Event

In 2012, the joyful hopes of the Egyptian Revolution were tempered by revelations of mass sexual assault in Tahrir Square in Cairo, the revolution’s symbolic birthplace. Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution is the story of the women and men who formed Opantish—Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment—who organized rescue squads to intervene in spiraling cases of sexual violence against women protesters in the square. Organized and led by women during 2012–2013—the final, chaotic months of Egypt’s revolution—teams of volunteers fought their way into circles of men to pull the woman at the center to safety. Often, they risked assault themselves.

Yasmin El-Rifae is a writer and editor. Her first book, Radius, a narrative history of a militant feminist group within the Egyptian revolution, is published by Verso. She recently moved to London from Cairo, where she works with the independent newspaper Mada Masr. She is also a co-producer of the Palestine Festival of Literature.

Yara M. Damaj is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania where she studies the relationship between humor, anxiety, and politics. Yara has extensive experience working in academic research with a marked interest in theorizing events in the MENA region using critical theory, political economy, psychoanalysis, and feminist theory.