Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

It is important that we ask ourselves if we can do without the Western academic rhetoric that for all its usefulness can never understand the true scope and complexity of our identities, our stories and our traumas. Is it possible in Pakistan to speak about the right to love and live as we choose without talking about our deplorable healthcare system that has led many to bleed to death in understaffed and underfunded hospitals? What about our corrupt police force that takes advantage of khwaja saras amongst many others, extorting, intimidating and murdering for personal gain? Our judiciary system must also be held accountable for favouring the powerful and punishing the oppressed. Women too have been oppressed in South Asia for centuries, disregarded, ignored and patronized at every step. If we cannot ground concerns of gender non-normativity to a wider system that keeps most of Pakistan’s citizens oppressed and downtrodden, then how can we expect to create a language that even attempts to express LGBT rights?