Why must women pay? Qandeel Baloch's murder has left Pakistan sick
In a month of seemingly unremitting horror, news on Saturday (July 16) of the alleged "honour killing" of Pakistani social media sensation Qandeel Baloch, in a region where women's rights and indeed women's lives are often shrugged off as secondary concerns, has brought a sense of despair.
An attractive woman of 26, Baloch gained fame and notoriety for a provocative series of videos gaining her half a million followers on Facebook and making her one of the most searched for names on the internet in Pakistan.
Some people ranted, as is only too predictable in sexually repressed cultures where hypocrisy is perforce a way of life, about her performances leading people astray and bringing disrepute to a nation associated with global terrorism, military dictatorships, zealotry and spectacular violations of human rights.
While for some, Baloch was the first of a kind of celebrity in Pakistan, enjoying the attention she got without feeling ashamed of wanting it, for much of the elite, she was a laughing stock.
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| Qandeel Baloch. |
And whether or not in the aftermath of her terrible death, they wish to rebrand it, as a Pakistani columnist did, as disapproval of her "mistaking narcissism for feminism", the fact remains that if you wish to be risque but speak English with an accent and didn't study at a grammar school, you will fall prey to the immense insecurity of an elite that needs the world to throw them a bone now and again to further reinforce their sense of entitlement.
Incidentally, I never got the impression that Baloch minded the sniggering.
She wasn't the insecure party here. If you put yourself out there, you will attract both positive and negative attention, and she was surely savvy enough to have realised that.
Besides, too many good things were happening in her life for the haters to bother her. She had, reportedly, walked out of an abusive marriage, an act that the most privileged and empowered of women still approach with some reluctance.
I don't say this to make her out to be an ideal woman. For instance, in Indian movies if a scantily-clad heroine performs an item number, we see her taking care of orphaned children.
I say it because Baloch's past like her videos, was a series of acts of extraordinary courage to be celebrated. She had left her husband, moved to a shelter and then supported herself as a bus hostess driven by the desire, as she had said, of "standing on my own feet", which she was doing, along with financially supporting her family.
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While one is sadly familiar enough with the ugly chauvinism, hyper-religiosity and misogyny of the vast swathe of the populace who've been left insensate and mentally stunted by repression of all sorts, the real disappointment came from some Pakistani liberals who felt the need to temper their commiserations with qualifiers along the lines of "while she was no role model".
I appreciate that especially for Pakistani public figures, being liberal requires a sort of balancing act and an endless compromise with a society that demands you respect its conservatism. Still, if one must score points off a dead girl to do it, a major rethink is required.
In all this darkness though, there is some hope, some prospect of progress, albeit of a limited, stuttering, slow-moving variety. I see women, far from being scared into silence, clamouring for justice for Baloch and for greater freedoms for themselves.
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Perhaps more unusually, I see men, not from the regular bubble of Pakistani liberals-when-suits-them sickened by this murder, wanting to discuss why their masculinity is perceived as being so fragile that women must die to protect it.
I see the sort of people who ten years ago wouldn't have given it another thought to vociferously condemn not just Baloch's murder but the culture that made it possible.
Last night at a vigil for Baloch's murder at Lahore's Liberty Chowk, where from the photographs it seemed men and women attended in equal numbers, a young man held a placard reading "So sick of this s**t". I realise all of us aren't, but a lot more of us are, and that's something.