>Is it foolish for a woman to cycle alone across the Middle East?
bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-39351162
>When Rebecca Lowe set off solo from the UK for Iran by bicycle, her friends thought she had taken leave of her senses. But although she had to endure gropers, extreme heat and heavy-handed police, most of the people she met were a long way removed from stereotypes.
>Mostly, I wanted to show that the bulk of the Middle East is far from the volatile hub of violence and fanaticism people believe
>A man in the pub said I was a "naive idiot who would end up decapitated in a ditch - at best". A good friend sent me a copy of Rudyard Kipling's If, stressing the importance of keeping "your head when all about you / Are losing theirs".
>I swiftly relaxed, however. A truck driver stopped just to hand me a satsuma. A cafe owner gave me his earmuffs. Dozens of others offered food, water, lifts and lodgings, and endless varieties of kebab.
>There were the sex pests, for a start. In Jordan, Egypt and Iran, I was groped, ogled and propositioned with disappointing regularity.
>In Egypt, one randy tuk-tuk driver got his comeuppance following a juicy bum squeeze by being beaten to a pulp by the police convoy on my tail
>In Jordan, a truck driver who'd picked me up following a puncture repeatedly asked for kisses and grabbed my breasts.
>Fortunately his bravado ceased abruptly at the sight of my penknife wafting ominously close to his crotch.
>Such incidents angered me intensely, and were often frightening and unsettling. Lechery is hardly a preserve of the Middle East, but there were areas where strains of patriarchy and entitlement ran deep.
>I realised quickly, however, that these men were not monsters. They were ignorant and often ill-educated. Not to mention severely sexually frustrated within a culture where physical intimacy is shameful and stigmatised.
Is there anything more annoying than a middle-class feminist journalist out to prove people wrong?
