Independence day
A woman was violently assaulted, thrown into the air and had her clothes ripped from her while filming a TikTok video in Pakistan, police say.
The unidentified woman said she was filming at a park in the city of Lahore when a crowd of up to 400 hundred men attacked her on Saturday.
Video of the incident circulating over social media shows a woman being forcibly picked up and dragged through a mob of hundreds gathered at Minar-e-Pakistan to celebrate Independence Day, an event marking the end of British colonial rule.
Yay, end of colonial rule, what better way to celebrate than to have hundreds of men assault a woman?
What is colonial rule?
A power imbalance. An act of aggression in which one country forces its will on another country. An intrusion. An assault that continues for decades or centuries. An injustice.
The woman, who is a TikToker in Pakistan, said she attempted to escape from the crowd along with six others when around 300 to 400 people “attacked us” and “assaulted us violently” during the struggle.
The 300 to 400 “people” were men. Newsweek shouldn’t have switched to “people.” The incident isn’t random, it’s what men do to women in many cities.
“People were pushing and pulling me to the extent that they tore my clothes. Several people tried to help me but the crowd was too huge and they kept throwing me in the air,” she added.
Well she’s a woman – women are fair game.
Footage of the incident has since garnered hundreds of thousands of views over Twitter and TikTok, with many expressing their horror, frustration and anger at the assault. The attack has invigorated public debate in the country surrounding women’s rights and protection.
This is horrifying to imagine, and I’ll lay you long odds that this DOES NOT happen to transwomen.
@Michael Haubrich:
I’d take that bet. This is obviously a particularly toxic patriarchal society with strict and exaggerated ideas of gender roles. Put a man wearing woman’s clothes in the center of that crowd — trans or not — let him start filming for Tik Tok — and my guess is they’d turn into the same kind of violent mob.
It’s less likely to happen only because transwomen can easily opt out of gendered oppression and blend into male society.
And, um, because they tend to be able to fight back with their natural strength?
Natural strength doesn’t count for much in the face of massive mob violence. And I think we emphasize too much that natural strength. There are many objectively very weak men. Despite the properties of testosterone.