Oi! Oi! Keep your hair on! I am not in any way a feminist, in fact I am a firm believer that we should cut men some slack (under certain circumstances but that's for another post).
EDITED IN 2016: Turns out I was a feminist after all.. :)
However, after observing a few people close to me struggle with harrassers who came to be after being rejected, I can easily say one thing, arab men do not handle their rejections too well.
In fact, some will react VERY badly to it, regardless of the reasons of refusal ,and especially in cases where he is the -for the lack of a better expression- flawed party.
The girl will tell a guy nicely that she doesn't think she's the right girl for him, the man (the "rejectee)", won't take a hint and will repeat to her that she's just perfect for him, and that she's everything he's ever dreamed of, but would he stop for a second to think "Am I compatible with her? will she be comfortable with me?". Now insecurity plays a big part, and so does society, the girl was -and still is- raised to fulfill the needs and ego of her future companion. She carries this mentality throughout her life and into her (mostly incognito) relationships, or worse, with the first man suggested by mommy and daddy. (resulting in many many failed and dead marriages). In parallel, the man is raised to be the apple of his mommy's eye, and no girl must EVER dare say "no" to him, and if she does she's not "bent halal", and so he will prance around roaring "YE SHALL SWOON O FRAIL MAIDENS TO MY GAZE!".
This takes us back to the rejectee, who's gonna huff and puff, and if he's "ibn halal" he will let it go, and carry the grudge quietly and make any future contact with this girl -or her friends- awkward.
And if he's a vicious "ibn haram", he will take a rocky road through the five stages of acceptan- err..no, revenge! Seriously? you think she's going to run back to you, when you threaten to "tell dadd\ brother"? Maybe this is embedded in their genes, the whole slavery, harem and "Jawari".
It's not strange to us reading news containing words such as "revenge, reputation, rejection, honor, blackmail", or headlines along the lines of "She refused his proposal, so he tainted her reputation".
Well, we're not blind to the methods men can use to satisfy their thirst for revenge, and we're not strangers to the arab men's ways in particular, they will resort to the first and most crucial thing , the reputation.
What happened to the first woman, is that she felt her overly passionate male-friend was very aggressive, naturally as a sane move, she decided to stay away from him, and asked him kindly to leave her be. In his mind, this wasn't right, how could she reject his company? He would repeat over and over that she absolutely loves him, she just doesn't want to admit it to herself.
So what he does, goes around giving her mobile number, steals her pictures and starts distributing them about, attaching of course loads of bullocks about her reputation. Result? Tons of phone calls and humiliating text messages from random numbers. She was hoping that he will get tired of it, and that it will eventually die out. It didn't, he started stalking her wherever she went, making her life a miserable living hell. She'd confront him, and he would shamelessly deny that he's done anything.
Even after he's defaced her car and broken into her appartment, still thinking she loves him and NEEDS to take him back. She naturally feared for her life, and had no choice but to resort to the police, the first attempt was not too sucessful, and left her and her friends very frustrated, but after she went with her parent she was finally able to obtain a restraining order, which to my knowledge seems to have worked well.
Another woman faced the same problem, rejected man who's tried to play Mr. mysterious a tad too much, she wasn't able to obtain any personal information from him, even during a very normal conversation. But that's not why she told him off, he was overly aggressive, jealous and ill-meaning. And didn't refrain from hurting her by making indirect comments that question her moral conduct. Seeing that this is what made her furious, he makes it his weapon of choice. In one of his jealousy fits he managed to hack into her computer, stealing many personal pictures. What displays his ill-means is he did that months ago before she told him off.
He tried to lull her into a false sense of security, he told her he's leaving the country to move to a new office after he's wanted to open a new company etc etc... (which was very incoherent seeing that one man cannot leave work AND find a new job in 3 days.).
Shortly after she recieves a text message, threatening her that she will lose her job, she ignores it, and a while after, she starts receiving random phone calls asking to meet her. The blow was a person randomly showing up in her office simply saying she insisted on meeting him.
How, what where , why?..
The guy has created a Badoo profile with her stolen data, the victim shows the lady the website and leaves her frantic and upset. She saw there is no way of tracking the person who's made the profile, she resorted to the police, who referred her to the e-crimes department, who referred her to the public prosecution, they managed to close the fake account but our criminal was rather persistent, he created another account and started giving away her friends, coworkers and home number away. He himself would call from a phone booth whenever he could and fake his accent and voice.
Long story short (if you're still reading).
The police "made it all go away", and we were not encouraged to ask questions.
Make sure you tune in for my next post for extra online safety in the UAE tips for females!
