“You are weak!”, she is told

While waiting for the bus at the stop of Punjab University, she was mocked by two men− “It is Ramadhan. Why is your head not covered?” For a moment, she felt as if she was ridiculed. She panicked for a second or two but then she uttered a sentence which was right on the spot. She said, “It is Ramadhan and you are talking to a ‘gaer mehram’.” Embarrassed and flabbergasted, it was the time for those men to walk away. The problem of covering her head was a question that frustrated her for quite a long time, and every man who passes by her by or who looks at her, scans her from head to toe and then asks her to put on “dopatta” on her head.

The irony of the situation is very much obvious. Men like to think that they are strong and they have the right to tease and mock the women standing at the bus stops or waiting to cross the road. They can comment about women on every possible thing and that’s what, in their heads, make them strong. They are not string in reality. They are as feeble as women are. The least men are capable of doing is that they could almost kill a guy who would do the same with their own sisters or mothers but whenever they have the chance to pass a comment on a girl, they’d do it because at the end of the day, they are men. I am not trying to count the good and bad points of men and women here but what I am only saying why can the men not behave? Why do they feel the urge to insult the opposite gender? The neighbor country has made an attempt to reach Mars and look at us, our sisters and mothers are afraid to go outside their homes because they cannot digest the dirty things they might be addressed from a totally unknown man. There is no solution to such activities but we need to do something about this crucial issue. We cannot ignore these bad habits of our so called strong men for a long time.

The being that happens to give birth to a child, after having him in her own body for nine months, is told that she is weak. The one who works for twenty-four hours, seven days a week without getting a pay check at the end of the month is told that she is weak. That tough soul, which if it steps outside of its house, listens to the harsh sentences of the society’s strong men, ignores the unwanted criticism or cries silently because of it but never gives up. So, I would like to ask the men, the strong men, who is strong here? Is it them or the women who are emotionally strong enough not to cry in front of them and are able-bodied physically to produce an off-spring? I am quite sure that men would not be able to deny the facts but since they think they are strong, it is impossible for them to accept the reality. They tell the women that they are weak in order to hide their insecurity. I wish that all women of the world should stand for the cause that they do not want Feminism to support them but they want to be respected for what they are.

No man should discriminate any woman just because she is a woman. For men, it is the need of the hour to accept the existence of women and women on the other hand, should not stay back at their homes because of the opposite gender. A woman has to keep this in her mind that she is not weak so that no one tries to tell her about her weaknesses ever again.

By Aiysha Abbas
GC University Lahore