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‘Feminism: a conscious awareness of women’s silencing’

By Zoya Anwer
May 02, 2016

Women’s rights activists discuss the idea of feminism and its global evolution

Karachi

With the hall packed to its capacity with people of all genders, it was perhaps a sight when men gasped as Pakistan’s champion women’s rights activist, Nighat Said Khan’s, blatant truthfulness when she remarked that ‘men cannot be feminists’, while addressing the Women of the World (WOW) festival, the first of its kind to be held in the country.

Nighat was one of the panelists at a session over the idea of feminism and its evolution, along with other formidable women including director and founder of the Applied Socio-Economic Research (ASR) Resource Centre, Nimco Ali, Somali social activist Ghausia Rashid, women rights activist and Member of National Assembly Dr Nafisa Shah.

As the moderator, Noorulain Masood, questioned the panelists over whether the idea had personally affected any of them, the four nodded in unanimity.

Nimco and Ghausia spoke of how their mothers’ rebellion shaped their thoughts, while Nafisa also shared her experience of seeing her mother break through family norms. “Born in a Syed family, the levels to which structural discrimination was present perturbed me greatly.” My mother rebelled against what a ‘good woman’ was expected to be or do in a ‘Syed’ household.

Nighat on the other hand explained the basic concept of feminism and also dotted out origins of the feminist movement in Pakistan, “It has been a long journey for me. The idea to me means a conscious awareness of the silencing of women’s expression. It is the realisation that women are oppressed and controlled by their community, society, state, by the means of production, all of which are inherently patriarchal in nature.”

According to her it was a realisation of staging a collective resistance against patriarchy, for its manifestations lay in institutions including that of family and marriage; they are made to keep a woman in an inferior position, she added.

Walking the audience through the feminist movement launched during the dictatorial regime of General Ziaul Haq, Nighat said that it started off with a resistance against militarisation and Islamisation, which gave birth to more confrontations.

“Men were also oppressed under Zia’s military rule but not through Islamisation, the religion in fact validated their position in the society.”

She opined that it was usually the theory which led to actions but such was not the case in Pakistan. The theory was read after the women had already stood up against discriminatory practices.

“The feminists of my generation belonged to the left wing so feminism was naturally merited to leftist ideas.”

However, she added that women were both oppressed in the heart of socialism - the Soviet Union –while they were also oppressed in United States, the heart of capitalism. “So what was it that stood regardless of the economic system and that which redefined patriarchy,” the activist said.

Patriarchy has been internalized in every part of the modern society as well, she added.  She also spoke on the migrant crisis with respect to women’s rights.

Misogyny in assemblies

Nafisa while speaking of assemblies, stated that misogyny was deep rooted and women ministers and other members had to face the brunt of it.

“You don’t see a male parliamentarian being judged in assembly but a woman parliamentarian, everything she does, from what she wears to what she says to how she says it is scrutinized, judged and magnified,” she said.

However, women parliamentarians do get on the same page when it comes to a pressing issue concerning women rights, “When it comes to rights legislation, women parliamentarians including the ones from religious parties say that they would rise above the party lines and we did succeed in passing some legislations,” she said.

Speaking about the change in attitudes toward feminism, Ghausia opined that ‘feminism’ was not a ‘bad word anymore’ and that feminists were not referred to as ‘angry man-hating, bra-burning lesbians’. “A lot of people are discussing problems on social media, they formed groups and spoke about gender bias, and the activism wasn’t restricted to social media rather they stepped out on streets as well,” she said.

Nafisa Shah however disagreed and referred to the recent outrage after a bill against domestic violence was passed in Punjab because the jokes which circulated within her colleagues also highlighted the deep misogyny: “There is a fear of some moral disorder in this society if those laws are passed and in Pakistan particularly because of the situation of conflict. These laws turning the society upside down, this moral outrage — is hard to understand so feminism is till threatening.”

Referring to a case where women couldn’t vote, the women parliamentarians headed to Election Comission but to their surprise some parliamentarians from religious parties didn’t stand against this action.

But Nighat Said Khan pointed out that feminism was never taken negatively in the country rather the dichotomy of what was and what should always persisted because of a disjuncture: “Feminism has never been a bad word in Pakistan because since the beginning the movement had been confrontationist, it demanded enormous constitutional reforms.”

She then let the cat out of the bag when she said that she didn’t believe that men could be feminists, they could be allies but never feminists: “I don’t think men can be feminists. Woman is an identity now I can fight as much as I like, as much as I say close to workers’ rights, labour rights, fisherfolk rights, no matter how much Marxism took me in, I am not a worker, I can’t be privileged of my background even if I become a mazdoor, I am already privileged because of my background.”

Explaining her point she clarified that men can’t have those personal experiences needed to become a feminist: “Men are privileged because of their history, you can be for their rights you can change yourself, living my life, I can declass myself but I will not be a hari, so men cannot be women and that’s a fact. Feminism comes from within and our own experience is the premise of feminism that the personal becomes the political and men cannot have that personal experience.”

Speaking about the evolution in terms of cybervolution, Ghausia said that for the longest time people didn’t take cyber harassment seriously but now it is becoming a pressing issue. She added that the patriarchy worked with other systems and it had a lot of impact though the film industries as well as consumer products: “Through stereotypical adverts, feminism is being co-opted, appropriated with capitalism the very system which reduced women to objects. The idea of choice feminism should be talked about because it diverts attention from the actual issues of the structures of oppression,” she said.

Nighat also touched upon the idea of how issues like marrying out of choice are not considered problematic in the upper classes because the marriage is inter-class, however if an upper-class women decides to wed a man from a lower stature then all hell will break loose there as well.