IT is telling how much outrage follows when women say, ‘yes, all men’. It is, after all, not a universal condemnation but an expression of despair about the toxic patriarchy that dictates their lives, which is often shaped by narratives that rationalise women being seen as objects that may be claimed or discarded by men acting on their impulses. What more does one need to despair? Even the recent high-profile death sentence for the murder of a young woman has failed to deter others from committing the same horrific acts. It is already clear that, though the circumstances differ, a tragic thread runs through both the recent killing of teenager Sana Yousaf and the earlier murder of Noor Muqaddam. Both women faced fatal violence when they chose to reject the advances of men who had ‘claimed’ them. The Noor Muqaddam saga reached its denouement just weeks earlier, when the Supreme Court finally upheld capital punishment for Noor’s killer, Zahir Jaffer. The subsequent killing of Sana Yousaf shows that punitive justice alone is not enough to deter crimes against women.

There is more to it. On social media, faceless accounts run by individuals have been condemning Sana Yousaf merely because she dared to express herself publicly as a performer, entertainer and creator. The trolls have even gone so far as to celebrate her murder as the ‘cleansing’ of social media entertainers from society. What kind of culture allows such attitudes to take root in young men? And how safe do the women related to such individuals feel in their everyday lives? Nothing can be expected to change until boys and men are brought up with better values. The roots of misogyny must be tackled where they grow, through long-term investment in education, media literacy and cultural transformation. Society often proclaims its reverence for women in religious and cultural terms. It is time those values were reflected in how women are actually treated.

Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2025