Battle of the sterotypes

Before leaving the UK, I was often asked by friends and family about whether I was apprehensive about the prospect of being a single woman in the Middle East. Being the wishy-washy liberal that I am, I decided to give the whole experience time and really do some digging before coming to any conclusions on the matter, rather than charging in with engrained preconceptions or jumping to early conclusions.

So, after nearly two months I don't feel like I'm any closer to finding out anything about the kind of life that Jordanian woman are living, mainly because I'm not meeting many. So, all I've got to go on instead are my own experiences and those of other expats who I've talked to since arriving. And what a series of mixed messages it has been ... people who love the country and feel happy and comfortable here, but also expat women who ended up actually refusing to go to certain parts of town because of the harassment, and various shades in between.


For an idea of the kind of issues and the complexity of it all, do have at look at this article in the local English-language magazine JO about expat women on the prowl, and then at the reactions to this JO article. The arguments about stereotypes and counter-stereotypes are always important, but I think that they don't really go far enough into the point that we cannot help but use our personal experiences as a basis for developing our general feelings about a place and the people in it - and if you've been harassed not once or twice but many times, it becomes harder and harder to stop this colouring your feelings, even when you know that this harassment comes from a minority.

I don't say this because I am in this position myself (yet?), but I know several expats who have just reached the end of their tether and I can sympathise enormously with occasional feelings of victimisation and just being fed up at sometimes being regarded as a 'loose woman' or a 'sure thing' - as an example, have a look at this article that talks about these complexities and frustrations from an expat who tried the hijab to make life easier.

On the other hand, I can equally sympathise with the very valid outrage of the many Jordanians who strongly condemn both treating any woman with disrespect and the stereotyping of 'Arab men' or 'Jordanian men' as unfeeling, macho or predatory.

So far from just treating each other with respect as fellow human beings ...