An Introspection About Metamorphosis Of The Other w.r.t Pakistan

This article sets the essential groundwork for scrutinizing the placement of women in political reformation, nationalist agendas or power relation scenarios within Pakistani postcolonial setting. Women’s movements in Pakistan have largely been backlashed by extremists or hegemonic culture because of their shift from silent-bearers to fighters. In Pakistan, feminism has two fold views as historical and other one is the manmade ideologies about it. Gender discrimination, not only in the third-world but in the first world as well, has already been experienced by the oppressed or silenced section of the society that is a rising issue in every patriarchal society. The universal idea about feminism prescribed by first world feminism as center is highly objectified and creates a binary approach towards its mere ideology in first world feminism as marginal. The colonial discourse creates hype regarding binary terminologies of feminism that envision the socio-political and cultural distortion in both contexts either sexual assault or historical connotation of word representation regarding female position in home or work place i.e. discrimination in wages or ranks between man and woman.        

The Internet is the main shareholder to overcome or resist the challenging socio-political constraints on women in Pakistan these days. Patriarchal hegemony and gender discrimination are deep rooted in Pakistan’s homeland, truth to be told, women are subjugated by privileged gender type and labeled as bleak and weak so that overrated masculinity can become the voice of women rather than giving voice to voiceless Other (female) of society. Discussion host Uzma al-Karim in a conversation with BBC Urdu News in 2019 reported about a panel debate on feminism that was conducted under recast title “Understanding Feminism” from “Feminism: The Other Perspective”. She was of the view that gender inequality or to dismantle patriarchy oppression can only be investigated through live experiences of the ‘subject’. But all-male discussion panel except her was obviously to manipulate their universal significant position in order to reinforce their own ideas about feminism in the audience. Furthermore, she takes the edge of male hegemonic society to convey the essence of the feminist ideology that we wanted to register their perception because they were in a position to influence public opinion. And that's why we called it ‘the other perspective’.

The reinvention of feminism in Pakistan started a few decades back and now it is the case that every women's movement is following what Mohanty says that “we are all sisters in struggle”. According to Adichie in a YouTube video on feminism, “feminism is not about women rather it is about equality between both men and women.” She talks about the humanistic approach of feminism that is about equality between men and women, which is not only overlooked in the third world but in the first world as well. In Pakistan, women resist every constraint by articulating their uncanny tremendously off the beat actions that can surprise or shake the rigid patriarch mindsets. And it is parallel to what a Black feminist speaker Audre Lorde says in her essay, “The Master’s Tool Will Never Dismantle Master’s House that now we hear that it is the task of black and third world women to educate white women in the face of tremendous resistance, as to our existence, our differences, and our relative roles in our joint survival.” She considers male education as priority regarding female agency and strength to radically describe their existence and needs. The binaristic understanding regarding feminism is defined by multiple third world feminists to distort the marginal or center categorization of first and third world. The deconstruction of this mere idea about marginal/center, powerless/powerful, agency/dispirit and third world/first world feminism can pave ways for third world females to direct her gaze away in an agentive manner from the so called center to re-scrutinize the universal beliefs. The retrograde and unschooled areas of Pakistan still face forced marriages and the innate idea of never lashing back at your husband creates such a direction in which unprivileged women silently bear the violence from their in-laws knowing the fact that they can’t worry or burden their deprived parents. In Audre’s view, feminism is more to do with “an engagement in men, of men about men” in order to educate them. By trying to get and engage with boys and men collectively, a side-by-side transformation can be experienced in a societal pattern without any discrimination on any level.