Moroccan Women Face Rising Tide of Street Harassment, Writer Reveals

"In Morocco, ’psst psst’ is also used to call a curious street cat. As it was normal that, when I was a teenager, men would look at me and call me as they would to a small innocent homeless creature. I didn’t even deserve to be approached in complete thoughts - although the words they used were never better. [...] My parents always cared about what I wore when I left the house for high school," writes Moroccan-American writer Yasmina Achlim in an op-ed published by The New Arab, noting that her parents are not conservatives but were afraid of the reactions her outfits could provoke.

"The fact that I was told to wear long pants or cover my shoulders - usually by well-meaning people - has only oversimplified the complex and multifaceted reality that I could not walk the streets of Casablanca without tensing my body. [...] Happiness, anger, sadness, curiosity or any other feeling could be wrongly interpreted as flirting or asking for the attention of any man in search of his next ego trip," she says, noting that it is difficult to eradicate misogyny. According to her, the ideal would be for every parent to ensure that their daughter is not the next target. The writer says she has found mechanisms to fight against street harassment. These include a multitude of insults in darija, looks and comments.

The phenomenon is underestimated. "Harassment is never harassment. It’s always a ’compliment’, a ’misunderstanding’ or proof that you ’can’t take a joke’," she continues. "But Morocco is far from the only country that contributes to the normalization of street harassment." "When I lived and worked in London, I was called a cat by a store employee next to my office. In telling this to my supervisor, I was simply told to ’take it as a compliment’. I was 19 and all I wanted was to be able to go to work every day without feeling like my safety was compromised," recalls this graduate of the University of St. Mary’s in London.

""Psst" will always make me shudder. It will always remind me that no matter what I wear or how hard I’ve worked to become who I am today, I’m still ’just’ a woman".