Alone, Together: Enforced Singularity and Sexual Assault Disclosure in Cairo

Sexual violence in Cairo is a widely experienced harm, yet survivors are often expected to endure it alone. This talk proposes the concept of "enforced singularity" to describe how a collective harm is converted into a private burden and argues that disclosure offers an opportunity to observe that conversion. Drawing on anthropologies of structural violence and social suffering, I treat decisions about whether, when and to whom to disclose as moments where the boundary between individual and collective suffering is negotiated. I investigate this boundary through an engaged anthropological methodology: a workshop series that is both a site of support and of knowledge production.