'I am penis, hear me roar’: The threat of lesbianism

Men seem to labour under the misapprehension that sex is about them.

This is not a hastily made statement, there is some evidence behind it.

Exhibit A: The idea that men think they’re “putting the D” to or “giving it” to someone. The rhetoric gives the impression that the rest of us come to the party with nothing more than hope and a smile.

Exhibit B: (Linked to exhibit A.) That just by bringing the gift of an erectile member to the party means they have automatically won the award for “best guest”. Therefore they need not bring any other skills except the magic stick to make for an enchanted time.

Exhibit C: Any woman who does not present herself as a sexual option to men is a challenge and failing that, a threat.

The female body has, since the rise of phallocentric ideas based on Socrates’s Grecian school of thought, belonged to the man for sexual gratification. Male pleasure has been placed at the top of the totem pole while the rest of us are left to pick up the scraps at the great table of desire.

This is evident in the sexualisation and brutalisation of the female body across society.

Comments, taunts, grabbing at one’s person, stripping women in the streets and sexual assault are some of the tools are used to repeatedly assert this sexual dominance.

The phrase “hey my sister” coupled with a graze of my arm translates to: “If I want you now, you better be willing.” And if I am not willing, may the odds be ever in my favour, because this really is the hunger games.

I could end up hurt or worse.

These are the ways in which men, daily, attempt to maintain the status quo, the sexual order of things.

Despite these efforts there are many “who disrupt the natural order of things”: Feminists, women who refuse to marry, women who do not want to have sex with a man at a particular time, women who do not want to have sex at all (asexual women) and men who have sex with other men.

But there is one mortal enemy to the standing sexual order.

One so dire that the violence against this particular foe must be exponential in order to truly vanquish the power it has.

This threat is of course lesbians, or women who sleep with other women.

They have chosen not only to disrupt the system but completely secede from the socio-sexual order. Women who sleep with women have set up their own beautiful country and it must be invaded.

The “problem” with lesbians is that not only are they not a viable option but they shall never be a viable option. In addition to this they are making other sexual options non-viable.

I once spoke to a male acquaintance about the United States International University lesbians in Nairobi who “steal the good women”. It would seem that these women were on their way to their personal bed chambers before the “gay girl” derailed their progress.

This is but a minor example. One has to only watch videos where men speak on corrective rape. The men in the video agree that there is a need to show these “women that they are women” because by refusing to sleep with men they have forgotten what they are.

Their identity as a woman is based on being sexually active with men.

This is a threat to the highest order and men have found a way to react, through force.

Recently the Duduzile Zozo case, arguably South Africa’s most famous “corrective rape” case, came to culmination with Zozo’s murderer receiving 30 years in prison. Lekgoa Lesley Motleleng even went to her memorial service before being identified as her killer.

He murdered her and dumped her body after first putting a toilet brush in her vagina.

This was this man’s reaction to the fact that Zozo’s body did not belong to him sexually. This is what the current mindset is in terms of sexual interactions and social engagement. When they cannot sleep with you then they will kill you.

This is not a stand-alone event as is well-known and documented.

Eudy Simelane was found partially clothed in a creek in a park in KwaThema having been gang-raped and stabbed 25 times.

This can be termed a manic reaction.

As humans, we have been known to fear the unknown and be adverse to anything that threatens change. It would seem with the increasing visibility of LGBTI(Q) females in society men are having an increasingly adverse reaction.

As women of alternative sexualities becoming increasingly noticeable certain factions are reacting. These reactions range from off-the-cuff comments about “getting less sex because of the lesbians” to full-blown violence as men teach us “how to be women”.

The violence, based in problematic ideas of sexual interactions, continues to escalate. The idea that women’s bodies belong to men is what has brought on these acts of violence. The acts are not based in sexual want or need but are power plays.

The female body does not belong to men.

That understanding needs to be the first port of call.

This means that acts such as marital rape, a lack of consent and not wanting to sleep with men ever are a part of our social reality. They are not figments of people’s imagination that need to be fixed or ignored.

The violence against the female body comes from this way of thinking, which is the true scourge of society, not women who refuse to toe the sexual line.