We Will Harass Men

Overview

We Will Harass Men (#هنتحرش_بالرجالة in Arabic) is a Twitter hashtag addressing the issue of sexual harassment with tongue-in-cheek tweets discussing the objectification and harassment of men.

Background

On June 9th, 2014, an inauguration celebration for the newly-elected Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was held at Tahrir Square in Cairo. During the massive rallies, a string of sexual assaults against women were reported, including a public stripping and assault of a 19-year-old student by a group of men, the footage of which was subsequently released on YouTube that same day. As a result, seven Egyptian men were arrested in connection to the assault.

Egypt has seen a drastic increase in sexual harassment and assaults since the 2011 uprising, with at least 250 cases of serial mob attacks on women reported during political protests. According to a study commissioned by the United Nations in 2013, 99.3% of women in Egypt said they had been subjected to physical abuse, while 97% said men have lewdly touched them wthout permission. In addressing the growing public demand for reforms, the outgoing Egyptian president Adly Mansour approved a decree to criminalize sexual harassment as an offense punishable by up to five years of imprisonment.

Notable Developments

On June 15th, Arabic-speaking Twitter users led by a student who identifies herself as an Egyptology student began posting satirical tweets about sexually harassing men with the hashtag #هنتحرش_بالرجالة (“we will harass men” in English) in protest of the behavior depicted in the video. On the following day, Twitter user @TheBigPharaoh noted that “#هنتحرش_بالرجالة” had become Egypt’s top trending topic.

According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[1] the hashtag was tweeted over 63,000 times within the first week. In the comings days, both BBC News^[2] and The Telegraph^[3] published articles about the Twitter trend.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References