excerpt

the following is an excerpt from an email i wrote to a friend. i've decided to not alter my terrible sentence structure. a few words may be unfamiliar to a non-brown audience. please feel free to ask about them.

hey ******,

i don't think the uproar is because facebook is banned. well, at least not personally. i mean, yes it scares me to know i don't have 500 email addresses of my friends from college, but i think it's ridiculous because we already live in a country that's grossly unsafe. as a woman, my physical movements are very restricted - i can't walk down a street, or go walking to buy groceries, because of the horrid things that can be done, or the horrid stuff that has been done, and has been said to me. i mean, I've grown up getting my ass grabbed by strangers, and unable to do very much about it, so as someone whose physical freedoms are curbed, it does piss me off that the PK govt (that is not representative of who I am as a person), finds the need to restrict virtual freedoms too. and frankly I'm not a fan of forced activism - i never visited whatever blasphemous site, so i don't see how banning facebook for me makes sense, or is fair. not to mention, i don't really identify as Muslim. perhaps growing up half Parsi i didn't want to pick a side, or perhaps somewhere down the line i realized everyone really has their own religion, or at least their own version of it, so shoving it down someone's throat is barbaric. i don't care if this is the islamic republic - there's still that white space for minorities on our flag, and yet non muslims and lapsed muslims are all being forced the same fate. also, the PTA claimed only facebook would be blocked. the next day they extended that to youtube. now over 1000 websites have been blocked. this is ridiculous. the 'west' gets freedom of speech, and we get stifled and oppressed and given NO CHOICE, which is my main concern. how dare anyone decide you don't get to choose? especially when it comes to activism, religion and virtual spaces? i think this is all beyond outrageous, and extremely unnecessary. did you know even the internet on our phones is non-existent? seriously, dude. no wonder people run away from this country, anyone with half a brain, and the knowledge of free choice would not last very long here. i do NOT get how our parents do it. given how the pakistan they knew was one with discos, where women wore skirts and where there were no melas....

speaking of melas...yesterday i went to the autocross championship at seaview. and boy, was it a sausage fest. and i realized then and there, that i can deal with karachi never having any bijli, and i can with no water, and 42 degree heat, but i can not, can NOT, deal with sleaze. hooting, rubbing up against women on purpose, hurling insults - i can't STAND it. all because i don't have a penis? i don't get how anything that is pushed out of a vagina, can disrespect a vagina SO badly. despite sitting in the 'family' section, with a hoard of my male friends protecting me and surrounding me, 50 peoples' gazes were on me and not the cars. and i'm not saying that in this cocky way. it has nothing to do with my being attractive. as far as i'm concerned i'm pretty average looking, but because i have long hair and breasts that's reason enough for me to be gawked at, and for men to lick their lips and whisper at each other while they stare me down. SICK. on the one hand, i feel terrible for writing all this, given most of those people were poor, illiterate and women they knew probably never leave the home without being fully covered (fyi too was well covered), but still... no need to hurl insults, and say foul things. plus you don't need to be poor and illiterate to be a complete mela, tons of those in our socio-economic strata too...