Relax, Don't Do It?

So, um, Mosharraf Zaidi had recently written an article in Foreign Policy called "The Talibanization of America", which is certainly worth reading for his intelligent recasting of the debate over Islam and Islamophobia in the US, though I have serious issues with his implication that the only valid debate is one between religiously-inspired identities. And with an English speaking Pakistani-American schooled at the Karachi American School who is more than a little fond of heavy metal and rap, sneeringly referring to governments in Pakistan as being run by "culturally dislocated Muslims." It's the sort of essentialism Mosharraf's otherwise well argued writing can do without.

But I bring that up only as a by-the-way talking point because what I really want to share today is the 1996 video below. It is of Christine O' Donnell, a Tea Party Express candidate and right-wing activist who defeated the favoured Republican candidate today in the party's Delaware primaries. As you may recall, the Tea Party is sort of the extreme right of the Republican spectrum whose members have been in the forefront of casting Barrack Obama as a (OMG!) Muslim communist and leading the fight against the New York Muslim Cultural Centre to be known as Cordoba House. According to analysts, the win for her has put a rather large stumbling block in the GOP's (Republican Party's) hopes of winning the Senate in the November elections, since they do not believe O' Donnell has a chance of winning the face-off against her Democratic rival.

In any case, here is the video from MTV that one TV programme dug up. It's O' Donnell's campaign against, um, well, you know...





The Taliban just get a bad rap sometimes, I tell you.

Pakistan Loves Animals, It Really Does

Our friend Ahsan at FiveRupees had once done a post on his blog about the curiously fanatical predilection of Pakistani internet surfers to surf the world of dark erotica, so to speak, more than any other country in the world. You know, not the usual hardcore porn that everyone else is surfing for around the globe, but porn of decidedly unusual tastes. We can confirm, from the kind of searches that have led readers to our blog, that there's a strange, strange world out there, and even stranger are some of the people who mistakenly land up at Cafe Pyala in search of their unusual fetishes. Think of your favourite Pakistani political celebrity and pair their name with the kinkiest of your fantasies and you'll be getting a sense of the kind of stuff we see all the time.

Now it seems the rest of the world has cottoned on to the decidedly bizarre thought processes of the Pakistani public. Here is what Fox News recently reported via the Associated Press:

No. 1 Nation in Sexy Web Searches? Call it Pornistan

By Kelli Morgan

Published July 13, 2010 | FoxNews.com

AP

Pakistan has banned content on more than a dozen websites because of offensive and blasphemous material. The Muslim country, which has laws on dress codes, ranks as the top country to proportionally search for certain sex-related terms.

This article was updated on July 14.

 

"They may call it the "Land of the Pure," but Pakistan turns out to be anything but.

 

The Muslim country, which has banned content on at least 17 websites to block offensive and blasphemous material, is the world's leader in online searches for pornographic material, FoxNews.com has learned.

 

“You won’t find strip clubs in Islamic countries. Most Islamic countries have certain dress codes,” said Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame. “It would be an irony if they haven’t shown the same vigilance to pornography.”

 

So here's the irony: Google ranks Pakistan No. 1 in the world in searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content.

 

 

Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for "horse sex" since 2004, "donkey sex" since 2007, "rape pictures" between 2004 and 2009, "rape sex" since 2004, "child sex" between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, "animal sex" since 2004 and "dog sex" since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.

 

The country also is tops -- or has been No. 1 -- in searches for "sex," "camel sex," "rape video," "child sex video" and some other searches that can't be printed here.

 

Google Trends generates data of popular search terms in geographic locations during specific time frames. Google Insights is a more advanced version that allows users to filter a search to geographic locations, time frames and the nature of a search, including web, images, products and news.

 

Pakistan ranked No. 1 in all the searches listed above on Google Trends, but on only some of them in Google Insights.

 

“We do our best to provide accurate data and to provide insights into broad search patterns, but the results for a given query may contain inaccuracies due to data sampling issues, approximations, or incomplete data for the terms entered,” Google said in a statement, when asked about the accuracy of its reports.

 

The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not reply to a request for an interview.

 

In addition to banning content on 17 websites, including islamexposed.blogspot.com, Pakistan is monitoring seven other sites -- Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, MSN and Hotmail -- for anti-Islamic content, the Associated Press reported in June.

 

But it’s not to censor the Pakistani people, Reynolds said. It’s to shut out the rest of the world.

 

“[It] could lead to conversion, which would undermine the very order of the state,” he said. “Part of protecting the society is making sure that there is no way it could be undermined in terms of foreign influences.”

 

Pakistan temporarily banned Facebook in May when Muslim groups protested the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” page, where users were encouraged to upload pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. The page remained on Facebook, but Pakistani users were unable to view it, said Andrew Noyes, manager of Facebook’s Public Policy Communication.

 

And while Pakistan is taking measures to prevent blasphemous material from being viewed by its citizens, pornographic material is “certainly” contradictory to Islam, too, Reynolds said.

 

The country’s punishment for those charged with blasphemy is execution, but the question remains what -- if anything -- can be done about people who search for porn on the Web.

 

“It’s a new phenomenon,” Reynolds said."

I had once thought about doing a post about some of the searches that led people to Cafe Pyala but gave up the idea after I realized that it would probably lead to scandalizing decent people for no fault of theirs. All I can add to the report above is that Professor Reynolds is dead wrong about this being a "new phenomenon." Long ago, at the beginning of the net revolution in the country in the 1990s, Pakistani ISPs realized that were they to start filtering out sex sites (not that it would be possible in totality in any case) their traffic (and hence their revenues) would face a major downturn.

But why blame ISPs for the repressed fantasies of the common user? Pornography has been at the cutting edge of internet usage all over the world and continues to be the single biggest revenue earner in cyberspace. The only question that really is worth asking is why Pakistanis are so sexually repressed in their public life that their only outlet is on the net? And yeah, what is up with that bestial shit?

How To Make The Most of Blog Comments Sections

Okay so I was browsing around, and quite by accident came across this weirdly named Pakistani blog titled Alaiwah! which seems to specialize in nothing in particular but seems to have a tendency of using random sleazy photographs to illustrate its posts. One of the most popular posts on it was titled "Karachi Has More Than 100,000 Prostitutes" that has a photo from a porn site attached for apparently illustrative purposes (but of course it would be popular).

Contrary to all expectations, however, the post was a fairly sober piece about the prevalence and spread of HIV among the working girls of the port city, complete with a discussion of sexual health surveys and an interview with a Napier Road resident.

And then... I read the comments section.

I haven't stopped laughing since.

Nothing I could say would quite explain it. You have to check it out for yourself. Hint: And you thought Cafe Pyala's comments section sometimes veers off topic and goes into a free for all?

Video Of The Day

I don't usually post stuff about internal US politics - seriously, I don't care either way - but this had me laughing so hard, I really thought it was worth sharing. That, and because it demonstrates how Jamshed Dastis exist in all countries.

This is a video that a blog called TMPMuckraker dug up after Indiana Republican congressman Mark Souder announced he would resign his seat because he had had an affair with a part-time staffer in his office called Tracy Jackson. Okay, so no big deal there, happens all the time, even if it seems to happen more frequently to conservative, "family values" kind of self-righteous politicians. But the video that TMP has dug up is actually a promotional one of Rep. Souder talking about 'Abstinence Education', apparently one of his core political issues. Funny? Not half as funny as the fact that his interviewer is his staffer and lover Tracy Jackson.





God, that's gotta hurt!

How Not To Write About Sex in Pakistan

Note to feminists out to liberate Pakistani women from the shackles of sexual repression: please don’t. Or do it in private if you must, with some scented candles, massage oil, maybe a handy illustration or two. But please, for the sake of all that’s unholy (in this case, sex in Pakistan) cease and desist from writing about it in the way you have been writing about it.

In the last couple of weeks readers traditionally starved of public discussion about the sex lives of Pakistani women have been treated to not one but two stories on the subject, one in the December issue of local monthly Newsline and the other by one Jeanette Khan first featured on The Huffington Post in April but currently doing the rounds locally. Both inadvertently illustrate why some of us still prefer to do it rather than talk about it.

The Newsline cover story by Shimaila Matri Dawood (who, I hasten to add, this writer held in high esteem till right about the time she decided to make legions of other Pakistanis never want to have sex again) was clearly a noble effort to shatter a dominant taboo about female sexuality, i.e., not talking about it. The magazine opted for a brave cover in red, white, black and yellow featuring the silhouette of a woman against a backdrop of key words. These keywords presumably came up when Newsline staffers brainstormed to identify what normal people talk about when they talk about the subject. They include shame, embarrassment, immodest, sexual dysfunction, molestation and forced sex.

This told me three things. One, I should probably never try to have a conversation about sex with a Newsline staffer unless I have a box of tissues handy. Two, courageous as their attempt might be, Newsline was choosing to duck a ball by euphemistically representing rape as ‘forced sex’. Three, Newsline wanted to do a lot of things to the reader – inform, educate, edify – but it certainly didn’t want to titillate. Which made sense, sort of. I mean, if you want to blow the lid off repressed sexuality, you certainly don’t want to blow the lid of repressed sexuality do you? Snigger snigger, nudge nudge.

On the flip side, you don’t want to bore your reader to death either. This, ironically, is exactly what Newsline ended up doing when it decided to make people wake up. For example, an extract from Naila Baloch’s "Why I Want To Talk About Sex":

“In order to transform the dominant paradigms of relationships in our lives, based primarily on manipulation, power and control, I feel a stark need for us to connect to sources of power within ourselves, most potently through opening up to our own sexuality. We need, as men and women, to connect to our sexuality in a more loving, nurturing and non-dominant manner, seeing it as a sharing, as opposed to a conquering, and seeing women’s engagement with their sexuality not as shameful (an attitude that many women themselves internalize) but as natural, exuberant, joyful and a cause for mutual celebration! In this way, we may start to feel more power over our own lives, and can become actively loving participants in all of our relationships, sexual and non-sexual alike.”

You lost me at paradigms Naila.

Or consider this, from Ms. Dawood’s main feature:

"Ask the educated Pakistani woman about what the term sexual rights means and most would link it to sexual needs, preferences and habits. All these terms, however, have different meanings. While sexual rights pertain to the right of the woman to make her own decisions about her body (including her reproductive capacity, health and right to privacy and information) sexual habits is the term given to the specific types of sexual behaviour, needs are based on libido and preferences and individual tastes.

"All these play a critical role in the empowerment of women. The lack of informed knowledge about sex, given the taboo nature of the topic, and the misinformation that men, women, and adolescents received, perpetuates myths and misconceptions about sex and serves to reinforce messages of shame, fear and guilt. This can lead to issues such as sexually-transmitted infections, sexual dysfunction, gender-based abuse and violence, including sexual violence.”

If Newsline is now a brochure, why isn’t it free?


Interspersed with these inedible lumps of jargon was the odd attempt to make the piece readable, for example the opening itself:

“A group of well-heeled, sophisticated young adults are at a party, thrown by the host to celebrate her upcoming winter wedding. Strains of Nelly Furtado’s hit song ‘Promiscuous’ reverberate from the DJ’s sound system into the night. The women, frosted up in diamonds and dressed to impress, groove to the beat, sip margaritas at the well stocked bar, and discuss a range of superficial topics (or perhaps a range or topics superficially)…a socialite’s unflattering makeover, whether the Dubai default will cause prêt prices to fall, and if President Zardari can hold on to power for long.

"In a quiet corner sits an all-female quarter, aged between 25 and 40. One of them talks about a recent sex survey undertaken by an Indian magazine. “It’s called ‘The Fantasy Report’,” she says, “and it’s about sexual fantasies. They do one every year, in collaboration with a local NGO. Last year’s survey talked about under-age sex, sex with prostitutes and eunuchs, kinky sex, adultery, incest, homosexuality, preferences, favourite positions, attitudes towards role-playing and other sexual activities. I wonder what the findings would be if they could do one in Pakistan?”

Show me a frosted socialite two margaritas in who can say "under-age sex, sex with prostitutes and eunuchs, kinky sex, adultery, incest, homosexuality, preferences, favourite positions, attitudes towards role-playing and other sexual activities" without slurring, and I’ll show you a feature writer who doesn’t make shit up.


Here’s another:

“Take, for instance, the daughter of privilege. Essentially nocturnal by habit, she’s seen at all the haunts at which ‘liberal’ Pakistanis congregate- intimate dinner parties, charity extravaganzas, raunchy theatre productions such as Chicago, The V-Monologues, Mamma Mia, or even the OGS shows, raves and midnight dances at the beach. Her daytime pursuits include a few select fashion shows, or exercising her toned and exposed limbs at a zealously private club. She works in a bank or a multinational, drinks, smokes, has boyfriends. At weddings, she wraps herself in her latest Indian Satya Paul sari, a garment which was banned in government offices in the Zia era. For more casual dos she dares to bare in always western-wear.”

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s Super Slut flying down the lane!

Nocturnal bankers? [Source: Partylicious.com.pk]

There are so many things wrong, indeed grossly offensive, about the assumptions made in that paragraph that I’m going to have to just let it go. Except, if Super Slut with the boyfriends and the toned and exposed limbs is nocturnal by habit, how the hell does she keep her job at the bank?

So there you have it, jargon, stereotype and cliché. Cliché, stereotype and jargon. That’s the stylistic wrapping for you. And now for the meat on the bone (no pun intended, honest), my other big problems with the Newsline story are:

1) All the men in it are either sex-crazed lunatics who like nothing better than a bit of marital rape to relax on a lazy morning, sex-crazed lunatics who ‘abandoned’ their wives when they refused to allow a bit of marital rape on a lazy morning, or "Mullahs and conservative politicians" that "support brutal tribal traditions that throw allegedly adulterous women in front of dogs and bury them alive." No, wait, there’s an insert by a male psychiatrist. He tells a delightful story about a little old lady whose "missing front teeth and loss of hearing in one ear" bore witness to "the viciousness of her husbands beatings." In one fell swoop, Newsline has invented the perfect anti-aphrodisiac. This particular issue could well be repackaged and sold as The Diminisher, The Deflator, The Emasculator! So buy your copy now, ladies, and read it aloud to your lover next time he starts humping your leg at an inconvenient time. If you still have one, that is. After reading the sweeping indictments of Pakistani manhood contained therein it might seem simpler, and more tempting, to get a dog. And shoot it.

2) My second main problem ties directly into the first one. In a 15-page spread about female sexuality, repeatedly professing a desire to educate women about their ‘sexual rights’, the word ‘pleasure’ is used twice. And never by the writers. If that doesn’t tell you they were doing something wrong, I don’t know what does.

Quibbles aside, let’s congratulate Newsline on having the ovaries to do the well-intentioned story in the first place, and wish them luck in finding a less pedantic tone the next time they attempt something similar. One that inspires as well as informs (it's a little hard to change things when you've been bludgeoned into a defensive coma you know), stimulates rather than sedates, and doesn’t accidentally alienate the half of the Pakistani population without whose cooperation there can be no significant progress in women’s rights. Let’s also congratulate them for burying us under a landslide of fact rather than farce, which is what the other piece I mentioned earlier does.

Enter Jeanette Khan via The Huffington Post, under the rather unfortunate headline "Let’s Talk About Sex Baby, Let’s Talk About Sex in Pakistan." Still reeling from prolonged exposure to the Newsline story, I’m already groaning Oh no do we have to. But I will, because I am a Pakistani woman dammit. And if I can suffer in silence while I am violated at will by my demon lover I can certainly read 1200 words of forwarded text without a whimper. Except…I’m barely into the first paragraph and already oh god it hurts!

“I'm a red-blooded woman. I'm comfortable talking about sex and all aspects regarding it. As a full-fledged member of the Millennials, I'm accustomed to asking people "Are you a virgin?"

Asking random people ‘are you a virgin’ does not make you comfortable with yourself and a red-blooded woman Ms. Khan, it just makes you rude.

“In Pakistan there is no such thing as sex-education. People mostly learn about sex through their married friends or first-hand experience.” And also “Playboys are smuggled into the country.”

On behalf of all the passengers on Flight 2009, Ms. Khan, I would like to welcome you to our service and urge you to take advantage of all our facilities. They include this pretty little buttony thing here, it is called the INTERNET. But reading on, it appears Ms. Khan made a convenient leap into the future because then we have…

“A few years later, as a late teen, on another trip to Pakistan, my friend Nadia told me that teenagers were having sex; they would go to their houses when the parents weren't home. My older male cousin also told me he knew of a girl who had gotten pregnant.”

Are you sure he wasn’t talking about his mother? Ok that was a little rude but I have to say, considering the sheer volume and scale of the ignorance professed by the cousins and aunts that Ms. Khan periodically enlightens about the birds and the bees throughout her piece, it doesn’t seem like the brightest family ever does it?

“Before my cousin got married, I asked if sex had been explained to her. My aunt said that she had friends who had recently gotten married so they explained it to her. I wanted her to know her rights and that she had the ability to say "no" and that sex is something to be enjoyed for both parties, not just one. There is actually a celebration in Pakistan for consummating the relationship, it's called the Valima and it's held the night after the wedding. It seems so odd that there would be an actual celebration for the consummation, but no real explanation about sex.”

Good point Ms. Khan. Do you think our reluctance to have long, complicated, graphic discussions about the consummation we are celebrating at a Valima has anything to do with the fact that, unlike you, we don’t think talking about sex with our grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, strangers etc in a formal, public setting while simultaneously stuffing our faces with korma and biryani is particularly healthy? Or remotely erotic? Or entirely sane?

“I have another friend here who isn't married and when I asked if she knew what sex was, she said she didn't. Even after all these years my mouth still fell open in shock. Our other friend is married, and she just looked at me as if to keep quiet. Pakistan has become more Western in a lot of areas, but clearly not in this one.”

Here is what actually happened. Ms. Khan tried that whole rude, intrusive question thing she indicated she had a thing for in the first para again, and a mutual friend shot her a warning ‘wtf is wrong with you shut up’ look. So yes, we in Pakistan are indeed grateful that we are still lagging behind the west in the Munhphat arena.


And now for a handy clue as to why she is so obsessed with the sex lives of others.

“Here, there is no "flirting." I've tried to flirt with men, but normally get told off. Once I was in the car with my aunt, who's a bit conservative, and she noticed me staring at this guy next to us. She told me not to stare as it doesn't look nice. How exactly it doesn't look nice, I don't know, I thought to myself.”

Platonic embraces only

That’s right. You read it correctly. Jeanette Khan wrote ‘here, there is no flirting’ in reference to Pakistan. The country where phool walas flirt with female drivers (overheard at traffic light yesterday ‘main Allah say kuch aur mang layta’), women flirt with vendors (all is fair in love, war and bargaining) and the president flirts with female dignitaries. The mind boggles.

“Sexual expression is fully repressed here, at least in front of families. Sometimes cousins are even kept apart after a certain age to dispel interaction. I'm not allowed to go to my aunt's house without the older family members because she lives in a huge joint-family system where there are a number of young adult unmarried men. I am an unmarried young female. When I do meet these cousins I just bow my head to greet them and that's the extent of our interaction.”

Just another day at Meerkat Manor then.

No cousins allowed at this wedding obviously

“That's not to say that men and women don't date. They do, but always clandestinely. I've seen numerous couples and groups of men and women out eating and enjoying themselves.”

Yes, being seen in public is exactly what ‘clandestinely’ means.


Then there is a vignette about the time Ms. Khan managed to get "an elder male cousin alone" one day. It involved a lot of cloak and dagger stuff, like his having to sneak out of his grandmother’s house, her father having to cover for her, her running out of their vacation home to his car parked outside the gate. It reads just like a Jane Austen novel, except without the masterful descriptive lyricism, compelling storyline, or interesting characters.


When she finally manages to get aforementioned ‘elder male cousin alone’, “he looked so shocked.”

Rohypnol can do that to a person.


Ms. Khan makes an attempt to contextualize her utter and complete lack of self awareness with the following paragraph:

“The thing is that Pakistan isn't so wholesome sexually when it doesn't want to be. Lahore even has a famous red light district, called Heera Mandi. Men go there and pay a few rupees to sleep with the girls, often young girls who have been kidnapped or have to sell their bodies to make money for their families. Other women are from generations of prostitutes; it's their only way to survive. The thing about it is everyone knows what goes on there, but nothing's really done about it, at least officially.”

So now the readers of The Huffington Post think it costs a few rupees to sleep with a girl in Lahore - Ms Khan’s already tattered credentials are thus irreparably damaged by her misplaced faith in our currency - and that our culture fosters a strong tradition of prostitution while simultaneously doing all it can to keep cousins apart.

A Huffington Post reader arrives in search of good bargains [Photo: Noor Khan]

Her masterful encapsulation of sex in Pakistan ends with the following kernels of wisdom.

“Pakistan is caught somewhere between sexual repression and sexual exploration; only time will tell where it goes next.”

As a Pakistani, I would like you all to join me in a little prayer. May we never have to go to Jeanetteland. Ameen.

Geo Does the Dirty Once Again

You need to view this report from Geo in its entirety to evaluate just how "revolutionary" and "progressive" our electronic media has been for Pakistan...

Yup, this is the side of "fearless journalism" that we never hear about from the champions of media freedom who do not tire from telling us about their "principles" (i.e. "Geo Asool" in this case) and their fight for a more just and educated Pakistan. That is, when they're not inundating us with prattling talk shows about petty political intrigues...

A few questions that come to mind about this report for the Geo Asool people to answer:

1. It mentions that the entire "issue" was first highlighted by Geo itself. Did Geo create this "issue" or was there actually some protest before Geo got their cameras in there?

2. The poor terrorised principal states that the same curriculum is being followed by other schools. Did Geo's reporters make any attempt to check this? And if so, why was it not included in the report?

3. Is there something inherently wrong about teaching biology? Human biology? Sex education? Geo should tell us what its position is on the matter.

4. The thrust of the report seems to be that these kids are much too young to be given information about sex or human biology. Really? Is puberty too young? Is Geo implying that it would be okay if this information came slightly later? Or not at all?

5. What is the background of the moronic "Adviser on Education, Naveed Zuberi" who claims that Pakistani 'kids' are not even aware of sexual issues before they get their National ID card? Is he qualified to discuss educational matters? Does he know that the 'age of consent' in Pakistan is 16? And does an 'adviser' have the authority to conduct 'raids' on a school?

6. The report goes on to accuse the school of using further 'objectionable' material in its curricula, without specifying what this is. What is this objectionable material and who has deemed it objectionable? We see the cover of one book on Islam, with the implication that this is the offending material. If it isn't, Geo owes the writer /publisher of the textbook and the school an apology. If it is, why was it not spelled out so as not to tar everything else with the same brush?

7. Why was this particular school targeted? What connection does the reporter / commissioning editor have with this school? A full disclosure is necessary especially since it has tarnished the image of an educational institution without anything being proven.

Can anyone take up these questions with Geo and it's self-righteous owners?