By Zipho Dolamo We’ve all heard the term “fag hag” – generally defined as a heterosexual woman who primarily associates and maintains friendships with gay men. Bruce Rodgers is one of the authors accredited for coining the concept in his 1972 book The Queen’s Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon. Rodgers(1972, p.78) defines a fag hag as: […]
feminism
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics
The Place of Sara Baartman at UCT
The label “Hottentot Venus” continues to haunt our memory of Sara Baartman. This moniker, used in Jean Reaux’s posters to advertise the exhibit of Sara, may have been repudiated by renowned scholars such as Pumla Dineo Gqola, Zine Magubane, Yvette Abrahams, Patricia Hill Collins, Sander Gilman among others, but it has persisted as the lens […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
Women are patriarchal – and this needs to end
Dr Shahieda Jansen and Neziswa Titi Women are patriarchal. We know this from various sources and interpersonal engagements where we had been corrected by women to “remember our place” or understand that when a man violates a woman she should accept that is how men are. But what about women who work against other women’s […]
Posted inGeneral
What’s in a woman’s [sur]name?
Last year I visited the bank to do some admin and I was informed that my surname on their system differed to that which was in my ID. I was enraged. It was a few months after my partner and I had gotten married. We had gone to the Randburg Home Affairs office and with […]
Posted inMedia
Approaching women’s month: The misconception about the politically connected women
As we creep towards August the question of women’s empowerment will come to the fore the same way young people become the flavour of the month during June. These conversations will be recycled versions of the conversations that have been happening for many decades in South Africa and will mostly resemble the conversation between Sakina […]
Posted inGender violence
Rape, the South African nightmare
By the time I was in matric three of my friends had told me they had been raped. Not by strangers in some dark alley the way I imagined rape happened. They were raped by people who were in their inner circle: friends, acquaintances. When I was in Grade 11 someone I knew was gang […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Media, News/Politics
Anger, ‘outrage’ and the internet
Quite often, when I log on to Twitter, I’ll see comments like the following: “What are we angry about today? Did I miss today’s Twitter outrage? I don’t know what we’re supposed to be angry about this week, but I’m outraged just in case.” It happens especially after incidents like Bic’s sexist Women’s Day ad […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Can we please talk about the sexism on Matt Taylor’s shirt?
So there’s this scientist, right? And he and his team do something amazing. They land a satellite on a comet. How cool is that?! Possibly the coolest thing since Felix Baumgartner decided that skydiving is too mainstream. But that shirt. Eish, that shirt. The scientist, Matt Taylor, wore a shirt plastered with drawings of semi-naked […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle, Media
Feminism isn’t for everybody, but it could be
This morning I read Danielle Bowler’s commentary on the good versus bad feminist debate in her column “We are all bad feminists, and that’s okay”. While I’m all for a nuanced and reflexive critique on feminisms and their limitations in order to better develop and strengthen the movement, I found myself puzzled by what read […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
A toyi-toyi for Doek Fridays
On Friday, the department of arts and culture introduced a “Wear a Doek Fridays” campaign to mark Women’s Month. Women took to the streets of Twitter brandishing retweets of outrage. With each minute the Twitter numbers started to swell. A sign that those without a 3G internet connection were arriving at their places of work. […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, General, News/Politics
Should we ban boys-only schools?
I’m often accused of making sweeping statements in my writing; as if one were always required to produce a table full of numbers and statistics to underpin one’s thoughts. On the contrary, theory is grounded in thinking – not just numbers and balance sheets and calculations. However, there is often an interesting intersection between what […]
Posted inGender violence, News/Politics
The uncomfortable truth about white masculinity
Africa Check has published an article intimating that white women are more likely to die at the hands of their husbands, boyfriends and partners. This, and other research, directly challenges the notion of a “white genocide” carried out by “unknown black men”. Lisa Vetten, the researcher behind the article, along with journalist Nechama Brodie, Professor […]