2018 has been a great year for women, on social media. The social media platforms provided women and marginalized groups, in general, a safe space to voice their grievances, to a considerable extent.
Amidst all of this, the #MeToo movement also made its way to Pakistan. A number of men in power were exposed and it started a much-needed conversation around sexual harassment. Pakistani Twitter was at the forefront of all of this.
It formally started when a few girls outed Patari’s CEO, Khalid Bajwa, on Twitter, for harassing underage girls. From there on, women from all fields of life started coming out with their stories. Acclaimed Pakistani singer Meesha Shafi also came out with her story that involved a fellow singer, Ali Zafar. Majority of women supported Meesha and things for women started looking bright, if only on social media.
Where It Went Wrong
All was well until recently, one of the girls who outed Khalid Bajwa was seen partying at Ali Zafar’s house. The girl clearly sided with Meesha Shafi and condemned Ali Zafar while the whole Ali-Meesha situation was unraveling itself.
While it is understandable that people who had quit their jobs at Patari based on these accusations and supported these girls through and through were outraged when they saw her partying at Ali Zafar’s place, the story didn’t end there, unfortunately. A lot of comments and tweets bordered on vicious bullying and the girl had to eventually deactivate her social media accounts.
Now here are a few things I would like to highlight:
Yes, she made a poor decision that may have hurt a lot of people fighting hard for #MeToo movement, but it should not have paved way for so much bullying.
Here is how a tweet puts it, accurately:
your witch-hunt mentality can seriously go to hell. it's not okay to put the burden of the entire #MeToo movement on the shoulders on a young woman who is fallible/prone to making mistakes like any other human being. get off your high horses, you voyeuristic, smug assholes.
— Zoya Rehman (@pind_wave) January 20, 2019
Moreover, a huge number of people have been circulating personal pictures from the party that is a blatant breach of privacy. The cherry on the top, certain elements are also using this incident to discredit the entire #MeToo movement. Ali Zafar, at the same time, is under fire yet again for partying with kids half his age and the whole situation is a mess right now.
Keeping in view everything that happened, what’s certain is the fact that cyber-bullying is not okay, under any circumstances.
What do you think of the whole situation? Let us know in the comments.
