How should a woman behave to convince us that she was raped? When she breaks down, is hysterical, is rabid, is broken, is ripped apart, is together, is calm, is cold, is hyper sexual, never wants to have sex again, is manic, is depressed, is this right? Should she report and save others, report and […]
Gender violence
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Vavi, the rape claim and smear tactic
In a matter of days Zwelinzima Vavi was accused of rape and had the grievance against him dropped. I’m not surprised by this spectacle. What makes me concerned is the question of a rape accusation being simply attributed as a ploy in politics. The woman who dropped the charges demanded R2 million from Vavi in order […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Health, News/Politics
Deadly circumcision and initiation practices should be outlawed
Nelson Mandela in his autobiography The Long Walk to Freedom recounts his childhood experience during this rite of passage from boyhood to manhood. He writes: “When I was sixteen, the regent decided that it was time that I became a man. In Xhosa tradition, this is achieved through one means only: circumcision. In my tradition, […]
Posted inGender violence
This is ‘corrective rape’. These are its rules
Early last week, the newspapers reported the discovery of another dead and mutilated lesbian body. Yet another poor, black, landless, queer body with a vagina has been killed and the story, we’re told, is because she was gay. As the routine letters of condemnation from state, public and political officials came in their multitudes, and […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, General
The sacred art of listening
To spend time in silence deep in nature far from other people is to know that everything is listening. There is the profound sense that the world around you is deeply attentive, and by listening to that, you honour the presence of everything. The bruises in bark, stone, leaves, dust, the flicker of a tiny […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
What do men talk about?
Recently I participated in a workshop about curriculum review on teaching gender and security to military, police and prison officers in southern Africa. I became intrigued by how one facilitator on a session on “Men, Masculinities and Security/Defence”, subverted the “Bechdel Test” to provoke a conversation from the audience about how patriarchy silences and punishes […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Obama, women and hope
There I sat, five hours after leaving home, sunburned and wind chapped. I was hungry and thirsty and had spoken about engineering and women’s rights and weddings and which city in South Africa was the best. I had travelled thousands of kilometres the day before, and despite the anticipated excitement, at that moment I just […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Lifestyle
Frogs and queens: Crossdressing, spirituality and Feminism (II)
“The moral failing most common to men is brutishness.” So says “Jill” the wife of a crossdresser. “Jill” writes this in the context of having learned – with limitations – to accept her husband’s crossdressing behaviour as outlined in an appendix to Bert & Lori: The autobiography of a crossdresser, written by Robert J Rowe […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, General, Health
Name and shame?
I got taken to the doctor. He sat opposite me and said exactly nothing, not even hello or how are you. Pale and discomforted, he looked everywhere. And then I saw his cold hand, white shirt cuff, soft beige jersey, slowly pushing one small white tranquiliser halfway across the polished desk. I asked what it […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Health
I thought I was alone
Today, for the first time ever, I read a short piece about why some women have an orgasm during rape. It included: “Orgasm during rape isn’t an example of an expression of pleasure. It’s an example of a physical response whether the mind’s on board or not, like breathing, sweating, or an adrenaline rush.” You […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
‘Unwanted, dirty’: The ‘fictitious’ gang rape (II)
(Continued from previous blog) Bend, Not Break largely shifts between Ping’s nightmarish childhood and her adult life in the US. In America she grows, step by painful step, into a successful businesswoman in the software industry. Before this, sometime after the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government demanded she leave China. This is because of the […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, Gender violence, General
‘Unwanted, dirty’ – reading a Chinese woman’s memoir (I)
— Written while recuperating from a broken hand and wrist How everything is already memory. His broken hand cradled, cupped and listened to as its slow bones knit back. The wonder of watching his fingers and palm go through their re-blooming: the fingers learning again to outstretch, then bunch up like an evening blossom that […]