Let us agree and move from the premise that no one wants to be harmed, sexually violated, experience physical, economic, or emotional abuse, or be bullied, controlled, intimidated, or physically and sexually harassed.
However, we live in a society that tolerates, minimises, and normalises violence against women, girls, LGBTQI people, and children.
If we see men as the human default to society’s structure and view women as sexual objects, fit only for child rearing, nurturing families, cooking, and lying on their backs to pleasure men, we strip them of their identity and agency.
We slut-shame them, analyse their bodies, their voices, their demeanours, and their integrity and expect them to behave according to men’s whims, and if they don’t, violence is the language to get them in line.
We tolerate violence against women because we view the world through the prism of men. This was aptly put by Simone de Beauvoir when she wrote: “Humanity is male and man defines woman not as herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. […] He is the Subject; he is the Absolute — she is the Other.”
I have been asked numerous times during radio and TV interviews and even in penning this article why women are not heard and what needs to be done.
How do you hear women when comments such as these are made:
“Women are untrustworthy and liars”; “I smashed her yesterday and she wanted to be smashed”; “She is a b***h because she got the job that was meant for me, and I vow to do everything I can to make sure she fails”; “I bought her alcohol, and she does not want to give me what I want.”
And then there are comments like: “She fell pregnant to trap me”; “She has falsely accused me of sexual harassment because she wants attention”; “You want a promotion; you must sleep with me” and “If you leave me, I will kill you”.
Women will not be heard because the question of consent in relationships built on extreme power differences is minimised, and when they speak out about their abuse and violation, they are hit with defamation suits and silenced into oblivion.
Women will not be heard because they are forced to perform credibility to manifest believability. Nor will they be heard when some women among us make statements like, “Thina, we are busy planning for the G20, which will not be disrupted by women who are themselves responsible for breeding GBV.”
It has been 50 years since the Women’s Liberation Movement conference in Oxford in the UK put forward seven demands: equal education and job opportunities; equal pay; free 24-hour childcare; legal and financial independence for all women; the right to self-defined sexuality; freedom from intimidation and violence; and free contraception and abortion on demand.
A stark reminder of how long the struggle has been and that it continues in this country.
Still 30 years into a constitutional democracy that guarantees the right to choose, we are still faced with unrelenting discrimination, sexism, misogyny, revenge porn, cyberbullying, technology-assisted violence (intimidation and shame), rape myths, stubborn numbers of rape and sexual assault of children and women, intimate partner violence and religious leaders using God to sexually groom young girls.
Do we tire and give up? Sometimes we do; many female accusers have stated they are tired of this world. “Not being believed, constantly having to ‘prove’ that you did not ask for violence and violation is exhausting.”
But the many stories of violence against women keep reminding us that we are entitled to demand a life free from violence from men.
We are entitled to demand more from our leaders and accountability for the perpetrators of violence against women regardless of their race, class, social standing, political party, or cultural cachet.
We demand actual real change in which the broken system is compelled to reinvent itself. We demand institutions not tolerate violent behaviour patterns or encourage them.
What these systems working against us have shown is that our lives are worth fighting for.
Be an upstander by serving notice on impunity. Be an upstander by not being complicit in the exercise of power over women that takes away their agency or by not being too cowed to refuse to cooperate with power that is violent.
Be an upstander and stop hiding behind culture, tradition, religion, and custom to inflict harm on women and girls.
Maybe in another 50 years we can breathe a sigh of relief that we finally arrested the violence against women, girls, children and LGBTQI people — but for now the violence on women’s bodies rages on.
- Adv Madumise is a director at Wise4aFrika
Sowetan