There is a special place in the bottomless pit for women who demoralise and demerit other women, especially when one of those women belongs to a bubble so far removed that even the bubble comes in bubble wrap; the result is astounding and the indifference that I may have had towards this packaged protagonist has turned into a caustic contempt I find difficult to discount. In a white-picket-fence interview for India Today, Reham Khan, the wife of PTI chief Imran Khan, spoke of many a fancied thing, spun some yarns about domestic delights and having a very grounded life but there was one answer, one four-line observation/pearl of lopsided wisdom that was so brutal, so disengaged from reality that its asinine undercurrents bled out to infect the sugary superiority of the rest of her claims.
When asked about her views on women’s place in society, she remarks that she is “unsympathetic to whiners”, going on to ‘bleach lyrical’ about how women need to stop making “excuses” for themselves, followed by a little bit of drivel on how women need to stop thinking of themselves as “inferior”. I might never have gotten round to acquainting myself with this hogwash if the publication had not chosen these very lines as the cover tag for the cover page of the May issue of its India Today Woman magazine: “Women need to stop complaining”. Excuse me while I go check the most current statistics we have on how women in Pakistan have begrudged their elevated status in this equality driven society to nag, whine, bemoan and yammer on about the pettiness of the afflictions that plague them.
Reham’s turn to chip away at any slight modicum of ‘sympathy’ the majority of our women get from a jaded patriarchal set up was a smart play on words; these women do not want sympathy nor do they want your loud incantations of the lack thereof — they want compassion. Why? Because most of them are not allowed to feel anything but “inferior” in a country that boasts the exalted statistic of murdering more than 1,000 women annually in the name of ‘honour’. Do those women want Reham’s sympathy or do they want acknowledgment of their condition, a nod their way that does not borderline on condescension? It is not a tragedy to “whine” about when your own father and brother stone you and your unborn child to death in front of the Lahore High Court (LHC) for marrying of your own choice; it is a rallying cry to ignite the call for activism, focusing on the abysmal place women ‘enjoy’ in our society.
Or how about the fact that bearded guardians and deciders of a woman’s fate call congregational meetings to convene that puberty is way past expiry date for girls who should then be married off to any age of man to protect the virtue of this very egalitarian society where women have had every chance to prosper and flourish? Reham would like us to believe that her sweeping generalisations cover all strata and all brackets of women neatly shoved into the chicken coops of their stereotypes. She would have us believe that the pathetic state of women’s affairs in this country is a voluntary thing, created by the “excuses” women have made.
Domestic abuse is still not recognised as a crime in our society. Punjab has yet to see the passage of the Domestic Violence Bill, which lies collecting dust on some forgotten shelf, in some blackened recesses of the social welfare department. Human rights groups have reported more than 7,000 cases of ferocious domestic abuse emanating from this province in 2014 alone. Veering away from the fluffy, rose-tinted truth here, how about the inconvenient fact that more than 1,400 rapes and gang rapes were reported from Punjab last year? Those were just the reported numbers; it is feared that more than double that number goes unreported for fear of stigmatisation and reprisal in a society that blames women as its weakest link for instigating the libidos and murderous impulses in men. It must be such an annoyance for Reham to hear such women “complain” about their ruinous ostracisation from the mainstream when they could have been lying back and taking it (pun intended). Or how about the pitiful penance women and girls belonging to our minorities have been known to bear when they are forcefully fetched, compelled under threat to convert, made to stain virginal sheets red and then married to their rapists because no court of law in this country will accept anyone discarding the state religion to go back to their own? The state’s apathy and detachment to the plight of Hindu girls locked in the stranglehold of strained sanctity must just be part of Reham’s society giving everyone an equal go at things, handing women a hall pass into thinking and worshipping for themselves.
Reham goes on to embellish how she is a feminist and believes that a woman is an individual first, one who must not feel she is “inferior” to her male counterpart. Bravo first lady, but a little back check here would see you comfortably suited to make such crowning claims. Living, working and thriving in a socially progressive environment where Tesco feminists are a dime a dozen is a wonderful emotional hedge fund to be endowed with but expecting women to silence voices that are already pathetically low and to lambast them for denouncing the demonisation they suffer in this patriarchal hell is a far cry from understanding them, much less representing them.
Reham, the next time you get a casting call or a moment to express your thoughts in print, please do not speak for me and my sisters in a land that is no proxy for our cause.
The writer is Op-ed Editor Daily Times. She may be contacted at [email protected]