On being young, unmarried, and female in Pakistan | Yusra Amjad | TEDxLahore

[Applause] being a single 20 something in pakistan is a lot like being in the hospital everyone keeps asking you when you're gonna get out or else when you're going to get married because weddings are a lot like immigration they both involve a lot of forms and suitcases and sitting very still with very little leg room for a long stretch of time matrimony is a foreign land after all at least as good as an obscure european country by the cheque um but there are things that are not included uh in my introduction beliwad i am not married number two thank you number two condolences to you too sir number two i love harry potter oh thanks let me get this straight you don't like the fact that i'm unmarried but you like the fact that i like harry potter just to be clear yeah great um you might be wondering was asking me why do you have pastimes why do you have preferences personal interests why do you have book collections bookmark collections poster collections why are you indulging yourself as an individual you are not an individual you are a half of a whole when when you get married you will leave all these things behind to take on the responsibilities of a married woman now auntie loves me she wants what is best for me and i don't wish for us to sit here today and judge her harshly i don't wish for us to think of her as narrow-minded or old-fashioned i don't wish for us to be hypocrites because the truth is when we see a young woman in pakistan we think one thing and if if an answer isn't negative we think and after enough time passes we ask is kishadi right um so not only do we assume that marriage is and must be part of every woman's future we also have this very specific ideas of what marriage looks like right my sister is married but people assume that she's not often presumably because she doesn't only wear lawn choras and gold jewelry my mother is no longer married and people assume that she is presumably because we don't like to acknowledge that marriages can end we tie women's we do not allow women to be adult members of society until they engage in matrimony when we say things like when we say these things when we deny women mobility when we delight them social position when we deny them financial stability until they engage in matrimony i ask you how much of that decision to get married really remains a woman's so i'm 24 i am a woman i am pakistani and i am unmarried and that is my identity in a way that is not necessarily a man's identity there are assumptions that are made about me that are not necessarily made about a pakistani man you see when we see a young unmarried woman we assume that her time is less valuable museum that her responsibilities are non-existent and we assume that our life however thriving however exciting has somehow not yet really begun this is a poem i wrote called assumptions if you are a woman with depression you can simply wait until the time comes to give up possession of yourself if a man loves you you can say thanks if a man loves you and does it reasonably well without bruises a good height and a certain single-mindedness you can assume there is something wrong with you when you do not love him single-mindedly back if you are afraid to exist alone you can assume that's more or less the same as wanting to be with someone if you are with someone you can assume that everyone will be happy and your mother and everyone will hand you money in pastel envelopes and your mother will smile more if your heart is not behaving as it ought you can assume it's probably that first love's fault that brand new is the best way for a girl to be if you're a woman whose arms and breasts come easy to babies you can assume that your heart and your womb are empty waiting rooms if you are a woman you can assume things about your being answers to questions that would otherwise take a lifetime to figure out thank you now i don't wish to suggest that i am against women who choose to get married i don't wish ever to suggest that a woman who is married at 24 is less complex or less interesting than one who is not there is nothing that i dislike more than simplistic ideas of what is weak and what is strong particularly in women many women who i love and respect have made that decision while i might have my issues with the institution of marriage because it is an institution that swallows 14 million underage girls every year individually i believe marriage can be an act of courage and like i said many women who i love and respect wish to be or are married i do not wish to have judgments regarding women's life decisions what i wish is for us to stop taking women's personal decisions and pitting them against each other to decide which is a better woman as i said so many women i respect belong to this institution and this is a poem i wrote about the conversations that may arise between someone who belongs to that institution and someone who at that at this point in time does not because you see i feel no matter what a young woman achieves what she writes where she's published where she's invited to speak whatever invent she is part of all her friends her family even herself are waiting on some level for that one event where she will be dressed in red and gold my friend begins every conversation on the premise that a boy if not this boy if not the last boy but someone will be the one my friend asked these questions over and over again always is he committed to you never are you committed to him always is he husband material never are you wife material always does he make good money never don't you earn more than him always so is he a keeper never do you want to be kept always so you could settle down with him right right right my friend isn't afraid i'll end up alone she's afraid i won't end at all that i'll go on and on beginning into new chapters of myself my friend isn't afraid she'll end up alone but what does she do with her medal of matrimony when she sees that some women have not shown to this awards ceremony what will she do with all that heavy gold all that weight around her neck maybe she'll have to admit that the ribbon is a gaudy shade of red maybe she'll have to ask herself if this prize was only worth something to her when everyone was competing and if some woman can drop out of the race maybe she'll have to wonder if there are other ways to spend a spring afternoon maybe she'll have to question if red and gold really go with her complexion maybe she'll finally have to go out searching for something else to adorn her neckline a chain of daisies she watered into bloom herself a velvet choker plush and black or a string of zircon droplets in every color except red the options that we present to young women are something that i've been thinking about a lot recently um because apart from being a full-time unmarried woman some women aren't right part-time guys i'm full-time okay please um i'm also a full-time teacher at a girls school and so um i'm not a very good teacher i'm five feet tall so i'm mistaken for a student most days and attempted to be kicked out of the staff room but that's fine um my job my job involves two of the things my job involves two things it involves literature poetry and metaphor and language and it involves beautiful bright young girls and those are my two favorite things in the entire world believe me when i say i would not be standing here today without the power of literature and the power of other women and i would not have survived a lifetime of abuse without the agency that words afforded me and without the solidarity and the safe places that other girls provided for me so when i look at these incredible young girls i think about the options we are offering them and i know that despite being some of the most privileged in the country some of them will not complete their secondary education many of them will not go on to have a higher education because they will instead be participating in matrimony and i know that in many cases that will not be their choice so what i try to do what i wish to do with these girls is to give them language that helps them express themselves language that empowers them but i don't feel that i always succeed because i belong to an institution we all belong to an institution just like there are institutions that curbs women's freedoms their institution that curbs linguistic freedoms and as someone who is part of that institution i ask us all to reflect on that institution today so we can move beyond it this is a poem i wrote called on teaching english in the post-colonial state after years and years spent on learning it i take prescriptive linguistics off the shelf in exchange for a paycheck i put it on along with a floral three-piece suit and i go to work teaching young girls to speak english correctly the girls are my height the girls are monochrome in navy and white but their school bags are colorful and sequined and bright their school bags are all they have to differentiate themselves by the girls ask me how i know so many big words the girls ask me miss do you know all the poems in the world the girls ask me miss is it pronounced macbeth or macbeth the girls are tested on comprehensions about cousin helen the girls are made to read a play by 400 year old scottish warrior written by a dead white man the girls the girls ask me miss what is lady macbeth's first name the girls asked me why the past tense of bring is in brang and i say it just isn't the girls ask me why lasagna is agna and i say it just is the girls ask me if they are allowed to speak in urdu but most of all the girls ask me miss is this correct is this correct am i speaking correctly and i do not tell them girls language is not right or wrong it is simply spoken you see i don't just teach a subject i don't just teach a language i teach the skill that determines success in the post-colonial state i teach the marker of sophisticated intelligence i teach what we have made into a prerequisite for respect i teach privilege i enter the classroom and the stakes are higher being bad at maths just makes you relatable but being bad at english means you will probably be bad at life so the girls ask me miss is it pronounced poem or poem and i do not say girls it is pronounced however you choose to say it thank you so much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 929,303

Rating: 4.7652736 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, Urdu, Life, Community, Feminism, Literature, Poetry, Social Interaction, Society, Teaching, Women

Id: hlLzd5RsVQU

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2017