Despite the evidence to the contrary – 20 years of successfully protected freedoms – it has becoming increasingly fashionable to badmouth the South African Constitution. Sceptics range across the political spectrum, from radicals, who want the state to be unconstrained, to liberals who claim that the Constitution has effectively already been negated by the state. […]
corrective rape
Posted inEquality, Media
FHM to blame for corrective rape ‘joke’
Here are some simple rules, people of the world who have jobs. If you work for a food manufacturer, don’t post something about food hygiene. If you work for a media organisation, don’t post something prejudicial. If you work for a woman’s magazine, don’t post something sexist. It’s not brain surgery. Yet, for some people […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Is #whitegenocide funny if corrective rape isn’t?
Brace yourself. Some of you are not going to like this piece. Possibly quite a few of you. That’s the only predictable thing when it comes to jokes: somebody, somewhere is going to be offended. For years I’ve studied comedy from various angles: academically, from the trenches in the ad industry and as an occasional […]
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 inGeneral
Expose the lesbians
By Gcobani Qambela In the past years we have been reading with horror reports of not only extreme homophobia but also often the violent attacks that are levelled against homosexuals in Africa. From reading about men being named and shamed in public newspapers in Uganda, to the horrific “corrective rapes” of lesbians in our very […]
Posted inNews/Politics
SlutWalk: When feminists turn territorial
In 2008, Talk Radio 702 host Redi Direko (as she was then known) made news headlines for leading a Miniskirt March from the Joburg Art Gallery to the Noord Street taxi rank in town. Accompanied by about 300 men and women, most of them dressed exuberantly in miniskirts and high heels, Redi was protesting against […]