Guys and Dolls

What's in the daily news? I'll tell you what's happening in the daily news. Double standards for pimps and hoes transgress cultures. A girls puts out in America a little too much, and she's a s**t. A guy gets a lot of action, and he's a pimp. A girl goes out with a guy in Egypt, and she's used. A guy goes out with a couple of girls, and well, that's not too odd.

Girls have high expectations to live up to in Egypt. Many guys won't marry a woman who has ever dated a man before. And, when I say dated, I don't mean slept with nor kissed. I mean the literal definition: going out on dates just the two of them. Why would a guy care if a girl he likes dated a boy in high school? Because the guy wants the girl just to himself, he doesn't want her to "know" any other man other than him. A wife is supposed to be the one thing in life that a guy can truly call his own. He won't just be her first kiss, but he'll be her everything, her provider. So, this is what guys want. Or at least, they say that.

Guys have tough lives until they get married. Most of them want to marry the innocent, untouched girl, but until then, they still want to get to "know" girls. A lot of guys don't want to kiss a girl before marrying her, but they wouldn't be opposed to dating a girl. A lot of guys want to actually get action (they rarely get it). And, there are guys that don't want to do anything but marry a girl -- these guys have the worst game and when they meet a new, single girl the first thing that comes to their mind is the possibility of marrying her. It's a rare case for a guy and girl to be anything more than acquaintances unless of course they're together.

Since a girl can't know a guy before marriage, she must try to avoid all guys trying to approach her. If she is seen talking with a random guy, people might talk (I'm using this logic's language). So, it's hard to meet someone when you're always on the defensive. Likewise, it's hard for guys to meet girls because they are always on the defensive.

It's cultural. It's relative. That's just how it is. ?. But is there hypocrisy? Many guys want to sleep with women before marriage, many just want to date before marriage, but the majority doesn't want to marry a girl who has dated before. It looks like people are asking for two contradictory things.

He and She

An Egyptian mix between Summer Lovin' and Anything You Can Do

Picking Up Chicks Part III

Let's get deeper into this well regulated market.

First, you can't say "that's what she said" to the previous statement. They simply don't have that type of joke here.

Hooking up is out of the question. But, so is what Americans would call traditional dating. There are no dinner or movie dates, and there's never time to spend alone with someone outside of Egypt's watchful eyes. If you're sneaky, you can sneak in some long walks along the Corniche (right next to the beach), but don't even think about kissing her. Culturally, PDA is --حرام -- literally, forbidden. People love to hold hands and they get pretty touchy down by the beach, but you will never see a kiss in public.

One of my Egyptian professors calls her own culture a "culture of glue." It's a reference to the marriage-centric thinking of Egyptians. When I meet new people, the typical order of questions is "Where are you from?" "What's your name?" "Are you married?" "Well, are you engaged Everyone gets married as soon as possible, and Egyptian guys consider all Egyptian girls mozas (babes). I've been asked, in complete seriousness, if the three girls I was traveling with were my wives. Of course, I said yes and the Egyptians gave me a lot of props.

I'm not going to contradict Harry's advice to Sally on their ride to New York, but Egypt really takes it to the extreme in considering any acquaintanceship between a guy and a girl paramount to eternal love.

A couple 16 year-old boys told me that in Egypt, no one is looking to date, everyone just wants to get married. So be careful when you ask a girl for her number, that's the fast track to marriage or a dearly broken heart.

And, that's the dating scene in Egypt.

Picking Up Chicks Part II

Here's a video on one man's experience with women in Egypt. 

Picking Up Chicks

The fundamentals of the game are the same wherever you go, but the Egyptian game has some striking peculiarities. You might say the difference derives from the contrast of America's free market to the well regulated markets of Egypt.

In the next couple posts, I am going to explore this idea. I didn't post enough stuff to keep people interested in December, so I'm going be like the media and take a sensationalist bias to start up the new year.

What's the relationship between guys and girls in Egypt?

There is no such thing as "just friends" in Egypt. If a guy and girl hang out by themselves, they must be dating. But since dating doesn't exist, the only reasonable conclusion that you can make is that they are on track to get married. 

Guys and girls don't hang out in groups together. There are exceptions to this rule, but this is true 90% of the time. Guys hang with guys and girls hang with girls. Geographically speaking, college kids are doomed. The guys dorms are a couple kilometers away from the girls dorms. But, that's not too important because you would never be able to sneak past the armed guards who stand in front of the only entrance to the fort-like dorms. I'm not talking about sneaking into the dorm after lights out (there's no lights out, but I say that in a figurative way), I'm saying you can't go in the opposite sex's dorm at any time of the day. Furthermore, the girls have a 9:30 curfew everyday of the week, so there's no possibility for social life during the night. 

Why guys and girls still don't try to circumvent these external obstacles? I don't know. You can put it up to the culture, it's just considered completely weird for guys and girls to hang out. Last Thanksgiving, for instance, all the students in the Middlebury abroad program along with our Egyptian hall mates ate dinner in the apartment of our professor's apartment. The Egyptian guys hung out with everyone, and each of them made small talk and treated the girls kindly. On the other hand, the Egyptian girls hung out in a separate room, and they didn't talk with us at all with the exception of one girl who made small talk with a couple guys. I asked one of the guys what his opinion is on hanging out with girls after going out on night, and he told me that he finds it really weird because he just doesn't know what to say to a girl.