It's important not to smear or reduce mass-movements down to
a few points of contention. I've seen examples of this on this forum and elsewhere. People often react to things before properly understanding underlying issues and nuances. They see a few controversial examples of women's march slogans etc and form entire counter protests based on mischaracterisations. So I broadly agree with OP.
Women's march is much bigger than the few feminist issues that have been raised as points of contention. There are serious issues regarding harassment of women and girls, that ranges from relentless ogling in public places, to outright sexual assault. There are issues of women empowerment in the work force and especially of the literacy rate of women. If we had a
female literacy rate that was higher, we'd be more economically developed, our export industry would be stronger and all Pakistanis would be materially better off.
People need to calm down and assess things before reacting. It's easy to misunderstand, mischaracterise and malign entire movements based on a few questionable and wrong examples.
Brave person.
Just be prepared to get insults thrown your way.
I'm literally dealing with name calling, and personal attacks in another thread, and I didn't even necessarily disagree with the guy insulting me.
Just goes to show you, people are getting way too heated over something that won't even matter in a couple of weeks.
I'm dealing with the same sort of reactionary response here too. I don't want to drag that debate here unfairly, so I'll omit details. But I concur with your experience of seeing people getting worked up and reacting before understanding or properly considering the underlying cause for any movement.
It seems in Pakistan, we quickly assume some sort of saazish or other mischaracterisation of the other side in any movement or protest that we disagree with, well before allowing some sort of legitimacy and space of logical assessment of why it is happening.
No one can deny that women are not given their due rights in Pakistan, but problem here is that "Aurat March" may increase their sufferings.
The placards shown in the march, such as Mera Jism Meri Marzi, are so degrading for women. I haven't seen a single placard mentioning real problems faced by women in Pakistan. Has anyone seen "Quran se shadi band karo", "Jaidaad main hamara haq na maro", "talaq ki dhamki de kar apna matlab nikalna band karo", "maikay bhej ke Naan nufqay se inkaar band karo", "Aurat ki marzi ke baghair shadian band karo", "workplaces pe women ko secure mahol provide karo" etc etc.
This march seems to only want to persuade women to dress like western women, stop marrying, get divorce, and live in a live in relationship.
I agree completely. But I have to add, there are always bad eggs and people who take things too far in all movements. Even when, as in this case, the base cases are all valid. The point I'd like to add is that these few feminist slogans which we all see as objectionable should not be cause to disregard the entire movement and to smear/mischaractarise everyone involved, as we've already seen happening.
