Sexual Harassment: Blaming the Victim

“Kia masla hai aap kay saath?” screamed my friend to a man sit­ting behind her while on our way home from col­lege in a pub­lic trans­port. She was too infu­ri­at­ed and pale to reply me upon ask­ing if every­thing was well. Next day she poignant­ly shared that a man clev­er­ly placed his hand at the top of a seat she chose to trav­el on and he was phys­i­cal­ly hurt­ing her shoul­ders. I held her hand and while acclaim­ing her dare I told her how coura­geous she was.
Reminder: She was wear­ing abayya (gown) and scarf (head cov­er).

It is around some time ago, I asked my office boy, from whom I had nev­er received pos­i­tive vibes, to get me an AC remote. It was my bad to extend my arm to grab the remote from his hand. As it might had giv­en him a‑long-await­ed-chance to touch my hand. I remem­ber the shiv­er went down my spine. I remained silent.
Reminder: I was wear­ing Shal­war Kameez.

After years, I real­ized that I could­n’t inher­it the courage from my friend. I want­ed to slap the boy with all the rage but, I remained silent and put myself on cau­tion. Because, I feared. I feared cre­at­ing a scene. I feared every­one scan­ning me while walk­ing the cor­ri­dor next day. I feared being treat­ed like a ‘poor soul’ by every­one around. I feared they all would pity me. I feared the sar­cas­tic smile by his fel­lows to whom he stood vic­tor. I might had the courage to slap him but I had no courage to be a vic­tim as being a vic­tim in our soci­ety is very ‘unfor­tu­nate’ thing.

A lit­tle while ago, I met a very per­turb­ing sto­ry of sex­u­al harass­ment at LUMS, Lahore. Besides, the inci­dent itself being bristling, an appalling and ludi­crous ele­ment attached to it cap­ti­vat­ed my sens­es: nine cur­rent and vis­it­ing fac­ul­ty mem­bers at Law and Pol­i­cy Depart­ment at LUMS came out for the defense of con­vict­ed (law) pro­fes­sor despite the Fed­er­al Ombudsperson’s judg­ment to sack him over sex­u­al harass­ment. They claimed that an inad­ver­tent ‘brief tap’ on the student’s shoul­der in a ‘broad day­light’ does­n’t amount to sex­u­al harass­ment when that ‘brief tap’, as proved now, in real was an act of unzip­ping the girl from the shoul­der.

Sex­u­al harass­ment is just not about reach­ing out phys­i­cal­ly but also embraces any unwel­come ver­bal or writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion of sex­u­al nature accord­ing to “The Pro­tec­tion against Harass­ment of Women at the Work­place, Act 2010” that defines harass­ment as:

“Any unwel­come sex­u­al advance, request for sex­u­al favors or oth­er ver­bal or writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion or phys­i­cal con­duct of a sex­u­al nature or sex­u­al­ly demean­ing atti­tudes, caus­ing inter­fer­ence with work per­for­mance or cre­at­ing an intim­i­dat­ing, hos­tile or offen­sive work envi­ron­ment, or the attempt to pun­ish the com­plainant for refusal to com­ply to such a request or is made a con­di­tion for employ­ment”.

Leap­ing over the per­son­al space and bat­ter­ing her respect by a ‘brief tap’, which dis­com­fort­ed her, if is not an ‘unwel­come ges­ture’ and does­n’t tan­ta­mount to sex­u­al harass­ment then what else does?

It was utter­ly shock­ing to know that instead of con­demn­ing and bemoan­ing the sad act inside the premis­es of an edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion (large­ly deemed as a safe place), the col­leagues (the ‘lit­er­ate’ clan) of the guilty shame­ful­ly con­doned him and came for­ward for his sal­vage.

Fur­ther­more to the tac­it accept­abil­i­ty and cru­el (social) silence towards such inci­dents of sex­u­al harass­ment and rape that are sad­ly on the boil, what is more ago­niz­ing is the argu­ment put for­ward, par­tic­u­lar­ly by men, that such inci­dents are after­math of ‘improp­er’ dress­ing by women and their social demeanor. The con­tem­pla­tion fails me as what was so allur­ing about the five year old girl, who was raped in Lahore, Sep­tem­ber last, which forcibly pulled the seduc­tion strings of the brute?

The norm is to let the raped be blamed.

Whether we are stand­ing at a bus stop, shop­ping at bazar, din­ing out at a restau­rant or attend­ing a con­cert, there is no place that saves us from pejo­ra­tives or insin­u­a­tions cou­pled with an invari­able star­ing that blud­geons our bod­ies with­out blood being spit on the floor. But, we have been made social­ly attuned and habit­u­al­ly silent to all the ‘unwel­come ges­tures’.

We have been mauled so deeply and for so long that our body has now become unre­spon­sive or some­what sat­u­rat­ed. We have giv­en in to treat it as nor­mal and accept­ed to live with it. And that is where we have done us wrong. Our com­pro­mise has widened the space for men to exploit and bruise us more and more.

The prob­lem does­n’t lie with clothes, the skirt, the sleeve­less top, the dupat­ta or hijab. Women’s ‘prop­er’ cloth­ing can’t heal the per­pet­u­al and repul­sive dis­ease that lies very deep in the heads of men. Because men have an inbuilt ‘super­nat­ur­al’ tal­ent to x‑ray our bod­ies. These rays placid­ly tra­verse through lay­ers and lay­ers of cov­ers.

The sub­mis­sion to inflict­ed views and opin­ions of men is not only the defeat but, is fatal. As after the code of cloth­ing, we might be demand­ed to chop off our body parts. About time that, we women, should stop our­selves being told to wear ‘prop­er’ clothes to escape their mali­cious and odi­ous inten­tions. Now, they should be forced to bring an end to the prac­tice of selec­tive prac­tice of their reli­gion. They not only have to cease star­ing at us, but also need to low­er their gaze, if they obey Islam com­plete­ly.

It is time to stare back vig­or­ous­ly to drain out their peren­ni­al sick­ness and abort the unbri­dled lust. The advo­ca­cy for per­son­al free­dom and mutu­al respect is need­ed to be voiced valiant­ly. The dream of a safe soci­ety for our daugh­ters and their daugh­ters can’t bear fruition just by wash­ing the dirt off our hands.