Freedom of women or whatever

She left Pakistan when she was very little and settled in the USA. Her father had married an American woman. Her name is Alisha.when she became 18. Her father is my cousin, his sister tells me that Alisha is pregnant, she was not prepared to discuss it further.  I left it like that, the grapevine of my extended family started. There was lot of gossip going. The little details I could extract was that she was not married and was having a baby
For my extended family it was a shocker.
"How could she? She is not even married"  and so many questions like them. The more religiously zealous sounded as if they would kill her  if she was in Pakistan.  Several decades ago there was young woman who had come to Pakistan, because she had never seen her father's country. She had a six year old son. Every single day she would get furious calls from her father. One of the reasons he was upset was that the people who knew him would be shaming him for bringing up a daughter who is unmarried and has a son.
Marriage is the biggest priority.  There has to be a huge festival during the marriage and the daughter has to be disposed off to some guy she does not know  A monstrous facade.  Women are struggling for more freedom, struggling to assert their right over their body that it does not belong to anyone.
That is where society does not agree.A woman's body is everyone's property except herself. If she can do anything she likes with her body, it would ruin the cultural values.  Cultural values dictate that  sex is more sinful than lying, cheating, stealing and murder.
The most basic need is sex, but it is portrayed as a bad thing while every other crime does not carry the similar  stigma. If a woman claims absolute and complete ownership of her body, then those who resort to gang rape would not be doing so regularly. If a woman is told to be proud of her body and there is nothing ashamed to be a women, men will be reluctant to resort to rape. The reason they rape is because women are made to believe that they are subhuman and can be treated in any way they like.
A marriage is like telling that their daughter is having sex with their permission, do they not realise it makes them sound like pimps. They have no right to tell their daughter about her marriage, whether she wants to or not. They have to let their responsibility ends when she is at an age in which can have sex by her own consent not what her parents tell her to do.  She can fall in love or out of it. No one can tell what she should wear or not wear.

Marriages take place with great fanfare, but divorces occur in secret as if it is shameful. Such should not be the case. A woman who is divorced or widowed is not considered eligible for re-marriage, in a specific category of society, however divorces are taking place more frequently, women have stopped  seeing themselves as unpaid servants of their husbands. They drop everything and divorce. Perhaps this will bring a welcome change in society.

Sexual repression

So many stories of sexual violence. Of women being gang raped, women used as sex slaves.  Everything sex is horrible. Women are supposed to dress up in a certain manner to avoid rape. Everything is about sex obscene, terrifying, painful and unpleasant. Anything remotely related to sex, is strictly taboo. Mothers by nature have to tell their daughters about menstruation and about become mothers. But parents will never try to educate their sons about sex, about erections and how to have safe sex. On that part boys are disadvantage, no one talks about sex with them in the family. What they find out is what other boys tell them at school or elsewhere. 
The adults know about the pleasure of sex. Cracking dirty jokes are usually the funniest of all. But they remain taboo. Women and men like them. Women in other countries are stand up  comedienne in which they regularly crack dirty jokes, that has not happen yet. Sex is too serious, to be taken seriously.