'Righteous' women.

'TIS the season to be righteous, or so many prominent Pakistanis on TV and social media along with the religious right would have us believe. Pakistan suffers from hypocritical moral policing at the best of times - in homes, colleges and universities, places of religious worship, and the workplace - but the trigger for the current frenzy is the impending Aurat Marches in many cities of the country. Given that these marches only began three years ago, one can only marvel at how rapidly they have gotten under the proverbial skin of their highly agitated opponents.

Enough has been said and written about the wider context of the marches and why they threaten the fragile male ego in a society that is, by any and all accounts, amongst the most patriarchal in the world. There is considerably less discussion, however, around the primary line of argument of the haters; that the Aurat March is the preserve of a 'particular' kind of woman: loose in her morals and not representative of the chaste majority of Pakistani wives, sisters and mothers.

So who is this 'righteous' woman that would never dare join Aurat Marchers?

The following four real-life movements explode the myth of so-called 'righteous' women that permeates mainstream discourse. Many women participants of these movements seemingly conform to the stereotype of submissive, loyal subjects to male overlords. Many of them wear veils, are overtly religious, and keep their homes ticking over, day after day, through productive yet unacknowledged care work expected by a patriarchal society.

Who is this woman who would never dare join the marchers?

First, the Baloch women and girls at the forefront of the struggle against enforced disappearances. Hardly anyone in the mainstream talks about it anymore, but the Long March of 2012 from Quetta to Islamabad was led largely by women. Before and after, Farzana Majeed and many other women have spoken truth to power in ways few men in this country would ever dare to. A young girl during the Long March, Maharang Baloch has since emerged as the leader of a new generation of students in Quetta and beyond.

Those who would depict Farzana, Maharang and others from brutalised ethnic peripheries only as sisters and daughters of the men targeted by the dastardly state policy of enforced disappearances, neglect that these women have challenged dominant patriarchal norms in their own societies. Women like Wrranga Luni at the forefront of the anti-war PTM represent a...