Round II: The feminist open mic

Discussion organised in connection with women’s day

LAHORE: Over 70 individuals gathered on Tuesday at Books n Beans to exchange views and personal experiences regarding feminism in context of family, faith and culture.

Speakers at the open mic discussion, organised in connection with the International Women’s Day, had been invited to share random musings, poems and songs with feminist undertones on the occasion. Gender studies student Laraib Abid said Pakistani women had been suffering at the hands of socialisation, where men were always preferred over women.

“No matter how subtle, remarks and words go a long way in shaping a child’s mentality,” she said. We live in a society where girls are referred to be “just like a son” as a way of encouraging them while boys are denigrated by giving them effeminate names and entities, Abid said.

Arooj Saleem, a participant, said there was a need to localise concepts of feminism—something that was erroneously considered to be a western idea—since Urdu was even bereft of equivalents for feminism and patriarchy as such.

“A general critique of feminism is that it lacks inclusivity. This ignores the fact that women have been long alienated from holding powerful decision making positions in private and public discourse.

Therefore touting women empowerment merely as a western agenda is inherently problematic,” Saleem said. She said it had taken her some time to self-identify as a feminist and realise that feminism was not a swear word due courtesy social pressure and misinformation.

Arooma Shahzad of the Pakistan Workers’ Federation said part of the problem was rooted in focussing attention on raising girls in a “culturally acceptable manner” while boys were often given a freehand from a tender age.

Rights activist Sarah Kazmi said it was factually incorrect to categorise feminism as a western concept as local literature was replete with notions of women empowerment. “Most distinctive examples of this can be found in the work of Bulleh Shah—where Heer, sick of sitting on the spinning wheel, questions her standing as an individual in her family and encourages rebellion against cultural norms of her time, she said.

Rights activist Hashim bin Rashid said there was no such thing as good men versus bad men.

He said sexism had been normalised to such a great extent that a lot of women were victims of gender bias that took the form of extremely subtle and seemingly insignificant actions.

The event was organised by the Democratic Students’ Alliance and the Lahore University of Management Sciences with the objective of creating a safe space to promote dialogue regarding personal struggles and victories.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2016.