4. Contemporary Feminist Activism in Pakistan: The Online, Offline Continuum

As seen in the last chapter, I was interested in how discourses on gender rights unfold on X and how that in turn shapes the contemporary feminist discourse on identity. The controversial slogan of ‘My Body My Choice’ was originally used in the protest of 2018 on International Women’s Day. Since then, it has been debated in mainstream media and social media. To gain a better understanding of Pakistan’s most debated counter feminist movement, I interviewed activists who were the first ones to carry the placards with the same slogan, chant it loudly, and continued to debate it online. While the focus of these conversations was how digital mediation has impacted contemporary feminist causes, I was also keen on understanding how their articulation of feminism differs from that of Pakistan’s second generation of feminists. The findings reveal that the intersectional elements of class, ethnicity, urban placement, city, and age are crucial in shaping today’s activism.