By Esha Sachdev
We all remember the slogan “Mera Jism Meri Marzi”, some call it a publicity stunt, while some say it’s stupidity with the usage of the meme “women- along with the coffee emoji”. I am damn sure that you could hear the meme while reading it. But the real deal isn’t known, the perceptions are still quite subjective and the question still exists that what is this feminist movement all about. Well let’s find out!
Majority of the people claim to be a feminist and later they find out that they don’t belong in that spectrum.
So, to break it down, feminism refers to the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of equality of sexes. Hold up! What about men then? Is it a movement against men? Which rights are we talking about? Too many questions at the moment! Right? So, let’s have an in-depth analysis on it from the start.
It was initiated on 8th march 2018 and it was titled as "Me Too" movement. The manifesto demands economic justice. The main theme was “Equality” and “Sisterhood” for 2018 and 2019 respectively. The theme was “Autonomy” for 2020.
Each year the females of the nation gather and perform a rally holding banners and shouting their slogans as loud as they can. The main motive is to bring in a positive change in the mind-set of the citizens. But do you think it’s that easy to change someone’s perception without facing a backlash? No, it isn’t! let’s have a look at the other half of the story.
Some unforgettable slogans include, “lo baith gayi sahi se”, “Nazar teri gandi aur pardah main karoon?”, “Consent ki tasbeeh rozana pardhein”, “Stop being menstrual-phobic” etc.
They call it a freedom of choice, so for that concern people do have a freedom of opinion as well and they showed it by their comments and trolls. Many males stepped out in opposition to debate against it while many women even showed resistance. It was definitely a mixture of emotions and opinions.
Being a citizen of “Islamic Republic of Pakistan”, where culture, tradition and religion is so dominant; an individual owning liberal thoughts is considered to be an out-cast and this reflected quite well in the reactions of people.
Since, it was a unity movement, there is nothing wrong in executing it while having a fun and light environment for which singers, food stalls, swings were even organized. But people trolled it by saying it was vulgar, the dressing of women wasn’t proper leading to the outgrown lust of men present there and here we go, we arrived at the most conflicted stereotype that women dressing intrigues men resulting in increased number of rape and harassment cases over the nation. Now, if you observe it’s all interconnected as this point leads to another important point i.e., male opposition is understood but why were some women against it? Well, you will find the answer to this question by the end of this article.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, about 500 women per year are the victims of honour killings and still people ask what right do women want? According to mufti Muneeb Ur Rehman, all rights are covered according to sharia leaving no need for Aurat march. This fact leads to the point that Muslim women have secured their rights, so what about the minorities?
Secondly, if sharia provides the rights, why are people not following it to safeguard women? There were even intimidating attacks from the opposing parties creating an environment of terror all over, reflecting that freedom of speech was taken away to some extent due to external pressure.
Now comes the most awaited 2022 manifesto, “Asal Insaaf”. This revolves around the theme of “Reimaging Justice”. If we rewind back to the point where many women were against the movement in the previous year marches, the reason for this behavior was that march was heading in the wrong direction which was all about secondary issues and unnecessary slogans making it a movement again men. Whereas, the actual motive is to safeguard women’s rights by highlighting significant issues like rape, domestic violence, acid-attacks, honor killings, equal pays etc.
With 2022 manifesto, it covers all these above-mentioned primary issues and hopefully we might see the march moving on the right track as it moves to 2023 march. The suspense for the theme and manifesto for the year 2023 excites all.
When any movement is executed, a lot of loopholes are associated with it. Same goes with the Aurat March as there might be a lot of unresolved answers to the questions which need to blossom layer by layer. We still don’t know whether the march would succeed in changing the perception of highly conservative people or not and whether the crime rate would decrease or not. There is still an ample amount of uncertainty and as a nation all we could do is be a part of this movement in a positive way hoping for security and peace.