One major recent event that feminists need to talk about

The rape game: The one major piece of latest news that we feminists have not discussed enough!

Yes don’t be surprised. In today’s modern world, something as hideous as a “rape game” exists. The direct proof of that is the Cologne Sexual Assaults on New Year’s Eve.

I am a big feminist. And I follow many blogs and pages that deal with feminist issues. Most of those are Western, because it is no hidden secret the Westerners tend to be more vocal on women rights. However the one major piece of feminist opinions recently was about the news of Chris Gayle flirting with the news reporter and it was everywhere on the social media. Whereas I was surprised that the Cologne mass New Year attacks went by unnoticed by many except a few. Why was that so? No heads to be scratched there; it is because of the ethnicity of the perpetrators involved. Do we feminists only speak up and criticize when it’s “safe” to do so? In the light of what happened in Cologne this New Year’s eve, we should wonder why is it that we indulge in selective criticism and empathy. More than often, when it comes to choosing between women rights and trying not sounding racist, we choose to be the latter.

The massive wave of sexual assaults that occurred at New Year’s Eve in Cologne is a kind of a rape game that has been etched in history. The rape game or as it is called in Arabic popularly as “taharush” is an activity wherein a group of men surround the victim and then a few of them go ahead and rape them. This is clearly the definition of rape culture. The one case famous in the western media regarding this is of Lara Logan.

“Such crimes are committed by groups of young men … mostly when there are large gatherings of people, such as demonstrations,” Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said in a statement according to newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “They range from sexual harassment to rape.”

This was a huge atrocity which deserved much attention and discourse which went relatively less talked about because the color of the skin of the criminals involved and their religious beliefs. It is true that if something similar had been carried out by white men, everybody would be talking about it? Why are people of other cultures held to different standards? Do we tend to tolerate crime and immorality in the name of tolerance and multi-culturalism? Criticizing the culture of a particular region does not make one racist. For example, Dowry is a huge part of the Pakistan/Indian culture, and when I speak against it, it doesn’t mean that I am racist. It just means that I give a damn about women’s issues. We need to realize that not all cultures are good enough when it comes to women’s rights. It has been surveyed time and again that there are certain countries which give more importance to women’s rights than others. I myself am from one such county. Pakistan is struggling to maintain its identity as a democratic state while on the other hand, an official implementation of Sharia law as demanded by the Taliban, ISIS, and other radical Islamist local bodies would further worsen the situation of women. Things are not much different in other Islamic countries such as Iran or KSA, because they derive their values from an ancient set of beliefs (religion) rather than democracy and equality.

Instead of being fed by conspiracy theories and rallying for BDS movements against the only decent democracy in the Middle Eastern region, and the one which has values closest to Western values, we should focus on criticizing values from around the world which are in a direct clash with women rights. Instead of trying to voice support for a symbol of oppression and encouraging women to “walk a mile in her hijab” maybe we should ask women around the world to sympathize and show solidarity with thousands of women worldwide who are forced into wearing it. 

As Gaby Hinsliff writes in her piece in The Guardian “We mustn’t shy away from awkward questions because the answers may give righteous comfort to bleak enemies of liberalism everywhere.” Refusing to talk about such acts in fear of sounding racist or islamo-phobic is just giving such criminal minded people leverage and freedom to do what they want as they feed on the cloud of “tolerance” that the western society is guilted into acting upon. We feminists should join hands with liberals who are not scared of calling a spade a spade and work towards preventing rape culture all around the world.