Karachi Lit Fest cancels manel on women empowerment after backlash online

The Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) is known to be a weekend full of feast for hungry book-lovers seemingly wandering around to grasp on any and every intellectual panel discussion they can find their way in.

Come literary fest season, we're mentally prepared for some questionable topics (like why do we have 11 sessions on Partition every year?), puzzling speakers and moderators and of course, manels abound.

But it's 2020 and we're not letting such blatant sexism slide anymore. KLF released the schedule for their upcoming 2020 edition recently and came under fire on Twitter for hosting a session on Financial Inclusion and Women Empowerment featuring four men; even the moderator was a dude!

Exclusion seems to be this year's KLF theme as a panel on student activism was also scheduled and excluded students who have been advocating for their own rights.

People on Twitter were enraged, upset and seemed to be calling the committee out for this mess.

Surprisingly enough, the panel discussion was removed altogether after and is now representing a blank space on the website. Perhaps it was more convenient to omit women altogether rather than bring some onboard or explain to men why they were being replaced by women?

Listen up, this is what a real, effective discussion would look like:

This is not the first time this has happened; previously, a panel called 'Feminism: The Other Perspective' was called out for mansplaining when it invited only male speakers to discuss feminism...

You'd think they'd have learnt by now but we guess it takes a while to acknowledge your own privilege and smash the patriarchy. We're nominating Jibran Nasir to have a chat with them since he's the only man who seems to understand accountability: