The rape culture was made acquainted by United States in 1970s. Just because the women from the US were expected to be raped by men. According to study, it was a myth of society that a woman herself provokes men for rape. And the enforcer rapes woman only when she is awful in a society due to her bad behavior. At first, this culture was coined to cultivate civilization about body shaming, sexism and rape. Soon after its introduction, people in a society started creating myths to led women in a frightened state and to show them how cowardice men are encouraged to rape them.
The strong myth during all this provoking culture was:
“When a woman is raped its her fault.”
This builds up the idea that if a women is raped is raped for a reason, she can’t go to authorities. Some psychologists from the US started deriving this “rape supporting culture” as it was prevailing at a very high rate in US. According to their scrutiny, they inspected that rape culture is dominant due to the dresses that women wear.
Okay so, if we talk about the state which is “Islamic Republic Of Pakistan” where the dignity of woman is high enough on which no compromise can be made, that’s what we muslims perpetuate every single day. Every single day, we are normalizing this rape culture. We are not having enough courage to enforce legislation on these rapists. When an innocent daughter of Pakistani state is raped, we visualize nothing but lead to this sick vision so briskly “what the girl was wearing?” “why she went out alone?” Social media gets filled with “why, what, whom” and the psychology goes on. Every oncoming day is indicated with holocaust.
Now let me tell you about the devastation of religious aspects. In 2003, a 30 year old woman was gang raped on the order of “Panchayat” You can clearly detect how the panchayat culture is so influential in Islamic republic of Pakistan. In 2005, a woman was gang raped by the police, in order of not paying bribe. Moreover, in 2012 , a girl at the age of 15 was raped in Dera Ghazi Khan. There are many such cases where every year an innocent angel, a girl, a woman ,a grandmother is being raped and still there has no legal action taken by the authorities. In 2019, a 21 years old girl was raped by police officer in Rawalpindi. Across the globe, the police is responsible for the safety of a citizen. But when itself, they are indulged in criminality, then to whom the victim should ask for the protection. Women face humiliation when our influential gives edge to the perpetrators and that’s how these cases are emerging every single day.leaders show synchronization about these snarling acts that dehumanizes the victims.
As you can clearly get a living example from the yesterday incident where City Chief Police Officer (CCPO) Lahore gives his statement :
“Why did she choose that route? Why she was travelling alone with her children at the middle of night?”
I’m just out of words that how unethically and brutally he burst out, these remarks showed the inflation of sick mentality. According to them, from 2014-2017, 10,000 rape cases have been reported. Majority of them are gone without any investigation.
In order to defeat this culture, it is crucial to set up an environment where survival feels fortified for not calling out the attackers. And the hashtag emerging with hangtherapist should be enforced in a culpable manner.
May there be such brilliant powers that may become the audacity for the people who are still coping up and struggling to rise above the shattered pieces, mentally or physically.
-AENA KHAN