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Trending Hashtag Reveals Sexual Harassment at Epidemic Levels

April 4, 2017
Photo Credit: Melody Patry

Trending hashtag exposes the horrific levels of sexual harassment incidents Egyptian girls and women encounter since early childhood. The trending hashtag ‘first time to encounter sexual harassment was when’ acts as an online hub exposing the epidemic of sexual harassment incidents in the Egyptian society. The hashtag reveals stories ranging from verbal harassment, sexual assaults, physical and emotional abuse. Women started sharing their first encounters with sexual harassment on the hashtag and it quickly started trending on Facebook and Twitter, as hundreds of women joined in. Salma Hegab says she first encountered sexual harassment when she was 12 years old. However, Hegab shares, for the first time, a story at the age of 14 when a guy, in his mid 40s, exposed his private parts while she was on her way to school. “I had just stopped going to school by bus and started going on my own. My school was in a relatively new area, and I had a daily 10-minute-walk in some long street on my way. At around 7:30 a.m. a guy wearing a suit slowed down his car while I was walking, called me pretending to…


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