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Egyptian Actor Dresses as a Woman to Experience Street Harassment
As an Egyptian, I can speak from experience when I say that street harassment is a typical and almost expected occurance in Cairo. We’ve all heard shouts of “Ya mozza” or “Momkan at3arif 3layki”; it’s normal, and we learn to deal with it from a young age.
Yet how would a man feel if he had to undergo the same degrading treatment? In a video posted by Alex Club, 24-year-old Egyptian actor Waleed Hammad took this theory to the test. Made up to look like a woman–and a rather attractive woman at that–he roamed the streets of Cairo with a subtle camera crew at his back.
Hammad walked both as an unveiled, and later, veiled woman, remarking that (translated from Arabic) “When I put on the veil in the experiment, harassment became more vicious and in your face, so it’s not a problem of covering up.”
“I doubt it’s ever really about sex, because sex is available to those who want it and want to find it,” explained Hammad, “It’s not a matter of ‘I’m not having sex thus I’ll take it out on women’. No, it’s about domination.”
Truth.
Yet how would a man feel if he had to undergo the same degrading treatment? In a video posted by Alex Club, 24-year-old Egyptian actor Waleed Hammad took this theory to the test. Made up to look like a woman–and a rather attractive woman at that–he roamed the streets of Cairo with a subtle camera crew at his back.
Hammad walked both as an unveiled, and later, veiled woman, remarking that (translated from Arabic) “When I put on the veil in the experiment, harassment became more vicious and in your face, so it’s not a problem of covering up.”
“I doubt it’s ever really about sex, because sex is available to those who want it and want to find it,” explained Hammad, “It’s not a matter of ‘I’m not having sex thus I’ll take it out on women’. No, it’s about domination.”
Truth.