Nothing but larrki ke bhai, we are informed

“Let me assure you: this, like any other story worth telling, is all about a girl.”

• Spiderman (2002)

Yes, Jinnah newspaper thinks the attack on The News correspondent Ahmed Noorani had nothing to do with his rather fearless reporting, often at odds with the military establishment. No, it was about a lady, says Waheed Dogar, one of the paper’s reporters in Islamabad.

Noorani had been attacked on 27 October near Zero Point by unknown assailants, a grenade’s throw from the seat of the nation’s premier spy agency.

The attack was condemned far and wide, by not just the nation’s various press clubs and journalist unions but also by the government and political class. Interior Minister Ahsen Iqbal went over and enquired about his health. And, in a move that caused some snickers, the ISPR also sent over a bouquet of flowers with the get well soon card to the hospital where the hapless Noorani had been rushed to and admitted since.

The police has expanded the scope of the investigation, we are told. The attackers, says Dogar, weren’t too pleased with Noorani’s overtures towards a girl studying at a local university.

Yes, one understands that there is a difference between trying to see connections when there aren’t any and putting two and two together. In light of Noorani’s recent stories, there was some widespread speculation about the identity of the assailants, specially in the context of the history of violence against journalists by the deep state. Then, the paper that has printed the story is affiliated with an influential real estate tycoon.

Yes, one is acquainted with Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation is most often the correct one. Except, of course, when it isn’t. Sabeen Mahmood was attacked, we were told, as a reprisal for holding a Valentine’s Day function at The Second Floor. Nothing to do with her attempting to give a platform to some Baloch protesters.

The plausibility of the alternative narratives that the powers that be will peddle after circumstances that incriminate them will keep on falling. Expect to see an absolute neon-UFO-technicolour-lollipop the next time something of the sort happens.

 Talking at each other

We’ve been over the issue many times in this space. Social media and citizen journalism were supposed to end the champagne baths of the media barons of yore. It was supposed to put the power back with the people, who are not as subject to the pressures of advertisers as the mainstream media. But what we have seen is the propagation of false narratives based on said citizen journalists’ personal biases, rather than the vetted content of the mainstream media.

But at least social media opens up the space for debate, reason the glass-half-fullers. Well, we have seen that it doesn’t do a fabulous job of that either. But here, that is not necessarily because of some inherent flaw in social media but because of human nature. Our penchant for digging in our heels. Of wanting to “win.”

“Most of society’s arguments are kept alive by a failure to acknowledge nuance. We tend to generate false dichotomies, then try to argue one point using two entirely different sets of assumptions, like two tennis players trying to win a match by hitting beautifully executed shots from either end of separate tennis courts.”

-Tim Minchin.

The tweet that started a storm. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s disclosure of having reported a doctor for harassment started a spirited debate on social media. One that spilled off into the mainstream media.

The controversy was quelled, if slightly, by an intelligently written subsequent clarification from Ms Chinoy, where she stuck to her guns on the case, divulged more information about said harassment and, more importantly, conceded that some of her words were poorly chosen, because they were written in a fit of anger.

The poorly chosen words in question? Well, there was a measure of elitism in her verbiage. Many of her detractors, however, did not mind that much. If there actually was harassment, they reasoned, then nothing wrong with a rich, well-connected woman using her privilege to seek recourse. Specially since this would also set an example and attempt to weed out the problem.

The issue most people had was — in the absence of the subsequently revealed information which did, in fact, seem like harassment — the classification of a Facebook friend request as harassment. True, it’s rather bad form for doctors to fraternise with patients over social media, but is it quite worthy of the H-word?

Before I venture forth, I would like to point out that if the difference of opinion on the word “harassment” was all that there was to it, perhaps there shouldn’t have been as spirited an opposition to Ms Chinoy as there was. The Tube would like to concede here that he was also initially of the same bent of mind. Mea Culpa. After all, don’t we all agree that the problem of both sexual assault and sexual harassment is pervasive? Made even more clear by the surprisingly wide participation of women from all walks of life in the #metoo campaign.

Though initially, Ms Chinoy had her share of female detractors of this issue, these women started moving over to her side after the menfolk of social media started to use some rather misogynist slurs against her and downplayed the prevalence of sexual harassment to begin with. One wonders what, exactly, had set these particular males off. It seemed to be the sort of thing that enabled some male bonding. Friends long since estranged seemed to be mending fences over their insecurities about their own far from ideal behaviour towards women being called out.

On the other hand, those on the other side need to understand one thing. The most effective way to combat harassment as a problem is through legal recourse. That is it. Affecting social change is an admirable goal and should be constantly attempted but even that is enacted through the judiciary. To that end, one should jettison the rather ridiculous idea that harassment occurs whenever the victim feels harassed. There is no denial of the human experience but for such acts to be cognisable, there has to be an objective definition. To that end, those on Ms Chinoy’s side shall have to let that one go.

Subjectivity in the law is a slippery slope. It’s the stuff that leads to tyrannies. Such standards won’t even be limited to harassment either. It’s the sort of pivot that leads to things like no Pashtun labourers should be allowed in a housing colony because the residents somehow don’t “feel” comfortable.

As Afia Zia writes in her brilliantly argued column in Dawn, “Despite respecting a victim’s intuition and recognising discomfort as a symptom of harassment, according to the fairly broad legal parameters, this still would not qualify as sexual harassment. Critics who want a tighter, narrower definition should be cautioned against conceding to the state the right to decide all aspects of gender relations.”