannical Patriarchy?
Analysis by Francesco Pitzalis, Staff Writer
September 22nd, 2020
Recent sociocultural activism in the Middle East has been awash with revelations of sexual abuse and various forms of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against women. Notably, a notorious Egyptian sexual predator, to be known as ABZ; was exposed by virtue of persistent online activism. The question remains, what is such activism confronting? A tyrannical patriarchy? A patriarchy of naturalistic dimensions? Or simply against male psychopathology? The following article entails a dissection of the alleged crimes of the aforementioned predator, followed by postulations as to its root causes.
Over 100 women and girls accused the alleged sexual predator of rape, rape of minors, sexual harassment and blackmail. ABZ was a member of Cairo’s elite and employed an intricate system of blackmail and intimidation in order to shame those he abused and avoid being exposed. Thus, he undeniably leveraged a sociocultural structure that permitted the harassment of women. Indeed, Cairo has been affixed the unfortunate title of the world’s most dangerous city for women, where 90% of women are subject to varying degrees of sexual harassment (UN). The remits of such structures which incite a culture of rape and SGBV are debated extensively within the fields of feminism and psychology.
Michel Foucault describes power as diffuse and pervasive throughout discourse, knowledge and social structures. He alludes, “If we speak of the structures or the mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain persons exercise power over others”. Thus, whilst Foucalt maintains that power is not fundamentally repressive, it inheres within social hierarchies and has potential to subjugate. Foucauldiandoctrine has since formed a pillar of feminist approaches towards delineating patriarchy – an uneven distribution of power between the sexes.
The feminist model defines the patriarchy as predicated on male oppression, underpinned therein, on social constructionism; the idea that gender is constructed and reinforced by the socius. Postmodernist social constructionism was pioneered by Judith Butler in the early 1990s. Butler noted the stigmatization, ostracization and marginalisation of individuals within communities who do not conform to binary, discreet gender archetypes. Butler subsequently postulated that these reprimands repress deviation from the gender binary and thus generate discreet categories of male and female.
Postmodernism belies the essentialised idea of binary, biological behavioural discrepancies between the sexes. Therefore, gender, like identity is not what someone is but rather what a person enacts or performs. Butler contends that gender is propagated and crystallizes within rigid power structures. Thus, in the words of Mackinnon, “women/men is a distinction not just of difference, but of power and powerlessness.” This power imbalance is one exercised through sexual relations; “organized so that men may dominate, and women must submit” (MacKinnon, 1987). Consequently, the feminist/postmodernist type sees sexual abuse as a manifestation or “outgrowth” of the hyper-masculinisation of males implicit within a hegemonic patriarchy.
From an early age, men in the iddle east are sculpted towards a bold and assertive phenotype. In Egypt, boys may be disciplined with the terms “estargel” (man up) or “matenshaf shwaya” (toughen up). Women contrarily, are steered towards being submissive and agreeable towards their fathers and husbands. Any deviation from this stereotyped gender binary is seen as a subversion of the dominance and control of the male. Under such pre-requisites, sexual abuse is therefore a manifestation of the controlling, hegemonic male archetype. Jess Hill proposes that “men don’t abuse women because society tells them it’s OK. Men abuse women because society tells them they are entitled to be in control.”
The presupposition of male control vis-à-vis women was seen in Lebanon in May. Professor Nuwar Mawlawi, the wife of the Lebanese care-taker Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, suggested that Lebanese nationals should undertake low-skilled jobs vacated by migrant workers. She was subsequently antagonised with a wave of online backlash; the hashtag read, “Hassan Diab deb martak” (Hassan Diab sort out your wife). Diab’s authority not only as a Prime Minister but as a man came under question for failing to “control” his wife. Mawlawi’s words seemingly became lost in translation as her non-conformance became a vehicle to undermine the masculinity of her husband. Thus, society propagates a dichotomy of order and chaos, which in the words of Jordan Peterson, represent the division of male and female sexes respectively. Masculinity, the embodiment of ordered rationality and femininity of chaotic neuroticism, with a desirable encounter between the two requiring the former to control the latter. In representing genders as immutable, naturalistic, yin and yang-type entities Peterson and others obscure the self-reinforcing nature of gender (more on him later).
From a pathological standpoint, hyper-masculinisation propagates a form of behaviour known as “coercive control”. Concerning sexual abuse, this manifests as isolation, micromanagement, degradation and humiliation of the abused by the abuser. This was blindingly apparent in the case of ABZ. After becoming acquainted with his victims, ABZ threatened victims with exposure in order to coerce them into performing further illicit acts and remain within his sphere of influence. In questioning one’s convictions and autonomy, the abused becomes trapped in a quasi-Deleuzian empirical/virtual reality. To remain conformant to the domineering virtual hierarchy? Or, to empirically recognise the coercive reality of sexual abuse and contest their oppressors and oppressive patriarchal structures. If we consider that feminist thought considers gender stereotypes to be expressed sexually; to rebel against sexual practices is to rebel against one’s gender archetype. Maybe this is what Judith Butler means when she claims we should cause “gender trouble”.
The act of rebelling; speaking out, reporting and prosecuting against sexual abusers has been heavily obstructed in Middle Eastern society and discourse. Sexual harassment was only outlawed in Egypt as late as 2014. This represents a shocking lag in public policy governing the protection of women. Such deficiencies in progressive policy are indicative of a culture of rape. In keeping with the archetype of female “purity” and “innocence”, Middle Eastern women are blamed for their victimisation and penalised accordingly. A notable regional proverb notes that a “woman’s reputation is like a glass; once broken, it cannot be repaired.” The existence of victim-blaming culture was corroborated by an IMAGES study (UN women) amongst men in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine. The study observed, “31-64% of men reported that they carried out acts of street harassment” and “2/3 to ¾ of men blamed women for dressing “provocatively”.” Indeed, abusers like ABZ exploit this culture to repeatedly dominate the abused, who fear reprisals from the wider community . In this case, the alleged abuser repeated the model of exploiting rape culture over 100 times. Therefore, are we surprised that his exposure necessitated massive internet activism (spurred on by an era of massive internet activism)?
A pushback against orthodox post-modernism came in recent years in the form of whirlwind clinical psychologist, come-philosopher, Jordan Peterson. Peterson asserts that hierarchies are biologically determined and contiguous throughout nature. He famously paralleled gendered behaviours and neurochemistry in humans and lobsters to elucidate the biological determinism of hierarchies. Peterson refutes Foucault’s power theory and instead asserts that gender hierarchies in Western society are predicated on competence, thus fundamentally opposing the idea of a patriarchal tyranny. Although I am yet to encounter his views on sexual abuse, the idea that sexual abuse is an outgrowth of hegemonic male traits is untenable under his ideological framework.
Peterson cites, the Gender-equality-personality paradox (GEEP) as evidence for the absence of gendered oppression. The GEEP indicates that in more egalitarian societies, perceived behavioural disparities between the sexes amplify. Such conclusions would refute social constructionism. Stoet and Geary seemingly substantiated the GEEP theory in their 2018 study by cross-culturally comparing gender equality, defined by the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) and the success of women in Tertiary STEM[i] fields. The study recorded a positive correlation between the two, thus inferring that disparities in gender are not a product of socially constructed cultural reinforcement. However, this study is by no means bulletproof and comprises methodological limitations. Worryingly, the parameters used to generate the GGGI are not congruent with the presence of women in STEM fields. For example, Algeria has the 128th worst GGGI (2015) rating yet has the second highest global rate of women in STEM fields. Consequently, the study’s conclusions are spurious if women in STEM fields is being considered as an independent variable. A study by Richardson and colleagues (2020) simply altered the metrics of Stoet and Geary’s from GGGI to the Basic Index of Gender Inequality score (BIGI). The study found no statistically significant correlation between the variables considered and hence no overarching Gender-equality paradox (see graph below).
Figure 1. Graph representing BIGI against Tertiary STEM Degrees Award to Women (%) (Richardson et al., 2020)
I likewise reject such sweeping cross-cultural investigations as pretext for a lack of socially-induced hyper-masculinisation in males. A singular gender equality statistic for each country (or culture) homogenises countless number of variables. Thus, the potential for patriarchal reinforcement within one of the constituent data sets is masked. Moreover, mean values employed in such data sets will ignore data at the tail ends of the bell curve. Considering sexual abuse is most frequently and most severely perpetrated by a sub-stratum of hyper-masculinised, hegemonic males; a single metric on “gender equality” will misapprehend the ergodicity of hierarchies governing sexual abuse. As such, we should also consider data that accounts for the socialisation of men at the extremes, in order to better understand behavioural reinforcement with respect to sexual abuse.
Consequently, I contend that there is still potential for a degree of social constructionism, intersecting with elements of biologically determined character traits. As such, potential for dominance between social groups are implicit within hierarchies. Indeed, this is my understanding of Foucault’s power theory, with power being an entity that inheres and is pervasive. Peterson frequently misconstrues this to mean covert representations of power. He uses the example of plumbers; conjecturing that a lack of “roving bands” of tyrannical male plumbers constitutes a lack of power disparity between male and female plumbers. This is similar to insinuating that a lack of roving bands of KKK members constitutes a lack of white privilege. Likewise, as far as sexual abuse is concerned, this analogy lacks empiricism. Rape gangs, albeit comprising a very small percentage of the male population, still exist. A shocking example of this was witnessed in Cairo’s Fairmont hotel in 2014, where 8 men gang-raped a minor.
Peterson’s anti-power stance also demands that every individual maintains the ability and agency to reform their social status. A dominance hierarchy cannot exist if the oppressed can break through the glass ceiling imposed by the oppressor. As a clinical psychologist, Peterson is deeply cognizant of an individual’s ability to become upwardly mobile through careful, strategic psychological intervention. However, without questioning his professional integrity, I would contend that a lack of agency in Middle Eastern society is not reserved for the cognitively, physically or psychologically impaired (as he suggested in “12 rules for Life”). To test this theory, we must examine those at the bottom of the food-chain, with female refugees being a pertinent example. The literature indicates that Syrian female refugees in Lebanon are subject to elevated rates of early marriage, sexual harassment and sexual and gender-based violence. Jinan Usta notably concludes that elevated SGBV is directly correlated to shifts in gender roles in a post-migratory environment; predicated on increased female employment and decreased male employment. This in turn provokes the expression of hegemonic masculine traits seen in the form of SGBV. This hyper-aggressive reaction is typical of patriarchal environments in which inter-gender “power-play” is more pronounced. Syrian refugee women are also subjectto institutionalised sexual harassment by policemen and social services, undermining their ability to report and mitigate against SGBV. They are also denigrated by the political class as “baby making machines” and “cheap wives.” In essence, we see a multi-systemic, multi-domain gendered oppression of Syrian refugee women; starting with their intimate partners and percolating down from the political class. The multi-layered structured oppression of Syrian Refugee women is indicative of a dire prognosis for their mental health and social progression. If there was evidence that oppression can be gendered, Syrian refugee women in Lebanon maybe it.
In Peterson’s defence, his work focussed on Western hierarchies, therefore a critique of his work in this context may be unbecoming. Moreover, in numerous interviews, he recognises the potential for tyranny between genders but denies it’s a governing principle of gender hierarchies. Instead he argues that life is defined by suffering and therefore oppression is all but universal. This may pertain to the Middle East, where tyrannical autocracies induce hegemonic tendencies amongst the populace itself. Considering Egypt, ABZ would have witnessed two despotic dictators back-to-back. Nevertheless, we should question the extent to which this culture of oppression trickles down to a 22-year old member of the Egyptian elite. ABZ was able to bounce around international schools whilst abusing young girls without so much as a slap on the wrist. He was also able to afford a first-rate education in Europe during his university years. Therefore, it would not be overzealous to suggest that ABZ, rather than being subject to oppression, was a component of the oppressive, clientelist system itself.
I am not an ideologue; thus, I conclude that the issue of sexual abuse in the middle east is rooted in a number of variables. Power-theory fails to explain biological variation between the sexes and biological determinism fails to account for social reinforcement. It can also never be as simple as what Peterson describes as the “tragedy of life”, the idea that existence is suffering, and this engenders oppressive behaviour throughout the system. Sexual abuse in the middle east is not entirely the product of patriarchal tyranny but is a product of a system in which hyper-masculinisation leads to pathological outcomes. As a man, to deny this, is to deny the searing urge for vengeance when one’s “manhood” is undermined. Culpably, this is an emotion that I experience all too often. I end with a suggestion for men. Drop your toxic masculinities, you don’t know what you might be engendering.
[i] STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
Thank you to Celine, who taught me so much.