Toxic masculinities: The demon

Just because they’re creative – and seen to be more sensitive and introspective than other men – does not mean they do not act violently towards women

Men in the arts are no less capable than other men of violence, their tendency to be highly sensitive people notwithstanding. Why are we surprised when they are accused?

Filmmaker Khalo Matabane, creator of the television series When We Were Black and Mandela: The Myth and Me, and Dominican-American author Junot Díaz grew in notoriety in recent weeks. They joined the public list of men in the arts the world has accused, some tried and convicted, of sexual and other violence, mostly against women.

The addition of Matabane and Díaz to this fast-growing list cuts against the popular notion that artists are introspective, highly sensitive beings. Artists, psychologists such as Scott Barry Kaufman have argued, are more open to feeling and responding to the world around them, the beautiful and grotesque alike. In his co-authored book, Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind, Kaufman argues that this is true even of those who might, as part of their artistry, project an image of being hard, brash and outlandish.

Matabane and Díaz in their bodies of work do indeed demonstrate progressive politics and sensitivity — fragility, even. Their demeanour is also not “macho”, wrongly thought to be the sole indicator of a predilection to violence.

Consequently, revelations of their atrocious acts against women have come as a shock to many.

But, according to Kopano Ratele, professor, researcher on violence and author of Liberating Masculinities, sensitivity and a heightened capacity for introspection are not enough to cause any man to face the violence they inflict on others, nor what they’ve likely experienced personally but repress.

“Only a different kind of introspection about the kind of man you are, the kind of man you have been made to be, the kind of man you want to be — not about art that you do — can bring men to face this violence,” Ratele says.

He says that people, perhaps creative-minded people more so, have an incredible capacity to build walls in their minds around otherwise incongruent ideas and actions. This allows them to function with no apparent cognitive dissonance. This is how men like Matabane and Díaz could present a progressive public image yet be violent in their private lives, he suggests.

Matabane and Díaz have joined the list of men alleged to be violent in the arts which includes kwaito star and West Ink Records founder Mandla “Mampintsha” Maphumulo and Mark Coetzee, who resigned as chief curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art. City Press reported that Coetzee resigned during a meeting of the museum’s trustees after being confronted with evidence staff had gathered of his sexually inappropriate and abusive behaviour.

Maphumulo, for his part, stands accused of domestic violence against Bongekile Simelane, who is signed to West Ink as musician and performer Babes Wodumo, the “Queen of Gqom”. In a controversial interview with Simelane on Metro FM, Maphumulo is said to have broken the performer’s leg during one of the assaults. He posted a statement and a rambling video on Facebook the day after the interview, in which he said he was no saint and conceded the veracity of some of the claims — made by host Masechaba Ndlovu, who seemed to have ambushed Simelane with the accusations live on air.

In an interview with Ndlovu last Tuesday, Maphumulo was evasive and seemed to retract his concessions. Alarmingly, he seemed to lay claim to Simelane, as if she were property.

Also on the list are painter and photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa, serving an 18-year sentence for murdering Nokuphila Kumalo. There’s also fugitive Roman Polanski, who pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, and Bill Cosby, convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault. Both were expelled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which continues to nominate and award Oscars to Woody Allen, accused of sexually abusing his adopted daughter Dylan.

Film producer Harvey Weinstein is also on the list. It was the accusations against him that triggered Hollywood actors to adopt the #MeToo movement, started by activist Tarana Burke. The movement has spread to countries such as France, Sweden, India and South Africa — and women have come forward to say they, too, were subjected to violence, sexual and otherwise, at the hands of a man, a specific man. In most instances, multiple women have come forward, suggesting that the behaviour could be part of these men’s way of being.

There is also kwaito artist Sipho “Brickz” Ndlovu, a convicted rapist who still lands gigs after his release on bail pending the outcome of his appeal. And playwright and former drama lecturer Tsepo wa Mamatu was dismissed by a disciplinary committee at the University of Witwatersrand on sexual harassment charges. Similarly, filmmaker Sipho Mpongo was charged and found guilty by the University of Cape Town of “sexual harassment, sexual assault and interfering with the complainant”.

There’s a bevy of others who’ve been accused but denied the claims, including Swedish photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, Hollywood executive Adam Venit, rapper Nas (Nasir Bin Olu Dara Jones), former Ruth First fellow and arts journalist Lwandile Fikeni, musician R Kelly, Kenyan columnist Tony Mochama and kwaito producer Arthur Mafokate.

In his upcoming book Born to Kwaito, writer Sihle Mthembu is scathing of Mafokate, whom he describes as “kwaito’s most hideous man”. Mthembu argues that the hit-maker, currently on trial for assaulting Cici Twala, his former girlfriend, is undeserving of the title “King of Kwaito”.

“Not simply because he is not the genre’s foremost innovator (that title could go to an Mdu or Spikiri), but because he represents a toxic masculinity and a co-opting of the very notion of artistic autonomy, placing him at odds with the aspirations of black excellence and joy that are at the core of the music’s roots,” Mthembu writes.

He also expresses distress that Mafokate still has a place in our culture.

Despite being the accused in an ongoing domestic violence trial, Mafokate was among the local celebrities allowed on to the pitch to meet players as Mamelodi Sundowns squared off in the Mandela Centenary Cup against Spanish football club FC Barcelona. He has not been asked to step down nor been suspended, pending the outcome of his criminal trial, as a board member of the South African Music Rights Association.

Based on Ratele’s framing, it is the toxic masculinities Mthembu says Mafokate represents that allow the music producer the support and freedoms he continues to enjoy.

“Masculinity, at a minimum, operates at two levels. It operates as something that is corporeal. It is incorporated on to the body, in the choice of clothing, the way you sit, the way you carry yourself,” Ratele says.

These choices communicate and are understood by society as masculine and defining of the person who embodies them as a man, he says. This is the more dominant understanding of masculinities, he adds.

The other interconnected but, according to Ratele, poorly understood level at which masculinities operate are as ideologies. He says they organise our lives and how we relate and engage with each other.

“Masculinities are both, on the one hand, performance to societal expectations and, on the other, ideologies — bundled sets of beliefs created over time and taught to everyone from one generation to the next,” he says.

These are taught and reinforced not just by children’s primary caregivers, who in South Africa are mostly women, but also by everyone they