I don't know anything about Patai or his book, but have you ever been to Cairo? There's definitely something wrong with the attitude towards women here, though I don't know if you could call it an "Arab" problem. It's like a country full of construction workers.

To deny that there's something going on, though, I think is to deny the obvious.

Well, define wrong. Cairo is a pit regardless, of course.

Re the book: " "there are no words for 'child,' 'baby,' 'infant,' 'toddler' and so on."" that's a peculiar claim. Depends on the dialect, of course, but what a strange thing to assert.

Of course there is a clear difference between roles assigned boys and girls in the MENA world - although this is hardly unique to the region or even Islam.

[Added Thought]
Having read the article now, it really deserves further comment. Interesting reflexion. The connexion with the wider Mediterranean culture is an important note.

Shoot, my hidden agenda is showing.

The Mediterranean culture point was one I hoped readers would pick up on. Since time immemorial, standard human sexism has had a particular permutation in terms of honor of the female and the clan and sexual purity in the region; which often translates, in underdeveloped times, into double standards (Madonna/whore), seclusion/modesty expectations, and violent retaliation for sexual indiscretion. Islamic societies tend to mix the official puritanism with the Meditteranean style.

The founding myths of the West, of Meditteranean pagan Troy and Rome were ones of females who were violated (Helen's abduction and the rape of Lucretia resulting in a public suicide for dishonor in the latter case) and were causes of mass violence.

The treatment meted out to American college female students in Athens and smaller areas of Greece circa early 1980s that I was told at the time were identical to the horror stories I hear from Egypt.

....have you ever been to Cairo?

By the way, I have been to Cairo, and you aren't kidding; though not being a female I didn't experience it directly.

On a non-sexual level, I was almost gang-baksheeshed however, by Cairenes when my khawaja self carelessly opened my wallet in a vulnerable position.

My lone-female-in-Cairo anecdote, for your edification (not L, he's heard this one before):

I was largely spared overt harassment due to the presence of a private guide (men in suits are obvious deterrents). However, when he was not with me I noticed an immediate difference. Deep underground in Menkaure's burial chamber, a dozen teenage boys followed me around for 20 min, gawking and giggling. As I was climbing out of a sub-chamber, one boy decided to come up behind me and touch the bare skin that had appeared between my jeans and t-shirt. Merely grazed my back with a finger, but it drew odd cheers/applause and then fearful scurrying from the larger mob when they saw the look on my face.Utterly bizarre piggish behaviour.

I note it is extremely difficult to yell effectively in a low-oxygen setting.

Hadn't considered the Mediterranean angle, that is interesting.

BTW southern Egypt is worse, but I don't feel like telling that story again.

Actually, most of the horror stories I hear are from Alex ... a female friend of mine went up there for the day, on her own, and a guy followed her around for five hours saying things like "I'm going to rape you" and "I'm going to fuck the shit out of you, bitch." She went to the police, but he ran and hid and then came back.

I think Egypt has to be worse than Italy and Greece on this front.

Yeah, that stuff is precisely why I paid for a handler. If you don't have in-country wasta, may as well pay someone a lot of money to look out for you.

I noticed that quite a few of the creeps I encountered were utter cowards when confronted directly. Of course, much easier to be assertive when you have backup options.

Re: the linguistic/gender angle: I can't think of a language that has a wide variety of gender-neutral words to describe different ages of people in a non-gender-specific way. Not that I speak such a huge variety of languages, but in Spanish the default term for a person/group of indeterminate gender or mixed gender is always masculine. And in Russian, which even has a neuter gender, I can't think of a single gender-neutral term such as those mentioned above, at least a non-archaic one; Russian follows the Romance model in these matters. Admittedly there are tons of other languages out there, including the non-Indo-European ones with which I have zero familiarity; will ask the Albanian-speaking co-worker tomorrow if I remember.

Besides, as if Arabs are the only people to have distinct forms of socialization according to gender for children? Hardly.

The funny thing, though, is the weird role that male genitals play in certain East Asian cultures--at least the Korean, since I know this better than others (extremely casually in the old days, although not quite so openly--at least not in front of foreigners nowadays). Interesting that comparable pseudoacademic stereotype hasn't emerged about East Asians, huh? (or, is there something that I don't know?).

Addendum on languages: most East Asian languages (Korean and Japanese for sure, and others by what I've heard from speakers thereof) are gender-neutral on almost everything, including people at various ages.....

Having said this, though, I wonder how the genders in the Indo-European terms came to be as they are now.

In regards to harrassement and the like, a few observations.

First, I think it has gotten worse over the past 20 years. From the Maghreb to the Machriq.

Second, I would attribute the sort of idiocies eerie and other describe to the breakdown of urban culture in the past 20-30 odd years in the MENA region. Mass influx of rural citizens seeking jobs, stagnant job market, poorly organised means of socialising.... In effect a failure of the old models of modern Islamic citizenship (urban).

Third, I do think there is a Med basin shared template (being I think as old as Mathew, if not more, I do recall the days when Greek fonding stories from the year abroad girlies). Similarities in the Med Basin in terms of many cultural templates are often astounding (if one has the open eyes).

Fourth, rural areas are generally far better than cities... almost a non-observation. eerie's issue I will assert was not southern but venue.

Fifth, on the side of the silly Western bints wandering around without male accompagnment, I can only say the phrase "when in Rome...." should always be recalled, and I have somewhat limited sympathy in this area. The argument "you shouldn't have to" is tosh. In Egyptian urban situs, to take an example, it is bloody well clear that society lives with massive frustration across the board. Can't bloody get married, can't get jobs, no privacy to do some whanking. In short, life sucks. The Western girl who traipses about without a prophalactic male is simply being an idiot and deservesa bit a harrassment for her self-involved "me, me, me" point of view.

Sixth: I rather suspect that the added access to Euro TV via satellite and its late night porn (hard core even) has had a salutory effect on the imaginations of young Arab boys (and girls) imaginations as to what Europeans do to each other. Certainly in my experience, some people picked up the most surprising concepts and skills. Of course there are positives and negatives.

Finally, to return to the generic issue, given the questions I have gotten during this period of exile in the United States due to this annoying cancer thing, based on my joint venture, etc., there are no shortage of highly peculiar ideas floating about with respect to Arabo-Muslim sexuality.

oh yes, kao, as far as I understand the Indo-Euro gender system seems to have had its roots in a grammatical marking of moving versus non-moving things. If I recall in my haze. One can rather overread the idea.

Just heard today about a girl in Egypt who experience a tenfold amount of sexual harrassment AFTER she donned the hijab.

Fourth, rural areas are generally far better than cities... almost a non-observation. eerie's issue I will assert was not southern but venue.

Bah, that's only because you find the southern/Nubian types less loathsome than the Cairenes. However, thinking on it now, Aswan and surrounding area is not really rural.

Re wandering around alone: even if there is no direct harassment, one still feels tension. The only time I had real peace was when they gave me a younger guide and people assumed we were married.

The association of the mother, and hence women in general, with erotic pleasure..

First point. Wouldn't the association of women with erotic pleasure be common to all heterosexual human males?

Second point. Freud thought the association of the mother etc was universal, and he certainly didn't base that on "the Arab mind".

More general point: in the future, students will read up on these people in the same way they currently read about Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Moeller van den Bruck, Karl Schmitt and so on as the intellectual forefathers of Nazism..

The association of the mother, and hence women in general, with erotic pleasure..

"First point. Wouldn't the association of women with erotic pleasure be common to all heterosexual human males?"

Yep, and that was one of the stranger points in that stupid kind of analysis. I don't think I became heterosexual because mom pulled the lever. (Maybe gays are those whose moms fail to pull the lever!)

Worse than the pseudo-Freudian stuff is that extrapolation from language. I think Patai got to the gender issue in language because, to my knowledge, Hungarian is gender-free, and English is more or less so. (It appears he studied German, maybe, so he should know that many languages are genderized.)

It would be like hearing: in English one has several verb forms (continuous, simple, emphatic) which explains the subtlety of disstinction in the mind that enabled the Industrial Revolution and all Anglo-Saxons to become versatile from childhood.

I think Patai got to the gender issue in language because, to my knowledge, Hungarian is gender-free, and English is more or less so.

Oh Christ, he can't have done that? That's just incredibly wildly unbelievably fucking stupid...