By Editor Critic Magazine
Discrimination of and abuse against women comes in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Pakistan has its own market as exemplified in honor-killings, acid-attacks, the usurious dowry system, and the act of disinheritance. Champions of women’s rights do not champion against these particular varieties of dehumanizing acts simply on case of it being dehumanizing per se, but rather, because, honor-killing is hardly a business venture. Understand that we are all products of this capitalist economic system, and mentality, which regards anything and everything marketable as long as it is profitable, including rights, or as in this case: women’s rights. If not, then, according to Noam Chomsky, why is marijuana illegal but tobacco not, when research and evidence over-emphatically proves the latter to be deadlier?
Answer: because marijuana plant can be grown by anyone anywhere even indoors making it a no-business a no-show. Likewise—though hard-to-digest—honor-killings in Pakistan and elsewhere are condemned simply because not that we should as a matter of principle, or maybe it is, but basically because it is hard to make a business out of it. Again, if not, then why this deafening hoo-hah against honor-killings on the one hand and murderous silence on the business of prostitution and depiction of sexually objectified imageries notably those “adult” programs that run on Cable TV and those readily available pirated DVDs at movie outlets, on the other? Why this double-standard? Is it perhaps somehow ok to see a woman pole and lap dance naked for a man and prostitute for a living than to be killed in the name of so-called dignity and honor? No, the reason being that honor-killing is our marijuana and prostitution and pornography, our tobacco!
We Pakistanis specialize in women’s rights abuse while the Western world targets the woman in self. Killing a woman is denying her the right to live and stopping her to work is denying her the right to earn a livelihood—this is what we do. They, on the other hand, violate the very sanctity of womanhood by erecting billion-dollar industries like the industry of prostitution and pornography where female bodies are publicly bought and publicly sold like any other commodity in the market as if women were objects. Oh yes, but they are, because they have been made into one, and this is what I am setting out to prove.
It is not enough to raise voice against honor-killings alone and claim to have done great service to womankind unless brothels are shut down too, Cable TV vigorously censored and sale of DVD’s banned. Commodifying woman and sexually objectifying their gender is an eviler sin having far greater and more pervasive implications than honor-killing. In fact, honor-killing is lollipop against pornography. It is, not because murder is a joke, no, God-forbid, but rather because the size of its impact and the nature of its repercussions pale in comparison to what pornography in particular threatens with to the human civilization as a whole.
In the modern-day capitalist society and globalization demand and supply subsists in brotherhood. If there is no demand, it is created. If it cannot be created—either because of legal or moral reasons—it is camouflaged as an abstract something which in real it is not, like: art and culture, and modernity. Then it is packaged and marketed as entertainment and sold over Cable TV and movie outlets to the masses. We are referring to the art of creating demand for sexual gratification and promiscuity achieved by constantly bombarding imageries and content of such nature in heavy doses left and right day and night. This helps desensitize public on sex taboo on the one hand while on the other, sex them up physically and mentally. Over time, gradually, one after the other, sex-supply-industries like brothels, “fashion houses”, modeling agencies, pageantry and beauty contests and so on spring up and more importantly, without objections, only so because these represent billion-dollar industries each. Such becomes the normalcy of the day that issues like prostitution and pornography becomes non-issues—in fact, defended upon as women’s rights! We know for a fact that our youth spends enormous amount of time in browsing pornographic websites on the internet and buying x-rated videos besides watching countless hours of Cable TV. What impact do you think does it have on them? Will it not turn them into sex-maniacs? What if these imageries continue to bottle up in their minds and they cannot find any outlets for it (brothels or by getting married)—for how long will they leash themselves before eventually raping a girl? Or molesting her, teasing, flirting, or fantasizing in the least?
Research has empirically proven the impact of TV programming and advertising on our minds in terms of influencing us the way we think and the way we act reasons for which multinationals spends billions on it. It does not need to be pornography or likewise imagery per se to sexualize a mind—no, in fact, the same can be achieved, though with lesser impact, through innuendos in the form of soaps, song lyrics, modeling and fashion, and even through everyday toiletry jokes and discourses. The idea is to mainly trivialize and commercialize sex. Cable TV is an expert at this. Societies where sex is a taboo will never think about letting its daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives to even uncover their hair, let alone to permit them prostitute for a living or model for any commercial! This was the precise situation in Pakistan before the advent of Cable and advertising culture and the sale of music and movie DVD’s; prostitution was unheard of, or where existing, condemned mercilessly and unforgivingly; rape almost non-existent. Today, however, we have Aunty Shamins and Uncle Bahadurs maintaining list of their clients in their little black books! What happened? What changed? What happened and what changed was that the world came to know that sex sells, and sells big, and who better to symbolize sex than women? Young and pretty faces, unmarried, owning unblemished skin, beautiful smile, ocean-filled eyes, and silky hair, were all lined up. Seemingly innocent and harmless depiction of their faces against products was used to grab attention of people to the advertisements which ordinarily they wouldn’t see. Thus how the system of sexual objectification of womenfolk came into being.
With time, as always is the case, sex went under a thorough redefinition phase into becoming an art. Entire system of beliefs and culture transformed to accommodate this invention; gender-intermingling approved, dress-codes changed, religious values relaxed. Subsequently, the cases of rape and divorce rates shot up; profession of prostitution got socially accepted, if not legalized; and DVD sales flourished. Who benefited the most? Men. Who suffered the greatest? Women. Our sexual revolution has come almost fifty years late to the one that came in the West. It is only logical to see what its results will be like by glancing at their socio-cultural system and particularly the state of womankind there. Today, women are being categorized as the ‘sex-class’ because of the nature of the work they are involved in. When you visit pornographic websites, or buy x-rated movies, or watch sexually-charged soaps, or gaze and stare at fashion models, and women in tight-fitted dresses, compact and revealing clothes exhibiting skin, or entering into brothels—what are you doing? You are lusting for their bodies. How many times have we noticed people turning pages of a magazine and stopping only to “check-out” models selling some product; people flipping TV channels and pausing only to drool over a sexually-charged image; or people just walking on streets but then turning their heads around to follow a jean-clad woman pass by? In fact, men, when they hang out with their likes, proudly exchange “notes” on women they have been with while keeping count and boasting on the total number of their partners with each other.
To be continued...
Discrimination of and abuse against women comes in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Pakistan has its own market as exemplified in honor-killings, acid-attacks, the usurious dowry system, and the act of disinheritance. Champions of women’s rights do not champion against these particular varieties of dehumanizing acts simply on case of it being dehumanizing per se, but rather, because, honor-killing is hardly a business venture. Understand that we are all products of this capitalist economic system, and mentality, which regards anything and everything marketable as long as it is profitable, including rights, or as in this case: women’s rights. If not, then, according to Noam Chomsky, why is marijuana illegal but tobacco not, when research and evidence over-emphatically proves the latter to be deadlier?Answer: because marijuana plant can be grown by anyone anywhere even indoors making it a no-business a no-show. Likewise—though hard-to-digest—honor-killings in Pakistan and elsewhere are condemned simply because not that we should as a matter of principle, or maybe it is, but basically because it is hard to make a business out of it. Again, if not, then why this deafening hoo-hah against honor-killings on the one hand and murderous silence on the business of prostitution and depiction of sexually objectified imageries notably those “adult” programs that run on Cable TV and those readily available pirated DVDs at movie outlets, on the other? Why this double-standard? Is it perhaps somehow ok to see a woman pole and lap dance naked for a man and prostitute for a living than to be killed in the name of so-called dignity and honor? No, the reason being that honor-killing is our marijuana and prostitution and pornography, our tobacco!
We Pakistanis specialize in women’s rights abuse while the Western world targets the woman in self. Killing a woman is denying her the right to live and stopping her to work is denying her the right to earn a livelihood—this is what we do. They, on the other hand, violate the very sanctity of womanhood by erecting billion-dollar industries like the industry of prostitution and pornography where female bodies are publicly bought and publicly sold like any other commodity in the market as if women were objects. Oh yes, but they are, because they have been made into one, and this is what I am setting out to prove.
It is not enough to raise voice against honor-killings alone and claim to have done great service to womankind unless brothels are shut down too, Cable TV vigorously censored and sale of DVD’s banned. Commodifying woman and sexually objectifying their gender is an eviler sin having far greater and more pervasive implications than honor-killing. In fact, honor-killing is lollipop against pornography. It is, not because murder is a joke, no, God-forbid, but rather because the size of its impact and the nature of its repercussions pale in comparison to what pornography in particular threatens with to the human civilization as a whole.
In the modern-day capitalist society and globalization demand and supply subsists in brotherhood. If there is no demand, it is created. If it cannot be created—either because of legal or moral reasons—it is camouflaged as an abstract something which in real it is not, like: art and culture, and modernity. Then it is packaged and marketed as entertainment and sold over Cable TV and movie outlets to the masses. We are referring to the art of creating demand for sexual gratification and promiscuity achieved by constantly bombarding imageries and content of such nature in heavy doses left and right day and night. This helps desensitize public on sex taboo on the one hand while on the other, sex them up physically and mentally. Over time, gradually, one after the other, sex-supply-industries like brothels, “fashion houses”, modeling agencies, pageantry and beauty contests and so on spring up and more importantly, without objections, only so because these represent billion-dollar industries each. Such becomes the normalcy of the day that issues like prostitution and pornography becomes non-issues—in fact, defended upon as women’s rights! We know for a fact that our youth spends enormous amount of time in browsing pornographic websites on the internet and buying x-rated videos besides watching countless hours of Cable TV. What impact do you think does it have on them? Will it not turn them into sex-maniacs? What if these imageries continue to bottle up in their minds and they cannot find any outlets for it (brothels or by getting married)—for how long will they leash themselves before eventually raping a girl? Or molesting her, teasing, flirting, or fantasizing in the least?
Research has empirically proven the impact of TV programming and advertising on our minds in terms of influencing us the way we think and the way we act reasons for which multinationals spends billions on it. It does not need to be pornography or likewise imagery per se to sexualize a mind—no, in fact, the same can be achieved, though with lesser impact, through innuendos in the form of soaps, song lyrics, modeling and fashion, and even through everyday toiletry jokes and discourses. The idea is to mainly trivialize and commercialize sex. Cable TV is an expert at this. Societies where sex is a taboo will never think about letting its daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives to even uncover their hair, let alone to permit them prostitute for a living or model for any commercial! This was the precise situation in Pakistan before the advent of Cable and advertising culture and the sale of music and movie DVD’s; prostitution was unheard of, or where existing, condemned mercilessly and unforgivingly; rape almost non-existent. Today, however, we have Aunty Shamins and Uncle Bahadurs maintaining list of their clients in their little black books! What happened? What changed? What happened and what changed was that the world came to know that sex sells, and sells big, and who better to symbolize sex than women? Young and pretty faces, unmarried, owning unblemished skin, beautiful smile, ocean-filled eyes, and silky hair, were all lined up. Seemingly innocent and harmless depiction of their faces against products was used to grab attention of people to the advertisements which ordinarily they wouldn’t see. Thus how the system of sexual objectification of womenfolk came into being.
With time, as always is the case, sex went under a thorough redefinition phase into becoming an art. Entire system of beliefs and culture transformed to accommodate this invention; gender-intermingling approved, dress-codes changed, religious values relaxed. Subsequently, the cases of rape and divorce rates shot up; profession of prostitution got socially accepted, if not legalized; and DVD sales flourished. Who benefited the most? Men. Who suffered the greatest? Women. Our sexual revolution has come almost fifty years late to the one that came in the West. It is only logical to see what its results will be like by glancing at their socio-cultural system and particularly the state of womankind there. Today, women are being categorized as the ‘sex-class’ because of the nature of the work they are involved in. When you visit pornographic websites, or buy x-rated movies, or watch sexually-charged soaps, or gaze and stare at fashion models, and women in tight-fitted dresses, compact and revealing clothes exhibiting skin, or entering into brothels—what are you doing? You are lusting for their bodies. How many times have we noticed people turning pages of a magazine and stopping only to “check-out” models selling some product; people flipping TV channels and pausing only to drool over a sexually-charged image; or people just walking on streets but then turning their heads around to follow a jean-clad woman pass by? In fact, men, when they hang out with their likes, proudly exchange “notes” on women they have been with while keeping count and boasting on the total number of their partners with each other.
To be continued...
true. and unfortunately our women dont see how the vultures of the society are using them. Instead when someone try's to stop them they say these men are backwards and dont let us enjoy our freedom. Actually our criteria of honor and dignity has been changed by this so called enlightened media for our leaders...
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