Daily Times

Ayesha Gulalai should keep quiet. But now that she has misspoken an apology must be forthcoming. No, not for Kaptaan. Once he has decided upon just the right line-up of the usual suspects ready to don the well-worn one-size-fits-all hats of the parliamentary probesters then justice can be done. Provided, of course, it doesn’t turn into a witch-hunt borne of political opportunism. Perish the thought.

Gulalai has managed to offend many people. First in the firing line were English or England-based women. For while calling out Imran Khan on his reported predatory behaviour, she promptly reminded him that this wasn’t England but a land of respectable women. Such pitting of one group of women against another is, of course, never cricket. Sadly, Khan has still to teach the rules of the game to his female party workers. The latter issued a rallying cry of their own — yet this failed to go beyond asserting that they are, indeed, respectable women and therefore what Gulalai accuses Imran Khan of cannot possibly be true. Which is another way of saying that if what she has claimed actually did happen then she must have somehow brought it upon herself. Beyond party loyalty, the MNA has also rubbed up the wrong way certain quarters of the liberal elite. Some have attacked her wardrobe. Meaning her decision to attend the National Assembly in full tribal headdress and traditional male clothing. Their gripe is that playing dress-up as a man while trying to smash the patriarchy simply will not do. Far better to drape oneself in the sweat-shopped stitched garb that is a clear indicator of womanhood. What they don’t say is that by this they mean cis-gender womanhood.

Thus it is all the more saddening to have heard Gulalai’s throwaway comments that were aimed at underscoring how Khan seemingly refers to all female party workers as ‘his women’. Yet instead of kick starting a conversation about men in power and the language they may or may not use when referring to women party workers — Gulalai took the debate in an entirely different direction. With a rhetorical question in which she asked whether this means that Khan considers PTI men folk to be nothing more than ‘hijras’. Less than men.

According to Faizan Fiaz, director of the film Poshida: Hidden LGBT Pakistan, “transphobic language can have a lasting and damaging effect on people  . . . [it] contributes to stigma and marginalisation”

And it is for this comment and this comment alone that Gulalai must unreservedly apologise. And she must do so to Pakistan’s transgender community without delay. TransAction Pakistan, an alliance working for the rights of this group in the country, has already threatened to protest outside her house if this is not forthcoming.

Faizan Fiaz is the director of the film Poshida: Hidden LGBT Pakistan. They tell me in an online conversation that there can be no doubt that Gulalai’s comments “seem out of step with emerging enlightened attitudes towards transgender people in Pakistan and are in poor taste from a global human rights perspective.” Yet that groups such as TransAction Pakistan are increasingly speaking up to have their fundamental rights respected offers hope. It will, they say, not go unnoticed. And this is important. “Unsurprisingly, transphobic language can have a lasting and damaging effect on people as I found when making my documentary. It impacts self esteem and contributes to stigma and marginalisation.”

Let us hope that this is a lesson learned by Ayesha Gulalai. One that dictates how it is never permissible to use language that a particular community or gender finds derogatory. And let us also hope that another lesson, too, is learned: that when language is employed so recklessly — it serves as a distraction from the main conversation.

The writer is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Times. She can be reached at mirandahusain@me.com and tweets @humeiwei

Published in Daily Times, August 26^th 2017.