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Women: Beware of Egypt
By Michael J. Totten
...who knows what he's talking about, responding to this.
I recently gave a talk about the Arab Spring at a college in the Pacific Northwest and met a young female journalism student who said she was envious that I've been to Cairo. She considers herself something of an Egyptologist and can't wait to go there herself.

She was blissfully unaware of how badly women are treated in Egypt, including foreign women like herself. I've heard one extreme sexual harassment horror story after another from women I know who have visited Cairo. I don't personally know anyone who has been sexually assaulted in Egypt, but from my informal survey of female travelers there it appears the likelihood of a foreign woman experiencing extreme harassment approaches 100 percent.

I have no idea why this is such a huge problem in Egypt. It's not because Egypt is Arab or Muslim or Middle Eastern. Lebanon isn't like this. I understand Syria isn't either, though I'm less certain. My wife has been to Morocco, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Libya. She experienced minor sexual harassment in Tunisia and Libya, but it was the sort that was annoying rather than horrifying. She wants to revisit both countries despite it.

The stories I've heard from women in Egypt, however, involve harassment that is aggressive, physical, and sometimes terrifying. I will never take my wife to Egypt. Never. 
Perhaps I should have visited Mr. Wife when he was doing that factory start-up in Egypt back in 1987, when such things were not supposed to happen. But then the company would have seriously pressured him to take the assignment in Saudi Arabia, and I was not nearly tactful enough to survive that experience -- and I'm pretty sure being presented with a headless wife would have upset my sensitive mate, impacting his work efficiency.
Plus it would have sucked to be us, TW
Posted by: trailing wife 2012-06-12
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=346410