'Karachi Eat Festival should rename itself We Hate Men Festival'

How dare they hurt my fragile male ego by instituting 'Families Only' policy?

I am a Pakistani male, and because of my male privilege, I am not used to hearing “No”. I get the biggest boti at the dinner time, and I like it much like Sir Mix-a-Lot. I get to enjoy all the public spaces available in the country whilst making cheap jokes about supporting the idea of having ‘Girls at Dhabas’ – nothing like reducing an entire progressive women’s rights movement to a joke about eye candy.

As such you can understand my dismay when something is denied to me. I hate all Indians because of 1947 and all Americans for the drone attacks but I do not understand how women in Pakistan can feel unsafe around men just because some men engage in sexual violence against them.



By following a policy already implemented at shopping malls and other public spaces in the country, the Karachi Eat Festival with a single stroke has condemned all men to be rapists. I am a man and I am not a rapist so naturally I will take to the social media to vent my fury. I don’t care if women were assaulted as recently as this Saturday at a concert in Karachi – I was not the one doing it so I see no reason for any public space to be protected from me.

All my friends and family members can testify that I have never assaulted them so it makes sense for me to use the hashtag #NotAllMen. All my friends talk lustfully about people so I will not count them in the #NotAllMen category. My family members make colour jokes about women too so maybe not them as well but definitely not me. Basically what I mean when I use the hashtag #NotAllMen is #NotMe – it is a way to show people I am a nice guy so I can get a girl.

Denying entry to a single man to the Karachi Eat Festival is a denial of my fundamental basic human right. It is my right to enjoy a public space. It is true that we tacitly deny this right to all women in Pakistan each day by creating the conditions in public that contribute to the creation of rape culture in Pakistan, generating the need for feminist organisations to reclaim public spaces but that is not as cool as a food festival so can we focus on the priorities.



Me posting a selfie at Karachi Eat Festival to make my Facebook friends think I am cool is a lot more important than creating safer public spaces. In a country where patriarchy rules and there is a seemingly insurmountable male privilege, it is sexist to deny single men entry to a private ticketed festival. Obviously, I can take my family to the festival but that would make me uncool so I do not want to do that. Plus, there will be so many men there; I cannot possibly take my mother or sisters in fear that other men would stare at them.

The Karachi Eat Festival should rename itself Women Eat Festival or We Hate Men Festival. Women do not even love food that much – this is why they maintain a strict diet after internalising unachievable standards of beauty set by men for them. If they do end up eating everything at Karachi Eat that they want to, who will marry them? A day of food is not worth losing a husband over.

If women love food so much, why are there no women sitting at Khadda Market at 3 am enjoying garlic mayo rolls? Or women sitting on footpath at Burns Roads enjoying nihari and fried kebab? Or women haggling with the street vendors all over the city on the roads? I have never even seen a woman run after a Wall’s ice cream-wala.

It is men who get to enjoy all the food offered by Karachi publicly each day. We too get stared at but probably not as much as women.



How dare women demand the right to be out in public eating food and feeling safe? How can we give them the privilege of doing something for three days that men get to enjoy for the entire year?

It hurts my fragile male ego to think that women would feel threatened by me. All I do is appreciate beautiful women by staring at them in public. I am educated and I am friends with women so obviously I will not act upon my desires so I am not the same as a buswala or a panwala staring at them. All stares are not created equal.

My social standing and my class demand that I come off as being unthreatening. Why am I making this about class? Well, I have no straw man argument left to argue this on the basis of gender so I will make this about class by playing the victim card.

As an educated, English-speaking man able to afford a ticket to a festival, I will argue that I am being discriminated against based on my class. I cannot possibly acknowledge my male privilege and if I cannot prove sexism against men in the face of a plethora of evidence of sexual misconduct, harassment and violence against women then I have no option but to make this about class as even acknowledging that we need to have a conversation about feminism, women’s rights or safer public spaces shatters my fragile male ego.



All I am saying is keep all the other men out of the festival but please, at least, let me enter. I love those Churros!!!!

This article is a work of satire.