What Are We Supposed To Do?

It is fascinating, but hardly instructive to look back at historical cultures that represented amazing civilizations adept at art, politics, philosophy, science, military, agriculture and religious devotion when the world of human civilization was yet relatively young.  Egypt and Rome, for example, each represented in their time of antiquity and historical revelations, extraordinary civilizations.

France is another country whose lineage in a more modern sense bred more recent notions of civilization in their espousal of Liberty, Fraternity, Equality.

And the Greece of Sparta and Athens, the great philosophers Plato and Aristotle, Socrates and other guiding lights of rational civilized humankind - along with that of ancient Persia, exemplars of wisdom, architecture, artistic endeavour, astronomical and medical science, do not now seem to resemble in their current presentation, a close reincarnation of their ancient heritage.

Protesting mobs in Greece, setting fire to state institutions in rebellion against financial austerity bear little resemblance to the home of the Olympics and parliamentary democracy.  Italy has disgraced itself in repeatedly electing an elderly Lothario with no shame at demonstrating the bankruptcy of either his business acumen or his personal erotic predilections; Silvio Berlosconi's unabashed demeanor reflects that of the average Italian male.

France is little better, with its shameful social male predation seen as a normal consequence of male-female relations.  Even in parliament, elected female politicians are subject to demeaning catcalls. The sensational releases of first-hand accounts of sex orgies between high-ranking politicians, even those aspiring to the presidency of the Republic, and women of the demi-monde aspires to equal that of Italy.

Male MPs hooted and whistled at Cecile Duflot as she presented a routine report to parliament last week.

Image: AP/National Assembly of France

In Iran, women, as in most Islamist countries, must conform to male cultural expectations; not a scintilla of flesh or wisps of hair must be seen in public.  As in Saudi Arabia and other Arab/Muslim countries practising strict Sharia, women must walk about as entirely shrouded wraiths, existing in a netherworld of male control and domination.  When rape occurs, it is held to be the woman's fault.

In Egypt, which was once ruled by a dynasty headed by a woman the equal of any male in the power ceded to her, women, as occurs also in the ancient civilization of India reborn, are publicly groped.  Woman are accused of deserving molestation by their provocative mode of dress, luring men to respond in brutal and entirely explicably entitled physical excess.

Even when a group of young Egyptian men attempted during this year's Eid al-Adha, to make a concerted effort to rouse public awareness over the injustice and dangers women are exposed to, they were vastly outnumbered by boys and men who made a mockery of their mission.  The name of that game is blaming women for earning harassment by their mode of dress.

Earlier, when women themselves marched in Tahrir Square to demand cessation of harassment, they were assaulted by crowds of men who overwhelmed the men protecting the women to enable the attackers to molest the women.

"Harassment happens, why?" declaimed a 17-year-old Cairene.  "There are girls that do this to themselves, they wear jewelry and makeup.  What are we supposed to do?"

In Cairo, the authorities have nothing of valuable substance to add.  Police look upon these scenes of confrontation with complete disinterest.