dubai abrar zenkawi was cruising toward the beach in kuwait city when she saw a man waving and smiling in her rearview mirrorelsewhere this may have been a benign highway flirtation but in kuwait its a haunting routine that often turns dangerous the man pulled up beside her inched closer and finally drove into her zenkawis car carrying her toddler nieces sister and friend flipped six timesits considered normal here men always drive way too close to scare girls chase them to their homes follow them to work just for fun said zenkawi 34 who spent months in the hospital with a shattered spine they dont think about the consequencesbut that may be changing as women are increasingly challenging kuwaits deeply patriarchal society in recent weeks a growing number of women have broken taboos to speak out about the scourge of harassment and violence that plagues the gulf nations streets highways and malls in an echo of the global metoo movementan instagram page has led to an outpouring of testimony from women fed up with being intimidated or attacked in a country where the criminal code doesnt define sexual harassment and lays out few repercussions for men who kill female relatives for actions they consider immoral a wide variety of news and talk shows have taken up the subject of harassment for the first time and one journalist used a hidden camera to document how women are treated in the streetsthe spark may have come from fashion blogger ascia alfaraj who vented in january on snapchat to her millions of followers after being hounded by a man in a speeding car in such episodes men often try to bump a womans car but many serious accidents result as in zenkawis caseits terrifying all the time youre feeling so unsafe in your own skin alfaraj told the associated press the responsibility is always on us we must have had our music too loud or our windows downshayma shamo a 27yearold doctor sought to seize the momentum of alfarajs viral video creating an instagram page called lan asket arabic for i will not be silentshamos rage had been building for weeks in december a female employee of kuwaits parliament was stabbed to death by her 17yearold brother reportedly because he didnt want her working as a security guard it was the third such case described as honour killings to make headlines in as many months the national assembly allmale despite a record number of female candidates in the recent election offered none of the customary condolencesthe silence was deafening shamo said i thought ok that could happen to me and anyone could get away with itkuwait unlike other oilrich persian gulf sheikhdoms has a legislature with genuine power and some tolerance for political dissent but restrictions to slow the the spread of the coronavirus prevented shamo from staging a protest and forced her to take her grievances online as women in the regions more repressive countries have done recentlythe