Before even a woman is born, she is labeled as a sexual object. The question arises why a woman needs to be protected? Women will cease to need the protection given by men, the day “men” will stop harming them. Generally, in our society, the evil started when the victims are silenced. This practice has been continued for generations and eradicating it requires victims to be vocal about what’s happening around. Such reforms will take time, maybe generations. But one by one, we have to start from now.

This girl from Karachi named Huda Tirmizi, shared her experience on how common harassment has become and woman have been facing this so often that now this doesn’t seem new to any of us. But this one time, while she and her friend were traveling back home from work, witnessed something unusual…

Here is what she has to say:

So basically, if you’re a woman in this patriarchal society, you don’t really have an identity. You are just a sexual object, an object that belongs to a man, the object whose master is a man. A man who is there to ‘protect’ that object but unfortunately ends up ‘using’ that object.

We as women have no rights, our opinions don’t matter and most importantly we’re always the ones who are asked to stay quiet when something bad happens.. kyunke hum toh ‘izzat’ hain na. We have been criticised by the way we talk, walk and dress. We aren’t considered as humans, we are known by our brothers, fathers or our husbands only, they are our only identity. Not one day is different for us, no place is safe for us. Harassment isn’t harassment for us, it’s a way of living now, we’re used to it. But the question here is, ‘aakhir kab tak?’

So today, on our way back home, this old man who was around his 50s was caught starting at us. Now our van is full of girls, my friend and I sit at the back and chat our way back home. My friend saw this man staring at us and told me about him. I asked her to stare back at him coldly and in response he winked at her because he felt like he could and because he thought he had a right to do it. We were shocked, not because it was new to us but because this man was old, very old. We decided to make his video to just show his face to public. These other men on bike actually applauded us.

My parents have taught me to speak up when something wrong happens but sadly majority of the girls are asked to stay quiet. We’ve faced many such incidents during our daily commute but this is the first one which could be recorded. Harrasment is getting out of hands now and there is a drastic need to stop it. We need a better future for our next generations and we need to stand up now or else it’ll be too late.
Not all men are like that, but the men we can trust are a few only.

Please don’t stay quiet. Tape it. Post it. Kyunke ab nahi toh kab?

And here’s the video of the guy:

Huda and her friend thought to teach this 50-year-old man a lesson by recording his video. Huda further said that it’s high time that people need to expose all these harassers to the public so they know that women are not afraid anymore. Let it be the slogan “Ab nahi toh kab?”