Anatomy cannot entitle dominance
WHENEVER accounts of gruesome attacks on women hit me on Facebook, I cannot help but think of my adorable 13-year-old niece, Andiswa.
My fear stems from the vicious attacks on females seen recently. Each morning, we release her into an unsafe patriarchal society, where she has to constantly remember she is “sub-human”. I bet she has already had a taste of the ruthlessness in our society.
For many of us, this unsafe society is the elephant in the room. It is dreadful that so many of us have decided to ignore it.
Yes, we post complaints on social media every so often, but we fail to confront the reality on the ground.
An MEC in KwaZulu-Natal uses the phrase “we condemn” so often in media releases that at some point I concluded it was insincere and just a matter of ticking a box to register the condemnation of an incident.
If my niece’s life is just going to be treated as a number, I fear that history will judge us.
We have all played our part, directly or indirectly, in the construction of the female-unfriendly society we live in today.
I was recently deeply absorbed in thinking about the violence, not just physical but intersectional, that Andiswa would have to dodge every day of her life.
I reflected on how her elders at home had cultivated the ground and made it fertile for men to claim a supreme position in her life. The idea of her as secondary to a male has already been instilled.
In the words of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller… We teach girls to aspire to marriage, and we don’t teach boys the same. We raise girls to each other as competitors, not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men.”
I remembered how, as a 10-yearold, Andiswa was lectured daily that she had to keep herself clean, not because “cleanliness is a good hygienic practice” but because “which man will marry you if you fail to keep yourself clean?”
Andiswa has to be indoors before it gets dark outside, while my nephews’ movements are not equally monitored, because “boys will be boys”, I suppose.
What a privilege my nephews have had just because they happened to have different anatomy.
I have since become a devil’s advocate in some circles in my quest to challenge such thinking. Some reminded me of how I had benefited from this oppressive set-up.
I agree. There are places where I have been privileged to be a male and I continue to enjoy that freedom. However, I must not forget that it comes at a price and it is mostly my female counterparts who pay the price.
President Cyril Ramaphosa reminded us: “We cannot effect meaningful change if we become complacent, if we become comfortable with our own positions in the status quo.”
We need to address the roots of the behaviour we see playing out in society. Homes, schools, cultural and religious practices and institutions are breeding grounds for the monsters we, in society, have to deal with now.
These beasts roam our communities, reminding us how dreadful they are where they come from.
At institutions of higher learning, we have to face Goliaths whose masculinity is underpinned by the abuse of women.
They use their muscles and mouths to validate a male supremacist existence. Their behaviour is not just learnt at university or college, but is a manifestation of the violent behaviour they have seen and which has been accepted over the years as they grew up.
We have a moral obligation to undermine any cultural or religious practice that seeks to incessantly oppress females in any aspect of their lives.
I have no interest in tolerating systems meant to unjustly marginalise females. If I do, I am rallying behind a ruthless society that will be treacherous to my niece and many girls out there for the rest of their lives.
In 2008, pop star Beyoncé released a song, If I Were A Boy. I’d heard it but did not pay much attention to it.
Professor Nyna Amin of the University of KwaZulu-Natal drew my attention to the lyrics.
This powerful song conscientises us about the overt, yet ignored, gruesome emotional violence women suffer in heterosexual relationships in a patriarchal society in which the structures favour the men.
The song does so by putting the male character in the shoes of the female (Beyoncé), to portray exactly how males conduct themselves in spaces and towards their partners.
It also reflects on how women tend to internalise their feelings about the treatment because it has been socially normalised. This, however, does not mean they do not hurt. The emotional scars are there.
Beyoncé repeats the line in an attempt to register in the listener’s mind that the expressed fantasies of privilege (in the song) are all dependent on the (boy) gender, hence she wishes she was a boy.
In this society, a boy is socialised into an idea that there is behaviour (in which we, at least many of us males, find no fault) for which our partners have to turn a blind eye as it’s believed to be “inherently fixed”.
This is a real phenomenon, a “common sense” understanding of the world. Nevertheless, it is an absurd and illogical line of thinking.
In the interest of justice for women, we cannot, in the post-modern era, perpetuate the inequality of the sexes in our spaces, be it at home, school or in our communities.
Anatomy cannot entitle us to dominance and privilege over girls.
Beyoncé’s sentiments represent what most women out there feel.
Men, wherever they are, need to listen to the cries, pleas and demands of the socially oppressed, censored and marginalised.
In his Facebook post following the death of Zolile Khumalo, who was a student at Mangosuthu University of Technology, UKZN Professor Thabo Msibi wrote: “We have normalised violence and the assumed natural dominance of men in society.
“The penis has become a weapon of power and anarchy – a powerful weapon that sanctions some of the most ruthless and horrific forms of violence against women. The penis owns women: their voice, agency, human dignity, citizenship, rights and lives.
“Heteropatriarchy and violence have become so ingrained in the soul of who we are as a society that we have all become complicit in watching our mothers, sisters, nieces and grannies die at the hands of damaged young men.”
As I wrote this piece, I was thinking of how I would be crucified over the next few days by “the privileged”, the conservatives and the custodians of culture and religion as I call on people, especially males, to challenge the cruel norm.
I refuse to be part of practices that seek to oppress and harass Andiswa and other girls out there just because they are female.
I reject with contempt any system that would confine her to a subordinate role in society.
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty of the bad people, but the silence over that from the good people,” said Martin Luther King jr.
Ngubane is a journalism lecturer at the Durban University of Technology. He writes in his personal capacity.