Of monsters and men

Between state and citizen, there exists a social contract. Loyalty to the state is owed in exchange for the protection of life, liberty, and property. Government holds out liberty on trust, and we frame constitutions to set the terms of that trust. Repeat violations of these terms render the social contract meaningless. Why, after all, have a state if it cannot ensure justice?

Pakistan’s fondness for patriarchy has forced its women to constantly ask themselves this question. Security and autonomy over their body — perhaps the most basic of basic rights — is denied to them. They are raped in front of their children; harassed in the streets; killed in the name of honour; married off to settle tribal vendettas; assaulted at home; forced to change their faith. Pakistan is the world’s third worst country for women according to the Global Gender Gap Report. Human Rights Watch reports that a woman is raped every two hours in Pakistan.

So let me ask again: why should women respect the state of Pakistan?

I cannot answer that question. Not after a woman is raped in front of her children as she waits for help on the motorway.

Cricket is Pakistan’s national obsession; victim blaming comes a close second.

The CCPO Lahore thought the victim should have exercised more sense. She should have known the dangers of being a woman in this country; she shouldn’t have travelled alone.

This pearl of wisdom from a man who the PTI has moved heaven and earth to appoint should serve as a watershed moment for this country. Abandon hope, those tasked with protecting you blame you.

Blaming victims flows from a myopic worldview that Sherry Hamby, a professor of psychology, describes as the “just world hypothesis”. Speaking to The Atlantic, she described it as: “There’s this powerful urge for people to want to think good things happen to good people and where the misperception comes in is that there’s this implied opposite: if something bad has happened to you, you must have done something bad to deserve the bad thing.

Victim blaming robs the victim of their dignity. It argues that people deserve to be raped.

Nobody deserves to be raped. It doesn’t matter what they are wearing, what time of the day it is, how they live their life. No person deserves to be raped. Rape is never the victim’s fault.

If this was genuinely what our leaders believed, the CCPO Lahore would be out of a job. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Asad Umar described the CCPO’s words as “unnecessary”. He might as well have been describing putting slices of pineapple on a pizza. Apparently IGs can be replaced for political motivations every other day but denying a rape victim their dignity is where the PTI draws the moral line.

The dignity of a person is the only unconditional right in Pakistan’s Constitution. In practice, women seldom get this right. A woman’s dignity is violated every step of the way when gender-based crimes occur. First, when the crime is committed. Then, when they are harassed and humiliated as victims — blamed for their misfortune, treated as social pariahs. For victims of rape, Pakistan continues to employ the unscientific, unconstitutional, and archaic ‘two-finger’ test to determine if they are virgins. The results of these tests are then used to determine the question of consent, resulting in judges writing in publicly available court judgments that a woman is “habituated to sexual intercourse”.

The state has allowed monsters to roam among us, preying on women. Monsters bred by patriarchy. To cure this, some people advocate for a return to Zia’s Pakistan where public executions became normalised, violence became a spectacle. Zia’s Pakistan where the solution to cruelty was more cruelty.

Public executions cannot kill an idea. The idea of patriarchy. A notion of male superiority that has permeated every facet of life in this country. Our laws are bred by it; our moral norms nurtured by it; our social values moulded by it. Only through the systematic dismantling of patriarchy can this country change and its women feel safe.

Neither are public executions constitutional. To answer injustice by perpetuating more injustice is unlikely to prevent any crime.

We must tear down the house that patriarchy built. This means breaking the taboos that exist around discussing sexuality and sexual violence at home and at school. Children must be taught that a woman does not carry her family’s honour, that the only person to blame for rape is the rapist. Consent must become a core part of our educational curriculum.

It is also necessary for the government to embark on gender sensitisation trainings. The police must learn to stop blaming victims, the judiciary needs to learn to stop shaming women in court judgments, and every man who holds public office must learn to respect women.

Finally, it is time to amend every law in our books that perpetuates patriarchy and makes women jump through multiple hoops before they can report a crime. Pakistan’s broken criminal justice system forces people to suffer for years before any modicum of justice is dispensed. It is the certainty of punishment that deters crime. Here, there is no certainty.

The law in this country is present only in its absence. If the social contract fails to protect women from men who have become monsters, then women have no obligation of loyalty to the state. The state loses its moral legitimacy. Women then must take it upon themselves to dismantle the structure of patriarchy that has forced them to suffer. Whether or not the state helps them.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 15^th, 2020.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.