Daily Times

Another girl raped-this time in a shelter home in Korangi reportedly by the son of the woman who owned the shelter home. While female sexuality is policed at every juncture in patriarchal Pakistan, women are not awarded the luxury of feeling safe. Every year, a handful of cases of gender-based violence wriggle their way into the news cycle, provoking mass outrage only to fade into obscurity once our collective conscience cannot handle the weight of its guilt anymore. The anger ebbs, as always, and everything is forgotten.

Those who aren’t angry resort to victim-blaming instead-contextualising rape as an act of aggression rather than something the victim brings upon themselves would require us to acknowledge that Pakistani men hardly ever take responsibility for their actions, opening up a rabbit hole of guilt that is far too painful for the average person to confront. So we decide to surveil women instead, inspecting their every move, what they wear, where they go, and who they speak to; everything about female existence is scrutinised in Pakistan.

No one cares enough to examine the limitations of our courts and law enforcement officials who routinely undermine women’s testimonies in favour of the defendant, who is almost exclusively always a man with greater social capital and more financial resources. In general, courts are very reluctant to hand down rape convictions in cases where there are no “marks of violence” on the victim’s body and the evidence consists solely of the victim’s word against the defendant’s even though most instances of rape do in fact occur without other people present. Some victims, particularly children, have no way of defending themselves against their attackers-why is it then that our courts continue to ascribe undue significance to bodily evidence?

We must ask ourselves whether it is reasonable for women to go to extreme lengths to prove that they have been violated when they have already suffered the trauma of a sexual crime that has likely altered their psyche forever. Instead, we keep asking the wrong questions, enabling rapists everywhere to do whatever they want, regardless of the immense cost to this country’s women. *