Sexual assault as a public health problem and other developments in psychotraumatology

Sexual harassment of women and girls in public places is prevalent and well-documented in Egypt. In a 2008 study of about 1,010 women and 1,010 men in Greater Cairo, 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women respondents reported they had been sexually harassed (Hassan, Abul Komsan, and Shoukry 2008, 16). A 2013 UN Women study revealed that 99 percent of 2,332 women sampled from seven governorates across rural and urban contexts, including Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailia, Gharbia, Dakahleya, Assiut, and Qena, had been sexually harassed (El-Deeb 2013, 6). Additionally, a 2014 study by HarassMap reported that 95 percent of three hundred women surveyed in Greater Cairo experienced sexual harassment (Fahmy et al. 2014, 6).Collective sexual assault and rape by largely unidentified men were prevalent responses to protests in Tahrir Square between 2011 and 2014 (El-Nadeem et al. 2013; Langohr 2013, 19; Nazra 2014). Such violence added to the existing widespread problem of everyday sexual harassment of women and girls by men and boys in public places, as well as sexual violence against women activists by actors affiliated with state security and police forces (Amar 2011, 309; Hafez 2014, 178; Tadros 2013, 8). In a context characterized by lax security due to the withdrawal of the police from the streets after the 2011 revolution (Ahmad Zaki and Abd Alhamid 2014; Tadros 2013, 7), novel forms of street-level action-oriented initiatives emerged and intensified. These initiatives focused on bystander intervention and self-defense and aimed at changing individual behaviors and attitudes, particularly as sexual assaults against activist and nonactivist women and girls became a regular feature of life. Initiatives against sexual harassment and assault such as HarassMap, OpAntiSH, Tahrir Bodyguard, WenDo Egypt, Shoft Taharrush, Dedd el-Taharrush, and Harakat Bassma relied on large numbers of volunteers and used social media for mobilization (Ahmad Zaki and Abd Alhamid 2014; Langohr 2013, 19; Langohr 2015, 131). Such action-oriented initiatives were facilitated by growing mainstream and social media attention to sexual harassment and violence and the ease of mobilizing creatively on- and offline to expose and shame harassers, name experiences of violence, and discuss them (Langohr 2015, 132).Between 2005 and 2010, in contrast, anti–sexual harassment interventions in Egypt by women’s and feminist nongovernmental organizations had focused largely on raising awareness and improving laws and policies, although there were early efforts at bottom-up approaches that used art, music, and theatrical events; workshops and trainings held at El Sawy Culture Wheel, the Goethe Institute, and the campus of the American University in Cairo (AUC); and interactive information sessions that included the collection of survey data to understand people’s experiences at AUC (Rizzo, Price, and Meyer 2012, 471–72; Pratt 2005, 141). The new initiatives against sexual harassment and assault represent for Hind Ahmad Zaki and Dalia Abd Alhamid (2014) the rise of “an independent social movement” that includes hundreds if not thousands of volunteers. Dalia Abd Alhamid, who works with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, emphasizes the “tremendous change” that occurred after the revolution as anti–sexual harassment activism moved away from small-scale “workshops, reports, documentation” that reached few people.1In addition to analyzing reports and secondary source material, this article uses fieldwork research we conducted in Cairo to explore the strategies and work of two prominent anti–sexual harassment initiatives, HarassMap, established in October 2010, and WenDo Egypt, established in May 2013.2 HarassMap activists mobilize bystanders to intervene if they witness sexual harassment, and WenDo Egypt trainers offer self-defense courses that encourage women to verbally and physically respond to harassment and assault against themselves and other women. We conducted participant observation and interviews with four activists in HarassMap and four trainers in Wendo Egypt. Participant observation included Abdelmonem working in the HarassMap office and attending unit meetings, trainings, and street outreach between 2013 and 2014. Galán participated in three self-defense workshops organized by WenDo Egypt in 2014 and 2015. We also interviewed six representatives of organizations and initiatives working against sexual harassment and assault, one each from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Nazra for Feminist Studies, El-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, Harakat Bassma, Dedd el-Taharrush, and Tahrir Bodyguard. All interviews were conducted in English.HarassMap was launched in October 2010 by going live with an online crowdmapping system, Ushahidi, a GIS-based technology that asks users to anonymously describe their sexual harassment experience and pinpoint the location of the incident on a Google map (Peuchaud 2014, i115, i118; Skalli 2014, 250).3 The HarassMap cofounders include Rebecca Chiao, a US citizen employed as international relations director between 2004 and 2008 at the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR); Engy Ghozlan, an Egyptian citizen who managed the ECWR anti–sexual harassment program in 2007 and 2008; Sawsan Gad, an independent Egyptian researcher who affiliated with ECWR in 2009; and Amel Fahmy, an Egyptian employee of the UN Population Fund from 2008 to 2011.In late 2008 Chiao and Ghozlan separately left ECWR because, as they report, they each sought other work opportunities and increasingly disagreed with the organization’s political advocacy approach in response to sexual harassment. In 2005 ECWR initiated the “Making Our Streets Safe for Everyone” project to combat sexual harassment. Initially, the initiative centered on bottom-up strategies that engaged local people to raise awareness of sexual harassment as a problem. It was not externally funded and was run by Chiao and unpaid interns and volunteers until 2007, at which point it received a grant from the UN Population Fund (Rizzo, Price, and Myer 2012, 470). With funding, Chiao contends that ECWR moved toward top-down projects, such as conducting research and promoting draft legal amendments to criminalize sexual harassment in Egypt (ECWR 2009; FIDH et al. 2014, 74).4 Within Egypt’s militarized and neoliberal environment, ECWR and other NGOs sought to combat sexual harassment without breaching a variety of legal restrictions on their activities, including the 1958 Emergency Law and Law 84 of 2002, regulating NGOs (Rizzo, Price, and Meyer 2012, 464).HarassMap founders bypassed registration with the Ministry of Social Affairs, a practice that became widespread among anti–sexual harassment initiatives after the revolution.5 Initially, Chiao and Ghozlan worked part-time at other jobs while using their private cars and personal funds for the initiative and meeting with volunteers in cafés.6 They held the first outreach meeting with volunteers in December 2010, although the revolution accelerated their work as people began to speak more freely about sexual violence and the “barrier between people and the street” was removed.7 Amal ElMohandes of Nazra similarly reports that between 2011 and 2013 “public space was very open” and “very promising.”8 She continues: “everyone felt that they own the streets.” Between 2012 and 2013 HarassMap incubated with the capacity-building NGO Nahdat el-Mahrousa, which oversaw the use of funds from the Canadian-based International Development Research Center. HarassMap used these funds to hire staff to coordinate volunteers and pay for the use of a coworking space in Heliopolis. In 2015, given the government’s renewed enforcement of Law 84, HarassMap sought formal NGO status, which was approved in early spring 2016.HarassMap’s mission is to end the “social acceptability” of public sexual harassment and encourage people to stand up against it. Thus the primary focus of their work is to build community outreach teams comprising local people who speak to their neighbors and community kin to promote zero tolerance for sexual harassment and more recently to recruit schools, universities, small businesses, and corporations to become “role models” and devise internal measures—HarassMap calls these “escalation policies”—to manage sexual harassment claims. Initially, HarassMap activists hoped to use their Ushahidi-powered crowdmap to conduct community outreach in “hotspots” of sexual harassment. This idea was discarded soon after the first volunteer training in December 2010, when the cofounders decided that it made more sense to focus instead on the neighborhoods of their growing volunteer pool to more effectively impact the neighbors, friends, and family of participants.9HarassMap comprises several units. At the time this research was conducted, the Community Outreach unit worked with more than fourteen hundred volunteers in twenty-three governorates to coordinate monthly street campaigns. Within each governorate, HarassMap trains volunteers to become “community captains” who are responsible for building, training, and overseeing their own volunteer team to conduct a minimum of one or two outreach days per month to engage people and instill within them a sense of responsibility for solving the problem of sexual harassment and changing cultural sensibilities.10 The Safe Areas unit works with small businesses such as cafés, kiosks, and even taxis. The Safe Corporates unit works with companies such as Uber. The Safe Schools and Universities unit develops campus outreach teams. Additionally, the Marketing and Communications unit streamlines messaging, mediates media presence, and devises campaigns, while the Research unit manages the crowdmap, though this unit is currently being reformulated.Social movement theorists have long noted that social and political change depends on the mobilization of bystander publics, who have been described as “distal spectators” even if they are sympathetic (Snow, Zurcher, and Peters 1981, 31). Social movement actors often seek to sway bystanders to their cause and turn them into movement adherents to build a critical mass that will precipitate change (Benford and Snow 2000, 624). HarassMap seeks to end the bystander effect in relation to sexual harassment by convincing bystanders (al-nas illi waqifa), or those who “play stupid” (iʿmal ʿabit), to view it as a crime that is everyone’s responsibility to counteract. “Play stupid” appeared as a caption in a cartoon circulated on HarassMap’s (2013) Facebook page, showing a faceless woman on a crowded metro car being harassed while others ignored the situation. Bystanders, HarassMap activists argue, contribute to the social acceptability of sexual harassment.In a TedX (2012) talk, Chiao noted that bystanders use myths to excuse sexual harassment, for example by arguing that it happens only to foreign or unveiled women or that harassers are sexually frustrated because of delayed marriage. Referencing a 2007 political campaign poster of a lollipop covered with flies that encouraged women to veil to avoid sexual harassment, Chiao challenged this message, saying: “We believe that the only way that this problem will stop is if all the harassers stop harassing. And the only way they’ll stop is if we stop accepting these reasons. Stop ignoring, stop making excuses for them, and stop tolerating their behavior.” Like other activists, Chiao believes that men bystanders and harassers “actually interpret silence as welcoming.”11HarassMap’s Ebaʾa el-Tamimi argues that bystanders often consider harassers to be “cool” and believe that women want to be sexually harassed.12 To challenge common responses to sexual harassment, HarassMap launched a series of campaigns between 2012 and 2015, including “Byitḥarrash leh?” (“Why Does He Harass?”), “Mesh sakta” (“I Am Not Silent”), “Ṣaliḥha fi dimaghak” (“Get It Right”), “ʿAyyizin siyasa guwwa al-gamaʿa” (“We Want a Policy in the University”), “Di mesh muʿ aksa, da taḥarrush” (“It’s Not Flirtation, It’s Harassment”), and “Al-mutaḥarrish mugrim” (“The Harasser Is a Criminal”). El-Tamimi emphasizes that these campaigns either focus on or direct their message to bystanders:I’m not telling the harasser to stop harassing. I’m not telling him to “stop this long-term behavior that you’ve been doing all your life.” . . . I’m not even talking to him. I’m talking to people in the street who are generally passive and generally sit around and look at something happening, sometimes they even disagree with it. . . . The idea is to activate these people. You can do it on moral grounds, so you can go and do what the community mobilization guys do and talk to people and make eye contact and tell them this happens on your very street under your own nose and you don’t do anything about it.13In their fall 2013 biannual training workshop, called HarassMap Academy, activists conducted a performance activity in which they asked volunteers to compare how bystanders beat thieves and turn them into the police when a woman’s purse is stolen, whereas they are usually silent when a woman’s body or personal space is violated on the street. HarassMap seeks to “transfer the salience” of standing up to theft to standing up to sexual harassment (Von Atteveldt, Ruigrok, and Kliennijenhuis 2006, 2). As HarassMap’s former director of Community Outreach Hussein El-Shafei (2013) explained to volunteers in a training workshop held in Fayoum in October 2013, the initiative’s work depends on street awareness campaigns that gain people’s trust, transform their perceptions of sexual harassment, and obtain their agreement to speak up as witnesses in order to reshape the “social mentality” (al-ʿaqliyya al-igtimaʿiyya).The focus on bystanders and individual responsibility to stop harassment in a community avoids demonizing or alienating young lower-class men who are usually identified as harassers in popular discourse (Amar 2011, 317). This approach to combating gender-based violence has been criticized for shifting blame to bystanders, encouraging vigilantism, and endangering those who intervene (Elk and Devereaux 2014). These criticisms, however, do not address bystander approaches focused on producing social pressure that changes harassing behavior and creates new community norms, which is HarassMap’s goal.WenDo Egypt was established in May 2013 by Schirin Salem, a former gender project manager at the German Agency for International Cooperation. Being “half-Egyptian, half-German,” as she describes herself, influenced Salem’s decision to bring to Cairo WenDo, a women’s self-defense method created in Canada in the 1970s.14 “I have been coming to Egypt since my early childhood and always saw harassment,” notes Salem.15 She was surprised that her cousins and friends “never reacted” when harassed. Salem learned of WenDo when she attended a self-defense course as a thirteen-year-old in Germany. She recalls this experience as greatly increasing her self-confidence. Many years later she still remembered many self-defense techniques she learned. After she moved back to Egypt in the aftermath of the January 25 Revolution, she became certified as a WenDo trainer and decided to adapt this “Western concept” to the safety concerns of Egyptian women and girls.16 Salem trained weekly with a group of Egyptian women, practicing the exercises and modifying them to their needs and demands.WenDo self-defense training is addressed to women and girls of all ages, shapes, sizes, and abilities. It focuses on increasing women’s self-confidence and assertiveness in public places and on teaching women how to react against everyday sexual harassment through a wide range of strategies. The goal is to increase the number of women who walk confidently on the streets and react effectively and assertively to stop sexual harassment. Salem emphasizes that WenDo Egypt allows her to “see an effect right after” a training instead of waiting years for change.17WenDo Egypt basic training includes ten hours divided into two blocks. In the first, women learn how to enforce their boundaries through the look, voice, and body language. In the second block, they practice easy-to-perform kicks and punches that target vulnerable areas of a man’s anatomy. Since 2014 Salem has trained twenty-six new instructors from Cairo and Mansoura. WenDo trainers offer private self-defense courses to Egyptian and foreign women who can afford the lessons, which cost two hundred Egyptian pounds (about twenty-two US dollars), but they also train underprivileged women and girls on a voluntary basis in collaboration with children’s organizations, refugee service centers, and youth centers. Salem reported that by May 2015 around a thousand women and girls had been trained by WenDo Egypt, about seven hundred of them for free.18 Additionally, WenDo Egypt co-organized four igmadi (“be strong”) events, which combine self-defense, Zumba classes and awareness-raising sessions in cooperation with HarassMap, Nazra, and El-Nadeem. These events were attended by an average of 325 women and girls.19 Beginning in May 2015, WenDo courses are offered in youth centers across the country and new Training of Trainers courses have been planned in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Youth and Sports and the German Agency for International Cooperation, which provide funding to WenDo Egypt.Feminist scholarship on self-defense has demonstrated that norms of respectable femininity prescribe passive, helpless, compliant female bodies in need of male or state protection (De Welde 2003, 256; McCaughey 1997, 37). In public places, this gendered often into of rape and and 1981, of sexual harassment in Egypt that women respond to everyday and for of the into (Fahmy et al. 2014, Abul Komsan, and Shoukry 2008, they avoid public places, more and from or making eye contact with (Fahmy et al. 2014, trainer notes that women that if they look at they a . . . so they to by this of 1981, 2008, while women’s and awareness of WenDo Egypt in contrast, that women look up when on the street if back at the harasser into In the WenDo are up in and asked to at each other in a an that as to the exercises are to other and a look, voice, and convincing at the of a training, or raising their is to be so notes one of the after an that is or WenDo trainers the of using the to a message and for a space is to the WenDo their experiences of harassment without they will be for sexual They learn to a critical In addition to the look, voice, and body the of the WenDo training are to increase women’s self-confidence on the WenDo trainer emphasizes that women only need to use the voice, look, and self-confidence of the training to it is very to self-defense go from the training that . . . she can in the it such into practice in that of harassment while waiting for a on the or in the Trainers consider this one of the exercises because experiences and to them on their is voluntary and to others their they The harassed woman in a can the and for at The trainer often asks of the was and be in order to and With all manage to stop the who is by the This is very . . . that changes something them, because of them are very to of the and very and very of the end of the basic training, a with their using one of the learned the This more will than and as a of that the of which is in the that with and as a of their and Salem contends that WenDo to the of social that make sexual harassment by encouraging women to react against these sexual and other women who challenge sexual harassment on the 2008 Egyptian nongovernmental organizations the Sexual among other that sexual harassment be a The also called for the of and in the because the first the of rape to of a by a and the second to sexual assault as a of 2011, These which included article to and after the January 25 but have been ignored by the et al. 2014, a at El-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, emphasizes the of changing legal which do not consider by other than a to be as or men as of 2013, under the of the Ministry of the police a unit responsible for violence against women. 2014, after a sexual harassment incident at Cairo University to a public in of the to of the of so that and online sexual harassment be with of between six and years and of up to thousand Egyptian pounds of 2014). the is because it that an to gain a sexual which is to and depends on a In have because contact information is included in police reports, to the of the and often in As a the family of the will often the woman who the and her or so that their the state sexual harassment in response to “tremendous from notes that sexual harassment is the social of as by a series of by the Egyptian between 2014 and In October 2014 the Ministry of a new anti–sexual harassment women’s police the 2014). this unit has been criticized by anti–sexual harassment activists for being against sexual harassers and instead to and of their volunteers In early 2015 that all Egyptian anti–sexual harassment training workshops for who the training for the Ministry of Youth and Sports in 2015, was about the of such trainings given the of information on gender norms and the increasingly political such as Abd Alhamid similarly that the but not have the political will to sexual or make to women’s have legal and interventions do not transform gendered and and can even activate gender or when norms are not 2013, women will often use laws the laws women as who to They also men as men and women from to the 2013, The anti–sexual harassment initiatives that emerged after the revolution direct intervention on the streets as more than legal and political change strategies for gendered norms and although activists also encourage women to seek through and HarassMap activists Chiao and El-Shafei that people who do not the or political will seek to being when a WenDo Egypt’s Salem, the of the is a in the right but change” so that the and consider harassment as a this article we use the action-oriented to to against sexual violence after the on the of Dedd in 2012 to combat sexual harassment the “I had this that need to do something and do an that was the notes in relation to Harakat Bassma with that had . . . He had an idea and to it and had a stand to WenDo trainer and HarassMap Safe Areas reports that her was by a sexual harassment incident by a family The for an response what from Tahrir calls a approach that centers on people’s personal experiences in with the anti–sexual harassment initiatives were when the the on 2013, a and the Emergency Law between and In 2013 the Law and public of teams that had been in Tahrir Square between 2012 and 2013 their because of political in and security concerns in In 2014 the by anti–sexual harassment initiatives to as nongovernmental organizations under Law 84 of or of their the January 25 in Egypt, initiatives were organized or accelerated to combat public sexual violence through HarassMap and WenDo activists that people the changes they in and HarassMap activists that sexual harassment will only end when all people speak up and view it as WenDo trainers that self-defense is an of anti–sexual harassment activism that can bring change when all women react against sexual and each other in this initiatives promote gender and women’s in public places, working to new social with the goal of producing

EDITORS' NOTE: Howz serious and widespread a problem is sexual harassment in our universities? What means will effectively diminish its incidence without violating the rights of individuals? Each of thefollowing essays answers one of these two questions. In the first, Bernice Lott, Mary Ellen Reilly, and Dale Howard describe the results of a 1979 survey that examined a sample of the entire University of Rhode Island population. Its purpose was to determine how many of the respondents in the sample group had personal knowledge of or had experienced any form of sexual assault, intimidation, or insult; how they had responded to assault; and their beliefs about harassment in general. In the second essay, Judith Berman Brandenburg delineates a response to the problem worked out at Yale University: the establishment of a grievance procedure administered through a specially selected board. The process of this honest search for answers uncovers other questions: Do we have a definition of sexual harassment upon which most people will agree? Is power thefactor that transforms what may be cajolery into harassment? If so, power in what forms? Do these forms make the problem invulnerable to any solution? With these essays we open a dialogue on such questions. We invite your letters in response, in the hope that through the exchange we canfurther advance feminist efforts to analyze-and to overcome-this pernicious form of sexual injustice.

Responding to sexual violence in armed conflict

The purpose of this study was to examine factors predicting the development of posttraumatic stress symptoms after a traumatic event, the 1991 Oakland/Berkeley firestorm. The major predictive factors of interest were dissociative, anxiety, and loss of personal autonomy symptoms reported in the immediate aftermath of the fire; contact with the fire; and life stressors before and after the fire. Subjects were recruited from several sources so that they would vary in their extent of contact with the fire. Of 187 participants who completed self-report measures about their experiences in the aftermath of the firestorm, 154 completed a follow-up assessment. Of these 154 subjects, 97% completed the follow-up questionnaires 7-9 months after the fire. The questionnaires included measures of posttraumatic stress and life events since the fire. Dissociative and loss of personal autonomy symptoms experienced in the fire's immediate aftermath, as well as stressful life experiences occurring later, significantly predicted posttraumatic stress symptoms measured 7-9 months after the firestorm by a civilian version of the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the Impact of Event Scale. Dissociative symptoms more strongly predicted posttraumatic symptoms than did anxiety and loss of personal autonomy symptoms. Intrusive thinking differs from other kinds of posttraumatic symptoms in being related directly to the trauma and previous stressful life events. These findings suggest that dissociative symptoms experienced in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic experience and subsequent stressful experiences are indicative of risk for the later development of posttraumatic stress symptoms. Such measures may be useful as screening procedures for identifying those most likely to need clinical care to help them work through their reactions to the traumatic event and to subsequent stressful experiences.

The authors' objective was to explore aspects of trauma associated with severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Vietnam veterans. Several ratings of stress exposure and symptom severity were administered to 40 patients with combat-related PTSD. A significant relationship was observed between exposure to atrocities and the impact of PTSD on veterans' lives, as measured by the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Exposure to atrocities was also significantly correlated with current symptom severity. In contrast, combat exposure alone was not significantly associated with overall symptom severity. Both atrocity and combat exposure, however, were significantly related to reexperiencing symptoms. The data suggest that the enduring effect and severity of PTSD symptoms on an individual are associated more with exposure to brutal human death and suffering than the threat of death associated with combat.

The aim of this study was to confirm and extend the authors' previous work indicating that symptoms of traumatic grief are predictors of future physical and mental health outcomes. The study group consisted of 150 future widows and widowers interviewed at the time of their spouse's hospital admission and at 6-week and 6-, 13-, and 25- month follow-ups. Traumatic grief was measured with a modified version of the Grief Measurement Scale. Mental and physical health outcomes were assessed by self-report and interviewer evaluation. Survival analysis and linear and logistic regressions were used to determine the risk for adverse mental and physical health outcomes posed by traumatic grief. Survival and regression analyses indicated that the presence of traumatic grief symptoms approximately 6 months after the death of the spouse predicted such negative health outcomes as cancer, heart trouble, high blood pressure, suicidal ideation, and changes in eating habits at 13- or 25-month follow-up. The results suggest that it may not be the stress of bereavement, per se, that puts individuals at risk for long-term mental and physical health impairments and adverse health behaviors. Rather, it appears that psychiatric sequelae such as traumatic grief are of critical importance in determining which bereaved individuals will be at risk for long-term dysfunction.

The #MeToo Movement has brought new attention to sexual harassment and assault. While the movement originates with activist Tarana Burke, actor Alyssa Milano used the phrase on Twitter in October 2017 in response to multiple sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Within 24 hours, 53,000 people tweeted comments and/or shared personal experiences of sexual violence. The study objective was to measure how information seeking via Google searches for sexual harassment and assault changed following Milano's tweet and whether this change was sustained in spite of celebrity scandals. Weekly Google search inquiries in the United States were downloaded for the terms metoo, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and rape for January 1, 2017 to July 15, 2018. Seven related news events about perpetrator accusations were considered. Results showed that searches for metoo increased dramatically after the Weinstein accusation and stayed high during subsequent accusations. A small decrease in searches followed, but the number remained very high relative to baseline (the period before the Weinstein accusation). Searches for sexual assault and sexual harassment increased substantially immediately following the Weinstein accusation, stayed high during subsequent accusations, and saw a decline after the accusation of Matt Lauer (talk show host; last event considered). We estimated a 40% to 70% reduction in searches 6 months after the Lauer accusation, though the increase in searches relative to baseline remained statistically significant. For sexual abuse and rape, the number of searches returned close to baseline by 6 months. It appears that the #MeToo movement sparked greater information seeking that was sustained beyond the associated events. Given its recent ubiquitous use in the media and public life, hashtag activism such as #MeToo can be used to draw further attention to the next steps in addressing sexual assault and harassment, moving public web inquiries from information seeking to action.

In recent years a number of high profile cases of sexual harassment and assault have redirected international attention to the issues of sexism and sexual violence at universities. Many of these cases have addressed student to student sexual violence. One such high-profile case took place at Columbia University where in 2014-15 Emma Sulkowicz protested the university's mishandling of her sexual assault case by carrying her mattress around campus and to her graduation. (1) The weight of Sulkowicz's mattress represented the burden placed on survivors of sexual assault when universities fail to take these cases seriously and not only force survivors to navigate their studies while living in close proximity to those who have violated them, but also tacitly accept and condone these violations as part of the conditions of study. Other cases have drawn attention to the violence committed through faculty to student sexual harassment. For example, the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) made international news in 2014 when an independent report found the philosophy department to be characterised by 'unacceptable sexual harassment, inappropriate sexualized unprofessional behavior, and divisive uncivil behavior'. (2) The report went on to note that the effect of these behaviours was to alienate women from the workplace, with female faculty avoiding campus and making efforts to leave the department in disproportionate numbers. While many of these cases have been located within philosophy departments, and while disciplines may express and reproduce sexism in distinct ways, sexual harassment is not confined to particular disciplines. Similarly, while many of the cases that have received international coverage are located at US institutions, the problem of sexual violence at universities is in no way specific to the US. In the UK a 2014 survey conducted by the National Union of Students found that sexual harassment on UK campuses was 'rife', with 37 per cent of women and 12 per cent of men reporting that they had experienced unwanted sexual advances while at university. (3) And while two thirds of respondents said they had been witness to students tolerating unwelcome sexual comments, 60 per cent said they were unaware of university procedures to prohibit these behaviours. This may be why Phipps and Young have found that two-thirds of surveyed students describe sexual harassment and violence as a normal part of university life. (4) In this article we discuss the sexual harassment that occurs within academic institutions between academic staff and students. Our interest is in thinking about the ways that sexism and sexual harassment are enabled and perpetuated in the university environment. In particular, we are interested in interrogating the power that occurs in these relationships, and how the nature of this relation makes it difficult for students to name and refuse the harassment that occurs. What are the mechanisms, both social and institutional, that enable, circulate and conceal sexism, and what work do they do? How can we think about the mobility of sexism enabled by these mechanisms, and how does the movement of sexism make the work of those in universities committed to ending sexism even harder? In pursuing these questions, we draw upon materials predominately gathered from experiences in UK higher education, which has its own particular institutional structures. This includes, for example, the structure of PhD study, which pairs students often with a single supervisor and no mandatory course work. However, we also draw on narratives from US spaces, showing continuities in the experiences of power in these two contexts. EXPERIENCE AND GENERATING FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGIES Our engagement with sexual harassment within the academy has grown from our work with the UK-based blog project Strategic Misogyny. Strategic Misogyny was founded to collect and publish experiences of sexism and sexual harassment in the academy in order to make sexism and sexual harassment more visible. …

Since the horrific murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, sociologists have been concerned with better understanding and hopefully, reducing incidents of the bystander effect. This study builds upon past work by examining the bystander effect in cases of sexual harassment and victimization with a focus on middle school students. Given the #metoo movement, Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Judge Kavanaugh and the proposed changes to college campus policies on sexual assault proposed by Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, this study on sexual assault and the bystander effect is culturally relevant and timely. Past studies have found that prevention programs influence bystander participation. The research discovered that bystander participation varies depending on the diverse types of sexual assault and harassment. This research will examine the bystander effect in middle school adolescents dealing with sexual harassment, assault, or violence in schools. An analysis of adolescents’ belief on whether they can prevent sexual assault in their schools will be conducted. This research wishes to understand what characteristics contribute to students being active bystanders, someone who acts. The Experimental Evaluation of a Youth Dating Violence Prevention Program in NYC Middle Schools data set is utilized in this study. The sample size is 2,655 students from inner-city middle schools. All statistical analysis is conducted with SPSS. Chi-square, Gamma, and Cramer’s V are used to test statistical significance and strength of relationships. The results are interesting. Out of the seven hypotheses, three were found to be statistically significant. Gender, age, and in some cases attendance at a school prevention program had a significant effect on bystander intervention. In contrast, race and in other cases attendance at a school prevention program were not significant. The varying results towards student’s participation in prevention programs raises future questions on how prevention programs effect bystander effect.

Distressing and intrusive reexperiencing of the trauma is a hallmark symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). However, unwanted memories of trauma are not a sign of pathology per se. In the initial weeks after a traumatic experience, intrusive memories are common. For most trauma survivors, intrusions become less frequent and distressing over time. A central question for understanding and treating patients with PTSD is therefore what maintains distressing intrusive reexperiencing in these people. Three factors appear to be important: (1) memory processes responsible for the easy triggering of intrusive memories, (2) the individuals’ interpretations of their trauma memories, and (3) their cognitive and behavioral responses to trauma memories.

Daily news is dominated by reports of traumatic events across the world. Is trauma indeed rather the norm than the exception? What are the facts? How can we better understand, prevent and treat the consequences of trauma? This past year the European Journal of Psychotraumatology (EJPT) has again tried to address these questions. With the gold Open Access model articles in the journal are being made immediately available without any barriers to access. In Europe, promising developments with regard to Open Science emerged in 2018, for instance, cOAlition S with their ambitious Plan S boosting the transition to full Open Access. In this editorial these and other developments in the journal, such as Registered Reports as a way to reduce Questionable Research Practices (QRPs), journal metrics, and the ESTSS EJPT award finalists for best paper of 2018 are being presented.

The Complexity of Complex PTSD

Water sprays from an open fire hydrant in Brooklyn, New York, in the midst of a July 2010 heat wave that affected much of the eastern United States.In 2007 the New York City Department of Environmental Protection first teamed up with Alianza Dominicana, a Washington Heights community organization, to educate city residents about the appropriate use of fire hydrants and other ways

Sexual assault and harassment, perceived vulnerability, and association with alcohol use in a student population: a cross-sectional survey

In June 2020 a new wave of feminist activism emerged in the Egyptian public sphere.1 Building on almost two decades of mobilization and organization against sexual harassment and assault, the new organizers are upper-middle- and upper-class Egyptians in their early twenties who politicize social networks to push the problem of sexual violence and women's bodily integrity back into public discourse (Fayed 2021). Inspired by the global #MeToo movement, they built on its feminist discourse against sexual violence and its model of organization, relying heavily on social media as a tool for action to revitalize feminist activism in authoritarian Egypt (Khorshid 2021).Nadeen Ashraf, a student at the American University in Cairo, started it all when she founded the Instagram account @assaultpolice. Her intention was to provide a space for people to share anonymous testimonies about Ahmed Bassam Zaky, an elite college student who had left a trail of victims of sexual harassment and rape in every private school, college, and institution he attended (MadaMasr 2020). Instagram was her platform of choice because of its popularity among the young generation and the fact that this social network is less subject to state security than Facebook.2 Once @assaultpolice launched, other individuals joined Ashraf in flooding social media with anonymous testimonies that did not necessarily relate to Zaky but spoke of the pain, agony, and trauma that accompany the experiences of sexual harassment. The ABZ case, as it is known in the media, was followed by others. A whistleblower implicated seven members of Egypt's wealthiest families in a gang rape in what became known as the Fairmont case (Al-Ahram 2020). Shortly thereafter other newly created or established Instagram accounts joined the conversation about sexual violence, calling for protection against gender-based violence and for gender equality. Between June and July 2020 hundreds of testimonies of sexual violence unrelated to the ABZ case were anonymously shared on various Instagram accounts such as @assaultpolice, @catcallsofcairo, and @skhodirr (El-Mahdawy 2020a).This article analyzes this new wave of feminist activism by examining how its organizers capitalized on the political utility of social media and anonymous testimonies, and discusses how the movement developed within the wider feminist movement and vis-à-vis the Egyptian state. It draws on semiguided interviews conducted with seven feminist activists and actors in the new wave between September and November 2020. The interviews were conducted online by both authors of the article.The use of social media and anonymous testimonies is not new to the feminist movement in Egypt. In fact, this has been a key aspect of activism against sexual harassment and assault since the early 2010s. Initiatives like Harrasmap, Bassma, Dedd el-Taharrush, Shoft Taharrush, OpAntish, Tahrir Bodyguard, the Girls' Revolution, and the BuSSy Project productively engaged Facebook, Twitter, and blogs to share testimonies of sexual violence, out harassers, and call for action. Similarly, this new wave of feminist activism has relied on social networks to politicize instances of sexual violence beyond the ABZ case and to attract new actors to support its cause.3 The large number of testimonies published on @assaultpolice and other Instagram accounts speaks to the continued pervasiveness of sexual violence across geographical location, generation, and class.In June 2020 Shady Noor, a young feminist musician and filmmaker, saw an anonymous testimony against Zaky on Facebook. After sharing the post on his Instagram account, he received dozens of messages from women who also accused Zaky of sexual harassment/assault. Noor published their testimonies anonymously on his Instagram account and urged others to come forward.4 Sabah Khodeir, another prominent online content creator, began sharing Noor's stories and posts. Around the same time, Ashraf learned through a closed college-related Facebook group that Zaky had sexually harassed one of her classmates. Instagram was, according to Ashraf, "the first thing I thought of using when I was furious about [the silencing of] my classmate's testimony against Ahmed Bassam Zaky" (Ashraf interview). In the weeks that followed, Noor, Khodeir, Ashraf, and four other women and men worked together to solicit testimonies and coordinate their actions (Noor interview).In early July Ashraf created the anonymous account @assaultpolice, to which Noor directed his followers for further testimonies against Zaky (Noor interview). The account's publication of clickbaity posts and its intentional use of screenshots and voice recordings of testimonies—as opposed to their transcriptions—attracted widespread attention. According to Ashraf, this method felt more personal to viewers. While the anonymity of the survivors inspired empathy, people related to the testimonies because sexual harassment affects women despite their class or social status (Ashraf interview). Behind the Instagram stories and posts, the members of the core organizing group were engaged in constant conversation, deciding when and what to post, defining the tone and visual aesthetics, listening and speaking to survivors who reached out to them, and directing them to mental health support resources if necessary (Noor interview). Apprehensive about state surveillance or infiltration from those associated with Zaky, and highly protective of survivors' identities, they used secure messaging apps to communicate across borders and time zones.5 While Ashraf was in Cairo, others were operating from abroad, including Noor and Khodier from the United States. They contacted the Spanish university where Zaky studied, which promptly took action after confirming similar cases of sexual assault at the institution.6 The group not only focused on gathering testimonies to stir up public opinion but also collected data from individuals exposed to ABZ's violence. This later became the evidence used by the lawyers and public prosecutors building the case against Zaky. The Instagram account @assaultpolice built its credibility by posting only testimonies that could be reasonably verified; its moderators asked victims to supply screenshots of previous conversations with ABZ as evidence before posting their testimonies (Mohamed interview). Their unconditional support for survivors and demand for accountability secured a large following for the platform.Following this success, other young activists and influencers began to support the campaign. As the person responsible for @catcallsofcairo mentioned in an interview, this Instagram account dedicated to denouncing instances of sexual harassment in the city attracted more attention as a result.7 Facebook pages and groups such as Speak Up started to discuss the widespread problem of sexual violence.8 In parallel, a group of anonymous activists initiated an online blog named Modawanet Hekayat, which used anonymous testimonies to tell the stories of survivors of sexual violence and denounced prominent figures as perpetrators, including the journalist Hisham Allam, the filmmaker Islam Azazi, and the human rights advocate Wael Abbas.9 New Instagram accounts such as @gangrapistsofcairo, which exposed the details of the Fairmont case, emerged using the same tactics. In response to these cases, online influencers and celebrities like the TV host Radwa El Sherbiny expressed their support, shared posts, and even offered material help and legal support to survivors.10 In the summer of 2020 the Egyptian virtual sphere buzzed with debates about consent, victim blaming, the burden of proof in cases of sexual violence, and trauma.Despite a reliance on social media, organizers were conscious of the limitations of a medium that remains inaccessible to large swaths of Egyptians (Ashraf interview). They also knew that their publication of posts in English made them less relatable outside young, educated, and upper- and upper-middle-class circles (Mohamed interview). Their decision to publish posts in Arabic was thus meant to broaden the potential audiences and to compel mainstream media and popular talk shows to address the ABZ and Fairmont cases, turning them into public opinion debates (Waheed interview). Activists later realized, as Ashraf noted, that the media attention garnered by these incidents was motivated by the "scandalous" nature of the crimes and the fact that they occurred within the relatively protected liberal social circles of upper-class youth (Ashraf interview). While these revelations challenged the social misconception that upper-class girls are protected by the law and the widespread cultural sentiments that sexual violence is the result of poverty and sexual repression, the mainstream media also used these cases to offer a critique of the lifestyles of the wealthy (MadaMasr 2020).While in its early manifestation the movement focused mainly on and benefited from online campaigning, as testimonies continued to emerge the core organizing group became aware of the need to connect survivors with legal resources (Noor interview). According to Ashraf and Waheed, many girls and women who shared their testimonies wanted to participate in the growing movement and support other women who spoke up. Though they wanted to shame sexual predators to prevent similar acts of violence in the future, they did not seek legal redress. With the encouragement of activists, however, a few of them agreed to eventually pursue legal action (Ashraf interview).The initial online phase was thus followed by an offline stage where legal action occupied a central position. Having urged those who gave testimony to press charges, organizers shouldered the responsibility of connecting them with legal counsel (Ashraf interview). Alliances with human rights lawyers obtained pro bono legal services to survivors and provided advice and consultation to activists. The transition to legal activism was fraught with debate and uncertainty regarding personal risk to the complainants. Organizers also feared smear campaigns against themselves and/or survivors as well as attacks on their credibility through tactics such as releasing fake testimonies, questioning the reliability of those they had published, and spreading rumors about the survivors' morality.11 They also perceived themselves in a litigious race against Zaky before he initiated defamation lawsuits against survivors and/or activists themselves (Ashraf interview). On July 4, 2020, the public prosecutor issued an arrest warrant against Zaky (Noor interview). Prior to that, the veteran women's rights activist and lawyer Azza Soliman agreed to represent those who came forward against him.As Zaky's prosecution moved forward, the survivor of the Fairmont case approached @assaultpolice to adopt her cause, motivated by its success. She accused seven young men from Egypt's elite of drugging and gang-raping her at a party. The Instagram account @assaultpolice was the first Instagram account to draw attention to the case, followed by other accounts that had previously publicized the ABZ case. Activists also tracked down video evidence of the gang rape, which many claimed to have seen but no one seemed able to produce. In the meantime, however, Ashraf grew worried about the integrity and sustainability of the platform and her own safety and sought legal counsel (Ashraf interview). After receiving threats for her involvement in the case, she decided to reveal her identity as the person behind @assaultpolice as a safety measure against these attempts at intimidation.The online noise reverberated in mainstream media and quickly caught the attention of the government's National Council for Women (NCW), which offered to cooperate with victims willing to take legal action against their harassers. Cooperating with the NCW was cause for contention within the organizing group of activists: some welcomed it, while others realized the need for independent legal support for survivors to maintain their freedom of action (Noor interview). Coming under increasing public scrutiny, organizers also disagreed on the degree to which they should align themselves with the public prosecution, which had supported their cause in the ABZ case (Mohamed interview).Activism against sexual violence in Egypt dates back to the mid-2000s (Hunt 2020: 248). This form of collective action multiplied in the years that followed the January 25 Revolution, with the proliferation of independent initiatives mobilizing against sexual harassment and assault on the streets as well as in other spaces (Butrous 2017: 1029). With the reinstallation of military rule in 2013, the Egyptian state built an arsenal of laws to limit collective action, notably Law No. 107 of 2013, prohibiting public protest and restricting street action without the prior consent of the Ministry of Interior. Beginning in 2014, the state cracked down on civil society work, including the activities of feminist organizations (Smohamed 2021). Law No. 70 of 2017, organizing the affairs of civil society, forced many organizations that had operated as LLCs to register as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and operate under the guise of the Ministry of Social Solidarity. The law was amended and reissued as Law No. 149 of 2019, which limits previous restrictions on civil society work; however, it still instates ministry oversight. In addition, civil society was still reeling from the threat of NGO case no. 173 of 2011 as dozens of NGO employees/activists underwent investigation and were subjected to temporary travel bans (Abuzaid 2019). Finally, the enactment of Law No. 175 of 2018 instituted state surveillance of activists' interactions on social media (Miller 2018). These laws have put an end to feminist grassroots mobilization and gravely set back feminist activism.12The new wave of activism that emerged in the summer of 2020 distanced itself from the feminist movement in Egypt to avoid the complications of working under state restriction. As Ashraf noted, the new wave organizers are "not educated as feminists or engaged with earlier feminist fights in Egypt" but identify with the global #MeToo movement (Ashraf interview). However, as the organizers moved from their online campaign to legal action, they became connected to other feminist operatives with more experience in on-the-ground activism, and they sought legal counsel and assistance from human rights activists and lawyers (Darwish interview). Ahmed Ragheb, the renowned human rights lawyer, was the lead counsel in the ABZ case. Other lawyers such as Ragia Omran and Azza Soliman played an active role in advising victims on ways to deal with their legal claims (Soliman interview).The new wave of activism that emerged in the summer of 2020 initially benefited from state cooperation (Soliman interview). On July 4, even before complaints were filed, the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) issued an arrest warrant against Zaky. According to organizers, this decision was the result of their behind-the-scenes efforts to push the state to adopt an active role against these crimes and the organizers' success in mobilizing survivors for legal action and getting public opinion invested in the case. At the same time, the NCW provided free legal services to the survivors of sexual violence and assisted with filing legal complaints. In the Fairmont case, however, the prosecutor's foot-dragging allowed some accused rapists to escape the country.13 The reluctance of the general prosecutor to issue arrest warrants was interpreted as the result of the influence of the perpetrators' families, which belonged to Egypt's business elite. When an arrest order was finally issued against the seven suspects, key witnesses were also arrested (Soliman interview). Among them, Nazli Karim remained in detention for more than four months and was the target of a smear campaign whereby state-allied media leaked personal photos and videos and undermined her testimony (Soliman interview).The detentions of witnesses delivered a significant blow to the movement, resulting in the spread of a sense of defeat and helplessness in activist circles (Darwish and Soliman interviews). By then the core group of organizers had expanded to twenty activists working together to coordinate the Instagram campaigns. Within this group, some members criticized @assaultpolice's decision not to call for the release of the arrested witnesses, especially Karim (Ashraf interview). This decision was motivated, according to Ashraf, by their fears that such a campaign would "create a viral spread of her private photos and videos that are being used to incriminate Nazli" (Ashraf interview). Others argued that a feminist agenda required opposition to authoritarian rule as much as it required a clear stance against sexual violence (Darwish interview). Instead, @assaultpolice thanked the GPO and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for their support, thus dividing the movement and its supporters around the issue of cooperating with the state.While state officials took a hard-line stance in the ABZ case, mainly through the adoption of a narrative of paternalistic state protection of women, this was not the case in the Fairmont crimes. Soliman, who attended the GPO and NCW meetings, recalled that prosecutors and NCW officials repeatedly referred to witnesses and survivors as their "daughters" and voiced their intention to protect them from the danger represented by Zaky (Soliman interview). Conversely, state agents took a more ambivalent approach toward the Fairmont incident, which allegedly occurred in the context of an elite party filled with sex, alcohol, and recreational drugs. On that occasion, the state saw an opportunity to condemn the lifestyles of a group of young, upper-class Egyptians who had dressed, partied, and socialized according to a set of social rules that differed from the state's conservative morality (El-Ammar 2020). In response to this case, the state articulated a moral code that condemned "illicit" sexual acts, both nonconsensual and consensual, urging parents to pay attention to the moral upbringing of their children and youth to beware of internet influence. This narrative of family values and parental control was expressed in several statements released by the GPO as well as in the NCW's sudden retraction from assisting the victim or the arrested witnesses (Ashraf interview). The active persecution of witnesses on unrelated charges of moral indecency also demonstrated the state's intention to use this incident to remind activists that the paternalistic authoritarian state had the final say about what was permissible and what was not (Shea 2020).What started as a movement by largely young upper- and upper-middle-class women sharing testimonies of sexual harassment and assault gradually influenced the wider public debate and ultimately led to actual legal change, with the amendment, in August 2020, of Law No. 113 of 1950 to ban the disclosure of victims' identities and personal information in sexual violence cases. The law is still ineffective; it was approved by parliament and passed on to the cabinet but was not enacted. However, the potential law amendment is a testament to the work of feminist activism in Egypt.Almost two years after the publication of the first testimonies on @assaultpolice, the intensity of that summer has subsided but the effects of this new feminist wave are ongoing. Fueled by the sharing of experiences of and testimonies about sexual violence that keep surfacing via online groups, feminists carry on with challenging the culture of disbelief and victim blaming by supporting survivors and animating the public debate about gender violence and discrimination. Feminist-identifying online communities such as Speak Up are still attracting thousands of engaged followers from a mostly middle-class social base to discuss gender inequality and violence. A discussion on the legitimacy of relying on anonymous testimonies as a tool of truth telling and accountability remains active. The difficulty of legal recourse for survivors and the need for legal reform is more widely discussed. Ultimately, this new wave of feminist activism has caused a crack in the state's firm control over the public sphere, creating a space of action around sexual violence.By 2022 the new wave of activism that started in social media and among the closed circles of the Egyptian elite has organically spread to other locales and sectors of society. An example of this development is the independent feminist lobby Egyptian Female Journalists. This group was created during the campaign against Hisham Allam to demand the creation of an internal policy and bylaws against sexual harassment in syndicated journalistic institutions.14 Similarly, groups of Coptic women and girls are bravely speaking about sexual harassment within the church.15The question remains: What is next? While this wave of feminist activism has revived issues of sexual violence in the mainstream public debate, its longevity hinges on the ability of activists to make connections among feminist causes that differently but simultaneously affect women from different socioeconomic, professional, and educational backgrounds. The capacity of activist groups to offer collective care and support to one another in a context where the intensity of violence against women is often traumatic is also crucial. If this wave is to bring about further change, activist groups will have to find new ways to expand their reach, diversify their alliances, and stay connected to one another despite state efforts to fragment, frighten, co-opt, and marginalize them. Most important, the activist groups have to realize that scaling up the issue of sexual harassment will happen through constant contact with state institutions, which raises another question on the nature of their relationship to the state.