When I was a kid growing up in Pakistan, we had what we called Peeping Toms: young boys from neighboring houses or marketplaces who liked to hang around on the walls and peer through to get a sense of the women inside the house.
One day, when I was about 11 years old. I was changing my clothes when I saw a young boy perched up on the wall behind my room, trying to get a good look of my naked body. I screamed and hid underneath my bed. My sister came rushing and asked if everything was alright. I said, ‘yes’, and pointed from underneath, towards the boy, who was now feeling even more confident and fearless after causing me a fright. ‘Ah, ’ my sister said, ‘Oh, he is just a Peeping-Tom. ‘A what?’ I asked, and she said, as she drew the curtains and shooed him away, ‘he is harmless, he is just a Peeping-Tom’. This was the first time I heard this term, but I was fascinated by this concept. Throughout my adult life, I was fortunate and never encountered stalking or being chased by anyone. I travelled across Europe, America, and Pakistan- all by myself, freely and confidently, despite having all sorts of affairs.
Ever since I moved to New York, I seem to have attracted a flock of Peeping-Toms, led by a serial stalker. This could be due to the nature of modern cities, where people’s lives lack immense meaning, and the urban monotonous lifestyle requires them to seek more intensity. It is perhaps a dysfunctional way of seeking connection with another. Yet, it can hurt the one who is being peeped at and stalked. Every time I realize how my deepest insights, insecurities, intimacies, loves, and hates have been violated, misused, and seen, I feel nauseated at how can someone take this much interest in my life? I simply recoil with disgust and find it grotesque when I think of how my most private thoughts for a lover, heightened emotions, my failures, and weaknesses have been exploited and highlighted by my Peeping Tom. Right then, I recall that moment in Lahore- of the boy perched up on the wall, trying to have a good look of my bosom and bottom. After all, what is theft of privacy but peeping into the deepest crevices of someone’s mind and heart? Women are still watched, obsessed over, gossiped about, and stalked- sometimes in the name of fact-finding, sometimes purely out of lust, envy, or contempt. A modern-day stalker will control the mind of a woman and not just her body. Because in controlling her mind, you can then control her body, and make her feel like she is in control. The stalker can make her act according to their wishes. So the bigger question raised here is, how can we protect women from being mentally exploited by Peeping Toms?
Woman, know thy limits: protect your emails, your letters, your messages, your innermost thoughts, and those whom you love. Avoid the miserable, because misery loves company, and those who resent will always accompany the tyrant. Avoid the simpleton and bored, because those who do not think deeply, will use you as a spectacle for their own life.
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