Men, we too must support and believe rape victims
After American actress Alyssa Milano took to Twitter to urge all women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted to tweet two words, “Me too”, within days more than 200,000 women declared they had been violated.
In SA, where rape statistics are almost double those of murder, the #MeToo campaign gained momentum like a Mexican wave.
The silence was shattered by former MP and musician Jennifer Ferguson, who named her alleged violator — football bigwig Danny Jordaan. Ferguson claimed the rape happened more than 20 years ago in a hotel room.
I am not using the word “alleged” because I don’t believe Ferguson, who is a wife and mother. I am using “alleged” because I am obliged to by law.
Which brings me to a conversation I had with one of my trusted and respectable male friends — a caring father of five girls.
I know for a fact my friend loves and respects women — his daughters will attest to that. And I know him as a husband who always treats his wife with the respect he also easily and comfortably extends to all women in his community.
But when I mentioned Ferguson’s story, his first response was typical of most men in this country. Although he was outraged and empathised with her, he said it would have served the women’s cause better if she had called Jordaan, confronted him, told him he had hurt her and then gone public with the details, including his response.
He was suggesting that Ferguson should have given Jordaan an opportunity to speak before she went public.
My response was that rape is a violent act against someone vulnerable perpetrated by a person who has learnt to be dominant and aggressive towards a woman or man who is weaker than he is.
A female victim of such violence would experience fear and trauma — as would any person who has been assaulted, shot or stabbed.
Not even a strong man would have the nerve to approach the person who has brutalised him, so why expect this from a more vulnerable woman? And Ferguson has a husband and children to consider in every decision she takes regarding what happened to her in that hotel room.
Women can never know how their husbands and partners will react when they tell them they have been raped. There are many incidents where men walk away from women who have been brutalised, because they perceive them as unclean. Women often have to go through that hurdle first before they even contemplate reporting a rape to the police.
Society’s attitudes do not help rape victims to come out in public and report their violation to the police. A typical South African reaction is to try to find reasons why it happened or even blame the victim for the attack.
This kind of thinking is not helping us stem the scourge of violence against vulnerable women and children. Studies published by Kilmartin, Rozee and Koos say “when men are taught to be dominant and aggressive, this often leads to hypermasculinity, male peer support for sexual aggression, development of rape myths and adversarial sexual beliefs”. Surely, some of SA’s men can be described like this.
South African studies have also reflected that a large number of rape cases go unreported and when they are reported, little is done. Which explains why someone like Ferguson — and any other woman who comes out now and says she was raped — must be believed and supported. It does not matter whether it happened a year ago, a decade ago or even 30 years ago.
We need to be concerned that our attitude towards rape victims may have cowed many women into going to their graves in silence.
Rape is a traumatic experience and in many cases, the victims block it out as a coping mechanism only to have flashbacks years later. So when a woman does come out, we shouldn’t act like the mob that protested outside court, bullied and harassed President Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser, Fezekile Kuzwayo, until she had to flee SA in fear for her life.
Men need to support the victims and assure them of our love and protection. We need to stop asking inappropriate questions and, instead of putting the burden on women to come out and name their abusers, why can’t we find it within ourselves to expose other men?
We must stop behaving as though we own women’s bodies. When we worry about a man’s right to his side of the story, we seem to forget about the woman’s pain.
If we don’t affirm our sisters, wives and mothers by standing firm behind them when they come out and report rape, we are collusive in this culture of silence and the protection of powerful men who abuse their power and positions of authority to prey on women.
Milano said: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”
And as men in the global village, we need to be ready and prepared to give unwavering support and encouragement to women in their struggle to free themselves from patriarchy and all its manifestations, such as assaults, rapes and femicides. Women cannot do this alone.
Botha works at the Commission for Gender Equality. He writes in his personal capacity.