Breaking the silence: A corpus-assisted analysis of narratives of the victims of an Egyptian sexual predator
-
Wesam M. A. Ibrahim
Abstract
Beginning in July 2020, Egyptian social media were flooded with stories about a young man raping and sexually harassing about 100 women and under-age girls. An Instagram account called @assaultpolice posted narratives of the man’s victims reporting the verbal and physical abuse they were subject to. The whole set of issues about the sexual activities of this man, who was dubbed the “Sexual Predator,” trended on Twitter and Instagram and was then picked up by many Egyptian talk shows. The issue received much attention because of the conservative nature of Egyptian society in which the tendency to blame victims of sexual abuse leads to their remaining silent about any abuse they have suffered. The power of social media in highlighting these narratives, and ensuing similar ones, has helped the whole community to realize the severity of the problem of sexual harassment. This resulted in a push for an amendment to Egyptian law in 2021 placing harsher penalties on crimes relating to sexual harassment and concealing the identity of victims. This article uses a corpus-assisted approach to analyse the discursive strategies used in these narratives to explore the discursive construction of the sexual aggressor and the victims. The analysis shows that the narratives are told from the perspective of the victims, with access always given to the victims’ inner feelings and perception, and that the male abuser is constructed as the active agent while the female victims as acted upon.
1 Introduction
Sexual harassment, which can lead from verbal abuse to physical injury and, in some cases, murder, is a major public threat against women and has been an endemic problem in Egypt for years (Abdelaal 2021, El-Rifae 2014). The breadth and severity of the problem was foregrounded, and probably exaggerated, by a 2013 Thomas Reuters Foundation survey[1] which ranked Egypt as the worst country in the Arab world in terms of women’s rights because of its high rates of harassment, sexual violence, and female genital mutilation (FGM). The survey claimed that 99.3% of Egyptian women and girls have been subjected to sexual harassment and that about 27.2 million women and girls – 91% of the female population – have been victims of FGM.[2] However, the President of the National Council for Women (NCW[3]), Dr Maya Morsy, cast suspicions on the results of the survey and reported in an interview that the rate of sexual harassment in Egypt is only 9.6%. In any case, there have been no full-fledged studies to confirm any of the reported statistics (Egyptian Streets[4] 18 August 2018).
Although many forms of sexual harassment are punishable under Egyptian laws, most victims do not report sexual harassment to the law enforcement authorities. Victimized girls and women are silenced through their fear of humiliation and public shaming (Abdelaal 2021). Since July 2020, however, sex crimes have become increasingly reported and widely circulated, with several high-profile cases being widely circulated across social media. This new trend in Egypt challenges the deep-rooted bias that places more blame for sex crimes on women for what is deemed to have been their provocative behaviour than on the men who commit them (Eltahir 2021).
In July 2020, a story about a young Egyptian man who had sexually harassed and even raped a large number of women, including underage girls[5], spread rapidly through social media, TV networks, and newspapers. It had all started in 2018 when a female student at the American University in Cairo posted on the RATE AUC PROFESSORS [6] Facebook page her accusations against a fellow student, ABZ.[7] She accused that student of committing sexual harassment against her and some other female colleagues. For 2 years, her post remained on the page and attracted thousands of comments from fellow students. However, at the end of June 2020, the post was surprisingly deleted by the page’s administrators. The deletion of this post brought the story back to the scene, particularly when in July 2020 many other girls started sharing their stories and experiences with the same young man, which dated from as far back as 2016, on two key Instagram profiles. These were the personal profile of the Egyptian writer and poet Sabah Khodir (@skhodirr) and another account which was mainly set up to gather evidence against ABZ from all the girls he had sexually harassed (@assaultpolice). The story was quickly circulated in social media, leading to the two hashtags related to the allegations becoming the top trending in Egypt in a few days. A large number of girls posted stories reporting incidents of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment allegedly committed by ABZ from 2016 onwards. The Instagram account[8] @assaultpolice, which had gathered up to 172,000 followers in less than a month, collected evidence claiming that ABZ had sexually harassed and assaulted about 100 women and girls. The evidence collected on the @assaultpolice account consists of stories of girls detailing the physical or internet harassment committed by ABZ against them. Their stories were validated by screenshots of chats between a number of these women and the person they claim was ABZ. The Instagram account classified the stories and the screenshots into six sections depending on the type of threat and/or aggressive behaviour reported in them: real-life harassment, physical assault, online harassment, blackmail and threat, odd behaviour, and AU Barcelona.[9]
These narratives report the various tactics allegedly used by ABZ to bait his victims and/or force them to fulfil his desires. The narratives include allegations that ABZ had created various accounts on social media and used them to message the victims privately and repeatedly ask them for “inappropriate favours.”[10] There were also allegations that ABZ used to manipulate the victims emotionally by threatening to self-harm and commit suicide to persuade them to meet him or chat with him using social media, and when they eventually did what he wanted, he would blackmail them. He would threaten these victims that he would circulate their fake and/or real nude images and dishonour them by telling their families and friends stories about their having sexual encounters with him.
Because of the wide circulation of the narratives (of an extent probably never witnessed in Egypt before), ABZ’s name trended on Twitter in just a few days (Egyptian Streets [11], 2 July 2020). The situation was so intense that a petition[12] on Change.org was shared around. The story also received intensive coverage on Egyptian TV and in the press.[13] The strong effect of the media coverage led to the immediate suspension of ABZ from the business school at Barcelona. The Egyptian NCW, presided by Dr Maya Morsy, quickly responded to the issue: they urged victims to report to the police and file official complaints against ABZ, publicized a hotline to receive complaints about the alleged sexual crimes, and filed an official complaint to the Egyptian Prosecution Council to get the whole issue investigated. The Egyptian Prosecution Council put out a warrant for ABZ’s arrest for interrogation, and he was arrested in just a few days.
ABZ was accused by about 100 women and girls of having committed a number of crimes, including physical and internet harassment, rape, and blackmail. According to the Canadian Human Rights Commission,[14] harassment involves making “unwelcome remarks or jokes,” threatening or intimidating a person because of his/her “race, religion, sex, age, disability or any other of the grounds of discrimination,” or making “unwelcome physical contact … such as touching, patting, or pinching.” Sexual harassment, on the other hand, “includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature in the workplace or learning environment.”[15] Internet harassment – also known as online abuse, cyberstalking, or cyberbullying – was defined by the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety[16] as the “use of the Internet to harass, threaten, or maliciously embarrass” any person. In 2017, a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, an American nonpartisan fact tank which strives to inform the public about the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the world, reported that “more than 40% of Americans have experienced online abuse, and more than 60% have witnessed it.”[17] Although this kind of statistics may be unavailable in many countries, it can be argued that the frequency and intensity of internet harassment is likely to be the same worldwide. Article 306 of the Egyptian Legal Code covers both offline and online verbal sexual harassment because it defines verbal sexual harassment as occurring through using gestures or words or through modern means of communication (i.e. internet, mobile, and more), or through stalking, or in any other means through actions that carry sexual or pornographic connotations (Egyptian Streets[18], 18 August 2018).
As for blackmail, it involves someone threatening to reveal embarrassing, harmful, and/or shameful information about another person, “unless that person meets certain demands either paying money to the blackmailer or performing other actions which may not be legal.”[19] Finally, rape can be defined as “a crime of power and violence in which sex is the weapon” (Holmes and Holmes 2002, 139), and in Egyptian law, as the nonconsensual penile penetration by a man of a woman’s vagina (El-Rifae 2014).
ABZ was accused of physically and verbally harassing the victims both online and in person; blackmailing many girls by saying that he would send their fake/real nude pictures, chat messages, and videotaped sexual encounters to their family and friends unless they satisfied his demands; and raping two women with this crime being probably the most serious among all the other reported crimes.
In the interrogations following ABZ’s arrest, his lawyers claimed that the whole issue was a fabrication and that all the social media accounts posting the girls’ narratives and accusations against ABZ were fake. They maintained that ABZ was not in acquaintance with any of these girls and had not committed any of the reported sex crimes. They insisted that all plaintiffs had to appear before the Prosecution Council in person to report these alleged crimes. Through this demand, ABZ’s lawyers were manipulating Egyptian culture against the victims. Although social media reflected people’s sympathy with the victims and their contempt for ABZ’s alleged crimes, social media do not often reflect in full the actual attitudes towards rape and sexual behaviour held right across the Egyptian social context. The deep-rooted attitude of blaming the victim of sex crimes for their abuse would make the lawyers’ demand that the plaintiffs reveal their true identities exceptionally difficult to carry out.
The stories were mainly written in English with a few scattered Arabic words inscribed in what is known in Egypt as “Franco-Arabic,”[20] i.e. using the English alphabet to write Arabic words. The victims’ use of the English language in their narratives may be justified. The victims may be trying to shield themselves against Egyptian culture which sees sexual abuse as shaming to both the victim and her family. Hence, their use of a foreign language might be seen as a defensive strategy. It might be the case that these victims did not recount the abuse they had suffered in Arabic (their native language) to detach and protect themselves from the judgemental culture they belong to and to protect their families from being stigmatized by the community. A completely different scenario justifying the victims’ tendency to deliver their narratives in English can be detected when we look into the shared background and lifestyle of the victims. All the victims belonged to wealthy families, inhabiting luxurious residential compounds, and were studying at expensive international schools and universities. Their relatively privileged backgrounds and expensive educations had endowed the victims with a native-like competence in English, so that the hybrid language manifested in the narratives, which can be considered a form of translanguaging (Li 2018),[21] and could possibly be considered as close to the ways these victims use language in their everyday lives. It could also be argued that the rise of social media has helped the English language to become so pervasive particularly among these young people. In a sense, this may have led to a profound shift in the order of discourse. More particularly in the context of sexual discourse, native speakers are susceptible to being upset, offended, or provoked by the conventional connotations triggered by the sexual words of their native language. So arguably, many people would probably find it easier to talk about sex in a second language because, as it seems, they can escape the emotional charges attached to the words in their native language. As for the narratives at hand, being written mostly in English made it easier for the stories to come out. Victims may have possibly felt that describing the sexual abuse they suffered in English was less emotionally charged than using the equivalent terms in Arabic.
However, regardless of the language these narratives were mainly delivered in, they belong to a kind of narrative that usually tends to be suppressed, particularly in a conservative country like Egypt, that could be labelled “discourses of the unsayable” (Coupland and Coupland 1997, 117). But perhaps for the reasons just outlined, what was unsayable has become sayable.
Although stricter laws and punishments against sexual crimes were introduced by the Egyptian authorities in 2011, “it remains particularly difficult for women to publicly accuse men of rape, sexual assault or sexual harassment due to social and cultural views around sex and sexuality” (Egyptian Streets, 2 July 2020).[22] It should be noted, however, that the tendency to underreport sexual crimes is not restricted to Egypt but can also be detected in Western countries. The 2016 American Justice Department’s analysis of violent crime stated that “80% of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported for reasons such as fear of retaliation – not just from the perpetrator, but from society at large, and distrust of the police” (Brennan Center, 4 October 2018).[23] The brutality of police questioning and rape trial procedures, which has been dubbed by feminists as “the second rape,” probably constitutes the primary reason behind the tendency to underreport sex crimes. Police questioning victimizes victims even more with intrusive questions tormenting them such as “Did you enjoy it? Are you a virgin? What were you wearing?” (Matthews 1994, 11). Kennedy (1992, 114) remarked that questions about victims’ reasons for walking alone late at night or about wearing certain styles of clothing are never addressed to men. The trauma experienced by victims of sexual assault and the secondary victimization these victims experience because of the negative reactions of those around them have been the focus of many studies (see Ulman 1996,Williams 1984).
In addition to the reasons explained above, the situation in Egypt is further complicated because premarital sex, or more generally sex outside marriage, are widely frowned upon and upholding virginity and purity is emphasized. In the Egyptian cultural context, premarital sex is traditionally associated with shame, whereas virginity is the condition of honour. The honour of a woman, and eventually that of her family, is defined by her chastity, and consequently, “if a woman is raped she is stigmatized and no longer marriageable” (Haddad 2017). Alsaadawi (2015) stressed this idea when she stated that
the victim who loses her virginity, the girl who loses her hymen – for whatever reason, even as a result of rape, or at any age, even that of early childhood – is doomed to lose her honour for life. Her hymen is her honour and, once lost, it can never be replaced (Alsaadawi 2015, 39–40).
Egyptian men are not brought up to realize the gravity of sexual harassment, in the same manner that they learn to perceive the seriousness of crimes like theft or murder. Actually, for some Egyptian teenagers, engaging in harassment is considered the gateway that ushers in the transition from boyhood to manhood. For others, it might be seen as a show of force, or punishment for women who do not abide by societal dictates on how a woman should behave in public (Ezzelarab 2014). Hence, harassment is indirectly nurtured through the established specific image of the model woman in the Egyptian cultural context. This image is used across many segments of society to justify sexual violence and blame the victim. In one incident, a TV host and a president of a state-owned university were obliged to make public apologies after they audaciously blamed a female victim who had been assaulted by a mob of harassers on campus, based on the way she was dressed (Ezzelarab 2014). In another incident, publicly referred to in Egypt as the 2018 “coffee harassment,” a woman posted a video of a man harassing her in public. People who commented on the woman’s post called her a “whore,” and photoshopped her face onto the bodies of porn stars and other women in revealing clothing (Egyptian Streets 18 August 2018).[24] Although, under Article 306, the State has made such public responses to illegal harassment because they might promote sex crimes even further, they remain the normative reaction whenever a sex crime is reported. Regrettably, an atmosphere of victim blaming tends to surround sexual harassment throughout the media and popular culture (Abdelaal 2021).
The situation described above leads to the silencing of many victims of sexual harassment and/or rape for fear of being blamed by their community and ruining their families’ honour and reputation.
2 Combining critical discourse analysis (CDA) and corpus linguistics (CL) to examine the victims’ narratives
Sexual harassment in the workplace has been intensively studied (cf. Fitzgerald Louise et al., 1988, Fitzgerald and Cortina 2017, Hajdin 1994, 1997, Holland and Cortina, 2016, Johnson et al. 2018, Konik and Cortina, 2008, Leskinen Emily et al. 2011, Rabelo and Cortina, 2014, Seagrave 2013). Cultural and linguistic perspectives on sexual harassment have also been examined in many studies (cf. Baugh 2018, Gelfand Michelle et al. 1995, Tyler and Boxer 1996). Recently, however, the language of harassment on social media has attracted scholarly attention (cf. Hosseinmardi et al. 2015, Mangaonkar et al. 2015, Nobata et al. 2016, Rezvan et al. 2020). The current study contributes to the last group because it investigates the language of narratives on sexual harassment and assault that were published on an Instagram account, by Egyptian victims, using a synergy of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and CL.
CDA is regarded as “a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (van Dijk 2001, 352). It is basically interested in analysing “opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language” (Wodak and Meyer 2009, 10). Hence, it aims to “investigate critically social inequality, as it is expressed, signaled, constituted, legitimized and so on by language use” (Wodak and Meyer 2009, 10). However, it is “not interested in investigating a linguistic unit per se but in studying social phenomena which are necessarily complex and thus require a multidisciplinary and multi-methodical approach” (Wodak and Meyer 2009, 2). The discourse–historical approach (DHA), which is a strand of CDA introduced and applied in many studies (cf. Reisigl and Wodak 2001, 2009, Wodak 1986, 2001, 2011a, 2011b, 2015), shares the same principles of CDA because they both “aim to reveal and demystify power structures from the perspective of those who suffer” (Wodak 2008, 2).
This study uses DHA to analyse the narratives of victims of rape, sexual harassment, and blackmail, recounted from “the perspective of those who suffer.” Several discursive strategies have been identified by DHA (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, 2009, Wodak 2015). This study, however, uses only the three strategies, outlined in Table 1, to analyse the victims’ narratives. It mainly examines the discursive strategies (Cf. Reisigl and Wodak 2009, 104, Wodak 2015, 8–11), which are involved in constructions of identities (the victims), of the “other” (the offender, ABZ), and of situations and processes in general (sexual harassment, rape, blackmail, and so on).
Discursive strategies (adapted from Reisigl and Wodak 2009, 104)
| Strategy | Objectives | Devices |
|---|---|---|
| Referential/nomination | Discursive construction of social actors, objects/phenomena/events, and processes/actions |
|
| Predication | Discursive qualification of social actors, objects, phenomena/events/processes, and actions (more or less positively or negatively) |
|
| Perspectivization, framing, or discourse representation | Positioning speaker’s or writer’s point of view and expressing involvement or distance |
|
CL provides a methodology for the systematic investigation of large amounts of data (corpora) via computer software tools (McEnery and Wilson 2001, 2). CL tools facilitate detecting linguistic patterns in corpora. This study uses two CL procedures, namely, keywords and concordances.
A word can be potentially key in a certain corpus if it occurs frequently enough to become statistically significant when compared with a reference corpus (Scott 1999). Keywords can be classified into three main categories: (1) proper nouns, (2) content words which can function as indicators of the “aboutness” of a particular text, and (3) function words which may indicate the style rather than the aboutness of the text (Scott 1999). Hence, examining the keyword list of a particular corpus reveals the most significant lexical features in relation to its aboutness and style. The CL keyword procedure was particularly selected for this study because keywords indicate the “aboutness” of a text, and hence, they would convey the topic and plot elements (participants, processes, setting) of the selected narratives. WordSmith5 is used to extract the keywords of the corpus, i.e. of all the narratives compiled, using the BNC Sampler–Written as a reference corpus and setting the “cut-off” point for determining the keyness of each word at a threshold frequently used in corpus-based research, namely p = 0.000001 (McEnery 2006, 233).
The second CL procedure used in this study is concordances. A concordance, which can also be labelled “key word in context,” yields each node word “within its immediate co-text, which is usually a specified number of words to the left and right of the node word” (Baker 2006, 71). Concordances can also be extracted by WordSmith5 which can provide a list of “all of the examples of a search term in the context that it appears in” (Baker and McEnery 2005, 202). Concordances establish a link between quantitative and qualitative analyses, because they can be examined qualitatively.
3 Data and methodology
A total number of 100 narratives were posted on the Instagram account, @assaultpolice. The narratives were in the form of images/screenshots. There were 149 screenshots in total, divided into six folders as shown in Table 2.
Division of screenshots on @assaultpolice
| Category | Real-life harassment | Odd behaviour | Blackmail and threat | Online harassment | Physical assault | AU Barcelona |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. of narratives | 64 | 24 | 24 | 20 | 13 | 4 |
Screenshots of chats allegedly occurring between ABZ and the victims were excluded from the data. Only screenshots of narratives providing a personal account of the events were taken into consideration. A total of 62 narratives were told from the perspective of the victim and 7 narratives from the perspective of a friend or a witness. The corpus, then, mainly consisted of 69 narratives. All narratives were manually transcribed, yielding about 12,700 words, and converted to text files to be eligible for processing by WordSmith5.
The analysis was conducted in three steps. The first involved extracting the keywords from the corpus using Wordsmith5, yielding 194 keywords. Content words (i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) were identified in the keyword list. They were examined and then classified into nine categories according to related or shared semantic space. These categories include references to ABZ, references to victims, processes for both ABZ and victims, sex/rape, threat and blackmail, communication and social media, body parts and clothes, places, and other. Pronouns were also investigated because of their high statistical significance and their importance in the construction of the actors involved in the narratives. The second step involved examining the concordances of the statistically significant keywords to identify discursive strategies. Finally, the third step involved discussing and explaining the discursive strategies in relation to the context of the narratives.
Through revealing and explaining the discursive strategies used in the narratives, the analysis seeks to answer questions relating to the perspective from which the narratives were told, the discursive construction of ABZ and the victims, and finally the qualities attributed to both ABZ and the victims.
4 A corpus-based approach to the analysis of the discursive strategies in the data
4.1 A glimpse into the inner world of the victims through “perspectivation”
Ninety percent of the narratives are told from the perspective of the victims. First-person narration is used to provide a detailed account of ABZ’s encounters with and abuse of the victims. This accounts for the high frequency of first-person pronouns. Table 3 lists the frequencies of all pronouns and shows how the first-person pronouns “ME” and “I” occupy the top of the keyword list with a frequency of 375 and 614 and keyness ratings of 1494.7 and 1429.9, respectively. Other first-person pronouns are also ascribed high keyness, including the possessive pronoun “MY” and the Arabic first-person singular pronoun “ANA” (which is an equivalent of I). The fact that third-person singular masculine pronouns also get a high keyness rating is simply because the narratives revolve around a young man (ABZ) and his actions. Hence, the list also includes the subject pronoun “HE,” the object pronoun “HIM,” the Arabic pronoun “HWA” (which is the equivalent of he), and the possessive “HIS.” The list includes other pronouns: “U” which is a short version of the English second-person pronoun you that tends to be frequently used in online chatting and messaging, the Arabic pronoun “HEYA” (which is the equivalent of she), the plural first-person English pronoun “WE,” and the third-person plural possessive “THEIR.”
Pronouns in the keyword list
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ME | 375 | 2.83618 | 1,414 | 0.135351 | 1494.724 | 2.567 × 10−19 |
| 2 | I | 614 | 4.64379 | 6,217 | 0.595096 | 1429.920 | 2.941 × 10−19 |
| 3 | HE | 548 | 4.14461 | 4,890 | 0.468075 | 1389.810 | 3.210 × 10−19 |
| 5 | HIM | 230 | 1.73953 | 1,184 | 0.113333 | 793.280 | 1.828 × 10−18 |
| 6 | MY | 218 | 1.64877 | 1,951 | 0.186751 | 547.479 | 5.909 × 10−18 |
| 31 | ANA | 10 | 0.07563 | 0 | 87.651 | 5.180 × 10−15 | |
| 44 | HWA | 9 | 0.06807 | 0 | 78.885 | 8.847 × 10−15 | |
| 46 | U | 23 | 0.17395 | 132 | 0.012635 | 74.765 | 1.181 × 10−14 |
| 51 | HIS | 118 | 0.89245 | 4,000 | 0.382883 | 64.189 | 2.908 × 10−14 |
| 121 | HEYA | 4 | 0.03025 | 0 | 35.059 | 6.742 × 10−10 | |
| 137 | WE | 77 | 0.58236 | 2,985 | 0.285727 | 30.823 | 2.534 × 10−8 |
| 185 | THEIR | 8 | 0.06051 | 2,713 | 0.259691 | −29.163 | 6.361 × 10−8 |
There is a tendency among first-person narrators to use “unmodalized propositions” because they “always express higher reliability than propositions involving evaluations of reliability” (Halliday 1994, 89). This tendency is conveyed in the keyword list, as shown in Table 4, by the relational processes which include various forms of the verb be (AM, IS, ARE, WAS) and the equivalent Arabic verbs for was (KAN [he was], KANET [she was], KONT [I was]). The use of “unmodalized propositions” serves to enhance the readers’ trust in the narrators’ stories because they are conveyed as facts.
Relational processes in the keyword list
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33 | KAN [3rd m-was] | 10 | 0.07563 | 0 | 87.651 | 5.180 × 10−15 | |
| 35 | WAS | 210 | 1.58826 | 8,167 | 0.781752 | 83.936 | 6.425 × 10−15 |
| 77 | AM | 25 | 0.18908 | 313 | 0.029961 | 48.703 | 2.517 × 10−13 |
| 90 | KANET [3rd f-was] | 5 | 0.03782 | 0 | 43.824 | 8.438 × 10−13 | |
| 166 | KONT [1st-was] | 3 | 0.02269 | 0 | 26.294 | 2.903 × 10−7 | |
| 189 | ARE | 22 | 0.16639 | 5,346 | 0.511723 | −41.658 | 1.781 × 10−12 |
| 190 | IS | 62 | 0.46892 | 10,231 | 0.979319 | −43.556 | 9.169 × 10−13 |
When readers are given a glimpse into victims’ perceptions and emotions, they will be more likely to identify with them. Eventually, they will sympathize with rather than condemn these victims because they should be more able to understand and relate to their suffering. This can be facilitated by first-person narration which grants readers direct access to the victims’ inner worlds and potentially encourages them to empathize and sympathize with them. Hence, a kind of intimacy and bond is established between victims and readers. This bond is further enhanced through the use of mental processes (Table 5). Klosterman (1997, 140) has dubbed narratives of sexual abuse “pro-survivor writing” and emphasized the importance of mental processes because “it is easier to blame the victim for individual pathology because the context for her decisions, perceptions, and behaviours – crucial for the audience’s understanding – are omitted.”
Mental processes in the keyword list
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 65 | KNOW | 38 | 0.28739 | 627 | 0.060017 | 57.572 | 6.108 × 10−14 |
| 175 | THOUGHT | 23 | 0.17395 | 490 | 0.046903 | 26.154 | 3.123 × 10−7 |
A close examination of the concordances of the mental process know (Table 6) shows that it occurs in the corpus 34 times with the pronoun I as the actor. It should be noted, however, that in 32 of these occurrences, the pronoun I refers to a victim, whereas in only two occurrences, the pronoun I refers to ABZ in reported speech. It is noted also that the verb is used in the affirmative 20 times and in the negative 14 times with didn’t or don’t before the verb. This mental process is used to mark the victims’ ignorance of ABZ’s history or misconduct (lines 1, 7, 9, 21, 38), their knowledge of him (lines 5, 29, 31), their desire to know the reason why ABZ was interested in them (lines 12, 14), their lack of knowledge about the proper response to what was happening to them (lines 6, 25, 26, 29), the victims’ acquaintances (lines 2, 3), and their determination to strengthen the case against ABZ by reporting all that they know (lines 16, 17, 19).
Concordance lines for know
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | the head of the school. I don’t exactly | know | what happened but our school rarely exp |
| 2 | me from other areas and called people I | know | . He tried calling me a million time whe |
| 3 | me. He has contacted so many people I | know | and then told me ‘I’m doing this becaus |
| 4 | or have any questions, please let me | Know | (I would also appreciate it if my name |
| 5 | I personally | Know | him, he’s my neighbor w he tried to har |
| 6 | I was 15 at the time and didn’t | Know | what to do so I asked my parents if the |
| 7 | quite uncomfortable Knowing I don’t | Know | this guy and he just asked to live with |
| 8 | I don’t know the full story but I | Know | brother isn’t a saint and may be in |
| 9 | blackmailed her with it, I don’t | Know | the full story but I know his brother i |
| 10 | a paedophile, a rapist, and I can’t stand to | know | he’s still getting away with all of it. |
| 11 | back with him I said idk I just wanted to | know | what the fuck was that and why. At the |
| 12 | was wrong with so I called him to | know | why me, he was very cold, then a few da |
| 13 | I live and somehow make me pay for it (I | know | it sounds dumb but he’s a psychopath an |
| 14 | texted a few weeks ago cause I wanted to | know | why me, and he was cold then called me |
| 15 | around me at all times otherwise I don’t | know | what could have happened. |
| 16 | Hi I don’t | know | if it’ll help, bas Ahmed zaki da used t |
| 17 | I thought I’d come forward with all I | know | to strengthen the case. I think I have |
| 18 | because he wanted to get to | know | me and for us to go out and stuff and I |
| 19 | I really think we should do smth abt it. I | know | it’s nothing serious compared to what y |
| 20 | whispering into my ears stuff like ‘I | know | you like this’ ‘just give up the tough |
| 21 | I didn’t | know | the guy at the time but he told me that |
| 22 | sexually assaulting a girl (whom I didn’t | know | ). They were in his car and he was forci |
| 23 | I | know | someone who got assaulted by him twice |
| 24 | At 10:30, I want an answer. Peace?” “You | know | what, let me send a broadcast to all my |
| 25 | to touch me. I left, yet I didn’t break up. I | know | that I was wrong bas once again, I was |
| 26 | I was honestly scared for my life. I didn’t | know | what to do. I let him kiss me and conti |
| 27 | 3alatool (right away). Like yo, take this. I | know | I’m such a bitch. But you’re a whore. A |
| 28 | in his bedroom. I was terrified. I didn’t | know | what to do he broke up with me since I |
| 29 | several times in the past few years. I | know | which school he went to and the people |
| 30 | He texted me too in May. I don’t even | know | how he found my Instagram account, but |
| 31 | I | know | this guy too! He added me on Facebook a |
| 32 | him to dahab 3ala asas ‘I love to get to | know | people when we’re travelling’ and that |
| 33 | Yes yess he slides in so many girls dm’s I | know | in such a slimy creepy way. 35 Story Ac |
| 34 | hakhedk hacienda w she doesn’t even | know | him w she told him she had a boyfriend |
| 35 | has followed me. I even didn’t | know | how he found me on Instagram but |
| 36 | Well even don’t | know | what to say about this animal. But |
| 37 | of certain places of his body (which you | know | what I am talking about |
| 38 | he is so lucky’ ‘I miss you’ I DON’T EVEN | know | HIM! I told my bf the story and he text |
The Arabic words, and more particularly the Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, which appear in the concordances (in Table 6), reveal the narrators’ hybrid language. These include w [the Arabic equivalent of the English conjunction AND] in lines 5 and 34, bas [Arabic equivalent of the English conjunction BUT] in lines 16 and 25, and da [a demonstrative pronoun which can be translated as ‘That one’]. There are other Egyptian Arabic expressions including 3alatool (right away) which the narrator herself translated in line 27; 3ala asas [which can be translated as ‘based on’]; and hakhedk hacinda in line 34 [which can be translated as ‘I will take you to Hacinda (the name of a sea resort on the Mediterranean)’].
The mental process thought, on the other hand, occurs 21 times with the pronoun I as actor. Such use provides readers with an insight into the inner world of the victims, particularly their thoughts and emotions. As shown in Table 7, the concordances of the verb thought convey the image victims had constructed of ABZ in their minds: respectful (line 7), well educated (line 9), a normal classmate (line 12), gentle and decent (line 16), nice and good looking (line 17), very sweet (line 18), and a nice person (line 20). The concordances also convey the victims’ emotions to readers: one victim liked the attention ABZ paid to her: I thought I was special (line 15); another victim felt love towards him: I thought I was in love with him (line 22); other victims experienced regret: I thought it was all my fault (line 8), shock: I would never have thought for a second he would do that (line 11), perceptions [I thought I recognized him (line 21), I thought I could trust this person (line 23)] and determination to report their stories and expose what ABZ did to them [I thought I’d come forward with all I know (line 6), many people need proof so I thought I’d share (line 10)].
Concordance lines for thought
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | of school suspension and that was it. I | thought | . we all thought it was just a high |
| 2 | and that was it. I thought. we all | thought | it was just a high school phase, but |
| 3 | believe this is still happening I honestly | thought | he was just a fuckboy playing around |
| 4 | he came for me (13 at the time) w I | thought | kan beyetkalem 3ady la2eto bey2oly b |
| 5 | we had a lot of mutual friends so I | thought | it was okay. He started with his cli |
| 6 | he’s still getting away with all of it. I | thought | I’d come forward with all I know to |
| 7 | works in the Intelligence Agency so I | thought | he would be respectful and responsib |
| 8 | A week ago I was at my lowest and I | thought | it was all my fault and something wa |
| 9 | for second he would do that as I | thought | he was well educated, I think he was |
| 10 | and many people need ‘proof’ so I | thought | I’d share because I really think we |
| 11 | I’m 24 and he was 20. I would never | thought | for second he would do that as I tho |
| 12 | He asked me ‘how was the exam?’ so I | thought | he is a normal classmate that w |
| 13 | Then he took me to his compound. I | thought | maybe we will just hang there like u |
| 14 | I loved the idea of him or at least how I | thought | he was. I’m going to share |
| 15 | and he was sharing things with me I | thought | I was special so I did the same thin |
| 16 | we have in the compound And I went I | thought | he is gentle and decent When he saw |
| 17 | nice bike and asked if he can use it I | thought | he was nice, good looking and he wou |
| 18 | We were talking and I | thought | he was very sweet, yet I felt that s |
| 19 | help me (they didn’t because they | thought | I liked him and as he said we were f |
| 20 | him to my friends just because I | thought | he was a nice person at the beginnin |
| 21 | this asshole’s face all over my feed, I | thought | I recognized him, and then it hit me |
| 22 | getting weirder and weirder by time bas I | thought | that I was in love with him at the t |
| 23 | at the moment, I sent him nudes since I | thought | I could trust this person and he was |
Again, there is a use of Arabic in the concordances: w [and] and bas [but] are used in lines 4 and 22 respectively. Line 4 is almost written in Arabic with the sentence ‘w I thought kan beyetkalem 3ady la2eto bey2oly’ [and I thought he was talking normally but I found him saying that]. The switch between English and Arabic in the concordance sounds natural. Line 10 “and many people need ‘proof’ so I thought I’d share” supports the deep-rooted victim-blaming tradition, so the victim felt that she had to provide evidence for what she was saying so that she would not be blamed.
4.2 Constructing the perpetrator and the victims using “nomination and predication”
The construction of an entity depends on the way it is named and described by others. “[T]here are many different ways of saying essentially the same thing” and the element of choice produces ideological meaning (Jeffries and McIntyre 2010, 25). Hence, the way ABZ is constructed in the narratives largely depends on the naming choices and modifiers with which ABZ was labelled by the victims.
All the narratives display considerable similarity particularly in relation to the victims’ first impressions of ABZ. Almost all victims agree on the fact that they thought ABZ was a nice and decent person when they first met him. Then, the mistaken first impressions get corrected when they realize his true abusive nature. All the victims, then, suffer a kind of abuse at the hands of ABZ ranging from verbal and physical abuse to blackmail to sexual harassment and even rape (Table 8).
Keywords used for naming and describing ABZ
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | GUY | 23 | 0.17395 | 13 | 154.855 | 4.532 × 10−16 | |
| 18 | AHMED | 20 | 0.15126 | 6 | 147.377 | 5.489 × 10−16 | |
| 23 | ZAKI | 13 | 0.09832 | 0 | 113.949 | 1.565 × 10−15 | |
| 94 | RAPIST | 5 | 0.03782 | 0 | 43.824 | 8.438 × 10−13 | |
| 95 | CREEPY | 5 | 0.03782 | 0 | 43.824 | 8.438 × 10−13 | |
| 108 | ASSHOLE | 5 | 0.03782 | 1 | 38.442 | 9.127 × 10−12 | |
| 134 | DISGUSTING | 5 | 0.03782 | 4 | 31.559 | 1.642 × 10−8 | |
| 135 | WEIRD | 5 | 0.03782 | 4 | 31.559 | 1.642 × 10−8 | |
| 167 | KISSER | 3 | 0.02269 | 0 | 26.294 | 2.903 × 10−7 | |
| 168 | MOTHERFUCKER | 3 | 0.02269 | 0 | 26.294 | 2.903 × 10−7 | |
| ANIMAL | 4 | 0.03025 | |||||
| NICE | 5 | 0.03782 | |||||
| DECENT | 3 | 0.03025 | |||||
| PSYCHOPATH | 2 | 0.02156 |
As shown in Table 9, the modifier nice is used by the victims to describe ABZ at the beginning of their relationships with him (lines 2, 5) and is used by ABZ to describe a victim (line 2), a victim’s boobs (line 1), a victim’s smell/hygiene (line 3), and a victim’s bike (line 4). The modifier nice tends to be often used by ABZ to construct an aspect of the victim.
Concordance lines for nice
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | brings a pretty girl like you here’ ‘you have | nice | boobs’ ‘you’re my slut’ I knew where th |
| 2 | to my friends just because I thought he was a | nice | person at the beginning And then he |
| 3 | done. At first he said things like ‘you smell | nice’ | ‘what brings a pretty girl like you he |
| 4 | He came to me and he told me that I have a | nice | bike and asked if he can use it I thoug |
| 5 | e and asked if he can use it I thought he was | nice | , good looking and he wouldn’t do anythi |
The modifier decent is also used to describe ABZ, as shown in Table 10. There is an emphasis on ABZ being decent while describing him in line 1 saying that he looked decent way too decent. It is even accompanied by the modifier gentle in line 4. It is also accompanied by normal in line 3, which stresses the transformation of character that will be encountered later and that can be implied that it was abnormal.
Concordance lines for decent
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | he wouldn’t do anything to me. Ahmed looked | decent | way too decent. And then we walked fo |
| 2 | anything to me. Ahmed looked decent way too | decent | . And then we walked for a bit and exc |
| 3 | about rape talk about first impressions | decent | – normal classmate etc… and then refe |
| 4 | ompound And I went I thought he is gentle and | decent | When he saw me he told me wow u r |
One keyword kisser is used by ABZ, while initiating sex-talk with the victims, to construct himself as a good kisser (lines 1 and 2), and even a great kisser (line 3; Table 11). The expression jumps on the topic of him being a good kisser (line 2) shows how ABZ was over-keen to initiate sex-talk.
Concordance lines for kisser
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | of where he stated that he’s a ‘good | kisser | ’ I am writing |
| 2 | jumps on the topic of him being a good | kisser | , I then just started to ignore his me |
| 3 | he then went on telling me that ‘he’s a great | kisser | ’ and that made me quite uncomfortable |
The image of ABZ as a nice, gentle, and decent man at the beginning of each relationship is reversed as time goes by and he starts his violent sexual advances. Keywords with negative connotations are used to describe or refer to ABZ when victims are subject to his abuse. He is constructed as a rapist and a paedophile (line 1) because many of his victims were under-age girls (Table 12), as an asshole (Table 13), an animal (Table 14), a motherfucker (Table 15), and a psychopath (Table 16).
Concordance lines for rapist
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | and all, it became clear. He’s a paedophile, a | rapist | , and I can’t stand to know he’s still |
| 2 | ke that. I never ever felt that he would be a | rapist | . Anyways we met only once and he trie |
| 3 | his old school in Qatar. He was labeled as a | rapist | since there were rumors going around |
| 4 | nt for my personal safety to discuss the | rapist | Ahmed zaki. While I have thankfully n |
| 5 | rprised by this. However, in the case of this | rapist | , allowing him access to the AUC |
Concordance lines for asshole
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | friend and I. I am so glad you exposed this | asshole | Yes yess he slides in s |
| 2 | o deal with girls. This ahmed zaki | asshole | at first added me on fb and texted m |
| 3 | girls who had the worst experience with this | asshole | . I’m a EU student and unfortunately |
| 4 | en scared of seeing his face ever since. This | asshole | deserves to die. |
| 5 | e I look at myself in the mirror.” I hope the | asshole | get what he deserves. I would show y |
Concordance lines for animal
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Well even don’t know what to say about this | animal | . But first I wanted to say that I’m r |
| 2 | t and unfortunately I had one class with this | animal | . One day we had an exam called mid- |
| 3 | w to explain my horrible experience with this | animal | . This is not my real account I couldn’ |
| 4 | shock people are saying this, this guy is an | animal | !!! I can’t find the account tho, but l |
Concordance lines for motherfucker
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ne how those other girls feel. This | motherfucker | totally tried to get me to trav |
| 2 | IM! I told my bf the story and he texted this | motherfucker | to tell him to back off and sto |
| 3 | ou in case I will. 2 months ago, this | motherfucker | used to be in my class, when |
Concordance lines for psychopath
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | pay for it (I know it sounds dumb but he’s a | psychopath | and made it real serious) he proc |
| 2 | t stay silent either Please be careful he’s a | psychopath | and keep spreading awareness to a |
The expression I never ever felt that he would be a rapist (line 2) stresses how convincing ABZ’s act was in pretending to be a decent man at the outset of each “relationship.” The victim’s reference to her personal safety (line 4) implies her traumatic fear of ABZ which probably started at the time of the sexual abuse and continued afterwards.
The victims’ fear of ABZ is stressed again in line 4 with the expression scared of seeing his face ever since. The victims’ perception of the traumatic experiences they suffered is detected in describing the sexual abuse as the worst experience (line 3), referring to their fear (line 4) and wishing ABZ’s death (line 4) and his punishment (line 5).
Again, the victims’ perception of the traumatic experience is highlighted by describing it as my horrible experience (line 3). The use of animal as a reference term for ABZ is particularly strong because it deprives him of his humanity. This construction stresses the inhumanity and brutality of his actions.
The use of motherfucker as a reference term for ABZ by the girls is quite interesting. It is stereotypically expected of men to use swear words but to have women and, in some cases, under-age girls using these sexualized taboo words so easily is not acceptable in Egyptian culture. It’s interesting that the women victims also seem to have internalized sexualized American slang terms.[25]
The victims’ use of psychopath to frame ABZ stresses their fear of him and whatever harm he can cause to them. This is supported even further by using the expression Please be careful (line 2), which is given as advice while dealing with ABZ, and by highlighting the target of sharing their stories, namely, spreading awareness to protect other girls.
Other negative modifiers are used by the victims to construct ABZ and to reveal the way they perceive his actions and his character, including disgusting (Table 17), creepy (Table 18), and weird (Table 19). The modifier disgusting is used to describe the rumours ABZ used to spread if a victim did not do what he wanted (line 1), ABZ himself (line 3), and his actions (lines 4, 5).
Concordance lines for disgusting
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | I didn’t go out with him then he would spread | disgusting | rumors about me. I kept brushing |
| 2 | nded up trying to flirt with, one of the most | disgusting | being one of my friends that was |
| 3 | ith this guy when I was a freshman and he was | disgusting | ! I elbowed him in the stomach onc |
| 4 | she was I had to interfere and obstruct such | disgusting | action. I broke his car window an |
| 5 | lue and I ranted at him for a while about how | disgusting | that was and how I hoped he would |
Concordance lines for creepy
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | y is that I am quite fortunate to realize how | creepy | he is from the beginning and block hi |
| 2 | als friends between us. At first he wasn’t so | creepy | but he was very flirtatious calling m |
| 3 | in so many girls dm’s I know in such a slimy | creepy | way. Actually a few years ag |
| 4 | alking for days he wasn’t flirty or sexual or | creepy | for few days until he kept asking me |
| 5 | was ‘an easy way to get into my pants’. Very | creepy | . |
Concordance lines for weird
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ept sending more and more then he kept saying | weird | stuff and that he likes me and he want |
| 2 | ll over campus and would stare me down really | weird | . I was deadass so scared and confused |
| 3 | on truecaller after that, he kept sending me | weird | photos of certain places of his body |
| 4 | when we both started talking. He had his own | weird | ways of being manipulative. For exampl |
| 5 | e girls in my grade and texting them starting | weird | conversations before he even came to |
There are some references to physical acts performed by the narrators as defensive strategies against ABZ’s sexual advances: I elbowed him in the stomach (line 3) and I broke his car window (line 4). These are rare cases of victims taking a positive role in self-defence and resisting being the passive recipients of violence as in the majority of cases in the narratives.
While the modifier creepy is used to describe ABZ and his actions (lines 1, 3, 5), it is used in negative constructions (lines 2, 4) to confirm ABZ’s normal behaviour at the beginning of the relationship.
Only one case among all narrators was not comfortable with ABZ from the beginning. She duly describes herself as being lucky: I am quite fortunate to realize how creepy he is (line 1). Again, it is interesting to find another sexualized colloquial expression an easy way to get into my pants (line 5) used by an Egyptian girl. In addition, one victim described ABZ as being very flirtatious (line 2) and stated that she did not find him creepy which gives an impression of a change in the culture of this particular upper class because it is not acceptable in many segments of Egyptian society for men to be flirtatious with women.
Finally, the modifier weird is used to describe ABZ’s conversations (lines 1, 5), his way of staring at victims (line 2), his way of being manipulative (line 4), and the pictures he used to send to his victims during chatting online (line 3).
Victims’ fear is again detectable in I was deadass so scared and confused (line 2), although the use of the word deadass is not stereotypically acceptable by a woman in Egyptian culture. The use of the expression certain places of his body (line 3) instead of being explicit in mentioning which parts is quite common among Egyptian women. This marks a difference in the characters of the victims: some of them are more daring in their language use than others.
It should be noted that labelling ABZ as a rapist, an asshole, an animal, and a psychopath as well as describing him and his behaviour as creepy, disgusting, and weird can be ideological because these labels and modifiers are value-loaded. In other words, they have negative connotations, i.e. a negative meaning attached to a word by virtue of its usage (Jeffries 2006, 229) and construct a kind of person who is bad, abnormal, immoral, and law-breaking. Hence, they are likely to motivate readers to go through a judgemental process and, eventually, take the side of the victims.
The construction of ABZ implicitly contributes to the construction of the victims because, as Jancarikova (2013) and Tabbert (2012) argue, offenders and victims are canonically perceived as binary opposites. As shown in Table 20, keywords include names used to label the victims, including girls, slut, girl, whore, and girlfriend, as well as modifiers used to describe the victims’ feelings about their trauma, namely, scared, uncomfortable, and terrified.
Keywords used for naming and describing the victims
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 | GIRLS | 31 | 0.23446 | 81 | 141.664 | 6.410 × 10−16 | |
| 26 | SLUT | 13 | 0.09832 | 1 | 106.769 | 2.076 × 10−15 | |
| 28 | SCARED | 11 | 0.08319 | 1 | 89.558 | 4.665 × 10−15 | |
| 55 | GIRL | 23 | 0.17395 | 183 | 0.017517 | 62.035 | 3.631 × 10−14 |
| 82 | WHORE | 7 | 0.05294 | 4 | 47.034 | 3.613 × 10−13 | |
| 84 | GIRLFRIEND | 6 | 0.04538 | 1 | 46.872 | 3.751 × 10−13 | |
| 143 | UNCOMFORTABLE | 6 | 0.04538 | 12 | 29.976 | 4.082 × 10−8 | |
| 150 | TERRIFIED | 5 | 0.03782 | 7 | 27.699 | 1.388 × 10−7 |
ABZ constructs his victims using the labels slut (Table 21), whore (Table 22), and girlfriend (Table 23). As shown in the concordances, he uses the degrading labels slut and whore either to insult the victims or to threaten them with destroying their reputations among their contacts.
Concordance lines for slut
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ds. He would call me and tell me that I was a | slut | and that I have to sleep with him and h |
| 2 | utation will be ruined and I’ll be known as a | slut | . He even said he will come to my compou |
| 3 | ould get mad and call us degrading names like | slut | and whore. He did this to a lot of girl |
| 4 | l me into coming to his house. He called me a | slut | and kept trying to pressure me into sen |
| 5 | nships with guys and that I was calling her a | slut | which is obviously not true. He wanted |
| 6 | ep with him he’d tell everyone that she was a | slut | who tried to sleep with him. She isn’t |
| 7 | or I’ll hurt you and tell your friends what a | slut | u are’ he kept making his way down my t |
| 8 | re not different than the other girls. Whore. | slut | ’. I left and I called my mom, I told he |
| 9 | d and all he had to say ‘go to your uncle now | slut | . You’re not different than the other g |
| 10 | Then he left me and told me go off to ur car | slut | or u need my dick to give a ride home I |
| 11 | ke you here’ ‘you have nice boobs’ ‘you’re my | slut | I knew where this was going and I trie |
| 12 | I go to school with, telling them that I am a | slut | and that I should change. He kept black |
| 13 | texted me the next day & he kept calling me a | slut | & a whore. He then told me it’s either |
Concordance lines for whore
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | went to school with and tell them that I’m a | whore | and send them my pictures. He keeps te |
| 2 | calling me a tease, playing hard to get and a | whore | . I met him once at a friend |
| 3 | mad and call us degrading names like slut and | whore | . He did this to a lot of girls at my s |
| 4 | t. The next day he kept telling me that I’m a | whore | and then he told me that it’s either I |
| 5 | . You’re not different than the other girls. | whore | . Slut’. I left and I called my mom, I |
| 6 | the next day & he kept calling me a slut & a | whore | . He then told me it’s either I come ov |
| 7 | e this. I know I’m such a bitch. But you’re a | whore | . And you’re gonna get down on your kne |
Concordance lines for girlfriend
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | you are always on my mind and will you be my | girlfriend | . Many times he tried to convince |
| 2 | ur for me, then a made-up sob story about his | girlfriend | . When I told him no for the milli |
| 3 | them that I’m a predator and I assaulted his | girlfriend | . Shocked about this, I quickly we |
| 4 | s either we start dating & I accept being his | girlfriend | or he’s going to kill himself. Th |
| 5 | telling me en he told his sister that I’m his | girlfriend | w en he wants to introduce me to |
| 6 | e wants to introduce me to his friends as his | girlfriend | a radeit 3aleh be en ehna mesh me |
ABZ’s relation with his victims may be considered as an illustration of what is known as the Madonna–whore complex,[26] which divides women into either saints or sluts. This accounts for ABZ’s violence with the victims, his tendency to label them as “sluts” and “whores,” and also for his inclination to force them to perform the kind of sexual acts that can be framed as implicitly humiliating acts that only bad women would take part in. The Madonna–whore complex is clear in lines 8 and 9: You’re not different than the other girls. Whore. Slut. ABZ’s sexual advances can then be framed as tests of girls to check whether they are “sluts” or “saints.” Line 9 implies that ABZ has a deep-rooted concept that all girls are sluts and he uses manipulative ways and even violence to prove this idea and validate his obsession.
The Madonna–whore complex is further revealed in ABZ’s description of a victim’s resistance to his sexual advances as playing hard to get and insistence that she was a whore (line 2). It is also maintained in ABZ calling his victim a slut and whore on the next day after their sexual encounter (line 6).
As for the label girlfriend, ABZ either asks a victim to be his girlfriend (lines 1, 4) or to tell people that she is his girlfriend (lines 5, 6). Line 2 presents one of the ways ABZ entices his victims at the beginning of a relationship by telling them stories about him being victimized by an ex-girlfriend. Line 3 is a part of the narrative of the only male victim in the corpus. He is a young Canadian man who was a fellow student of ABZ at the The American University in Cairo (AUC), who, when he left for his country, ABZ accused of being a sexual harasser and tried to ruin his reputation.
Table 23 shows other examples of “translanguaging.” There is a use of some Arabic expressions including w [and] and en [that] in line 5, and the Arabic structure radeit 3aleh be en ehna mesh me…. [I answered him that we are not [together]] (line 6).
Conversely, the modifiers uncomfortable (Table 24), scared (Table 25), and terrified (Table 26) are used by the victims. These modifiers provide readers with access to the inner feelings of the victims. In line 1, uncomfortable is used to justify a victim’s deletion of the evidence for her story, her chat with ABZ. Lines 2, 3, 5, and 6 describe victims being uncomfortable about ABZ’s sexual advances. Line 4 is the only instance of the word used by ABZ while threatening a victim to expose their sexual encounter to her father.
Concordance lines for uncomfortable
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | however I deleted the chat because I felt | uncomfortable | , however I still have one scre |
| 2 | things that is not normal (touching), I felt | uncomfortable | and wanted to leave. He kept b |
| 3 | mailed and sexually harassed me and me so | uncomfortable | for a very long time I never t |
| 4 | talk to me about my dad. And that he was | uncomfortable | doing that And he called me to |
| 5 | eg you don’t. I am being honest. Yeah it’s just | uncomfortable | Why? Never kissed a guy before |
| 6 | ‘he’s a great kisser’ and that made me quite | uncomfortable | Knowing I don’t know this guy |
Concordance lines for scared
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | thing and she blocked him. Or post it I’m not | scared | of him anymore. A week ago I was at my |
| 2 | it was at night and there was no one, I felt | scared | and he tried to do more things but th |
| 3 | hreatened to blackmail of us. I was genuinely | scared | of him I was only 13,14 at the time I |
| 4 | t impressions then realization culture – | scared | to share or reveal identity ill |
| 5 | and deactivated all my social media BCs I was | scared | of him doing anything to my accounts |
| 6 | stare me down really weird. I was deadass so | scared | and confused of what he was doing bec |
| 7 | hell. I blocked him everywhere and have been | scared | of seeing his face ever since. This a |
| 8 | e were alone in a compound and I was honestly | scared | for my life. I didn’t know what to do |
| 9 | My friend knew this guy as well. She’s | scared | to share the story so I asked her for |
| 10 | PLEASE KEEP ME ANONYMOUS!!! I am still | scared | . Bb I had 2 classes with t |
| 11 | f they could move me schools because I was so | scared | . He sent me a photoshopped nude of me |
Concordance lines for terrified
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | nd we sat down. I can’t express how much I was | terrified | on what he could’ve done. At first |
| 2 | isted my arm, I have no words to describe how | terrified | I was. He then said yala emshy bes |
| 3 | l kidnap her something like that I was so | terrified | that I did meet up with him out of |
| 4 | t there believes me because no one did. I was | terrified | . I didn’t love him I loved the idea |
| 5 | & the video of us being in his bedroom. I was | terrified | . I didn’t know what to do he broke |
The Madonna–whore complex is detected again with ABZ’s wondering about the girl being uncomfortable with his sexual advances: Why? Never kissed a guy before (line 5), showing how, for ABZ, it was taken for granted that all girls had prior sexual experiences.
As shown in Tables 25 and 26, all the uses of scared and terrified have the victims as actors in the agent position. They are used to describe the victims’ feelings during the process of being sexually assaulted and after.
The victims’ fear of ABZ is detected in many settings: during the sexual abuse itself (lines 2, 6, 8), after the abuse and during his blackmail and slander (lines 3, 5, 7, 11), and after the spread of the whole issue (1, 4, 9, 10). The victims are not just scared of ABZ, but they are also scared of the judgemental culture of their community. Hence, they stress the necessity of hiding their identities (4, 10).
The modifier terrified is used in most cases to describe the victims’ feelings during the sexually abusive event itself (lines 1, 2, 5). In line 3, terrified is used as a reaction to ABZ’s threats. There is another case of “translanguaging” in Table 26 in the use of the Arabic structure yala emshy [Go ahead, leave] (line 2).
4.3 Constructing the whole process of rape THROUGH “predication”
To shed light on how the events in the narratives are constructed and convey the experiences of these victims of sexual abuse, all processes in the keywords were extracted and classified using Halliday’s transitivity model (Simpson 2004). The transitivity model “assigns lexical verbs to a number of different categories, according to the kind of process or state they appear to be describing” (Jeffries 2010, 40). These categories include material (processes of doing), verbalization (processes of saying), mental (processes of sensing), and relational processes (processes of being) (Simpson 2004, 22–24).
The mental and relational processes identified in the keywords were discussed above in the section on perspectivation. As for verbalization processes in the keyword list, they include told, asked, talk, and tell (Table 27).
Verbalization processes in the keyword list
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | TOLD | 72 | 0.54455 | 373 | 0.03570 | 246.807 | 8.301 × 10−17 |
| 54 | ASKED | 33 | 0.24958 | 425 | 0.04068 | 62.805 | 3.347 × 10−14 |
| 104 | TALK | 17 | 0.12857 | 172 | 0.01646 | 39.024 | 6.308 × 10−12 |
| 146 | TELL | 18 | 0.13614 | 278 | 0.02661 | 29.085 | 6.635 × 10−8 |
Material processes in particular are quite important for the purposes of this article. They were extracted from the keyword list, as shown in Table 28, and examined focusing specifically on the activity or passivity of the participants.
Material processes in the keyword list
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | KEPT | 66 | 0.49917 | 132 | 0.01264 | 330.019 | 3.084 × 10−17 |
| 14 | TRIED | 39 | 0.29496 | 138 | 0.01321 | 158.708 | 4.125 × 10−16 |
| 15 | TEXTED | 18 | 0.13614 | 0 | 157.783 | 4.218 × 10−16 | |
| 17 | BLOCKED | 21 | 0.15883 | 8 | 150.123 | 5.109 × 10−16 | |
| 24 | STARTED | 33 | 0.24958 | 174 | 0.01666 | 112.047 | 1.683 × 10−15 |
| 76 | WENT | 32 | 0.24202 | 517 | 0.04949 | 49.504 | 2.147 × 10−13 |
| 80 | KISS | 10 | 0.07563 | 24 | 47.060 | 3.591 × 10−13 | |
| 83 | SUCK | 7 | 0.05294 | 4 | 47.034 | 3.613 × 10−13 | |
| 85 | HARASSED | 6 | 0.04538 | 1 | 46.872 | 3.751 × 10−13 | |
| 99 | GO | 34 | 0.25715 | 666 | 0.06375 | 42.788 | 1.179 × 10−12 |
| 109 | THREATENED | 10 | 0.07563 | 42 | 37.793 | 1.466 × 10−11 | |
| 111 | STOP | 15 | 0.11345 | 137 | 0.01311 | 36.981 | 3.019 × 10−11 |
| 128 | BLACKMAIL | 4 | 0.03782 | 3 | 33.314 | 4.916 × 10−9 | |
| 131 | CONVINCE | 6 | 0.04538 | 10 | 31.670 | 1.534 × 10−8 | |
| 138 | RUIN | 5 | 0.03782 | 5 | 30.086 | 3.839 × 10−8 | |
| 140 | ASSAULTED | 4 | 0.03025 | 1 | 30.080 | 3.854 × 10−8 | |
| 141 | HARASS | 4 | 0.03025 | 1 | 30.080 | 3.854 × 10−8 | |
| 152 | SEND | 11 | 0.08319 | 98 | 27.574 | 1.483 × 10−7 | |
| 160 | FUCKED | 3 | 0.02269 | 0 | 26.294 | 2.903 × 10−7 | |
| 165 | MESSAGED | 3 | 0.02269 | 0 | 26.294 | 2.903 × 10−7 | |
| 180 | GRABBED | 5 | 0.03782 | 11 | 24.226 | 8.539 × 10−7 | |
| 181 | RAPE | 2 | 0.037821 | 11 | 24.226 | 8.539 × 10−7 |
The material processes were divided into three groups based on their semantic domain: a group related to sexual activities, another related to online harassment, and finally, a group related to communication via social media.
4.3.1 Processes related to sexual activities
This group includes the processes kiss, suck, harassed, assaulted, harass, fucked, and rape. In almost all the concordances, the material process kiss has the pronoun he referring to ABZ as the actor and the pronoun me referring to the victims as the goal. Exceptions include reported speech cases in which ABZ asks the victim to kiss him: line 1 (let me kiss you), line 2 (loosen up kiss me), and line 10 (I wanna kiss you). Also, in line 7, a victim reports that ABZ asked her to kiss him (he started asking me to kiss him).
As revealed in the concordances, kissing is accompanied by other sexual advances: He proceeded to grab my thighs (line 3), he tried to force me to suc[k] (line 4), and touch me (line 5). In one incident, it is accompanied, although, by a victim’s crying (line 6). Translanguaging is also present in line 9: ‘d ma a3adna keter nekalem w keda, he tried to kiss me ghasb 3any w lama kont bab2a mashya’ [[after] we sat for a long time talking and stuff like that. He tried to kiss me against my will. And when I was trying to leave …], and line 10: ‘2a3ad y2olaha ur so hot w muzza w I wanna kiss you and make you go crazy w heya 8byaa’ [He continued to tell her “You are so hot, and a very sexy woman, and I want to kiss you and make you crazy.” And she was stupid].
The use of quotation marks, as shown in Table 29 and elsewhere in the narratives, marks the strategy of perspectivization to make it clear to readers that these are the exact words by ABZ being reported to them. This device adds to the credibility of the stories.
Concordance lines for kiss
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | tough act and loosen up’ ‘kiss me’ ‘let me | kiss | you’ and I kept on saying no but he did |
| 2 | ‘just give up the tough act and loosen up’ ‘ | kiss | me’ ‘let me kiss you’ and I kept on say |
| 3 | dn’t stop. He proceeded to grab my thighs and | kiss | me, I’m sorry this is very hard to writ |
| 4 | the red flags. When we first met, he tried to | kiss | me and then he tried to force me to suc |
| 5 | ead he is fucking dead’ And after he tried to | kiss | me and touch me in his car, btw I went |
| 6 | my life. I didn’t know what to do. I let him | kiss | me and continued crying. It didn’t stop |
| 7 | be open minded… Then he started asking me to | kiss | him, going back to the same flirting. I |
| 8 | e then stopped at a parking lot & he tried to | kiss | me. I kept pushing him away several tim |
| 9 | d ma a3adna keter nekalem w keda, he tried to | kiss | me ghasb 3any w lama kont bab2a mashya |
| 10 | aya 2a3ad y2olaha ur so hot w muzza w I wanna | kiss | you and make you go crazy w heya 8byaa |
The material process suck has my c**k as the goal or me in reported speech where ABZ requests the victims to do this action for him (lines 1, 4, 5). It has the goal as him in the victims’ accounts of how he forced, made, or threatened them to do this action (lines 2, 3, 6, 7) (Table 30).
Concordance lines for suck
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | for me to shut up about it. So, are you gonna | suck | my c**k or should I tell your sister. A |
| 2 | d to kiss me and then he tried to force me to | suck | him off. Keep in mind, I was 14 at the |
| 3 | force himself into me and told me if I didn’t | suck | him off he would tell my dad that I was |
| 4 | . And you’re gonna get down on your knees and | suck | my c**k for me to shut up about it. So, |
| 5 | nipples Then he took off his pants and told me | suck | me off little bitch. He raped me but not |
| 6 | He then decided to pin me down and to make me | suck | him off. However, I got away since one |
| 7 | kept resisting him. He then tried to make me | suck | him off again, yet I managed to push hi |
It is worth noting that the process suck is associated by subjecting the victims to physical force: he tried to force me (line 2), force himself into me (line 3), decided to pin me down and to make me (line 6), and tried to make me (line 7); and/or blackmailing them: or should I tell your sister (line 1), he would tell my dad (line 3), for me to shut up about it (line 4). In only one case does a victim construct herself as an active agent showing her resistance kept resisting him and I managed to push [him] (line 7).
The process harassed has the pronoun he (referring to ABZ) as the actor in all the concordance lines. It has the pronoun me (lines 1, 2, 3, 4), my friend (line 5), and one of my best friends (line 6) in the goal slot. The process also has the adverb modifiers sexually (lines 2, 4, 5) and verbally (line 6) to mark the two types of harassment ABZ indulged in.
It should be noted that Table 31 also has an example of translanguaging dah mor3b [he is terrifying] which is used by one victim to describe ABZ.
Concordance lines for harassed
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | …. and I in high school. And he | harassed | me and many other girls. He was rep |
| 2 | to say that he also blackmailed and sexually | harassed | me and me so uncomfortable for a ve |
| 3 | end up in prison’ dah mor3b he | harassed | me, my sister, and my friends. He t |
| 4 | ime to leave. This guy … he sexually | harassed | me and forced himself on me!! He al |
| 5 | OMG same thing happened he sexually | harassed | my friend and I. I am so glad you |
| 6 | Qatar’ that year. He verbally | harassed | one of my best friends and threaten |
The process assaulted is used in passive constructions in lines 1 and 3 whereby ABZ is the doer of the action (assaulted by him). In line 2, the role of actor is occupied by the pronoun I (referring to the Canadian guy accused by ABZ of being a sexual predator) and the goal is occupied by the noun phrase his girlfriend (with his in this construction to be interpreted as referring to ABZ) (Table 32).
Concordance lines for assaulted
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ahmed zaki. While I have thankfully not been | assaulted | by him, I have seen him sitting in |
| 2 | ly and telling them that I’m a predator and I | assaulted | his girlfriend. Shocked about this |
| 3 | ing me home. I know someone who got | assaulted | by him twice and he kept nagging h |
| 4 | e kept nagging her for nudes. Yo HE | assaulted | ME WHEN I WAS 15 fucking years old |
Again, the use of the sexualized taboo swear word in the structure I WAS 15 fucking years (line 4) is not stereotypically acceptable in Egyptian culture and particularly so when uttered by a girl.
As mentioned above with harassed, the process harass also has the pronoun he (referring to ABZ) as the actor in all concordance lines. The goal is occupied by the pronoun me (lines 1, 2, 4) and women (line 3). The process is modified by the adverb verbally in line 1.
Translanguaging is also detected in Table 33: the use of w [and] and the structure he tried to harass me abl keda aktar men mara [he tried to harass me before more than once] (line 4).
Concordance lines for harass
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ested but he didn’t care. He used to verbally | harass | me saying how pretty I was and how I |
| 2 | anyone anything, oh he also used to call and | harass | me at horrible times like 3 am etc… l |
| 3 | areas which are unguarded and often empty and | harass | women. Moreover, I’d like to note tha |
| 4 | ally know him, he’s my neighbor w he tried to | harass | me abl keda aktar men mara w literall |
As shown in Table 34, fucked is used as a material process in line 2 (he fucked me anal) and as a past-participle adjective in line 1 (how fucked he is) and line 3 (get fucked).
Concordance lines for fucked
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | but that wasn’t enough for him to realize how | fucked | he is. Anyways I went back to my frie |
| 2 | h He raped me but not the normal thing But he | fucked | me anal Which’s really dangerous And |
| 3 | en I kept crying really hard He told me u get | fucked | or killed It’s ur choice It’s up to u |
The process is used only once by ABZ (line 3) in a threatening manner to the victim telling her that she should either accept having sexual intercourse with him or she would be killed. The other occurrences of the word fucked are used by the victims, which is again not stereotypically acceptable in Egyptian culture, particularly by a woman.
The process rape is used once with the pronoun he (referring to ABZ) as the actor and the pronoun me (referring to one of the victims) as the goal (line 1). Line 2, on the other hand, has the pronoun they (referring to ABZ’s group) (Table 35).
Concordance lines for rape
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | iends home and I went over there. He tried to | rape | me and then I quickly left. The next da |
| 2 | saulting His whole friend group They drug and | rape | girls. He texted my friends older sister |
The process grabbed, as shown in Table 36, belongs to the semantic domain of violence but, in the corpus, it is always associated with ABZ’s sexual advances. It has the pronoun he (referring to ABZ) as the actor in all concordance lines and the pronoun me (lines 1, 2, 3), my hair (line 4), and my neck (line 5) as the goal. When the goal position is filled with the pronoun me, the place which is grabbed is always defined: by my waist (line 1), by the waist (line 2), and by my arm (line 3).
Concordance lines for grabbed
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ck to my friends and he followed me there, he | grabbed | me by my waist in front of my friend |
| 2 | hint that something was wrong. He came back, | grabbed | me by the waist AGAIN and said ‘we w |
| 3 | ed). That day he followed us to that spot and | grabbed | me by my arm, and when I looked at h |
| 4 | leave and managed to get out of his room. He | grabbed | my hair and threw me on the floor. H |
| 5 | kept kissing me and leaning in closer till he | grabbed | my neck and told me not to provok |
In addition to grabbed, the use of the processes assaulted, fucked, and rape convey to readers a sense of ABZ’s use of violence on the victims.
4.3.2 Processes related to online harassment
This group, which relates to the semantic domain of threat and blackmail, includes the processes threatened and blackmail. As shown in Table 37, the pronoun he, referring to ABZ, is used as the actor in all concordance lines. The goal position is occupied by me (lines 3, 6, 7, 10), us (line 1), and her (line 9). Other lines do not have a participant as the goal but have an infinitive reflecting what ABZ threatens to do: to tell my whole family (line 2), to blackmail (line 4), to physically hurt me (line 5), and to spread more shit (line 8).
Concordance lines for threatened
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | When her & I tried to get revenge from him he | threatened | us by saying that he’s going to su |
| 2 | really angry and called me so many names. He | threatened | to tell my whole family and all m |
| 3 | He dmed me, sent me unsolicited nudes then | threatened | me to share my ‘fake nudes’ if I |
| 4 | he harassed me, my sister, and my friends. He | threatened | to blackmail of us. I was genuine |
| 5 | ced we were dating and I tried to dump him he | threatened | to physically hurt me if I try to |
| 6 | im shaking right now. He threatens people. He | threatened | me to call me parents and tell th |
| 7 | cause am not a therapist or anything. He then | threatened | me and told me if I didn’t meet [ |
| 8 | also spread some rumours about us dating and | threatened | to spread more shit about our ‘re |
| 9 | verbally harassed one of my best friends and | threatened | her. She was 13 and he was 17/18. |
| 10 | too young, and when I tried to cut him off he | threatened | me that he’s gonna kill me and I |
The actor of the process blackmail, in Table 38, is also occupied by ABZ: he (lines 1, 2) and this person (line 4). The goal slot is filled by us (line 1) and me (lines 2, 4). In line 3, blackmail is used as a noun not as a process.
Concordance lines for blackmail
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | , my sister, and my friends. He threatened to | blackmail | of us. I was genuinely scared of h |
| 2 | s, area where I live, school name) to try and | blackmail | me into coming to his house. He |
| 3 | t it and he got all defensive. He deleted his | blackmail | and messages to make it look like |
| 4 | nts to see me again. This person continued to | blackmail | me for days that made my life a fu |
The process ruin is used in the context of blackmail because ABZ threatens to ruin his victims’ lives and their relations with others. The goal of the process is my life (line 1), your lives (line 2), my friendship (line 3), and my reputation (line 4). In line 1, the victim is scared that ABZ will manage to convince her relations of the truth of the false things being said about her which would eventually ruin her life. In line 2, the victim is reporting ABZ’s threat to her and her friends that “I’ll photoshop your faces and ruin your lives.” In line 3, the victim reflects that ABZ wants to ruin her friendship with her best friend. Line 4, on the other hand, has ABZ lamenting that a group of people wanted to ruin his reputation while he was innocent (Table 39).
Concordance lines for ruin
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ther make his own or convince them enough to | ruin | my life even if you don’t end up in prison |
| 2 | cent. He’s like I’ll photoshop your faces And | ruin | your lives. |
| 3 | lut which is obviously not true. He wanted to | ruin | my friendship with one of my bestfriend |
| 4 | ike ana ma3amaltesh haga takhayali they wanna | ruin | my reputation. |
| 5 | ced by his older brother I also don’t want to | ruin | his brother’s reputation. |
An example of “translanguaging” is used in line 4 with the Arabic structure: ana ma3amaltesh haga takhayali [I did not do anything. Imagine].
4.3.3 Processes related to communication via social media
This group includes the processes texted, blocked, send, and messaged. The process texted, shown in Table 40, has ABZ as the actor in almost all concordance lines expressed with the pronoun he (lines 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18), this guy (lines 3, 9), his name followed by asshole (line 6), and his first name (line 17). The agent position is occupied by a victim in line 7 with the subject I referring to the victim who texted ABZ to ask him why he did this to her specifically and by a victim’s boyfriend texting to ask ABZ not to bother the victim (line 11). ABZ occupies the goal position in these two cases. In the rest of the concordances, the goal is occupied by the victims or their relations: the former expressed by the pronoun me (lines 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 16, 17, 18) and the latter expressed by my friends (lines 5, 14), my best friend (line 3), her boyfriend (line 8), every single person (line 13), and my friend (line 15).
Concordance lines for texted
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | I deleted all my chats with Ahmed Zaki But he | texted | me too and kept trying to convince me |
| 2 | interested. Then the morning of the party he | texted | me again and asked if I was coming wi |
| 3 | h Ahmed Zaki, I live in El Gouna and this guy | texted | my best friend and I however my best |
| 4 | o creep on her, but he ended up texting me. He | texted | me multiple times on Instagram and I |
| 5 | hole friend group. They drug and rape girls. He | texted | my friend’s older sister from many dif |
| 6 | hmed zaki asshole at first added me on fb and | texted | me. I only answered cuz I found mutua |
| 7 | nd blocked him off my social media w kolo w I | texted | a few weeks ago cause I wanted to kno |
| 8 | should leave her boyfriend but she didn’t. he | texted | her boyfriend and told him that she w |
| 9 | trying to sleep with him. This guy | texted | me out of nowhere idk aslun gab my |
| 10 | me. I refused then we both broke up. He later | texted | me telling me that his friends taped |
| 11 | EVEN KNOW HIM! I told my bf the story and he | texted | this motherfucker to tell him to back |
| 12 | that I was wrong bas once again, I was 14. He | texted | me the next day & he kept calling me |
| 13 | I insisted that I won’t have sex with him. He | texted | every single person I go to school wi |
| 14 | I was already weirded out by him because he’d | texted | my friends before coming so I just bl |
| 15 | I asked why and I then discovered that he had | texted | my friend. He even requested my siste |
| 16 | or raising this awareness. He | texted | me too in May. I don’t even know how |
| 17 | Hi hope all is good, Ahmed basically | texted | me initiating a conversation about an |
| 18 | sharm where I live. A couple of days later he | texted | me again asking me why girls always b |
An example of “translanguaging” can be found in the use of the Arabic structure w kolo [and all] in line 7 and idk aslun gab [I do not know basically where he got [my number]]. The use of abbreviations like IDK is quite common in chatting and messaging.
After being verbally or physically abused by ABZ, the victims tend to end their relations with him using the blocking function characteristic of mobile phones and social media apps. It is no wonder that the actor in all concordance lines for the process blocked is always occupied by the victims expressed by the pronoun I (lines 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21), girls (line 4), my friend (line 8), and she (lines 9, 16, 19). Note that in the concordance lines where the actor is occupied by my friend or she, the first-person narrator of the story is not the victim herself but a friend of hers reporting the victim’s story with ABZ. The goal position in most concordances is occupied by the third-person object pronoun him referring to ABZ (lines 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21) or the possessive structure his number (ABZ’s phone number) (lines 1, 12). It should be noted that in line 17 blocked is not used as a process but as a participial adjective modifying the victim’s contact list.
There are many examples of “translanguaging” in Table 41: awsalek w msh di nemret mamtek w msh 3arfa eh I blocked him w fedel ycall me idk gab nemret [I can get to you. Isn’t this your mother’s number? And something like that. I blocked him but he continued to call me. I don’t know from where he got my number] (line 10), w lazem hashoofek tany [And I must see you again] (line 12), w meshyt [And I left] (line 14), babaha geh w hwa akeed gery 3shan babaha [Her father came and sure he ran away because of her father] (line 16), 3amaltelo block w I still have his number kn my blocked list 3ala wp [I blocked him and I still have his number. It was on my blocked list on WhatsApp] (line 17), 3ady khales w kan beyo3od yeb3atlaha fa she blocked him mn kol heta [It was quite normal he continued to send her things, so she blocked him everywhere] (line 19). Note that the use of ycall (line 10) which presents a blend of the Egyptian enclitic “y” which marks a progressive case and the English verb “call.” This blend is currently quite common in Egyptian Colloquial to mark a progressive action. Note also the expression 3amaltelo block [I blocked him] marks the borrowing of the term from the English language, which is also quite common in Egyptian Colloquial.
Concordance lines for blocked
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | to pay for all his action. When I | blocked | his number he called me from other a |
| 2 | f protecting their reputation. Right before I | blocked | him he was trying to force sex calls |
| 3 | er. I told him not to speak to me anymore and | blocked | him. He then spent weeks getting peo |
| 4 | he texted me again asking me why girls always | blocked | him so I asked why and I then discov |
| 5 | friend and I however my best friend instantly | blocked | him so he didn’t get the chance to c |
| 6 | es (I didn’t) then he got angry and said if I | blocked | him he’d find out where I live and s |
| 7 | ile and I was literally traumatized. Anyway I | blocked | him and deactivated all my social me |
| 8 | ysically hurt me if I try to leave, my friend | blocked | him off my social media w kolo w I t |
| 9 | came to my room I told her everything and she | blocked | him. Or post it I’m not scared of hi |
| 10 | awsalek w msh di nemret mamtek w msh 3arfa eh I | blocked | him w fedel ycall me idk gab nemret |
| 11 | me wanting me to go over to his house! When I | blocked | him, he made other accounts adding m |
| 12 | , w lazem hashoofek tany. Right when I left I | blocked | his number so he wouldn’t have |
| 13 | he’d be better. I told him to fuck off and | blocked | him… I will try to find the screensh |
| 14 | ed uber w meshyt w I didn’t reply again and I | blocked | him. |
| 15 | for days that made my life a fucking hell. I | blocked | him everywhere and have been scared |
| 16 | babaha geh w hwa akeed gery 3shan babaha she | blocked | him everywhere He’s older than her* |
| 17 | 3amaltelo block w I still have his number kn my | blocked | list 3ala wp |
| 18 | ow I hoped he wouldn’t do that to others then | blocked | him. |
| 19 | k 3ady khales w kan beyo3od yeb3atlaha fa she | blocked | him mn kol heta so when he lost hope |
| 20 | e’d texted my friends before coming so I just | blocked | him as soon as he tried hahaha |
| 21 | nd he wants me in his house but I refused and | blocked | him immediately (please spread this) |
In relation to this group of processes, other keywords also relate to the context of social media and communication (Table 42). This is because most events involving ABZ and the victims include communication by phones or social media apps.
Keywords relating to communication and social media
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32 | TEXTING | 10 | 0.07563 | 0 | 87.651 | 5.180 × 10−15 | |
| 49 | MESSAGES | 12 | 0.09076 | 16 | 67.342 | 2.158 × 10−14 | |
| 60 | 7 | 0.05294 | 0 | 61.354 | 3.909 × 10−14 | ||
| 72 | 6 | 0.04538 | 0 | 52.589 | 1.245 × 10−13 | ||
| 98 | SCREENSHOTS | 5 | 0.03782 | 0 | 43.824 | 8.438 × 10−13 | |
| 119 | 4 | 0.03025 | 0 | 35.059 | 6.742 × 10−10 | ||
| 124 | CHAT | 6 | 0.04538 | 7 | 34.820 | 6.916 × 10−10 | |
| 147 | PHONE | 9 | 0.06807 | 53 | 28.854 | 7.512 × 10−8 |
Most of the material processes discussed above have ABZ as the active agent and the victims as the passive objects being acted upon, except in the case of the process blocked which can be seen as a kind of defensive strategy performed only by the victims.
4.4 Body parts and items of clothing in the context of rape/sexual harassment
References to various body parts and items of clothing are expected to occur in the context of rape and/or sexual harassment. A number of keywords referring to body parts and items of clothing were detected in the keyword list, Table 43.
Body parts and items of clothing
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 62 | PANTS | 9 | 0.06807 | 5 | 60.762 | 4.174 × 10−14 | |
| 116 | BOOBS | 4 | 0.03025 | 0 | 35.059 | 6.742 × 10−10 | |
| 139 | THIGHS | 4 | 0.03025 | 1 | 30.079 | 3.854 × 10−8 | |
| HANDS | 5 | 0.03782 | |||||
| DICK | 3 | 0.02269 |
The clothing item pants (trousers) is mentioned nine times in the corpus either as part of the victim’s clothing (x 7) or ABZ’s (x 2). There is a reference to ABZ pushing down (line 3) or taking off (line 6) his pants. The concordance lines reveal ABZ’s sexual advances while trying to get into (lines 1, 2), making his way down (lines 4, 7), taking off (line 8), or unbuttoning (lines 5, 9) the victim’s pants (Table 44).
Concordance lines for pants
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | nd that was probably his way of getting in my | pants | , but I obviously rejected since I bare |
| 2 | iend if there was ‘an easy way to get into my | pants | ’. Very creepy. |
| 3 | s and would grab my hand and push it down his | pants | whenever we were alone. He’d force my |
| 4 | chy places and tried to put his hands down my | pants | and would grab my hand and push it dow |
| 5 | on my thighs, he then started to unbutton my | pants | and slipping his hand into my underwea |
| 6 | t in touching my nipples. Then he took off his | pants | and told me suck me off little bitch H |
| 7 | and crying, and he was making his way down my | pants | . I kept saying no and I tried to get o |
| 8 | crying, while begging him to stop. He took my | pants | off and he tried to touch me, yet I ke |
| 9 | r and threw me on the floor. He unbuttoned my | pants | and I was shaking and crying and I alw |
In texts about sexual violence, body parts are relevant to the material processes whether they are those of the victim or the abuser. ABZ physically harasses the victims through grabbing (line 3) or groping (line 4) their boobs (breasts). He also verbally harasses his victims either by praising their boobs (line 1) or asking what size they are (line 2) (Table 45).
Concordance lines for boobs
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | s a pretty girl like you here’ ‘you have nice | boobs | ‘you’re my slut’ I knew where this wa |
| 2 | r that he saw once, and asked me what size my | boobs | were … I ignored it, and asked one of |
| 3 | way But nothing changes He started to grab my | boobs | then I started to scream really loud A |
| 4 | lly kissed me and then he started to grope my | boobs | while I kept begging him to stop since |
Another example of a sexualized Western slang expression can be found in the use of the word “boobs.” The word “boobs” is an informal, slang term for “breasts” in both American and British English. It is expected that ABZ would use the term as in line 1 and 2. However, the concordances show that the women also use it to talk about him touching their breasts (lines 3, 4). A female native English speaker would be more likely to use the more formal term “breasts” in the context of reporting abuse.
The references to the victims’ thighs describe the sequence of actions through which the sexual abuse occurred with ABZ grabbing (line 1), making his way down (line 2), or moving his hands on (lines 3, 4) the victim’s thighs (Table 46).
Concordance lines for thighs
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | o but he didn’t stop. He proceeded to grab my | thighs | and kiss me, I’m sorry this is very h |
| 2 | a slut u are’ he kept making his way down my | thighs | and that’s when I had this feeling to |
| 3 | hurt me. He moved his hands down till my | thighs | and kept swaying his hands up and dow |
| 4 | and kept swaying his hands up and down on my | thighs | , he then started to unbutton my pants |
The use of hands also relates to the sequence of actions through which the sexual abuse occurred. As in Table 47, ABZ uses his hand to restrain his victim leaving a scar on her body (line 1), to get his hand down the victim’s pants (lines 2), to move down her thighs (lines 3, 5). In these cases, ABZ’s hands are typically constructed as the active agent in the abuse process. On the other hand, when the victim’s hands are mentioned (line 4), they are being held at her back, being restrained to keep her still, showing her disempowerment and physical entrapment.
Concordance lines for hands
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | eld me so strong I still have a scar from his | hands | . I no longer have proof but |
| 2 | ook me to sketchy places and tried to put his | hands | down my pants and would grab my hand a |
| 3 | ands down till my thighs and kept swaying his | hands | up and down on my thighs, he then star |
| 4 | He pulled my t shirt to my mouth and holed my | hands | to my back Then took off my t shirt An |
| 5 | ovoke him or he’ll hurt me. He moved his | hands | down till my thighs and kept swaying h |
Concordance lines for dick
| N | Concordance | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | dat But after a while of talking he sent me a | dick | pic on snapchat out of the blue and I r |
| 2 | 2af waraya yelza2 feya also I almost felt his | dick | begad, and I immediately ordered uber w |
| 3 | nd told me go off to ur car slut or u need my | dick | to give you a ride home I couldn’t even wal |
Finally, the word dick is used in the corpus three times: ABZ tended to send pictures of his aroused penis to his victims (line 1); one of the victims mentioned that ABZ had an erection while touching her from behind (line 2); and, in a conversation between ABZ and one of his victims, after raping her anally, he shouted at her to leave and drive home and insulted her saying “or u need my dick to give you a ride home,” which may be taken as a metaphor for orgasm (Table 48).
5 Conclusion
The analysis has revealed the way ABZ, his actions, and his victims are constructed in the narratives through examining the keywords and their concordances in the light of the discursive strategies of perspectivation, nomination, and predication. The narratives reflect the perspective of the victims of sexual abuse and/or harassment. They were presented as factual accounts of real-life incidents between the narrators (or their friends in some cases) and the sexual predator (ABZ). Hence, they tend to be more convincing for readers and encourage them to identify and sympathize with the victims. The nomination of ABZ reflects his manipulativeness and ability to lure many victims, being described as a nice normal person at the beginning of a relationship and then as a creepy, abnormal criminal after the narrator has been abused by him whether verbally or physically. Examining the predication strategies sheds light on the transitivity patterns in the narratives. All the material processes detected in the narratives tend to construct the male abuser as the active agent and the female victims as acted upon. The mental processes, on the other hand, give access to the victims’ inner feelings and perception, and hence, motivate readers even more to identify and sympathize with the victims.
This study has tackled a very sensitive issue and explored a kind of narrative probably never seen in Egypt before. In a culture of patriarchy and conservatism, Egyptian women have been silenced in relation to any kind of sexual abuse they are subject to because the tendency to blame the victim has been all too common in Egypt over the years. In the meantime, they have actively combatted sexual harassment through self-empowering social groups in an attempt to create a collective social resistance and challenge existing understandings of gender roles and behaviours (Abdelaal 2021). The spread of these narratives on social media, however, has given more power to the cause and is likely to cause a change in Egyptian culture. It ushers in a new beginning of a stronger resistance of women against sexual violence done by men, even though the shaming they may receive from families still presumably happens. This has already started with 10 girls among the victims filing official complaints against ABZ to the Prosecution Council.[27] Their initiative can be seen as a result of the power of social media which were flooded with allegations against ABZ, urging girls to come forward and speak out. In a very short time, the situation has developed and expanded even more widely with many girls and women posting stories and videos about their experiences of sexual harassment and assault.[28] The courage of Egyptian women to recount on social media stories about being exposed to sexual assault reflects what Klosterman described as “the heart of the concept of breaking silence really seems to be illuminating community denial and creating a context of true freedom of speech for women, of true self-presentation” (Klosterman 1997, 247).
What Egypt is currently witnessing, at the time of writing, can be considered a shift in culture, with a growing public awareness of the nature of the problem and a tendency not to blame the victim but rather to encourage women and girls to expose all incidents of sexual harassment and/or assault. This current awakening and movement of Egyptian women, encouraged by social media, has pushed for a change in the legal system in relation to sexual and gender-based violence. The Egyptian Penal Code has always criminalized rape which involves a “non-consensual penile penetration by a man of a woman’s vagina” (El-Rifae 2014) and includes penalties that can extend to execution for this crime. Other forms of sexual crime, however, did not receive the same strong penalties. An amendment to the Egyptian Penal Code in 2014 defined and criminalized sexual harassment and increased penalties for other sex crimes. This amendment was welcomed by the Egyptian NCW with heightened hope that it would eventually eliminate the “shameful phenomenon” of sexual harassment[29] (El-Rifae 2014). However, according to a parliamentary committee, the 2014 amendment “did not achieve the necessary deterrence” “although the punishments listed were a quantum leap at the time” (Eltahir 2021).
In 2021, however, the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and the Egyptian Parliament amended some articles of the 58/1937 Penal Law to confront sexual harassment. Law No. 141/2021 upgraded sexual harassment and related crimes from misdemeanors to felony offences, thus tightening the penalties on those who harass others in public or private places by making sexual insinuations whether by gesture, words, or action (Egypt Today,[30] 2021). The Parliament also approved a law protecting the identity of victims of sexual harassment and assault, after a social media campaign led to the arrest of a suspected sex offender (Eltahir, 2021).
The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Egypt, Elena Panova, thanked President Abdel Fattah al Sisi for ratifying these amendments and congratulated the Egyptian NCW and its president Dr Maya Morsy for “the great achievement” (Egypt Today, 2021). Panova[31] tweeted:
W the approval of amendments to Law 141 2021 by President El-Sisi @AlsisiOfficial, #Egypt is embarking on a new era of ending different forms of violence against women & addressing the crime of sexual harassment. Congratulations @ncwegypt & @mayamorsy for the great achievement!
Hopefully, these amendments will “curb sex-related assaults in a nation where women have long felt disadvantaged” (Abdelaal 2021, Eltahir 2021).
-
Conflict of interest: Author sates no conflict of interest.
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