As a female I feel it's essential to speak up about the current situation. Harassment of women isn't just a national problem, it's omnipresent. There are many cases such as the case of a female doctor in India, just a few weeks back, so it's safe to say that this evil is present everywhere.
Bieng a girl in this society can be incredibly challenging as women might be blamed for circumstances which are often beyond their control. Some are blamed with questions like:
- What was she wearing?
- Why was she out so late?
- What she did to provoke him?
Will a person be blamed for being robbed by a thief for carrying a wallet?
I strongly believe we must shatter the harmful notion that girls are responsible for harassment or assault.
There are numerous heartbreaking examples, but one that stands out is the case of Zainab Ansari, a 7-year-old Pakistani girl who was brutally raped and murdered in Kasur in 2018. She was simply a normal seven-year-old, going to her madrassa as she did daily, and had done nothing wrong.
Similarly some Pakistani parents are now putting padlocks to the graves of their daughters.. what does that justify? Still it must be a women's fault?
Then comes the stereotypical solutions in most of the brown households that they must stop their girls from going to schools or colleges and that they shouldn't interact with the outside world much.
Confining them to their homes or restricting interactions with men is not the solution.
This regressive thinking would undo decades of progress, silencing women's voices and excluding them from society.
The problem isn't with victims ,it's with societal attitudes and perpetrators.
It's bizzare to see that the whole focus in all these cases shifts from the main perpetrator to the innocent.
We can clearly say that sexual assault is NEVER a victims fault.
-Rameen Qaiser
The writer is a third-semester student at Khyber Law College.
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