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The Anthropologist-Feminist Hyphen
Abstract
This paper examines the tensions between anthropology, academia, feminism, and activism in the Me Too movement context. While the Me Too movement expands and intensifies around the world, Egypt witnesses its episode. This year, around one hundred Egyptian women, anonymously reported Ahmed Bassam Zaki for allegedly sexually assaulting them. This feminist tsunami sent out its waves across the Egyptian, Arab, and international mainstream media outlets, social media channels, and enticed an intense public debate. This opened the gate to hundreds of anonymous accounts of sexual assaults by Egyptian men. Within the Egyptian community in Washington DC, reports emerged of two Egyptian human rights activists assaulting Egyptian female activists and asylee seekers. I found myself as an anthropologist, a feminist, and an activist overwhelmed by moral, theoretical, and methodological dilemmas. How do we reconcile the anthropological commitment to the disfranchised and the subaltern when the perpetrators are also vulnerable? How do we give voice, representation, and agency to the victim while keeping her anonymity? How do we ensure rigorous research methodology and credible sexual harassment reporting without further jeopardizing the women at the intersection of a complex matrix of oppression? What does this movement reveal about the current system of the pursuit of justice? What can a feminist perspective to justice offer to the world right now? I use ethnographic data collected within the last four months among Egyptians in Washington, DC to reflect on these questions.
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