In another tragic incident, an unnamed minor girl was raped, murdered and dumped into the river in Attock on Wednesday; as of now, eight suspects were taken into custody in relation to the incident, but the details of the investigation have not been revealed to the public just yet. This is merely the most recent of a complex ecosystem of transgressions against women that is fast becoming synonymous with being Pakistani where rape culture runs unchecked. It wasn’t too long ago that a former prime minister had claimed that rape had a direct correlation with wearing”very few clothes.” From another president claiming rapes were an excuse to get foreign nationality to a police chief asking what a victim had been doing on the road “at this hour,” there is no shortage of people being rape apologists in this country; perpetually ready to shift the blame on the bloodied shoulders of the victim. In Punjab alone, 2,439 women were raped and killed within the last six months; most of these were honour killings, another age-enduring custom that continues to jeopardize women’s safety all across the country. Of the 22,000 cases reported in the last six years, only 77 were convicted-that’s an abysmal 0.3% conviction rate that is entrenched in our legal system’s biases and overall incompetence. What enables rape the most in Pakistan is that it is systemic; political discourse in the country is deeply misguided and perpetuates the idea that men are inherently violent and simply cannot control their impulses. Women, on the other hand, have been virtually erased from public spaces and asked to live a life of subordination. Despite public pressure for stronger persecutions and harsher sentences, women have been left to navigate the legal system where verdicts generally favour men who are able to paint themselves in a sympathetic light regardless of the nature of their crime. Women are routinely discouraged from speaking about sexual assault since it has been instrumentalised into the culture at large. Misogyny continues to reign supreme and any threats to the status quo are met with disdain. *