The rishta aunty is the biggest omen of patriarchy. She reinforces the segregation of sexes and takes the agency of young women into her own hands by choosing who young women will spend the rest of their lives with. Probably pushed to the sidelines of...
Misogyny, in Pakistan is largely a bipartisan exercise. However, with Khwaja Asif’s recent tweet about Firdous Ashiq Awan joining PTI and insinuating that she is a “newly acquired dumper,” he made PML N take the cake for misogyny. I won’t be surprised if secretly, he’s...
"I can't fade." Tanzeela Mazhar is the woman who took a man down on charges of harassment in the workplace. She has so much of what young people today call swag. When she walked in to meet with me this is the last thing I...
Our national carrier brought a goat to the airport and slaughtered it next to the ATR due to fly to Multan to ward off evil spirits. The sacrificial black goat’s blood drained on the tarmac, behind it, the wheel of the carrier. This is not...
They say justice delayed is justice denied. In Asia Bibi’s case perhaps delaying of a sentence may turn out to be a better deal for her. She was arrested for her faith. We all know the story by now — how she stood her ground...
When I heard the UNGA speeches from tier-two leadership of both India and Pakistan, it struck me how the rhetoric on both sides has remained unchanged since the early 2000s. Back then, I was a vehement activist on the Kashmir issue and had as a...
For a country that shuns sex education on the basis that it erodes moral values, the number of unwanted pregnancies in Pakistan are staggering. According to a 2012 figure by the Population Council, 4.2 million of the nine million pregnancies were unwanted. As much as...
In the four minutes that the Vogue #MyChoice video was played online, many critics missed the 3.8 or so minutes that talked about various options women exercise over their bodies: to have children, to travel, to love or to eat in quantities they like, and...
It is odd that the protection this country provides its citizenry is directly proportional to their power. The most vulnerable are left to the mercy of chaos: the Ahmedis, Shias, Christians and those random trespassers who are falsely accused of blasphemy either because they did...
Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Ice Candy Man had a young girl in it called Lenny as its central character. The only one good thing that came out of this girl contracting polio was that she got to stay home and listen in on all the grown up...
