Media is not an indicator of the opening up of society. The sooner we shed this misconception the better. The trends that stick out with all their ugliness beg a question as to whether Twitter takes well to gender slurs in the first place. Political parties use social media as a proxy to attack their rivals across borders. Some time ago, Twitter detected a network of accounts trying to influence elections in India. Later, Facebook unearthed another network involved in whipping up hate speech targeting their rivals. The problem is when one network is taken down, another rises. It is systematic. The controversial Twitter trends loaded with gender slurs have targeted Maryam Nawaz. After condemnation, there is a need to evaluate it objectively. Not so long ago, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif addressed his party workers. During the address, he pressed on the need to use social media and said that in the changing world no one can silence their rivals. His party has asserted itself on social media as his daughter Maryam Nawaz loves spending time with social media managers. She has also succeeded in convincing her father to run a Twitter account for direct contact with party workers. Both father and daughter are making inroads in this new field as the mainstream media has put restrictions on them due to the nature of cases they have been embroiled in. Though an inquiry will discover if the ruling PTI orchestrated this dirty trend or not, there is no doubt that the party leaders are known to target their rivals on the basis of gender. Even PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari could not escape indecent and immoral verbal attacks. Running a government is not a gender-specific job. A well-worked-out male can ruin it by making the wrong decisions and a physically weak woman can save a country by making the right decisions. Time was when the PML-N would target Benazir Bhutto on the basis of her gender. The party should behave rationally now as the burden of its own leadership has now fallen on a woman. This episode has shown one thing that such trends do not define us as a nation. *