On a hot dusty day in Cairo, General Abdel Fatteh Al-Sisi kicked
out President Morsi and his band of incompetent Islamic Brothers. The euphoria of
Egyptians was difficult to witness: military coups always end in tears. The sun
shone out of the new Pharoah’s arse. There was nothing he could do wrong. “Liar, liar pants on fire,” I said when he promised
he would never run for president. Months later Al-Sisi had swopped his khaki
for a suit and was ruling Egypt from an overstuffed gilt and red
throne. After a promising revolution, five governments, two parliamentary elections and two presidential races, each filled with much promise, the Egyptians were too tired to see the signs.
While they happily honeymooned
with their new leader, I met X, tall,
handsome, charming and with a smile to
die for. Intelligent and gentle he
pursued me politely and earnestly. I was
flattered but resisted, I was happy to
be on my own and besides, he was far too young. He was an Sudanese activist, who had fled to Egypt with his
family to escape the Islamist dictatorship of President Omar Hassan Ahmad
al-Bashir. He told me that as a student he had been
imprisoned for speaking out against Al -Bashir and his harsh regime. As a result of imprisonment and torture, his brother was wheelchair bound and totally disabled.
Eventually the entire family fled their home and settled in Cairo where they faced racism and hostility on a daily
basis.
Just as
Al-Sisi was quick to seize Egypt, X was quick to declare his love, even talked
about marriage. I preferred to take things slowly but speed can be seductive. I was like the Egyptian women who swooned over
their new President. How could I resist?
I fell in love. I felt safe with him. He was my hero. He had risked his life for
peace and democracy and I admired the way he took care of his brother and family. Friends and a fiancé had been murdered, his family
persecuted. He was kind, funny, sexy. I was
hooked.
We settled happily into our relationship while the the new government settled into ruling
Egypt, acquiring mass surveillance equipment capable of monitoring social
networks, individuals and organisations around the clock. Infiltration of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter had been stepped up
as the regime tightened its grip
on the population in the name of ‘security,'
operating without public scrutiny and accountability.
At around the same time, X’s
Tablet was stolen and I gave him the password to my computer so he
could check his emails etc. I trusted him implicitly, but was unaware that he was rifling through my entire hard disk,
accessing photographs, personal
messages, documents and social media, and sometimes making copies of them, to be thrown into my face later. I
only discovered this when, in bouts of
jealousy, he referred to old private FB messages
between me and an ex. Unexplained porn
sites suddenly appeared on my computer's history.
He constantly checked my phone and iPod Touch
which were never locked. I had nothing to hide, but that was not the point. He
was never as generous with his
passwords. He kept his phone on him at
all times, even taking it to the toilet and sleeping with it under his
pillow. I managed to check his phone twice. “Only twice!”
a female friend said incredulously when I told her. But I didn’t feel good about it. Much later, he created a bogus Twitter account and as someone else tried to lure me with suggestive comments into
messaging him. Creepy. On Facebook, Al Sisi’s minions
also fired friend requests from bogus people to spy on content. They were easily spotted, very
irritating and sinister.
It took me some time to realise the full
extent of X’s surveillance. When confronted, he clearly believed he was
entitled to invade my privacy and that it was for my own good. The regime was
no respecter of privacy either. It justified its citizen surveillance as a
security precaution and rounded up hundreds of so called ‘terrorists’ ie activists, who had once been heroes of the
February 2011 revolution, and Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood 'for the good of the country'.
When I first met X, he had just opened a café for Sudanese refugees.
There was nothing else for them in the bleak, isolated area they had been
settled in. I admired his commitment to
his people, who in Egypt, were marginalised, suffered racism and regular
attacks.
One evening, X nipped out to buy sugar and coffee. A group of
masked men rushed into the café with
machetes and sticks and tried to behead people. They hacked at X’s assistant.
He was left for dead. Others were injured. When X returned, his café was
covered in blood. We spent the night in hospitals waiting for people to
live. From the information we gathered,
the attackers had been after X. It was political, The next day we fled our flat and stood on the
edge of the main road to Cairo with
our cat and belongings. We went into
hiding and for several weeks lived with X’s family. The strain and stress and the uncertainty affected our relationship. I lost weight and missed my family and friends. I felt alone and isolated. X became increasingly
insecure, and jealous, particularly of my male friends. I lost my temper
easily, and we found ourselves arguing a lot.
I slapped him in a rage over what was really nothing. It was unforgiveable. Upset and shamed I felt I was losing myself. The Egypt I loved was becoming a very dark
place. I should have packed my bags and left but I wanted to support X through
this difficult time.
As the insidious creep of
fascism continued, X’s behaviour became increasingly unpredictable. One minute he
was the X I had met: loving, considerate, supportive and sweet, and the next he was mean, jealous, critical and punishing. I felt increasingly isolated and uneasy. People were being arrested or disappearing
from the streets, or their homes. Friends spoke of friends who had been taken from their beds
by security forces. Loved ones searching
for them were met with a governmental wall of silence.
.
As these searching relatives discovered, silence
is an effective form of abuse. All dictators practise it as a tool of control. It
is also called 'stonewalling' and is used to punish frustrate and dominate. X’s silent treatment would last for up to three days. His silence was sudden, cold and
inexplicable. He shut me out with hostile stares. When I asked what I
had done, he would answer, ‘You know.” I didn’t.
Stonewalling creates a bewildering array of emotions - shame,
anger, rage, infuriation, humiliation, desperation, helplessness. I felt I was
going crazy. Both X and the regime seemed to relish the humiliating efforts of
their victims to be heard. Never having encountered this behaviour before, I
explained it away as a symptom of X’s stress. He never took responsibility for his
stonewalling, and stymyied any
reasonable discussion by blaming me without explanation, just as Al- Sisi blamed the ‘terrorists’ in
his prisons.
I launched a campaign for X and his family to be resettled elsewhere
by the UNHCR. X had already started the process some time ago, but now it was
urgent. Other Sudanese activists were
being targeted, homes raided, and the café had been bulldozed by the military. I flooded the social media, got a journalist
friend to write articles, wrote to UN
HQ in Geneva and New York. Finally, someone at the UNHCR in Cairo contacted me
and arranged a visit to the family. Soon
after, they were told they would be resettled in Scandinavia.
Despite being an urgent case, it took eight
months before they finally left. During that time our relationship lurched
between heaven and hell. X’s sudden mood
swings, jealousy and coercive control became more frequent as did my emotional
outbursts. I began to feel the strain of trying to keep everything together,
financially and emotionally. I worried about our safety. I didn’t recognise myself any more. Friends in Egypt were being arrested and I couldn’t cope with the continual sexual
harassment of the Cairo streets as well
as a growing visible military presence. X grew increasingly controlling. He resented my male friends, and didn’t like me visiting Alexandria
where an ex lived. But he thought it was
OK to invite women to
join him in bars while I was away in the
UK. He said they were old friends. That was fine, but why had he
never mentioned them to me or introduced me to them before? Clearly it was one rule for the boys, and
another for the girls.
A few months after I met
X, Al-Sisi focused his charm on the Egyptian women. The man who oversaw the
virginity tests of arrested female protesters, made an awkward, surprise appearance at the
bedside of a sexually assaulted victim. In a country where women, not men, are blamed for sex crimes, his visit was a
turnaround. Despite his visit, and the introduction of gender equality in the 2014 Constitution,
perpetrators of sexual harassment continue to go free, and sexual violence carried out by security forces has surged. A report by human rights umbrella group, FIDH, details the use of
sexual violence against detainees and suspected political opponents. The regime’s
aim, the report says, is to
to eliminate public protest and legitimise the authorities as guardians
of the moral order.
Men like Al-Sisi and X deploy the same coercive control
tactics by intermitently offering enough charming
carrots to their victims to give the impression that things are changing for the
better. They never are. It’s a manipulative
ploy to get you thinking that the Mr Nice Guy you first met, is back in business. It doesnt last for long, but is enough to draw you back in. You want the guy you fell in love with to come back again, so he gives you tantalising false promises. Al-Sisi’s bedside
photo-shoot had the female population applauding. Later he would be sanctioning control tactics that undermine constitutional gender equality. For me, X was both devil and angel in one body The problem was, I never knew when the devil
would show up .
I finally left for the UK. X and his family flew out a week later to Scandinavia. They were
settled in a tiny remote town unprepared
for the isolation and a long hard winter. Later I flew
out to visit him. He was thinner than when I last saw him, and the strain of
a new country showed on his face. He was distracted and seemed lost. I had
been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and I was sure he was suffering
from the same. But we did our best to
enjoy ourselves exploring his new home.
I returned again a few months later, this time to the
capital for a week taking Christmas presents for him and his family. Needless
to say, there wasn’t one for me. It was cold dark and snowing. X seemed more
settled. We hit the bars and danced. It was like old times, even though he was
unsure of the future. Inevitably we argued, this time over his stubborn refusal
to answer questions that I felt were important. I walked out, but alone in a strange city, I returned. The familiar feelings of rejection and
insecurity trickled in.
One evening he left me to see a fellow African activist we
had met. Bored and fed up watching
Norwegian movies, I phoned him a couple
of times to see if I could join them - it
wasn’t much fun being alone when I had come all the way to spend time with him.
He clearly wasn’t keen. He said he was coming back soon. I stood on
the balcony watching the snow drift down. Two hours later he returned. We chatted and he suddenly turned to me
with a strange unsettling , expression.
In a voice I did not recognise he accused me of bringing a man in from the
street and sleeping with him. He had found a tiny piece of paper which he said was a condom wrapper. I thought
he was joking until his fist slammed into the side of my face. “Motherfucking bitch,” he said. I can't remember much of what
followed, except that I was shaking and shit my pants in terror. Desperate to escape, I
tried to get to my shoes, passport and
bag. He pushed me down onto the sofa. “I
control you,” he shouted in his new ugly voice, his face contorted with hate
and disgust. He wagged his finger under my
nose reminiscent of Al-Sisi when he was broadcast instructing Egyptians
to listen only to him. He was their master. X thought he was mine. He seized my computer and tried to plug it in
to check my social media. I took my chance and made a run for it. He
grabbed me and took my phone and keys. Terrified, I realised how easy it is for a man to kill a
woman. I tried to grab my phone back..
He twisted my arm. I began to shout and tried to kick him in the balls. He twisted my leg but handed the phone back to quieten me. I turned
around and saw an emergency number written
on a notice in the hall. I dialled while he looked on unbelievingly. A policeman
and police woman arrived. They escorted X out of the building. The policeman
returned and said, “I told him, in our country you don’t hit women no matter
what they do.”
The following morning I filed a police charge and flew home,
leaving behind the presents. I arrived home numb with
shock, a bruised swollen head and arms. I felt debased
and humiliated. For months after, I had
nightmares, insomnia, and couldn’t focus.
X kept calling and texting me and when we finally spoke he fluctuated
from being sorry, to insisting I had
exaggerated what had happened: he had slapped me not punched me. In what I now know to be the bog standard
response and the insane logic of abusers, he blamed the incident
on me. He still
believed I had had sex with a stranger in our bed while he was out. It dawned on me that I was listening to the delusional rantings of a disturbed mind. He refused to
acknowledge the horror of his violence and tried to convince me to drop the
police charge against him. I didn’t.
Two months later the brutally tortured body of a Cambridge
University student was found on the Cairo Alexander road. Giulio Regini was so badly
mutilated his mother could recognise him
only by his nose. He had been beaten and
tortured over nine days with electricity, stabbed and had suffered a severe brain haemorrhage.
Al-Sisi’s cops
announced that Regeni had been the victim of a traffic accident, but
when cornered claimed he had been kidnapped and murdered by “a criminal gang”, and
when that didn’t hang, said he had been killed in a lover’s argument. As
Italy’s anger exploded, the creepy excuses of the Egyptian government moved
from ‘conspiracy to people of evil and the shortcomings of journalists who
believe in social media. Like X , Al-Sisi and his cronies refused
to be accountable for their actions. Without conscience and blaming
others they can do it again, and they do. There are plenty
more like Giulio in Egyptian torture cells, and unless X changes and seeks help, there will be
more women like me.
It is ironic, but not surprising, that a political activist like
X who risked his life speaking out against brutality and oppression became an
oppressor himself. As a couple, we were a
small scale model of a much larger system that works in remarkably similar ways. The abusive mentality is the mentality of oppression
regardless of whether it’s a political leader
or the man, or woman, you love. Like
a terminal disease, the abuse only gets worse.
According to Lundy Bancroft, an American psychologist who
has spent 15 years counselling abusive men,
objectification is a critical reason why things get worse. In his book,
Why Does He Do That? Bancroft states,‘”As the abuser’s conscience develops to
one level of cruelty – or violence- he builds to the next. By depersonalising
his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of
gulit and empathy so that he can sleep with a clear conscience. He distances
himself so far from his victim’s
humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist.” Yep.
I didn’t wait for the next attack. Afraid that I would
eventually end up in a body bag, I skidaddled, finally freed from the constant check-up calls and accusations. I was still in love with the angel with the smile, but
unable to live any longer with the devil.
For those whose humanity is similarly denied by leaders like Messrs Al-Sisi and and Al-Bashir, they have no other choice than to revolt, or endure worsening abuse. Some, like
X and his family, pack their bags, and leave.
Did X’s abusive control stem from his traumatic experiences as an activist
in Sudan and then as a refugee? Is he mentally ill? Friends
who felt sorry for him said his behaviour needed nothing more than anger management, or medication and/or
psychotherapy. As Bancroft points out, they are missing the point: abusiveness
has very little to do with psychological problems or uncontrollable anger, but everything
to do with a system of attitudes to power and exploitation which are shaped by values and
beliefs. It's called patriarchy, and ISIS is an extreme of it.
We are all products of the
patriarchal system we live in. We are all victims of it, and while abuse
is the domain of men, it is not restricted to them - women abuse and so do partners in same sex couples in much smaller numbers. Male patriarchy, whether violently or delicately imposed, is still bent on subordinating us. The
idea of patriarchy as a male-dominated
power structure throughout organized society and in individual relationships is
not new. In The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and the
State, published in the 1800's, Frederich Engels cites
‘the historical defeat of the female sex’ by patriarchy. Life
at the end of the Neolithic Era included a phenomenon - the "Exchange
of Women" named by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. It represented forms of trade where women became a
commodity. Feminist historian,
Gerda Lerner states in her book,
Creation of Patriarchy, that the main strength of patriarchy is ideological
and "severed the connection between women and the Divine". The arrival of supreme male gods, such as Yahweh/Allah, the controlling and jealous god of the Abrahamic religions, killed off the goddess.
Sudan was already a troubled Islamist state when X was born. While still a boy, his country experienced famine and
civil war, and riots against a failed economy. He
watched as Al-Bashir instigated a swift and effective military coup in 1989 and in
1993 appointed himself president, establishing
Sudan as an Islamic totalitarian single
party state. X spent his youth in a country where human rights abuses were
the norm. The public flogging and
beating of women became part of Sudan’s
laws as well as amputations as punishment. Women have no legal rights to
ownership, including land and are forbidden from any type of banking. Slavery is
not illegal under Sharia law and is a
common practice in Northern Sudan used as a form of oppression against the non-Muslim and non-Arab population, with women and children as its main victims. HIs own religion, Islam, promoted the supremacy of the male and the submissive subordination of women. It is, according to one verse in the Quran, OK for men to beat their wives if they argue.
Most men who grow up in these cultures and traditions, do not abuse women consciously, but along with everyone else, they collude with the subordination and oppression of women. Those who arrive in
Western countries often undergo classes to ‘teach’ them how to respect women
and regard them as equals. The West has made progress in gender equality because women, and some men, have fought for each gain,
but within a continuing patriarchal
system. Coercive control and violence is now a criminal offence in most European countries, and X's stalking and hacking of my computer and phone would have been considered a criminal offence in the UK.
There are early red-alerts and we ignore them at our peril. Egypt and I ignored ours. We both thought it couldn't get worse. But it did. The good news is that it's not difficult to spot these abusers whether they are ruling your country, or in your bed. They never take responsibility for their actions, and will do nothing to change, even though they say they love you, or have the country's best interests at heart. They say sorry and offer to do whatever pleases you to win you back. It means nothing. They blame you, even if the evidence is irefutable - and are never wrong. Remember Sadaam Hussein, Iraq's bully boy, and his defiance in front of the gallows? They lack transparency, will steal your money, often on the pretext of borrowing it. Al-Sisi made a call for Egyptians to donate money to the country. They did, but the way things are looking, they won't get it back.
I want to thank X for
reminding me of my feminist heritage, which I had somehow pushed to one
side while I was with him. I too, was a political activist, campaigning for women's liberation. During that time, American feminist, Carol Hanisch, argued that the personal is political. It was used as a rallying slogan of the student
movement and second-wave feminism from the late 1960s and underscored the
connections between personal experience and larger social and political
structures. If he has the courage, X may hopefully one day make a shift, and see how futile and hypocritical it is to campaign
for freedom, equality and justice, when in his intimate life he uses the oppressive tactics of the man he
opposes, against the woman he claimed to love. Men like X and his President Al-Bashir do not respect women, nor do they consider them as equals.
By
rooting patriarchy in historical developments, rather than in nature, human
nature or biology, Gerda Lerna opened the
door for change. If patriarchy was created by culture from the Bronze Age
it can be overturned by a new culture. Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, feminist, and
social activist who argues that
visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics rooted in the love of male and
female being, refusing to privilege one over the other.
“The soul of feminist
politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men,
girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on
domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if
their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men
embrace feminist thinking and practice, which emphasizes the value of mutual
growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being
will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to
freedom, from lovelessness to loving."
Maybe one day, gender abuse will be ostracised by society in the same way paedophiles are in the UK. It will go a little way towards creating universal equality and respect. The women,
and men who walk away from their abusers are doing more than saving their
lives, sanity and wellbeing. They are
revolutionaries, quietly taking the first steps towards creating a new culture. If the personal is political, they are not only changing their own lives, but also challenges abusive men like Al-Sisi, Al Bashir and X and a system that institutionalizes
male hierarchy, condones entitlement and which robs men, boys, women and girls of their humanity.
Loving the bitch
word! I've been a motherfucking bitch, a mean bitch, a hot bitch, a cold bitch,
a cheeky bitch, a slut bitch, a lying bitch etc etc etc. Well, for all you name
calling bitches, there is nothing wrong with being a female dog, fox, wolf or
otter. Otter? For hundreds of years the b-word has insulted women considered
belligerent, unreasonable, malicious, control freaks, rudely intrusive or
aggressive. On the positive side, it suggests an oversexed woman (whatever that
means) comparable to a dog-on-heat. Those who find this threatening and can't
keep it up, are more likely to use it pejoratively. Since the fourteenth or
fifteenth centuries its slang meaning has always referred to the sexual
behaviour of women that confronted the sexual morals and oppression of the
time. The 1920's saw the birth of the new sassy bitch . By the 1930's, thanks
to Ernest Hemingway, bitches moved towards 'edginess', 'grit' and 'ferocity'
reflecting the new found freedoms of women. By the 1960's feminists were
reclaiming and re-meaning it. In 1968, The Bitch Manifesto by feminist lawyer,
Jo Freeman, stated... 
These days men can be lady dogs too, life's a bitch and the plumber calls my kitchen tap a
bitch,. I'm waiting for the Bitch chocolate. But the term bitch is still
considered offensive. According to linguist Deborah Tannen, "Bitch is the
most contemptible thing you can say about a woman. Save perhaps the four-letter
C word." Depends who's saying it. When my man-dog ex fired it at me, it was hurtful. But Beyonce and Rihanna (and me and my
sisters) can call us bad bitches, just as blacks can use the N-word.
Whites can't. Want the bitch lowdown? Just be your own strong, over-sexed,
over-there, under-sexed, under-the-table, over-the-hills, whip-crackin',
whatever-you-wannabe-bitch.
