Posted inLifestyle

Of monsters and men RE: Rapists are men

The most important point I need to make is that understanding something is very different from condoning it. Attempting to explain why men rape, and understanding their motivations for raping, is fundamentally different to condoning the act, or trying to ‘explain it away’. Condoning rape would be to play it down, or even to endorse it. Seeking to understand rape on the other hand, is about investigating why it happens. Understanding is not the same as excusing rape or rapists.

Posted inLifestyle

Our happy (sp)ending

I’m interested in the story we tell about ourselves in 2010 South Africa – because I don’t think it has a happy ending.
It’s a story like many of the fairytales we’ve heard before. It tells us that we are all special individuals capable of achieving anything we can imagine if we just work hard enough. Yes, regardless of where you come from or what your background, you can have a happy ending — a Tuscan-like villa, flat-screen TVs, a flashy car, and lots of branded goodies.

Posted inGeneral

An anatomy of anger

On Sunday my girlfriend and I were racing back to Cape Town, hoping to make it in time to watch the final at the Grand Parade. Unfortunately our car broke down about an hour away, and we only made it back to town well after the fan park was closed. I was absolutely fuming. First […]

Posted inLifestyle

Getting it on in public

My experience of white middle-class South Africans is that we tend to be very wary of others. Whether tucked away in gated communities, encapsulated in our cars, or running in the gym with headphones on, we like to keep at a distance from others. Even when in public, at the shops for example, we are […]

Posted inLifestyleMedia

Man enough to change?

What does it actually mean to be a man? My job in the publishing industry often bumps up against this question since a lot of what we do is about creating content for men. What I find most interesting is how so much of what we create is informed by a particular idea of masculinity […]