The American Woman in Pakistan, a Positive View of Eastern Masculinity

When I decided to make Iman's Little Blog into books, the decision came with an awareness that very little media was portraying the Eastern men that raised me and loved me in a positive light. The stories I included and the greater story I'm telling in the books is not only one about my experience as an autistic woman of color navigating my love life and failing, but also of the men who have supported me through it. The Redacted storyline is important to me because I experienced so much growth from it and because he reminds me so much of my father. Redacted ($@719) is gentle, patient, thoughtful, and forgiving. He is the antithesis of media's caricature of Eastern men. I would go as far as to say that most Eastern men are the antithesis of that caricature. In my experience, Western men have no awareness of how their masculinity should be managed around women and have very little respect. They treat women with the same roughness they do men despite the reality of physical and social power imbalance. My father, my uncles, and my grandfathers are and were remarkably wonderful men. They were nurtured to be. That is not to say that they are without flaw, but that they are without growth restrictive ego and ignorance. Yes, my entire life, I have been subjected to hellish remarks based in pure ignorance. "You don't want a man from those places, they beat women". "Your ____looks like a terrorist". "Oh your parents are divorced. Cause your dad was abusive, right? I've heard that about them." So on and so forth. I had, had enough. The Eastern men that loved me so well from the day I took my first breath would be regular people within the pages of my books. They would be wonderful fathers, handsome suitors, and supportive friends just as they are in real life. This project is ongoing, it is successful enough (thank you for 530 copies sold!), but I am humbled to admit that Sister Onijah Robinson has done more for the general population's perception of Eastern men than I have in 4 years. Every video of Onijah shows Pakistani Muslim men as patient, respectful of women, and kind. They indulge her delusions in an effort to help her. They humbly turn the other cheek when she is disrespectful. They are not the misogynistic monsters that media portrays them as and thousand are finally seeing it. I don't share this as a way to say that misogyny doesn't exist in the East. It does. Just as it exists in the West. I share this to emphasize that an understanding that Eastern men aren't inherently bad is a beautiful thing.