After living in Amman, Jordan for over two months, I have had firsthand experience with the catcalling culture present in the city’s streets.

Even before arriving in Amman, I received hours of reading material on sexual harassment in the Middle East. During orientation week, large sections of the days included studying catcalling scenarios and how we should react to them.

Some actions by men are driven by a need to exert male dominance, and women and men living in patriarchal societies experience this problem. Jordan is no exception. Here, it is mostly men who target women, but I have heard stories from male students in my program who have been catcalled by women.

In the U.S., my experiences with sexual harassment and catcalling have been pretty much contained to walking the streets around Syracuse University at night. More specifically, I have  experienced catcalling while in and around houses that are hosting parties.

I have had almost the same experiences in Jordan as I have had back in Syracuse, but they happen almost daily. Specifically in Amman, catcalling and ogling are the norms. Identical incidents have occurred in other areas of Jordan I have visited, but given that I live in Amman, most of my encounters happened in this city.

My experiences with men in Jordan have varied greatly. These include being hit on by taxi drivers who want my number or to add me on Facebook, being catcalled by of dozens of men while walking down the street and having my butt touched by a blue-eyed, sweaty man in the Friday market.

Some of these advances made me laugh, like the time a car drove by and a man sprayed shaving cream in the air to get my attention. Others made me feel anxious, pissed off and scared, like the time I spent almost an hour being trailed by that creepy man in the market.

Living in Amman comes with living in a patriarchal society that I have come to realize I don’t have a place to try to change. While I think people who don’t look like the average Jordanian experience it more often, my female Jordanian friends have all said they get catcalled as well.

The culture of countries in the Middle East is reaffirmed through laws and societal norms. Catcalling can be included in this systematic practice of male dominance over women, as well as some laws that give far more advantages to men than women in Jordan. However, I have seen and read how progress is slowly being made on these perceptions in order to change societal norms in Amman.

It’s not my job as a study abroad student to try to change the perception of catcalling in Jordan, which would include changing a culture that is not my own. Standing up for what you believe in, however small the action of standing up may seem, is how societal change takes place. And creating action against this culture in the U.S., specifically on college campuses, is part of that change.

Katelyn Faubel is a junior newspaper and online journalism and international relations dual major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email her at kmfaubel@syr.edu.

Published on October 31, 2016 at 9:05 pm