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Patriarchal structures facilitating a specific feminist culture:

 Meaning has a context and each context has a basis. Its the basis that has to be strong enough to navigate through the suggestions to interpret meaning within the contours of truth. Truth has definite contours. Its not limited to circles, squares and pyramids. Patterns cannot define it. They can just channel its energy and that too only for a limited time. Denial and choice define the truth of this Universe for the human being.

What you deny and  what you chose.

What you are not and what you plan to be.

What you resist and what you become.

I have met very less women who deny and choose within the contours of truth and escape falling into the traps patriarchy sets for them. Patriarchal structures and institutionalisation is so deeply embedded in authoritarian cultures like ours that its near impossible to navigate towards the truth. The only autonomy which then remains for each is of his or her 'being' as answerable to none other but his/her creator because the structures submit to patriarchy and reject plurality. 

Patriarchal structures gauge and predict individual autonomy with modern research tools so that control is reinforced even in the emerging trends. Like Chomsky's 'consent' a 'denial' is also manufactured. 

Pakistan has a very problematic pseudo religious society where misinformed beliefs shape a collective conscious. So even the feminist here is a feminist resisting a specific patriarchy with a predictable feminist space. That culture or space is not a space of autonomy. It is a pre guaged controlled space for experimentation. 

I say this because this is not specific to Pakistan only. Its a hallmark of the post modern era. We are all paying the price of modernity. Plurality or oneness is the causality.

Its for us women to reconsider our autonomy. Do we want a liberation of our 'being' as answerable to none but our creator or as our 'being' subject to circumstances striving for a liberation of response. A liberation from roles and functions or from a structure that defines them for us?

Do we want to define a role of liberation which glorifies our bodies or do we want to define a role of liberation that glorifies our whole as a being with a soul and a mind and a role in decision making?

React or Navigate?

The choice is ours to make.


Saima Sher Fazal




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