Disciplining bystanders: (Anti)carcerality, ethics, and the docile subject in HarassMap’s “the harasser is a criminal” media campaign in Egypt

ABSTRACT

Theorizing situates bystander intervention approaches to combatting street sexual harassment as either an anti-carceral mode of social justice concerned with citizen responsibility and reshaping community norms or a carceral practice that shifts forms and sites of penal power. This article examines the intersection and effect of carceral and anti-carceral framing techniques in the 2015 “The Harasser is a Criminal” media campaign deployed by the Egyptian anti-sexual harassment initiative HarassMap to promote bystander intervention. Situated within a sphere of Egyptian gender activism that is transnational, secular, and feminist-oriented, and operating within a militarized, authoritarian political context, HarassMap’s campaign complicates how bystander intervention is instrumentalized as a technology of power to shape subjective and intersubjective responses to Egypt’s street sexual harassment problem. Carceral and anti-carceral currents flow together in their campaign not to promote a reliance on police or juridical structures for redress, but to cultivate new ethical dispositions as a means of mobilizing individuals to act. Through the figure of the bystander, HarassMap is engaged in a biopolitical project which seeks to create new neoliberal subjects who police themselves and assume responsibility for their own behavior in public space.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual harassment
• bystander intervention
• (anti)carceral politics
• docile subjects
• Egypt

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Noora Flinkman, Susana Galan, Mary Jane Parmentier, Vickie Langohr, and Fatima Sadiqi for feedback on early drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Governance feminism is a term coined by Halley, referring to the “installation of feminists and feminist ideas in actual legal-institutional power,” (Halley et al. 2006, 340). It refers to a complex history of feminist activists working with/in institutions locally and internationally to produce policies and practices—and criminalization—in support of women’s and gender equality, particularly against sexual violence.

2. It is important to note there is a split between secular and religious women’s activism in Egypt (and the MENA region). HarassMap is secularly oriented and does not use religious rhetoric in its messaging because they see the problem as linked to social apathy and heteronormative patriarchy, transcending Islam and Christianity. Muslim and Christian women’s groups in Egypt have not addressed the sexual harassment problem.

3. Based on interviews conducted with HarassMap cofounders.

4. HarassMap seeks to inspire a “critical mass” of bystanders who will intervene against sexual harassment, but have not defined what constitutes critical mass and how to recognize it if achieved.

5. Egyptians, including activists, frequently use hyawaan (animal) to describe harassers. In 2013, HarassMap participated in a joint campaign, salahha fi dimaghak (Get it Right), which circulated posters depicting harassers as wolves and dogs.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant #1357477 and Grant #1714864.

Notes on contributors

Angie Abdelmonem

Angie Abdelmonem is a US National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Faculty Associate in the Global Technology and Development Program at Arizona State University. E-mail: [email protected]