I’m troubled about the classist nature of some of Pakistan’s answer to #MeToo – the women (only women that I have seen so far) telling stories about being molested as children. They are all stories of molestation by domestic servants or other lower class individuals. Cooks, drivers, gardeners, qaris. I imagine that there is more molestation there because these people typically have more access inside the home, to children, are often separated from their own families (especially live-in cooks and drivers) and often belong to more firmly patriarchal social structures. At the same time, however, I doubt that the number of upper class men and relatives who molest children is negligible. I wonder if izzat and an unwillingness to speak of the identifiable, those who are entangled with one’s family, leads to more silence. Look at how I have not been specific about my parents’ friend who molested me. But the result is, perhaps, a panic about molestation by lower class men, with an impact on those men but also on children who go unprotected from men of their own class, or are ever more reluctant to talk about those perpetrators.
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