Women In Pakistan Exist In Collective Fury
By Fatima Bhojani
Nov. 17,
2020
I am angry. All the time. I’ve been angry
for years. Ever since I began to grasp the staggering extent of violence —
emotional, mental and physical — against women in Pakistan. Women here, all 100
million of us, exist in collective fury….
Photo courtesy NYT
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“Every day,
I am reminded of a reason I shouldn’t exist,” my 19-year-old friend recently
told me in a cafe in Islamabad. When she gets into an Uber, she sits right
behind the driver so that he can’t reach back and grab her. We agreed that we
would jump out of a moving car if that ever happened. We debated whether pepper
spray was better than a knife.
When I step
outside, I step into a country of men who stare. I could be making the short
walk from my car to the bookstore or walking through the aisles at the
supermarket. I could be wrapped in a shawl or behind two layers of face mask.
But I will be followed by searing eyes, X-raying me. Because here, it is
culturally acceptable for men to gape at women unblinkingly, as if we are all
in a staring contest that nobody told half the population about, a contest
hinged on a subtle form of psychological violence.
“Wolves,”
my friend, Maryam, called them, as she recounted the time a man grazed her
shoulder as he sped by on a motorbike. “From now on, I am going to stare back,
make them uncomfortable.” Maryam runs a company that takes tourists to the
mountainous north. “People are shocked to see a woman leading tours on her
own,” she told me.
We
exchanged hiking stories. We had never encountered a solo female hiker up
north. When I hike solo, men, apart from their usual leering, offer unsolicited
advice, ask patronizing questions and, on occasion, follow in silence. I
pretend to receive a call from my imaginary husband who happens to be nearby
and wants to know exactly where I am. Even in the wilderness, you can’t escape.
Years ago,
a friend told me about the time her dad beat her up after he saw her talking to
a boy outside school. It wasn’t the first time. Until she left for college in
the United States, she lived in constant terror of when the next wave of
violence would arrive. Her mother stood by and let it happen.
Internalized
patriarchy rears its head often when aunties (an auntie is any older woman who exists
to profess her uninvited opinion) are concerned that you are not married.
Aunties emphasize that motherhood is your assigned purpose on this planet.
Aunties comment on your body as if you are not there.
This
country fails its women from the very top of government leadership to those who
live with us in our homes. In September, a woman was raped beside a major
highway near Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. Around 1 a.m., her car ran
out of fuel. She called the police and waited. Two armed men broke through the
windows and assaulted her in a nearby field.
The most
senior police official in Lahore remarked that the survivor was assaulted
because, he assumed, she “was traveling late at night without her husband’s
permission.”
An elderly
woman in my apartment building in Islamabad, remarked, “Apni Izzat Apnay Haath Mein” — Your honour is in your own hands. In
Pakistan, sexual assault comes with stigma, the notion that a woman by being on
the receiving end of a violent crime has brought shame to herself and her
family. Societal judgment is a major reason survivors don’t come forward.
Responding
to the Lahore assault, Prime Minister Imran Khan proposed chemical castration
of the rapists. His endorsement of archaic punishments rather than a sincere
promise to undertake the difficult, lengthy and necessary work of reforming
criminal and legal procedures is part of the problem. The conviction rate for
sexual assault is around 3 percent, according to War Against Rape, a local non-profit.
Mr. Khan’s
analysis of the prevalence of gender-based violence is even more regressive. Fahhashi (indecency) in society is the
culprit, deflecting responsibility from the police and government. Mr. Khan
blamed Bollywood for widespread incidents of rape in neighbouring New Delhi,
missing the point that, like Pakistan, India suffers from similar issues with
policing, public safety and the judicial system.
The highway
attack shook the women of Pakistan, but it did not shock us. We grew up with
stories of women killed for “honor” and women raped for revenge. Women doused
with acid and women burned with stoves. Pakistan ranks 164 out of 167 countries
on the Women, Peace and Security Index 2019-2020, barely hovering above Yemen,
Afghanistan and Syria.
In the two
months since the highway assault, a police officer raped a woman in her home. A
girl was murdered by her cousin and uncle for speaking to a male friend on her
phone. A woman waiting for a bus after work was kidnapped and raped. A teenager
committed suicide after being blackmailed by the men who raped her and
videotaped the assault. A 6-year-old was clubbed to death by her father for
making noise. Between January and June alone, there have been 3,148 reported
cases of violence against women and children. Many go unreported.
There are
slices of Pakistan where a woman can bare her arms, smoke, drink, escape abroad,
become a minister. But class does not protect her from the stares and the fears
of assault when she ventures outside. Yet for women in the lower socio-economic
strata of society, women in rural Pakistan, things are much worse. The
insecurity and harassment working-class women face daily at a bus stop are
experiences that are foreign to those behind the wheel of a Mercedes.
On a recent
afternoon, I pulled up to a traffic stop. Twenty or so motorcycles zigzagged
their way up to right under the light, as they commonly do here. The riders
were men. With one exception. I noticed her only because the men around her
were consuming her. It’s rare to see women driving bikes in Pakistan — probably
because when they do, they’re on display.
Although
she had her back to me, face obscured by a helmet, I imagined her staring
resolutely ahead, pushing through the discomfort, the sheer creepiness, of
being watched. A wave of fury passed over me. Don’t let the bastards grind you
down, I tried to telepathically transmit to her, a refrain from “The Handmaid’s
Tale” that frequently floats through my head when I’m back here.
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Fatima Bhojani is a writer from Islamabad,
Pakistan. Her reporting on women in Pakistan has been supported by the
International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women
Journalists.
Original Headline: When I Step Outside, I Step
Into a Country of Men Who Stare
Source: The New York Times
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/women-pakistan-exist-collective-fury/d/123502
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