Scholarly record

SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN THE ARAB WORLD FROM EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE - REASSESSING ESSENTIALISTS EXPLANATIONS

I. Nasalski

Abstract

Because of some, ideological rather than scientific, reasons, explanations of human behavior referring to culture as an all-encompassing nomos and as an axionormative matrix shaping all individuals, let alone those accounts referring to the genetic influence, are treated by many social and cultural scientist as reductionistic, deterministic, depersonalizing and reifying. These epithets are subsumed under relatively new term “essentialism” which has become, as Steven Pinker notices, “just about the worst thing you can call someone” and is now “a term of abuse hurled at anyone who tries to explain human thought and behavior rather than redescribe it” (How the Mind Works, p. 325-326). And yet, evolutionary psychology – which is based on premises that can be called essentialistic – has shown over the last decades that, first of all, human culture is to a large extent a product of our universal evolutionary past, and secondly, that there is no meaningful explanation of social behavior that disregards evolutionary constraints. The present article demonstrates how evolutionary psychology can help us explaining the (un)surprisingly widespread sexual harassment in the Arab and to some extent in the whole Muslim World. It shows likewise that the common intellectual and political trend followed as well in Arabic countries and as in Europe, which aims at denying the influence of Islam and Muslim Culture on this behavior, not only fails to explain the behavior but also strongly limits the possibilities to cope with it, either by neutralizing it or… by reinforcing some of its aspects. The paper argues namely that the phenomenon called sexual harassment has a twofold character and that the term covers two contrasting tendencies: on the one side the violent and aggressive assaults that are to be seen as a desperate strategy to eliminate women from the public space and to regain thus control over them, and on the other side the nonviolent and nonaggressive teasing that can be viewed as an opposite attempt, even if an extremely awkward one, to make strange women engage in flirting with unknown men in public, which is from the background of the dominant Muslim culture a genuinely revolutionary phenomenon. Condemning all sorts of men’s activities towards women in public as sexual harassment makes it impossible to recognize the groundbreaking aspect of the second trend and thwarts thus the possibility to help the Muslim World to end the prevalent sex segregation which is one of the main obstacles to modernization.

Publication Impact Profile

No metrics available.

PLUMX see details

DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/SGEMSOCIAL2017/HB61/S7.11

Publication details

Back to publication list