Misogyny and humour

Over the weekend, I got an opportunity to attend a mazahiya mushaira (which can be loosely translated as a ‘festival of Urdu humour poetry’). The opportunity was rare, the line-up was star-studded, and the cause was to raise funds for schools devastated by recent floods in Punjab and Sindh. It was meant to be a win-win situation with a good cause and good humour all in one evening.

While the charity effort reached modest success, the poetry was a festival of misogyny and a celebration of jokes made in poor taste. Many of the poets, who were supposed to be funny, had themes that reflected our deep social problems. The bulk of the poetry was directed at making fun of women, often wives. The oft-repeated message was how oppressed men are and how aggressive, oppressive and calculating all women tend to be. It came up over and over again. The messages in the ghazals and nazms, stanzas and couplets, were simple: men suffer throughout their lives due to their wives who are materialistic, men who look for good wives are insane and of course, men who are able to put up with their wives are saints. These gender-biased themes did well with male poets from all ethnic backgrounds, shattering the myth that people from any one province or one region alone have a monopoly on misogyny.

Had I not known the reality of Pakistan ranking among the highest in the world in crimes against women, domestic violence, gross violation of human rights of girls and women and in general, the reality of how we socially accept suppression of women, I would have come out with a very different picture of Pakistan. Unfortunately, I knew better than that. The poetry was far from realistic in capturing our social realities, but right on the mark in capturing the mindset of men in our society, the perpetrators of nearly all domestic violence incidents.

The second theme, after the focus on the emotional instability and conniving nature of women was done with, was about making fun of people’s physical appearance. Once again, this was directed to middle-aged women, who were being portrayed as massively overweight, well beyond the prime of their beauty and in general not attractive in any physical or emotional sense. Once again, this was hollow and in poor taste. Not only was this portrayal of women misogynistic, it is also hypocritical. Those who found these jokes extremely funny, among the poets and the audience, will do better by looking in the mirror and around themselves to find the prevalence of receding hairlines, gross obesity and in general poor health and fitness amongst themselves. It is easy to take cheap shots at women, a lot harder to glance at the mirror.

Coming out of the event, I realised that the real problem is not in the poets or the poetry itself. While the message of misogyny in our contemporary humour poetry is pervasive, the real problem is within us. Throughout the evening, there was a direct relationship between the extent of misogyny and the loudness of the applause (or daad as one would call it in this context). The stanzas with the most profound level of woman-bashing would get the loudest cheer from men in the audience. The deep problems of gender disparity, human rights and suppression cannot be just blamed on those who have not been educated. Even those of us who are supposedly highly educated, represent the enlightened, are eager to be represented as progressive and liberal, are a key part of the problem. We, through our applause and our attitude, encourage such a tasteless depiction of women and consider making fun of them fair game.

I have always had a deep affection for Urdu poetry. I find comfort in it and believe that it has the power to influence and change society for the better. At the same time, just as we should not put up with literature that promotes or glorifies racial, ethnic or sectarian prejudices, misogyny should also be abhorrent and unacceptable to us in all of its manifestations, whether in speeches by a political party leader or veiled in a verse by a poet.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th, 2014.

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