The Male Gaze in Morocco

When the street feels like enemy territory

Four weeks ago, my husband and I officially moved to Casablanca, Morocco. In the months before we came, we were constantly asked how we felt about the treatment of women in Morocco and if we were nervous about acclimating to a society so different than the U.S. and Thailand, the two countries we’ve lived in together.

I’ll admit we brushed these comments off as we affixed rose-colored glasses firmly over our eyes. We said things like, “It isn’t much better in the U.S, just look at the recent Supreme Court decisions,” and “We’re married, we’re expats, we’ll be fine.”

Let me be the first to admit - it’s worse than I thought.

The first thing that hit me when we were walking out of the airport was the obvious lack of women doing business. Everything — every counter, every food stand, every bus, every car, every motorbike — was in the hands of men. Men who stared, men whose eyes scanned my body and my surroundings to see if I was alone, men who seemed to own the world. It was a shock to my senses and I found myself mentally counting every woman I saw on the drive to our new home.

After a few days of unpacking and cleaning our apartment, we hit the road for 10 days to see the country > Marrakech, Essaouira, Tangier, Chefchaouen, and Fes. It was a whirlwind of beautiful sights, smells, tastes, history…and harassment.