Building consent for counterterrorism: Lonely Planet and Rough Guide tips for women tourists to revolutionary Egypt

Abstract

This article examines how the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide to Egypt (2005-2015) depicted the sexual harassment of women tourists in a way that built consent for global counterterrorism practices. It examines guidebook tips for women travellers in the period surrounding the 2011 Egyptian revolution. These guidebooks represented poorer, more religious Muslim men as threatening to both Egyptian and Western women. Guidebooks suggested that, in response to harassment, women should alter their conduct to enhance their respectability and masculinised protections. This advice naturalised violent counterterrorism practices that protected ‘respectable’ women from poorer ‘bad’ Muslim men, positioning (white) masculinised subjects as saviours and reproducing the ‘savages-victims-saviours triad’. Guidebooks thereby functioned to obscure and legitimise Egypt's repressive crackdown on anti-government dissent and women's public activism.