The technological revolution that has given us television, the internet and almost inexhaustible sources of image consumption has also, concomitantly, given viewers and internet users access to pornography on a scale almost unimaginable. But, as one should know by now, technology is a pharmakon – poison AND cure – and therefore it should come as […]
women
Posted inGeneral, Media, Tech
This is not all that Gyna sapiens (‘thinking woman’) is capable of
How the human species – Gyna and Homo sapiens (thinking woman and man), supposedly – have come down in the world. It does not take a genius to grasp this, although I daresay most geniuses would not waste their time with evidence supporting my statement, above; they probably have better things to do. What I’m […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The female state of the nation 2015
This state of the nation is one that asks you, for a few moments, to consider some information about the majority of South Africans. Some information about the biggest population group that is not a racial or religious group. This state of the nation asks “what is the problem” and “what can we do next”. […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
Like every other day of my life, this morning I woke up female
Once I was a girl, then I was somewhere in between, and now I am an adult woman. What that means for me is not the same as it is for other women. We can know our similarities and differences, but we cannot know any other life as intimately and honestly as we know our […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
An ordinary evening
On a Thursday evening not so long ago I decided to stop by Woolies on the way home. I got off the train earlier, got some groceries, and undertook the walk from Claremont to my house in Harfield. I had underestimated the weather. It was howling with wind and I spent most of the journey […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
All hail women!
An article in a recent TIME magazine (“The last Politicians”, by Jay Newton-Small; TIME, October 28, 2013, pp46-50) has brought home to me, once again, how different women are from men, and what a pity it is that they, our human “sisters”, have not remained in the social leadership positions that, according to several accounts, […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
M&G Women: Ixhanti in our political isibaya?
Recently the Mail & Guardian held a Google Hangout revisiting the decision by the newspaper to establish a section dedicated to women. This is out of a concern that despite the good intentions of the section, it could have the effect of negatively contributing to the further ghettoization of “women’s issues”. I was invited to […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle
Why I am a (man) feminist
I am a heterosexual man; I have been one for as long as I can remember. I remember three distinct stages of my development as such a man. I remember boyhood. During this time I had a healthy and innocent fascination with girls. I liked playing with them, I liked touching them and their attention […]
Posted inEquality
How not to write about African women and sex
By Gcobani Qambela This weekend I read a New York Times (NYT) article that is guilty of all traditional, white, western feminist mishaps when it comes to writing about African women and their sexuality. The article titled “Talking About Sex in Mali” is bereft of any holistic overview of the lives African women and is […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
On sexuality and freedom
“It is not enough to inquire into how women might become more fully represented in language and politics. Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of ‘women’, the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought.” Judith Butler: Gender Trouble. At first read, […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Guns, patriarchy and violence against women
In Ridley Scott’s (for a male director) astonishingly feminist film, Thelma and Louise (1991), there is a scene-sequence that graphically captures the indissoluble connection between patriarchal men and guns. And, at the same time, it shows how much the vaunted power of patriarchal men depends on their guns. The scene-sequence commences at that point in […]
Posted inLifestyle
Size matters in Africa
By Afua Hirsch You didn’t have to have tickets to Ghana fashion and design week (GFDW) to get a sense that something was afoot at Accra’s most showy venue, the Mövenpick hotel. In the lobby on the morning the event was meant to start (Ghana being Ghana, the 11am launch happened closer to 3pm), I […]