Shahd Alhamdan
JEDDAH — The common notion is that members of the weaker sex have always suffered verbal or physical harassment in the Kingdom and elsewhere, but, it seems, the suffering now has shifted to the other gender.
According to a report in Makkah daily, security personnel in one of the biggest malls in Jeddah have officially recorded around 16 cases of harassment of men by women.
Most of the harassment cases happen to be verbal, where women call guys by their names and puruse them. There have also been times when women alleged that some one was after them even when it was the other way around .
Ryan Kaddouri, general manager of the mall, said the mall's security department received some harassment complaints from men and surveillance cameras supported their claim. He pointed out that the cases were handed over to the police.
Fearing a social stigma, most of the harassed men did not file any complaints, Kaddouri said.
Many people perceive women harassing men to be a weird notion or at best an unaccepted attitude. Shadi Madani, a single male in his late 20s, said: “If I faced any harassment I will just ignore the girl and walk away.”
He believes that the solution for these kinds of harassments is enforcement of tough and deterrent laws that will keep everyone in his or her place. Ahmed Muyidi said the phenomenon of women harassing men is one of the topics that people do not prefer to talk about because of the social culture.
He said the society would look at the harassed guy as a weak man. Women harass men verbally for emotional enticement especially if the man is handsome. Sometime they harass men just for the fun of it or for financial blackmailing, especially that the girl could twist the situation claiming that it was the guy who harassed her.
Rayan Mazen, A Saudi male working in a bank, explained that if such an incident happened to him, he would feel that the whole thing was dirty and disgusting.
"I would give her my back and walk away,” Abdullah Al-Enezi, a young Saudi man, said when asked what he would do in such cases.
One of the men on twitter said comically that he will call the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Haia) if a girl ever harassed him.
Nada Jambi, a Saudi woman, believes that girls harass men only to grab attention. Some of the girls assume that the desire to get married and having a good relationship could be one of the reasons of harassing men verbally.
