Exceptional in death

The dead body of ‘dancing girl’ Shabana, mocked with currency notes strewn across it at Khooni Chowk in Swat, the dog-ravaged limbs of Taslima Solangi in Khairpur, the alleged live burial of five women in Naseerabad, the acid-burn scars of Fakhra, have all caught the nation’s sympathetic imagination in recent years.
Unlike the routine violations of domestic violence, acid-throwing, honour crimes and murder, cases such as those listed above, have somehow become exceptionally symbolic. It is true that the media has some role in influencing and shaping our outrage on select cases over others. This deflects our attention from analysing the deeper systems and nodes of power and social relations that motivate and sustain such expressions of violence against women. We seem to be stuck in the voyeurism of the spectacle such that it is the horrific nature and brutality of the crime that commands our attention, rather than the cause and sustenance of the social order that allow for the continuation of such crimes.
One can offer several reasons for this. The first, as mentioned, is the attraction of the spectacle. The visuals that distinguish some cases from others means that less horrific violations, which may be equally damaging as the more high-profile cases, are relegated lesser attention. This creates a hierarchy of violations which compete for media space and our attention.
Second, violations resulting in death seem to carry more ‘value’ than cases of survivors. Acid survivor Fakhra’s case had vanished from the consciences of Pakistanis but there was renewed moral outrage after she committed suicide recently. The sympathy for victims outweighs that of survivors.
Third, the pragmatic approach to violence against women concentrates on the criminal justice system and a demand for punishment, with a focus over forensics and improved legal procedures. This may or may not mitigate the nature of crimes against women because the whole purpose of many such crimes is to use women’s bodies as a message board for posting warnings of what happens to women who defy, or deny, male social codes. Perpetrators do not deny the crime; they own it and claim the reparations for damages to their self-defined honour.
Lastly, as always, the potential of using women victims as pawns in the larger game of male politics and using it as leverage, is a determining factor of male interest in violations against women.
Thus, over the years we see the many cases, particularly of sexual violence against women, being hijacked by male leadership of political parties and communities to contest out their ideological agendas. Such male leaders deliberately attribute the violation to be a politically motivated act, rather than an act of patriarchal regularity. The rhetoric of ‘feudalism’ or ‘tribalism’ as the root cause of the deaths of Fakhra, Solangi, and the Baloch women, and the charge that the slaughter of Shabana was a result of extremist ‘mind-sets’, renders invisible the regular, routine sexual violations and killings of women in urban settings and ‘liberal’ households. It also deflects from the central issue common to nearly all the cases, which is that of marital arrangements, women’s free-will and exercise of choice (including over their own sexualities and reproductive rights).
The temptation to give into voyeurism attracts us to accept cultural atavism, lack of education, lack of rule of law, feudalism, and even the influence of western, secular ideologies or, permissiveness of the media, as causes of violations and hence, masks the actual, very utilitarian purpose of violence. The central commonality, in all the cases cited has been, not so much the issue of honour, culture, feudal powers, or corrupt policing. Yes, these are players on the staging of such cases but the seed of contention lies in the women’s expression of their choice and will, particularly those that concern their sexuality.
Exercising the option to refuse a marriage proposal often motivates acid-throwing as an act of vengeance and purportedly to placate the injury to male egos. The decision to choose her own spouse may spark off serial murders between families in order to restore male control over a community and particularly, to send a warning to other women in the community to prevent future thoughts about female autonomy. The decision to end a marriage or re-marry, threatens male prerogative and control and often results in persecution of the woman, or forces her to surrender custody of children, forfeiting property or even, in death. The choice to terminate a pregnancy or indeed, proceed with an illicit one, all make women vulnerable to violence and death, usually brutal.
The final solution that many outraged citizens insist must be found, maybe simpler than the current grand propositions that call for abolishing supposed feudalism, extremism, corruption or which calls for mass education. One radical suggestion would be to simply, abolish marriage. But given the unlikelihood of ridding us of this patriarchal institution, it could be proposed that a concerted revamping of marital laws, reproductive rights and bargains brokered by male-dominated parallel systems such as jirgas and panchayats, be undertaken.
Even as activists propose the complete abolition of such extra-legal institutions, it may be expedient to take emergency measures to de-fang them in their role in decision-making in marital relations. This would mean a law that not only bans jirgas but which simultaneously, actively challenges the notion of the wali and concept of male guardians and indeed, the unequal laws of child custody, the removal of refuge given to perpetrators under the Qisas and Diyat laws, the reinforcement of protection for divorced women and prevention of child/early marriages, not just in rural but also urban contexts.
All those men who are outraged and speak on behalf of women victims and survivors of violence may contribute too, by giving up their own roles in controlling and making decisions for their wives, daughter and sisters in their choices – in marital relations and over their own bodies, including how many children and of which gender they produce. All of us know how many ‘liberal’, educated women produce that one extra child in the hope for a male prodigy.
Instead of being swayed by the fascination of the spectacle, of being horrified while equally admiring the bravery, the oscillation between regarding the violated woman as victim or sovereign agent, it may be time to re-adjust our corrective efforts towards the systems that benefit from such violations, and radically dismantle them.

The writer is a sociologist based in Karachi. She has a background in women’s studies and has authored and edited several books on women’s issues Email: afiyazia@ yahoo.com