Islamabad’s eatery steps out of bounds
Social media has been abuzz about a little Islamabad sandwich shop this week. Unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons. The sandwich joint in question, Table No. 5, has, since its launch, been marketing on the premise ‘If she won’t make you a sandwich, we will’. The tagline is splattered across the cover of their Facebook page and it’s the first thing you see. Their menu, prior to a retraction made just yesterday, featured food items named after known sex offenders and rapists. For a page of a mere 1000+ likes you may think the impact is negligible but if you’re still skeptical, I urge you to examine the comments on the Table No. 5 Facebook page.
Buzzfeed recently covered the outrage that many women and men both in Pakistan and around the world have shown over the business’s controversial marketing strategy. After a few days of media pressure Table No. 5 issued an apology on November 4th stating “A lot of people have been calling us misogynists over the past few days. I guess we started off on the wrong foot. We don’t have anything against the ladies; in fact we’re grateful to them. It’s because they stopped making sandwiches that we got the opportunity to open up a sandwich joint in town. So thanks ladies!” – a statement rife with patronising sexism and made clearly to satiate but not rectify the grave and offensive errors made by the page.
Because at the end of the day the business is not only accountable for the naming of its items or the campy sandwich-centric humor sprinkled with callous sexism strewn across their page, they are also responsible for perpetuating a dangerous conversation on all the wrong ideas. What’s most worrying about the Table No. 5 incident is the un-moderated wave of negative and ignorant conversation it has generated. Their so-called marketing strategy has provided a platform for the objectification and insult of all women. What’s more? Men on the extreme side of one spectrum are dismissing men defending women’s rights, slandering them with accusations of immasculinity and homosexuality thus equating level headed equal rights to the inferior and unmanly.
Their call to action is pleading all men to ‘defend’ themselves against the ‘feminists’ and their simpering male sidekicks. What they don’t realise is that this is not a feminine vs masculine issue – feminism encompasses equal rights for everyone regardless of their gender. This is an issue of hate speech; it is an issue of humanity. What the comments on Table No. 5’s Facebook page are implying is that men are superior to women and that their right to metaphoric ‘sandwiches’ should always be protected. Anyone who disagrees with these machos is, according to one user on the page, ‘hating on men and judging them for everything and thinking negative [that] is very unfair’. The obscene slew of sexually explicit comments by a majority of the male consumers is particularly gut wrenching. It’s as if the self-proclaimed ‘menninsits’ can only seem to defend their masculinity by posting foul images and lewd language that is in any case quite unlike the Islamic and moral hyperbole they seem to be using to discredit feminism. The irony offers little consolation when you consider that the Table No. 5 administration itself is not moderating these posts or deleting the previous campaign images that caused so much outrage. What’s even more shocking is that the establishment is owned by a woman.
In the latest they have issued a shallow apology claiming their naysayers have ‘won this round’ and that they have only changed the names of the inappropriately named sandwiches. Some have commended the business’s marketing team for using controversial subject matter to gain exposure, but really if that’s all they were after doesn’t that make the situation so much worse? If they really aren’t sexist and backward to a fault and we suppose all they really wanted was to get attention for the facility, they have provided young men a chance to express completely misguided views and the failure to moderate them is a price far too high. These commenters and consumers cry for their right to talk about women the way they please, to eat sandwiches and to prevent feminism from disturbing the ‘balance’ between the genders while they muzzle anyone else’s right (particularly the gender being spoken about) to disagree with them or take offence, using predominantly explicit and baseless arguments to do so.
Look, maybe you’re a simple guy who likes to eat sandwiches and maybe you’re a girl who likes to make sandwiches but you will always be more than that – that is what this whole issue is about. The Pakistan women’s football team came under attack, female users are being sexually harassed in the most disgusting way, obscene/demeaning images of women are being shared and it’s all public. It’s all slander and it starts and ends with the page itself. I would like to request that Table No.5 take responsibility for the negative impact it is having in generating so much animosity — moderate your comments at least, act like a real business.