The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums.
THE aftermath of the brutal and utterly tragic murder of Noor Mukaddam is following familiar patterns seen in instances of high-profile cases of gender-based violence. Sections of the Pakistani internet-using public, intelligentsia, and state elite, particularly men, resort to a range of familiar tropes to analyse such tragedies and provide prescriptions. Such voices become especially loud in response to any sustained anger and advocacy from gender rights activists and organisations.
What are these tropes that are dragged out with such tiresome persistence? The first is locating the logic of gender-based violence in some aspect of cultural Westernisation. The thought process behind it suggests that as people (especially women) become more deeply embedded in Western concepts of gender rights, freedoms, mobility, and the right to bodily and ideational autonomy, they become more vulnerable to gender-based crimes. An associated logic — one put forward by the prime minister himself — is that men exposed to Westernisation (or sexualised entertainment more broadly) are more prone to acting out on base, primal emotions, which raises risks of such crimes.