If you look at the history of this region, you will notice that sexual liberation has never been our issue. The folk legends of Sohni-Mahinwal, Sassi-Punno, Umar-Marvi, Heer-Ranjha all depict independent, defiant women who would sneak out to meet their lovers at night and, sometimes, elope with them. Women were involved with guards. Even today, in villages, lesbian sex is common. Relationships between men is seen as a more genuine friendship/partnership/love. And sex in the lower classes is rampant. It’s casual. Same goes for the upper classes. It is the middle classes that are burdened by this hideous morality. It started after colonialization of the subcontinent by the bloody, Puritanical Victorians. However, that doesn’t mean that the middle class doesn’t have sex outside marriage. Yes, of course, there is a great deal of hypocrisy. Youngesters have casual sex relations. During college breaks, in the afternoon, dark, guarded restaurants and cafés offer private booths in middle-class neighborhoods. Americans relate sexual liberation with fashion. In the United States and Europe, women molted their gowns, corsets and skirts, and slipped into trousers and tunics/tops and then eventually into miniskirts. They burnt their bras as an expression of their new freedom. And perhaps that’s why skimpy clothes are seen as defiant gestures. They are not defiant gestures in Pakistan. Maybe you will call us a schizophrenic society, but that’s how we have been for many centuries. Even today in the deepest deserts of Thar and Bahawlpoor women cover their faces in long ghhonghats but wear backless blouses. In tribal areas of the subcontinent, women roam around bare-chested.
this article is absolutely correct. I belong to a Sindhi family and in villages i have seen women covering their head whereas their chest is not covered with the dupatta. Also they shake hands with men in their family and its not considered an odd thing. whereas, middle class families take all these things as haww hawww!!
Spot on!
It would have been better if you mentioned your comment is a response to this horribly written & conceived piece of marketing sh** by Aamna Haider http://www.statelessmedia.com/blog/there-are-people-in-pakistan-who-are-beautiful-and-glamorous-and-do-not-want-to-kill-you/
To quote one of the comments, she wrote it as a price for being on that yatch.