https://arab.news/m7en3
Rock bottom is a great place to be. In fact, the very idea of there being a rock bottom is comforting, implying as it does with granite certitude, that there is an end point, a solid slab beyond which it is impossible to fall.
But after the millionth ‘isolated’ incident of women being mobbed, harassed, assaulted, raped or murdered, one must regrettably draw the inescapable conclusion that there is no bottom, rock or otherwise. Instead, there’s a yawning abyss in which all you hear is a whistling sound as you plummet.
Take the recent ‘incident’ at the Minar-e-Pakistan during the independence day celebrations for instance, where a lady called Ayesha Akram arrived to make a TikTok video and was mobbed by hundreds of men who then proceeded to harass, grope and attempt to undress her.
What followed was predictable, with social media erupting with outrage and the government swinging into action and lodging FIR’s and so on. What was also predictable was the counter-reaction in which, as per an established script, questions were raised as to what on earth she was doing there in the first place? What’s wrong with these TIkTokers? Isn’t TikTok a den of iniquity anyway? Why was she inciting the all-male crowd with her presence? And how can we be sure she didn’t just stage the whole thing to get more followers?
Now just about anything is possible, but if you’re finding it hard to imagine why any woman would put herself at the risk of gang rape and possibly murder for the sake of fame, then do note that rape victims have also been previously accused of wanting to get raped in order to emigrate abroad.
But Ayesha Akram is far from being the ‘perfect victim,’ and so, typing furiously with stubby fingers attached to sweaty palms, the legions of righteousness made sure we knew it too and then presumably settled back to enjoy the dopamine hit of social media validation.
One could argue that the perfect victim should ideally be dead, but even in those cases there is a workaround, as we saw in the aftermath of the Noor Mukaddam murder. Now directly blaming Noor for her death is tricky and so the angle of attack is one that was expertly laid out by a prominent anchor/ YouTuber/ alleged poacher who, after loudly calling for the immediate execution of her murderer, also had a message for those ‘defending’ Noor Mukaddam: “Where have our cultural and religious values gone?” he asked his online audience? When our religion discourages mixing between the sexes, why would any woman put herself in this position?
One could argue that the perfect victim should ideally be dead, but even in those cases there is a workaround, as we saw in the aftermath of the Noor Mukaddam murder.
Zarrar Khurho
Now this is a great tack because, while not directly blaming the victim, it also provides much needed solace to those unable to process this murder by conflating it with a lack of adherence to religious and cultural norms. The beauty of this argument is that it can be used even when the victim ticks all the right(eous) boxes, like little Zainab in Kasur, or the girl whose corpse was exhumed and raped in Thatta.
If you try and dissect and deconstruct this ‘root cause’ argument, it is made to appear as if you are arguing against cultural values and religion itself, and that’s not a position any sane person wants to be in. The audience laps it up, because it’s comforting to imagine that the actual culprits are dark forces bent on destroying the very moral fabric of the nation. Once you buy that, you’re no longer a voice in the wilderness of social media but a righteous crusader against a degenerate, foreign-influenced (and sometimes funded) clique bent on turning the country into a brothel.
It’s not just men amplifying this narrative, and in both cases we also saw a number of women joining the blame chorus. This too is understandable, because here they allow themselves the illusion that these women paid the price for not following the rules, with the implied hope that if they themselves did in fact follow said rules, they would be safe from the depredations of easily-provoked men.
Some want instant solutions, and inevitably they arrive at the crowd-pleasing notion of instant public executions. Try and argue that the problem isn’t so much the severity of punishment but the certainty of punishment and trot out stats about the reporting/ prosecution and conviction rates in rape cases (for instance) and you’ll get the response that general Zia once hung a few rapists and there were no rapes in Pakistan for ten years following that. It’s true, because they read it on WhatsApp.
Others employ great rigour: What do you mean when you say that women feel unsafe in this country? Do you speak for every single woman in the country? Why are you tweeting “yes, All Men’ when just a few months ago you were wishing your father a happy father’s day? Don’t you care about Pakistan’s image? And then, with the self-assuredness of a gambler revealing a Royal Flush, they will tell you even a foreign vlogger has said she felt so safe while traveling across Pakistan, as if to say: ‘Hah! Beat that!’
You could of course say that had a Pakistani woman tried the same and, God forbid, been assaulted, the same people would revert to argument one:
“Well, why was she out by herself in the first place?”
And you’d be right but it also won’t matter because in the end, you’re only screaming into the abyss.
- Zarrar Khuhro is a Pakistani journalist who has worked extensively in both the print and electronic media industry. He is currently hosting a talk show on Dawn News. Twitter: @ZarrarKhuhro