WE should have signs like these as we have signs like Stop Smoking or No Walking On The Grass.
As a Pakistani woman, I think it’s my duty to break this criminal silence about something we women face everyday. Whether a housewife or a working lady, we all are familiar with the “stare”. In our own neighbourhood, the market, offices, colleges, bus stops, roads, you name it and they are there, staring at us for no reason at all.
Most men stare, and it feels so disgustingly painful at times no matter what a woman is doing, buying groceries for her home, going to college, office or anywhere she has to face the staring eyes on a daily basis.
The question is WHY?
Why do we have to face something we don’t like? Or, the question maybe, are we really just objects to be stared at?
As a woman I have noticed that most men who stare are the uneducated type. These are the men who have their families faraway, in the mulak, somewhere in the remote areas of the country and they are here to earn and stare!
However, that doesn’t mean that the educated ones, who are born and live in the cities don’t stare! Well most of them do. Staring at women, is the best pastime of men. At least in our society .
Once I asked a cousin of mine who was badly beaten up by his father when he was found near a girl’s college. “Isn’t it a sin to stare at other women?” The answer was “Well, Allah forgives the first sight so the first sight never seems to end!”
Let me tell you of the regular day of a common woman like me in our society. The day starts when I have finished my cleaning and dusting and now I am going to the market to buy some things to cook. As I walk downstairs from my home, there are many different shops downstairs and of course as many shop keepers too! So the gazes start with each step. Eyes watch you as if you are doing something very extraordinary or suspicious. In the market you face the same thing.
On your way back home, everyone around you has a full data of the groceries you have bought and the time you took to buy them. Once I heard somewhere that women need appreciation and if a young girl is not peered at by the opposite sex, she might develop an inferiority complex. But looking at a beautiful flower and appreciating it is something entirely different from looking at it in a hungry and disgustingly desperate manner.
All I want to inform men is that we women are as human and sensitive as men are. Probably even more. Even staring can cause us deep psychological pain and facing it on a daily basis makes it even worse. And no we cannot accept it as a “norm” of society because its not right and we don’t like it! And yes, it is our society as well.
Stop looking at us like a sex object or some alien from Venus. What if we start doing it too? Well I don’t think that would come to pass. Women, as I have said earlier, are sensitive and innocent homosapians. And all they demand is their own space.
Well now I have found a solution to my starers. All I do is I just go to the person and ask if something is the matter? At times I just look back at them in an angry manner believe me, it works. Those cowards start looking away.
Once I and my husband were passing through a small street. There was a traffic jam and drivers were struggling to drive their car past without hitting any object. At this point I noticed that a car driver was literally inching ahead just so that he could stare at me. Infuriated, I shouted “Stop the car and come out and talk like a man. But don’t cause the traffic get blocked. The coward just sped away. So my point is, nobody will stop staring at you, until and unless you make them stop!
WE should have signs like these as we have signs like Stop Smoking or No Walking On The Grass.
