Eve Teasing Afghanistan

Eve Teasing, a problem identified at least as far back as 1960 in India, is a rather abhorrent tendency of young men to sexually harass women on the street. It can be anything from stalking, to hooting and whistling, to outright groping and molestation. While many men attribute it to those wily females and the way they all seem to dress too sexy for us to control ourselves, the reality is that, much like rape, it has very little to do with the relative attractiveness of the victim and the uncontrollable lust of the male perpetrator—it is about asserting power in a demeaning way. Just like all sexual harassment.

In India, the problem has come under increasing scrutiny, at least since Sarika Shah died during a 1998 eve teasing incident in Chennah, and now there is an entire blogging collective dedicated to cataloguing eve teasing incidents in the Sub-continent. Nevertheless, the problem has a vast reach, to both Pakistan and Bangladesh. And, quite obviously, to Afghanistan.

…The woman who was reprimanded by her male boss, professionally and morally, for showing one inch of flesh above her wrist. While otherwise fully covered up, in 40 degrees C.

The cases of sexual harassment battered away as unimportant, a misunderstanding, brought on because the woman was being friendly, thus asking for it. Like rape victims blamed for wearing too short skirts.

The woman who, out walking, complained to her male companion that a group of men were staring at her. And was told ‘well you shouldn’t be looking at them should you.’

…I could go on. And on. Stories of men who expect their wives and daughters to be paragons of virtue. Who stare unabashedly at un-burquad women. And, when asked, blame the woman for her immodesty.

This helps to bring the Taliban’s brutal enforcement of the burqa into sharper focus… as it does Massoud’s and Rabbani’s enforcement of purdah during the mujahideen government in the mid-90s. Harry Rud, the author of this depressing catalogue of the unfair burden women bare in Afghanistan (also the subject of Khaled Hosseini’s latest weep-fest), remarks, “The insecurity, the lack of freedom I can cope with. It’s the gender relations that make me think this is not a country I could ever feel at home in.”

This is, unfortunately, not new to Afghanistan, though it is fairly recent. Like many conservative societies, the rights of women have expanded at a rate far quicker than society’s ability to adapt; as a result, men and, given the depressing passivity with which too many women accept their treatment, women, have not developed effective coping mechanisms. In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, women could walk around unveiled in western clothes and remain fairly unmolested; today, while the worst depredations of the mujahideen and Taliban are gone from the big cities like Kabul (women’s fates and treatment in the countryside have remained relatively unchanged), the situation is far from perfect.

This is not unique to Afghanistan, it is a universal phenomenon. In the U.S. and Europe, a similar dynamic has played out in terms of minority rights; both societies have been trying to cope with racism and bias despite having officially non-racist societies. And as the bloggers at Jezebel catalogue relentlessly, there remains a serious problem with women’s issues in the West as well.

Indeed, it is important, when discussing the ways in which women can be victimized and turned into evil objects of unHoly lust, to remember that they enjoy a relatively privileged place in Afghanistan compared to a decade ago. It is just as equally important, however, to recall that there remains significant progress to be made still.

Further Reading: Sanjar writes on a similar topic, noting that self-immolation has become the favored suicide method for Afghan women. Which is difficult to comprehend, to be honest.