The curious case of the lady in red

Dressed in a green and red sari, a woman was seen walking through a swarming, predominantly male crowd at a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf rally on Monday.

“What is wrong with her?” was my first reaction. But, later I realised that this thinking is a product of the society, perhaps even the global society, we live in. A society that teaches us to blame the women first. In that exact moment, I denied the lady in red (no, not Melisandre) the right to be who she wants to be.

“Look at the girl’s dress, why is she dressed like this? What is her agenda? Why would she come to a rally with only men?”, were some of the questions asked by many party leaders while trying to defend their stance. This is perhaps the same mentality that blames women when they are raped. ‘It’s your fault’ continues to be a grim reminder of how it will always be the women who ‘provoke’ the men.

Not once did anyone (in position of authority) claim that perhaps it is men who should be taught to not harass women. Men have been granted the licence to harass; it is almost taken for granted that if a woman walks in a crowd of men she will be chased, cat-called or groped.

With time, the issue of how ‘unsafe’ PTI rallies were for women turned into a major problem. Back-to-back harassment cases show that the party’s women supporters are not given enough protection. But, it is not as simple as that. We will not need separate enclosures for women if men were bashed for chasing or groping them.

Harassment is both a political and social issue. It is not the first time we have heard or seen a woman getting harassed. It does not pertain to any particular political party, but is an everyday reality of many women (perhaps even men).

I don’t have any sympathy for the PTI, nor do I know the reason why that woman went into the rally; perhaps she was sent by the party’s political rivals, or maybe she genuinely wanted to meet Imran Khan. I don’t care what the woman was wearing or what her profession is — it distracts us from the topic at hand.

The incident does not highlight the failure of a party to ‘protect’ the women supporters — it is the failure of society to ensure that everyone is granted an equal right to live the way they want to.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2016.