Dear Auntie,

I’m a 26-year-old woman. When I was 17, my elders got me engaged to my paternal cousin, who was 19 at that time. We lived in different provinces then and barely talked. But, with time, we developed a deep bond. I began to trust him, and respected his presence and guidance in my life.

Then last year, our elders developed grave misunderstandings during our marriage settlements, leading them to break off our engagement. Within a month, his father — my father’s elder brother — got his nikaah done to another cousin from my family. I was in utter shock. I severed all ties with him. And I didn’t react in front of anyone, as I have a habit of bottling up my deepest feelings.

Two months ago, my paternal grandfather passed away. This tragedy broke the ice between the two families and interactions resumed. Then, my cousin confronted me and blamed me for not even trying to save the relationship. He said that he would have not gotten married if I had stood by him.

My side of the story is that I chose to go quiet because the tension between our families was very palpable. Any word could have led to a bad outcome. But I had hoped that, after five to six months, things would get easier and our elders would move towards a natural patch-up.

‘Should I Explain Myself to My Former Fiancé?’

Now, I face a moral dilemma: should I tell him my truth — about how I suffered and endured the pain quietly? Or would this conversation result in further complications, instead of closure, especially now that he is married.

Silent Sufferer

Dear Silent Sufferer,

Let me get to the bottom line right away. This man is now married and that changes everything.

What happened to you was painful and unfair. You were young when circumstances spiralled out of control and everything collapsed without your voice being heard. Your silence was your coping mechanism and so you did what you thought would prevent things from getting worse.

The problem is that this man is now trying to rewrite history for his own peace of mind. When he says things like ‘I would not have married if you had stood by me’, it sounds like he is trying to shift responsibility on to you for a decision that, at the end of the day, he made.

Telling him things from your point of view might feel like it’ll help bring closure, but you need to ask yourself honestly… who is this closure for?

If you keep revisiting the situation, it’ll simply reopen painful wounds. And for him, it will almost certainly complicate his marriage. It is not necessary to have every conversation. And this particular conversation is especially not necessary.

You already know what you felt, what you went through and why you stayed silent. If you speak now, it can create emotional complications with a married man, even if you are only trying to gain clarity. And trust me, an entanglement with a married man is not a path you ever want to go down.

Close this chapter now and protect yourself from entering a needless mess.

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 29th, 2026

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On a narrow, bustling street in Mansehra in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, evening light spills between tangled electric wires and shop signs. A transgender woman adjusts her dupatta, places her phone against a wall and presses record.

For a few seconds, the world is simple: music, movement, a small performance meant for an audience somewhere beyond the street. The video lasts less than a minute.

By the time night settles over the town, it has travelled far beyond the pavement where it was filmed. The clip is downloaded, reshared, passed between strangers. Comments begin to appear — mocking first, then explicit, before becoming threatening. Messages follow in private inboxes: propositions, insults, warnings.

What began as an act of visibility becomes unsafe exposure.

For many transgender Pakistanis navigating the country’s rapidly expanding digital world, this is the fragile bargain of social media. Platforms that promise connection, income and identity also open the door to harassment, surveillance and blackmail — risks intensified by limited digital literacy and weak institutional protection.

As the world observes the International Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, Pakistan’s historically marginalised transgender community is finding greater visibility online amid rapid digitalisation. But it comes at a cost that only a few can navigate and many were never warned about…

In a society where public space has long been hostile to transgender people, the internet once appeared to offer something radical: the chance to be seen.

But visibility, it turns out, has a price.

A NEW STAGE

Over the past decade — and particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated digital life — social media has reshaped how Pakistanis communicate, work and present themselves to the world. TikTok videos, WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages now function as informal marketplaces, entertainment channels and community spaces.

For transgender communities historically pushed to the margins of economic life and often facing violence, these platforms have opened unexpected opportunities. Malika, a 29-year-old transgender woman in Mansehra, describes social media as a gateway to both recognition and income.

“I have videos on TikTok and songs on YouTube,” she tells Eos. “I’ve connected with many people through these platforms. Many [people] in our community use TikTok to show their beauty — if you are visible, you get opportunities for functions and events.”

For performers who traditionally relied on word-of-mouth networks to secure work at weddings or celebrations, online visibility can bring new clients. Daily life itself becomes content: birthday gatherings, shared meals, small purchases that mark moments of pride.

“We share moments from our lives,” Malika explains. “If someone buys something nice — maybe gold or furniture — people show it,” she continues. “Even if a friend gives a small ring worth ten rupees, it still becomes a video.”

These glimpses of ordinary life are quietly radical. For decades, public narratives about transgender Pakistanis reduced them to narrow stereotypes — dancers at weddings, beggars at traffic signals, figures of ridicule or superstition. Social media allows them to tell different stories.

But the same exposure that attracts followers can also attract predators.

WHEN THE AUDIENCE TURNS HOSTILE

Visibility online can quickly translate into surveillance in the physical world.

“Since the use of social media increased, harassment and violence have also increased,” Malika admits. “People come to know that a beautiful transgender person lives in a particular area,” she adds. “Then they start recognising them.”

Sometimes that recognition becomes intimidation. “Some people threaten us or force us to go to parties,” Malika elaborates. “They say if we refuse, they will open fire at our homes.”

Blocking users provides little relief. “How many people can we keep blocking?”

For Katrina, a 40-year-old transgender woman in Mansehra, the dangers of online trust became painfully clear. “A friend asked me to join a video call and entertain him by undressing,” she recalls quietly. “Because I trusted him, I agreed.”

The call was secretly recorded, Katrina tells Eos. “He later sent the videos back to me on WhatsApp and threatened to make them viral.”

What began as a private interaction turned into blackmail — a reminder of how easily digital intimacy can become digital control.

THE DIGITAL LITERACY DIVIDE

These vulnerabilities are often magnified by a lack of digital literacy within parts of the community, shaped by geography and varying levels of exposure.

Sonia, a 24-year-old transgender woman who has worked with a transgender rights organisation in Mansehra, says many community members began using social media with little understanding of privacy tools or security settings. “There is hardly any privacy on Facebook,” she explains. “And on TikTok, most people don’t set privacy settings because they don’t know how these platforms work.”

Some users needed help even creating accounts. “I helped set up accounts for most of them,” Sonia tells Eos.

Without basic knowledge of account security or reporting mechanisms, users can become easy targets for impersonation, scams and harassment.

Malika remembers the shock of discovering someone had created a fake account using her name and photographs. “The account started messaging people while pretending to be me,” she says. Rumours spread quickly within the community, damaging her reputation. “I had to record a video telling everyone the account was fake,” Malika continues. “That was the only way to protect myself.”

Even then, the sense of vulnerability lingered. But, as Malika points out, the same social media also saved her life — by posting a video to tell the world that the account did not belong to her.

But not many know of the security measures and safeguards within, points out Zaini, a 32-year-old transgender woman in Rawalpindi. “I know how to use privacy settings, block accounts and report abuse — things many in smaller cities aren’t aware of yet,” she tells Eos.

This contrast reveals how digital vulnerability is shaped by geography and structural inequality.

In a big city like Rawalpindi, where people from different cities intersect, stronger community networks and peer-based learning create greater exposure to digital tools and safety practices — forming a layer of informal protection that allows users to navigate risks with more awareness.

In places such as Mansehra, interrupted education, economic marginalisation and isolation limit both access to technology and opportunities to learn, with many picking up digital skills informally and without a clear understanding of privacy or consent.

Across both settings, fear of reporting abuse persists, but the lack of accessible digital safety knowledge in smaller cities deepens vulnerability — highlighting that digital literacy is not just an individual skill but a structural necessity to ensure visibility does not come at the cost of safety.

THE COST OF PRIVACY

In theory, privacy settings could reduce these risks. In practice, they often threaten livelihoods.

“If we make our accounts private, it will affect our work,” Sonia says. “We will receive fewer event bookings.”

For performers and content creators whose income depends on public visibility, hiding from the audience is rarely an option. “Why can’t we be protected on these platforms?” asks Sonia. “Many other people have public accounts,” she continues. “Why are men not blackmailed the way we are?”

The question reveals a deeper inequality: transgender users are expected to navigate public platforms while carrying risks others rarely face. Safety and survival often pull in opposite directions.

WHEN THE INTERNET FOLLOWS

YOU HOME

For some transgender users, online harassment quickly escapes the digital realm.

Zaini says repeated threats forced her to rethink how she appears online. “I’ve had so many experiences that I’ve become cautious,” she says. “Now I use a fake account and, on TikTok, I upload videos with an emoji covering my face.”

Zaini says the situation has come to the point where she was compelled to apply for a visa abroad. “I’ve faced so much violence and abuse online that I’m seeking asylum.”

For others, digital threats have already reshaped their lives.

Saman, a 23-year-old transgender woman, says a former friend threatened to leak private photographs after they had travelled together. “He said he would post them on TikTok and Facebook,” she recalls.

The threats escalated rapidly. Saman tells Eos that the man resorted to blackmail and threatened to throw acid on her. Fear forced her to abandon her search for a job and return to Pakistan from the United Arab Emirates.

These stories illustrate a disturbing pattern: online harassment often becomes a precursor to offline danger. Screenshots reveal identities; messages reveal locations. Once that information escapes into hostile networks, intimidation can move easily from the digital space into the physical world, forcing transgender individuals to change their routines, hide their identities, or even leave their homes and communities to stay safe.

SILENCE AS SURVIVAL

Despite these risks, many transgender survivors choose not to report cybercrime.

Kami Chaudhry, a trans activist who is also a model, says she faced significant online backlash and reported it through both online mechanisms and directly to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the recently constituted National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency.

Despite multiple attempts, including office visits, there was little follow-up or meaningful assistance, Kami tells Eos. “Cyber harassment and abuse are not treated with the urgency they deserve.”

“I never even thought about filing a complaint,” Saman says. Her reasoning is blunt: “Abusers know no one will stand up for us.”

When transgender people approach authorities, she says, their complaints are often dismissed or ignored. “Even when we go after being beaten and covered in blood, no one listens,” Saman adds.

If physical violence is ignored, reporting online abuse can feel futile. For many, silence becomes a form of protection.

THE INTERNET AS DISCOVERY

But the digital world is not only a place of danger. For many transgender Pakistanis — particularly younger ones — it is also where identity begins.

Umrao Jaan, a 30-year-old transgender woman in Rawalpindi, says the internet helped her understand herself. “My journey started from the internet,” she tells Eos. “Through the internet I realised I was not alone.”

As a child, she felt isolated, unsure how to explain her identity. Online videos and discussions offered answers. “I created two Facebook accounts,” she says with a laugh. “One for family and one where I searched for information.”

Through those hidden searches, Umrao Jaan discovered communities, conversations and knowledge about gender identity and transitioning. Social media, she believes, has changed how younger transgender Pakistanis see their futures.

For her generation, the internet is not only a stage but also a classroom.

Yet Umrao Jaan also recognises the risks. “Social media has increased both vulnerability and popularity,” she says. “People know who we are and where we are.”

She remembers meeting a man on a dating app, who used fake photographs. “When I went to meet him, I realised he was someone completely different,” she says.

The encounter ended safely, but the experience revealed how quickly online interactions can become dangerous. “The abuse often shifts from online spaces to offline spaces,” she says. “After meeting people in real life, exploitation can become financial, physical or psychological.”

A STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

Digital rights advocates argue these stories reveal deeper systemic gaps.

Nighat Dad, founder of the Lahore-based Digital Rights Foundation (DRF), says even a small number of complaints from the transgender community signals significant underreporting. “Limited digital literacy makes people more vulnerable at every stage,” she explains. “For transgender communities, this risk is multiplied because survivors already face stigma and economic exclusion.”

Dad adds that these vulnerabilities are compounded by systemic gaps in how abuse is addressed online, particularly across major social media platforms.

“It is the gap between law, enforcement and survivor experience,” she continues. “Many transgender survivors fear secondary victimisation: being mocked, misgendered, judged or forced to defend their identity instead of having the abuse addressed.”

Pakistan’s cyber harassment cases continue to rise each year. Yet many transgender victims remain reluctant to report abuse due to fear of humiliation, delays or indifference from authorities.

While activists highlight the everyday vulnerabilities created by limited digital literacy and gaps in platform enforcement, policymakers point to the structural and legal shortcomings that exacerbate these risks. National Assembly member Sharmila Faruqui believes the country’s legal protections have not kept pace with its digital expansion.

One way to rectify this is through stakeholder engagement, says Faruqui. Parliamentary committees should hold consultations with transgender activists, civil society groups, digital rights experts and community leaders before drafting or amending laws, she tells Eos.

“Inclusion should mean that the experiences of transgender citizens are reflected in the language of the law, in enforcement guidelines and in oversight mechanisms,” she asserts.

Without stronger implementation and survivor-centred reporting systems, laws alone offer little protection.

THE DOUBLE-EDGED SCREEN

For transgender Pakistanis, the internet remains a space of contradictions — a fragile lifeline and a fault line at once. It is here that many first find the language to name themselves, the community to belong to and the visibility to challenge generations of erasure.

Yet the same spaces amplify harm with equal speed: a single video travels beyond control, a private exchange mutates into blackmail, a screenshot hardens into evidence against one’s own existence.

In this ecosystem, abuse is not confined to the screen; it seeps outward, collapsing the boundary between digital and physical worlds, where visibility can so quickly become vulnerability.

In a country racing toward digitalisation, safety cannot remain an afterthought. For transgender Pakistanis, the promise of visibility must not come at the cost of vulnerability. What is needed is not retreat from these platforms, but reform within them: stronger, more responsive reporting mechanisms and accessible digital safety training that equips users to navigate risk without dimming their presence.

The goal is simple yet urgent — to ensure that transgender individuals can exist online with the same ease, dignity and freedom as any other Pakistani, where expression is not shadowed by fear, but protected by design.

Zahra Naeem works in the development sector. She has studied gender studies and anthropology, and has experience in gender activism, research and advocacy

Laiba Nayyab works in the development sector and has experience of gender activism, community mobilisation and advocacy

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 29th, 2026

An earlier version of this article incorrectly listed Laiba Zainab as the co-writer. It has been updated to reflect Laiba Nayyab as the co-writer. The error is regretted.

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A couple of weeks ago, a midday poetry reading session was held at the Sind Club Library. Literary aficionados Bari Mian and Wajid Jawad read out a selection of poems, with members of the audience contributing their own favourites. In the midst of the mayhem of war, there was something restorative and moving about these two speakers, each with a small well-thumbed pocket-sized notebook bursting with paper bookmarks marking the poems to be read.

Most cultural events are held in the evenings, often extending well into the night. This was different. A couple of hours in the middle of the day. A hiatus between the business of the morning and what may well be a fraught evening. It was not a rest, a siesta, but a secret energising, a waking of the soul when many in the city were bent over desks, reconciling accounts.

Midday is seen as a powerful time of the day, when the sun is at its zenith, creating no shadow. A time of sharp clarity, intensity, perfect illumination, exposing the truth of things.

In Slavic and German folklore, Lady Midday was believed to be a spirit that haunted fields at noon, to dissuade those working in the heat. Christian monks refer to the “noonday demon” that creates restlessness and apathy, causing them to believe their work is meaningless.

From the “noonday demon” of mediaeval monks to Nietzsche’s “Great Noon”, midday has long symbolised moments of truth and reckoning

For Native Americans, midday is a time of intense energy and spiritual vigilance when the boundary between the physical and spiritual world is active. In epics such as the Mahabharata, noon is portrayed as a quiet turning point when the sun seems to pause, marking a moment for decision-making or action.

The English playwright and composer Noel Coward’s song ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ has the stanza: “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun”, referring not to the weak English sun, but the intense sun of its colonies that could not deter the colonial enterprise. “When the white man rides, every native hides in glee/Because the simple creatures hope he will impale his solar topee on a tree/It seems such a shame when the English claim the earth/That they give rise to such hilarity and mirth.”

German priest and philosopher Romano Guardini sees midday as a pause, not from weariness, but as “a pure present when strength and energy are still at the full.” It is a time for a person to re-collect themselves, “spreading out before their heart the problems that have stirred them.”

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book Thus Spake Zarathushtra, sees the “Great Noon” as the high point of humanity, the moment when we finally abandon all those “lies” — ideals, beliefs, moral principles that are the “exact opposite of the ones which would ensure man’s prosperity, his future and his great right to a future.” It is a “moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error.”

It is a calm like no other, a mystic intuition of truths disclosed in the midst of life. The “Great Midday” represents a stage of civilisation that has overcome its savage past but faces nihilism, or the loss of morality, values and purpose.

The term ‘High Noon’, made famous by the 1952 Western film, became an idiom for a final, dramatic showdown, a moment of confrontation, the ultimate test, an event which is likely to decide the final outcome of a situation. Jean-François Rischard, a former vice president of the World Bank, was the first to use the term in a political context in his 2002 book High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. It has since become a catchphrase for describing the crises of world politics.

The English writer James Plunkett, author of End State, asks: “Why is it hard to put a finger on the political moment we’re in?” Perhaps 2026 has brought clarity as the world faces a critical time of intense superpower rivalry, a volatile period where new coalitions are replacing the old.

Plunkett notes, in the midst of banal AI-generated content, it is also a time of unusual intellectual vitality, the rise of slow well-researched journalism, that braves the scorching political heat of this midday, asking the right question: not how we can ‘buy’ a better future, but how we can envision a better world. How can we govern in poetry, not prose?

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 29th, 2026

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