Humanista: Sharing the Stories of Sexual Harassment Victims

By: Nouran Saleh
@nouranyasser162

In a video created by Humanista, an Egyptian media agency, AUC female students read and react to anonymous accounts of sexual assault.

The video,“Women of the American University in Cairo fight sexual harassment” was posted on Humanista’s Facebook page at the end of last month.

Neda Taher, head of multimedia at Humanista and a journalism senior at AUC, says that the confessions sent to them were from women all over Egypt including women from AUC.

“I was 10 years old and my uncle would sexually harass me until one day at grandmother’s house where he decided to rape me,” was one of the anonymous testimonials read by Yasmina Orban, one of the AUC female students featured in the video. 

The students, who read the anonymous confessions, also reacted to them in the video and offered advice to the women who were feeling suicidal or severely traumatized by the experience. 

One of the students even opened up about her own experience of sexual harassment when she read a true story she related to.

The goal of Humanista  since it was established in August 2020 by two AUC students, Aly El Gendy, a political science sophomore, and Moustafa Wahdan, a business junior, was to produce videos that raise awareness about topics such as bullying and sexual harassment. 

The agency tries to capture everyday social struggles in Egyptian society through their videos by having people read true stories sent to them anonymously regarding experiences of hurtful situations.

“We wanted to create a platform for people to make sure that they think before they talk and we started to take different topics. For example: sexual harassment, religion, and parents,” said Taher. 

Taher pointed out that tackling an issue such as sexual harassment was essential due to the attention the topic was getting in Egypt this past year.

According to the Arab Barometer, a research network that conducts surveys in the MENA region, in 2020, 90 percent of Egyptian women aged between 18 and 29 said they had been sexually harassed.

Taher explained that another goal they had was to change the public’s perception of AUC students.

“We wanted to show people outside AUC that we are aware of what is going on and we don’t have any less experience than other women in Egypt when it comes to sexual harassment,” said Taher.

Humanista collects stories by sending out forms that ensure anonymity on multiple social media platforms such as the Rate AUC Professors Facebook group to ensure that they reach different communities. 

“Last time we got 200 [stories] I guess and we chose those five [to include in the video] because they are so shocking,” said El Gendy.

Many women who watch the video will be disturbed by how close to home the stories are.

“Almost every letter I read seemed very familiar. Sadly all these terrible incidents are not rare, me and almost every woman I know had a similar experience and are victims of harassment,” said Hania Sultan, a Political science senior, one of the female students featured in the video.

Sultan said that she wanted to participate in this project due to the important role of social media in combating things such as sexual harassment and to inform people of the struggles that women go through on a daily basis. 

This is especially apparent today in Egypt, with the amount of sexual harassers exposed over the last year by social media pages. 

One of these pages is Assault Police, an instagram account created by Nadeen Ashraf, a senior philosophy student at AUC, that encourages women to speak up and helped in exposing sexual assaulters such as Ahmed Bassam Zaki.

“My mind had a thousand thoughts but was blank at the same time from how shocking some incidents were, the women that wrote these letters are incredibly brave, my heart aches for what they have been through,” said Sultan. 

Sultan pointed out that choosing AUC female students to read the anonymous stories was important to highlight that women everywhere no matter their privilege or social status can fall victim to sexual harassment and assault.

The Humanista team wants to keep addressing such important issues in their future projects. 

“We want to create something like a group therapy video or a coach that would reply to some of the messages that come to us…this is about creating a safe place where you can speak out and nobody is there to judge you or make you feel that your problem is not that big, every little problem matters,” said Taher.