ARTICLE
This society killed her
A
s the smell of coffee wafts throughout the room,
my eyes wander to the newspaper, I can’t make
out the headline and I make no effort to read it.
Instead I open Facebook on my phone and the first thing
I see on my newsfeed is that Qandeel Baloch has been
killed by her brother.
I let the news sink in.Of all the news in the world this
shocked me the most. Did it really, though? With all the
attacks on females in our beloved, tolerant society, news
of a female star being killed to protect her family’s honour was nothing out of the blue, for Pakistan at least.
Baloch’s antics on social media were well-known
throughout Pakistan and even beyond, at least for
those people who possess a Facebook account. She
had been called “Pakistan’s Kim Kardashian,” a “slut,” a
whore and a number of other ‘colourful’ names. Her videos were full of comments abusing her, telling her she
must have some respect, that she should die and that
she is ruining Pakistan’s name.
Then she was no more. Strangled to death by her brother who thought he was protecting his family’s honour.
It was just another day for Pakistan. A woman who, for
all intents and purposes, was doing her own thing, was
not afraid to show a bit of skin, and did some things that
were far too wrong for this patriarchal society to handle,
was killed in cold blood.
There was outrage. People rushed to put up statuses
defending Baloch. The same people who had ridiculed
her rushed to talk good about her and felt good about
themselves. They were supporting a good cause, after
all.
These same people tagged their friends on the videos of
the late model-turned-actor-turned-social-media celebrity and made jokes about her, but after she was killed
all of us started updating FB statuses in her defence and
a representation of feminism.
If one thing that the majority of Pakistani people are best
at, it’s hypocrisy. But what they are even better at is barbarity. With the death of Baloch, there came a flood of
tweets and sentiments praising
the killer for what he had done,
that Baloch deserved it.
This is just another instance in
a long list of the male gender
overpowering the female. A few
months back, a bill was being
drafted by some religious ‘scholars’ who believed it was okay to
lightly beat your wife.
So, we are condoning domestic
violence now. Top-notch stuff
this is.
A religious scholar went on national television and refused to
let a woman talk because, well,
she was a woman. In 2015,
there were almost 250 incidents
of honour killings in Punjab
alone.
I was watching a video of a girl
who was singing an Arabic poem
while playing the piano, and
scrolling down to the comments, I found where hordes
of men and women (yes, women also!) were bashing the
girl for not wearing a ‘dupatta’ over her head.
Instead of praising her voice they were shaming her for
showing her face.
If one thing that we can learn from the past few months,
it is that we live in a very intolerant society driven by
men. For the feminine and, for that matter, any other
gender to survive in this society, this kind of intolerance
must be rid of. Qandeel Baloch’s brother didn’t kill her,
this society did.
20 | BOOM