Patriarchy uses words as weapons

Ethel Schultz Pittaway, Sedgefield:

I agree wholeheartedly with Ilse Schoonraad. (Schoonraad comes clean on the letters page - 14 February.) Being called a girl is not okay. It is downright sexist. It supports a system that sees women as irrational, childlike and immature instead of whole, independent and powerful. This system is called patriarchy and it uses many subtle weapons, one of which is words. Verbal abusers use their language and tone of voice and very often physicality to degrade women and then use one of many other ways, e.g. humour, to cover the humiliation the abused feels. "Can't you take a joke? You are too sensitive. Hey, I'm just being a guy!"

Calling women girls progresses to other names - as I recently experienced while being hospitalised. A man, white (and yes, this is important) stood in the door of the ward in which I was recuperating with three other women and said, "Ek wil net kom kyk hoe lyk die bokke in die kamp". (I'm just checking out the buck in this camp).

Firstly, what gave him the idea that he could enter uninvited and call women "buck" (to be hunted, graded, checked out)? Is it because he still believes in the old-fashioned manliness that André P Brink speaks about in one of his books when a son asked his father, "What is a real man?". His father answered "'n ware man het hare op sy bors en poep soos 'n perd". What would have happened if this had been a man of colour? How quickly would he have been led outside by security? How is it that those caught up in the system of patriarchy found this acceptable, maybe even funny?

It is said that if someone ticks the box of sexist, they will also tick the box of racist and homophobic.

Women, if you have been bombarded with words that have made you feel powerless, now is the time to decide to change that. You have the right not to be verbally abused, so start by refusing as a woman to be called a girl.