Thoughts after reading Dowd

The faculty lounge here at AUC has a library, consisting (I suspect) mostly of cast-offs from professors' libraries. I find this library a bit more accessible than the University's library ... mostly because it's on the same side of the street as my office. Those of you who have been to Cairo, or have read the recent Times article, know what I'm talking about here.

Just this morning I finished reading Maureen Dowd's "Are Men Necessary?" (Her answer: maybe. And if yes, it's our own fault.) I won't pretend to agree with all her critiques - of the failure of feminism, of the resurrection of long dong machismo in politics and society, of the grand conspiracies to quash female intelligence and strength.

On the plus side, though, she made me think. And God knows there are few enough media personalities or outlets out there we can say that about. (Fox News or CNN, anyone?)

I'm caught in an interesting double-bind right now in my life that makes me want to look around and think about what it means, being a woman. I'm a woman in science - strike one - and a woman living in a Muslim country - strike two. I suppose I could swing at a third pitch and point out that I'm 28 years old and living alone for much of the year, but that's nobody's fault but mine.

Shall I take the second part first? I was very concerned, upon receiving this job offer, about the prospect of moving to a Muslim country. I talked to as many women at Princeton as I could who had lived, worked, or gone to school in Egypt (about 3), and they all agreed that things could be much worse.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

But now I'm here, and I get to use my much-vaunted powers of scientific observation. And from what I can see, things could be worse. From watching television and listening to the news, I could have expected to see illiterate, over-child-birthed, burka-swathed women being beaten in the street for the crime of leaving their homes. Keeping in mind that I work in downtown Cairo at an American university and live in a pretty affluent neighborhood, I can tell you that I don't see these things.

When I walk down the street in Cairo, the vast majority (maybe as much as 90%) of the people I see on the street are men. I rarely see women walking alone, although first thing in the morning downtown, I see business women hurrying along. Nearly every women I see is veiled to some degree. I imagine the ones who aren't are foreign, or Christian, or very upper-class.

I see three "categories" of veiling. Many women (especially young ones) wrap two scarves over their hair. The scarves are lovely, and while these girls are covered head to toes, with very little skin showing, their outfits leave little to the imagination. Is it still modest, even wearing three layers, to wear clothing that fits like another skin? I find this dichotomy puzzling. The typical "uniform" here seems to consist of a thin, long-sleeved undershirt (black, white, or nude), a tight, brightly colored tunic made of synthetic fabric (often with ruffles on the hips and butt), full-length jeans (frequently tight), two bright headscarves, and a face full of makeup.

I've been told that the donning of the headscarf in recent years has risen in popularity, due to a desire for young people to express their Muslim identity. I respect expressions of religious or cultural identity; I just don't understand how flaunting your goods in every other aspect bolsters that identity. Unless it's some new, "burka babe" identity. Entirely possible.

A second category of women, frequently older than the first set, wears a headscarf that resembles a nun's wimple to my eyes. The scarf is usually black, brown, white, or olive, and it's folded low on the forehead, above the eyebrows. The scarf reaches down to the woman's waist in front and in back, so her whole torso is covered by the cloth. These women are usually wearing long loose dresses, but I've seen this type of headscarf over more Western-style clothing on older women who look like professionals.

And finally, the picture I'm sure most Americans have of veiled women: what I think of as the "full veil." These women are in black from crown to heels, although the black can be accented with black embroidery or beads. (I saw a fully veiled Saudi women at a swank restaurant on the Nile when I first arrived. I've never seen someone look so glamorous - considering I couldn't really see any of her.) Their face veil is loose and folded on the top, which ends up looking a bit like bat-wings, especially when they walk. The face veil comes to the bottom of the neck, with small slits for the eyes. Their robes are full, black and voluminous, and these women also wear black gloves - in all weather. I confess to having had the appalling manners to watch one of these fully veiled women in a restaurant. I couldn't figure out how she was going to eat wearing the veil. I guessed that she wasn't going to eat at all, but she did - by passing each spoonful of food under the veil, leaning forward to try to keep the cloth out of her mouth.

So why, oh why, do these women decide to dress as they do? There could be some logical fallacies in the question itself, like my use of the word "decide." I read an appalling passage in Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns" describing the teenaged bride's first encounter with her burka, thrust into her hands after her wedding by her abusive husband. However, I think the democratic idealist lurking in me refuses to believe that all these women have been bullied into wearing the veil. And I did, after all, point out the veil's symbology in Muslim identity. Maybe the question is inappropriate because these women don't perceive an "issue" with the taking of the veil. Sweeping generalizations, how we do love thee.

I'm not a sociologist - or an anthropologist, a religious studies scholar, or a Muslim. I have very few answers, only more questions. But I am willing to play devil's advocate on one issue.

There are always men loitering on the street here, frequently in groups of three or more. And many, many of these men have appalling manners. Vocal sexual harassment on the street is so normal that I can usually block it out. Yesterday I went for a walk along the Nile by myself - it was a holiday, and the weather was lovely. Big mistake - all the teenagers were out loose, and I got so tired of being harassed by gangs of ill-mannered thugs, I finally just went home. And more than once I've covered my face to deflect comments on my looks, my body - to deflect my objectification. It doesn't work very well, but it does make me think again about why women choose to veil themselves.

Don't these boors realize that every woman they harass on the street is someone's wife, someone's mother, someone's sister? And when their mothers, sisters, and wives go out, they're being treated with precisely the same disrespect? How can these people reconcile their strongly-felt cultural sense of duty and familial female honor with this street-gutter, testosterone-driven, vulgar behavior?

There's a newspaper here that once a week has an English-language edition. I've stopped buying it, because I find the hypocrisy in their political position sickening. (Apparently a "fair and balanced media" isn't something people here even pretend to.) One of the editions I did pick up early on, though, had an "article" (opinion piece, more like) framing the Egyptian male as a victim of unemployment and a barrage of Western pornography. The Western pornography is piped in by the new prevalence of satellite television, and how are the honest working men of Egypt, poor oppressed darlings, supposed to fight it? And since their wives won't behave like the sluts they see on television, the poor suffering man is receiving even more mixed signals, leading to his vulgar behavior on the streets.

My heart bleeds. Rivers, oceans of sympathy.

You want to frame the high unemployment rate as an underlying source of social unhappiness? Fine. I'll buy that. But the sheer idiocy and misogyny of blaming pornography and "frigid" (i.e., normal, ordinary) wives for the socially-accepted disrespectful behavior of men? Never.

After September 11, I was so angered by the behavior of media outlets like CNN that I stopped watching the news. The only televised news show I've watched in the last 6 years has been "The Daily Show." Hell, I haven't even owned a television in the last 3 years. Here's my point: I thought the news media was hurting America, so I stopped watching.

You think pornography is hurting the cultural underpinnings of your society? Then stop watching pornography. Go pay attention to your wife and children instead. I don't support censorship, but I sure as hell believe in self-control and self-responsibility.

Wow. After this enormous rant, I don't have the energy to start talking about women in science. Maybe another time. But dear readers, do post your responses to my voluminous post here. Maybe Ms. Dowd can get all of us thinking - and talking - again.