When you hold the proverbial pen in your hand, there is no topic that is deemed unwritable.

Celebrities, politicians, countries, happenings, attitudes, movies – everything and anything can be written about. We writers even tell people to be nice to us or we will write about them, too. (Yes, that’s a threat). And whenever something is written, we are certain there will be some form of feedback as well.

We are aware that our blog topics are prone to garnering a lot of reaction ranging from mild nods to loud applause to friendly admonitions to if-words-could-crush and even death threats. Well, when you’re tackling the taboo-bull by the horns, you expect a few of such comments every now and then. It only adds to the whole experience of blogging about things that must not be talked of and one must learn to walk it off to write more about things that must not be talked of.

One of such topics was the recent celebrated poll released by MissTravel.com, ranking countries with sexiest people in the world on a scale of 1 to 10. We wrote about it. Using a cleaver, we dissected and dismembered the whole survey. Obviously.

Pakistani men were a very high sesky number 3.  It was apparent with some digging-in that this survey did not actually mean that Pakistani men in general are sexy but rather just the ones on that tawdry site. We are being polite. There are other words beginning with the letter T that define that site perfectly.

When the blog feedback poured in, it wasn’t pretty.

Never before have we received so many gaaliyan. And to say this is something since our blogs get cussed at regularly as we’ve mentioned above and as is the way of our people – must lash out regardless of common sense to release demons within.

We were written off as men-hating feminazis. We were dubbed as ugly-looking, baboon-faced females who were jealous of Pakistani men. (It didn’t matter that the commenters never knew us nor what we looked like). We were also informed that Pakistani women were only 5ft tall and so ugly that Pakistani men took pity on them and hence, bestowed on them the gift of companionship out of sympathy. *What??* Not to mention the defense that since Pakistani women were so profoundly ugly, Pakistani men had to resort to women of other nationalities to survive. *That was actually funny. We laughed.*

It was like the collective disseminating IQ of the men replying to that post was diminishing with each childish insult hurled our way and the women of Pakistan in general. It was an ugly experience to have. We were shown a glimpse of exactly how much Pakistani men hated Pakistani women.

It was baffling, really. Where was all this anger coming from? How come the women were the target of this rage? And were all the men suddenly afflicted with misogyny so much that not even a single comment coming from a male reader was nice? Or were we simply tagged by a set of particularly misogynist readers?

We studied the responses – on the blog post itself and on our social media profiles. Their (the men’s) main grievance seemed to stem from the fact that they were exposed using a dating site. They were insulted that what they were doing behind closed doors was outed – the fact that they were using such sites. It was obvious that kiss and never ever *EVER* tell was the main motto of our commenters. They loved the sexy label tons, just not where it came from and what it implied.

Why? What’s so wrong about using a dating site, one might ask. Well then, one might also realize that Pakistani men, as a specie, are only pious, shareef, God-fearing good boys who are infinitely afflicted by the male Naik Perveen syndrome. Ahem. Visiting such promiscuous sites is sinful, unholy, loose, dishonorable, cheap, tacky, corrupt, immoral, errant, classless, shameful, disgraceful, ignoble, disreputable, shocking, scandalous, indecent, etcetera, etcetera, and everything that’s opposite of good, God-fearing, shareef, pious, etcetera, etcetera, and…well.

If it was a Gallup poll, something that was actually legit then, of course, proud, proud sexy number 3 Pakistani men. Woohoo! But from a dating site? Really? There were chest puffing, high fives, toothy grins, celebratory fist bumps, and comments everywhere until we talked about some facts.

The Pakistani men were there on MissTravel, so just us saying what was happening…how did that make us the enemy? The site was there already, we just mentioned what it was. Anyone visiting it can see that it isn’t any run-of-the-mill dating site. It is a site that clearly states if you wanted to see the world but didn’t have the money, your good looks could earn you a trip. In other words, if you are rich, buy a cute companion. If you are poor, sell yourself to be the cute companion. That sounds like borderline escort service to us. Gigolo anyone? It isn’t Match.com or eHarmony.com or heck even Shaadi.com, which by the way would be the second highest level of commitment (the final being Shaadi itself). MissTravel.com, on the contrary, could well just be another name for HookupandGo.com that airs its ads after midnight when all nice children and parents have gone to bed.

So why hate us for simply writing the truth in an admittedly tad sarcastic manner? Do Pakistani men really have such a fragile ego? If the same analysis, the one we did of the original survey, had come from men, would it have met with similar criticism? Or would it have received praise for being truthful?

Let’s take this test of nerves up another notch.

Now, picture this: Pakistani women on a similar survey of a dating site, getting voted third sexiest – or any-number-on-the-scale sexiest.

While the original survey had been a triumph for the men, what do you think would have been said for the women had our imaginary scenario been true?

There would’ve been blood. To put it simply.

The women would have been called sluts – in the least. They would have been asked what they were doing on such a site; how their honor had gone down the drain; how their honor had taken the honor of their men down the drain with it; how the liberals were responsible for this; how the bigots were in the right about being bigots because this. And really…voted sexy? How is that ever a compliment for any woman? Those women need to start covering up. Now!

Lastly, our favorite responses came from those idiots (no, we do not have a nicer word) who hadn’t read the piece but commented with complete confidence that their opinion was it. It wasn’t. Such opinions weren’t anywhere close to being in the same vicinity as being valid because all they really said was exactly how off topic and clueless the commenters were. Tip: always read the article you’re going to comment on.

We don’t know what to take away from this experience except that most of our men, based on their responses, seem insecure and may just perhaps hate women a little bit.

We sympathize with the womb that bore them.