It was in the ‘50s that a movie called Because of Eve caused jaws to drop inside the screening room where members of the censor board sat watching explicit scenes from the black and white film. The censor board, a small stand-alone building on Abbot Road, Lahore, was a happening place in those halcyon days.

American movies formed our staple diet. It was movie-a-day regimen for the members required to watch and decide if the film was fit for public viewing or if it needed scissors or dumping altogether. My mother had unwittingly taken me along, not realising what the title ‘Because of Eve’ actually meant.

In those days, a member was allowed five guests. My older two brothers had already alerted their friends in school about the movie. These teenage boys knew perfectly well what Eve spelt out and were not disappointed with what they saw. As for me? The scenes stayed on in my mind for years to come.

The movie failed to pass the censors. It was a unanimous decision by all the members who often disagreed about other movies. The most strident voice then, I remember well, was that of Kishwar Naheed. She always had a view of her own which at that time I really did not understand nor I suspect, did the rest of the men and women of the censor board!

The poetess was always ahead of her times. She was a rebel; an outspoken feminist (remember ‘women’s lib’ had not arrived in the US then). Had the world more women like Kishwar today, maybe the men, the powerful ones, would not treat women like sex objects. But sadly, the feminist movement is dead. Voices like Kishwar have been drowned in the din by ‘Cry Macho’ whose gallery of rogues, rapists, adulterers and predators of under-age girls include politicians, heads of institutions and celebrities.

When the ‘Terminator’ became the governor of California, I put up red flags in these very columns, warning my readers that this guy was a serial offender. Here’s what I wrote in 2003: “Isn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger the happiest man on planet Earth today? He came to this country a pauper with no knowledge of English. Look at him now — loaded enough to buy himself the governorship of the world’s fifth largest economy. Never mind if he calls it ‘Calee-forn-ia’ or is a confirmed groper who fondled women for over two decades. Mr Universe has the moolah — he spent $10 million — to lay claim on the Governor’s Mansion.

“Next: He would have bounded over to the White House, but can’t because he ain’t America-born. Arnold, pumping iron, fondling women and hitting the money jackpot many times over is titillated with life. You can almost feel it as you count the 32-set of sparkling white teeth when he opens his wide mouth. The grin is as wide as the wide-bodied jets he has acquired or the humongous fuel-guzzling Hummers (six of them in all!). From luxurious hotels in Santa Monica to shopping malls in Los Angeles — the fellow is an inveterate real-estate shopper.

“So, the gilded in America have it all? Sure! Ogle inside their pricey estates, or stalk these creatures as they flit from one watering hole to another it’s sheer...what’s the word...bliss for them. They are ‘happening’ people, not the dull old poor Jane and Joe on the street.”

Dirty, rich, powerful, old men from Italy, France, England and America have done what sickos do best with unrestrained libidos: chase women they can control and buy. “It’s because of Eve,” say the males. “Women throw themselves at men.”If today it’s the former IMF guy Dominique Strauss-Kahn or former California governor Schwarzenegger or Republican presidential contender Gingrich or Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi or President Sarkozy, yesterday we had New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and New Jersey Governor James McGreevey and Rev Jesse Jackson and before that we had US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, I can guarantee you that in the coming months we’ll have new guys around the block, caught red handed, maybe handcuffed, jailed but in the end let off because their money and celebrity status can purchase freedom and expunge their worst sins! Corruption and womanisers — including sick, violent ones — according to one writer is a global menace.

Why do men with money and status play with fire? Why do they parade their swagger? If I were a psychologist, I’d have the answer.

The closest answer is from the women writing in The New York Times after Strauss-Kahn’s coercion of a hotel maid. Titled ‘Are French women more tolerant?’ Caroline Weber, professor of French literature at Columbia, blames his American-born wife Anne Sinclair for her indulgence towards her husband’s pervasion. “When asked in 2006 about his skirt-chasing image, (she) declared: ‘I am quite proud! For a political man, it is important to seduce.’”

She’s already paying the price for her husband being a “séducteur.” The luxury apartment that she rented in Manhattan for her husband to stay after he got $1 million bail last Friday from prison has refused to allow him to live there! The tenants of The Bristol apartment building don’t want a rapist amidst them despite Strauss-Kahn being ordered by the judge to be under 24-hour home confinement with an armed guard posted outside to make sure he does not escape. The judge also ordered that he wear a monitoring ankle bracelet. So much for the term male libertinage, a phrase coined by the French.

“I think it’s an inconvenience for all of us,” said one resident, Michele Smith, who spoke outside the Bristol. “I don’t want that kind of publicity in my building.”

While Mrs Strauss-Kahn may be proud of her husband’s “seductive” powers, another professor of French Domna Stanton says:

“We’re not talking about behaviours of seduction, but potentially criminal behaviour – alleged assault and rape, which is outlawed in the French criminal code,” She hopes that despite the “blatant and appalling persistence of sexism” in their daily lives, the French women will not dismiss this as hysterical feminist notion refusing to “play the game of à la française.”

And what about playing the game à la Pakistan? Do the Pakistani women like the French ladies tolerate their males play the game of seduction? Hope not. We all know that women are often considered the subordinate sex by some of our male chauvinists; their sole purpose of existence being to fulfill masculine desire, yet women parliamentarians like Sherry Rehman have spearheaded a bill against sexual harassment in the Pakistan parliament. However “The real challenge is to get the laws implemented,” said Sherry last year.

Just because Pakistani women are too timid to report sexual assaults, it does not mean that the powerful and mighty males of Pakistan are pure as virgin snow! No, they believe in ‘Cry Macho’ which is the title of  Schwarzenegger’s new movie about fathering a love child.

anjumniaz@rocketmail.com