KHI 28-11-2011_Layout 1 11/28/2011 2:24 AM Page 13
Monday, 28 November, 2011
comment 13
The text police
Women and the Left
We’ll mind our own language, thank you
Misogyny found everywhere
By Waqqas Mir
P
akistan Telecommunication Authority’s proposed ban on allegedly ‘obscene’ texts has once again brought the country into the news for the wrong reasons. Apart from the fact that the list of ‘obscene’ words has introduced many of us to shades of obscenity we may not have been familiar with, this whole plot carries little redeeming virtue. And if being a Pakistani abroad is not exhausting enough already! As far as the world media is concerned this was another juicy story that, but of course, is evidence of the creeping Talibanisation of the Pakistani society and the growing power of the Islamists. To be quite honest, I am rather sick of the whole ‘let’s put a Taliban/Islamist spin on every development’ tactic. Like an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis I am anti-Taliban and vocal about it. But my existence and that of my country is not limited to those radicals yet that is what most new stories are interested in. It is intellectually dishonest and an insult to the intelligence of Western journalists and their audiences. But lapping it up, they are. Apart from the trivialities of the planned ban, there are many issues at play here. First up I think the Pakistani society deserves commendation for the fact that the mere talk of such a ban became big news and multiple fronts have already threatened legal action. We Pakistanis are a loud bunch but we don’t always raise the right amount of noise — in this case we have done that so, as they say in Pakistan, ‘yeh cheez’! The legal challenges to the planned ban under the Protection from Spam, Unsolicited, Fraudulent and Obnoxious Communication Regulations, 2009 are likely to be successful. The Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organisation) Act, 1996 carries some fairly
broad language which the PTA can rely on to argue that it is acting to protect the interests of consumers of telecom services. However, the list is not just absurd but clearly overbroad and courts generally find it easy to strike down such overbroad exercise of power. According to some reports, the justification offered by the PTA’s letter makes reference to the ‘glory of Islam’ in Article 19 — glory of Islam being one of the grounds under which freedom of press and speech and can be restricted. The courts will hopefully not uphold an overbroad and absurd list of words under the banner of glory of Islam. Apart from legalities, even as a matter of policy, the PTA acted clearly in ignorance of its avowed aims. The 2009 regulations in question already lay down how each service provider in the telecom sector must have a complaint handling mechanism to deal with issues of unsolicited calls and texts. Numbers can be blocked and subscribers can take effective action in this regard. The aim of the 2009 regulations is to protect consumers and it is laughable, yet predictable, that the PTA would rely on a desire to protect consumers while putting in place the new ban. That is how freedom is interfered with each time — a paternalistic desire to protect the people. But by merely concentrating on the list and by making fun of it, we have ignored a deeper issue. And that is the stance of a society on the prior restraint of speech. It is fascinating that this list seems intuitively ‘wrong’ to so many people—both Pakistanis and others. But as a lawyer it is intriguing to think about how societies focus on some issues while ignoring others of the same shade. By focusing on the list alone are we conceding the argument that a less broad list would be okay? What if the list only incorporated some of the dirtiest swear words—with no alternative uses? Would a state agency’s determination to protect people from harassment then justify restraints on what people can or cannot communicate to each other over text messages? Consider pornography. Some countries ban it altogether while others merely regulate access to it for certain age groups. europe, otherwise considered more liberal than
the USA, is grappling with its own freedom of expression issues. Many european states ban and/or punish Holocaust denial. Such laws would not pass constitutional muster in the United States where the First Amendment jurisprudence sets an extremely high bar before restrictions can be imposed. In Pakistan, we find the PTA issued list of banned words laughable but the debate would be different if the words were lesser or more provocative. Why should it be that way? Why shouldn’t we as a society take this opportunity to debate the merits of any prior restraint on speech? Is that going too far? Access to pornographic websites has recently been banned in Pakistan — shouldn’t we have rights groups threatening legal action to challenge that too? These are just questions—difficult questions at many levels—which I think we as a society need to discuss. Surely, most of us concede that the state does have authority to step in and regulate speech but at what point is that line crossed? We already have laws in place that punish use of words that cause sexual harassment and assault. Implicit in such laws is a judgment call that certain results, if and when produced, deserve condemnation. At the same time, many would argue that the state has no business regulating words exchanged between two consenting individuals; that argument sounds fine and yet it captures the problem. There is a temptation for the state to be paternalistic in such matters but for the most part it must be resisted. Let no one convince you that Pakistan is a messed up country because of this PTA list. The world needs to get over its coverage of Pakistan in make or break terms. No country can claim never having acted out of a protective impulse in enacting repressive laws. This is an ongoing process — a part of our growing up. But we will only truly grow up when we debate the issues at a deeper level and when enough among us rise to raise the most difficult questions. The writer is a Barrister and an Advocate of the High Courts. He is currently pursuing his LL.M at a law school in the United States. He can be reached at wmir.rma@gmail.com
A
friend and mentor, who has been an active part of mainstream politics for several years, once asked me if I knew what the problem with Leftist men was. Not quite sure what she was pointing to, I asked her to explain. “Their idea of female ‘emancipation’ is for women to behave exactly the way men behave in this country; with the same level of independence,” she said. “This is extremely unfair to women because here, they aren’t even considered human in the public space!” She was right. The Left in Pakistan has never really cared about women. While the participation of women has always been encouraged, a lack of understanding of the gender question and the on-ground socio-cultural issues of women in this country has meant that this encouragement has been little more than verbal. The concentration, as such, has primarily been to display a token participation of women in Left activities and politics; mainly to show that unlike right-wing and middle-of-the-road mainstream parties, the Left is the only political channel for women. While this is theoretically true – patriarchy and the ownership of property go hand in hand, after all – much affirmative action needs to be taken in order to bring things to an even scale for women in this country. And this is something that very few of our comrades in the Left have bothered to try and understand. I say By Urooj Zia ‘very few’ because in my time as a left-wing political worker, I’ve known some notable exceptions. But these men have been exceptions, rather than the norm; which is ironic, given as how leftist and progressive ideologies lay a lot of stress on the gender question. Most women here have to wage immense battles with their own families, first, to break the shackles that bind them to restrictive, cultural norms. More fights break out when she decides to be an active part of politics or political movements; the participation of women in street politics is, after all, a huge middle and uppermiddleclass taboo. During all of this, she continues to fight against the misogyny that she faces all around her everyday in the streets, at work-
places, even perhaps with friends. After this, the last thing she expects is to experience the same madness within parties that are said to be the sole women-friendly spaces in society. Unfortunately, her expectations are dashed; at least as far as the Left in Pakistan is concerned. When I’d first started working with the Left here, I’d foolishly thought that maybe the misogyny that I was experiencing from most of my comrades was my fault – that maybe I was expecting too much or that I wasn’t behaving properly; I’d thought of a thousand other maybes, perhaps in an attempt to deny the fact that misogyny existed even in the Left here. But then I started speaking to fellow female political workers and realised that almost all of them had exactly the same kind of experiences as me. All of them had received derogatory comments from male comrades about what they wore, how they spoke, what they spoke about. When they protested, they were generally told to ‘take it easy’, to ‘stop getting so worked up over minor issues’ and to ‘concentrate on the larger picture’. I have myself been rewarded with all sorts of labels, starting with ‘serial ranter’ to ‘anarcha-feminist’. The problem, however, is that our male comrades have, for the most part, failed to understand the fact that the expectation of being treated as a human being with self-respect is a basic human right; that the women protested because this right was being snatched away from them. They failed to understand that there could be no ‘larger picture’, no ‘revolution’ without the participation of women; and that, women would walk out of these movements, as they have done in the past, if they continued to be treated like appendages with no opinions or thoughts of their own. They failed to understand that a lot of work needs to be done to understand the particular issues that women face before they could be expected to be as ‘independent’ as men. To make matters worse, in most cases, unable (or unwilling) to understand these issues and assuming that women were just ‘being difficult’, male comrades ended up ‘ghettoising’ their female comrades. The choices given to women were stark: either deal with hardships (that men would never have to face) without uttering a peep, or be sidelined from mainstream activities. There is no doubt about the fact that the only political parties and groups that can do anything at all about the true emancipation of women are those that follow left-wing ideologies. As such, it is high time our male comrades started listening seriously to what female political workers within their ranks have to say, or the nascent Left in Pakistan which is being rebuilt with gusto and with much hope will soon be back at the point where it was in the 90s: in the living rooms and memories of disheartened former activists. The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher based in Karachi. She can be reached through twitter (@UroojZia) or email (contact AT uroojzia.com).