Destroy the patriarchy that fuels rape

Published Jan 20, 2013

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News of the gang- rape of a woman looking to enrol at Tshwane University of Technology last week offered a glimpse into the soul of a country increasingly accepting a horrific normality it should reject with all its might. This woman’s story made the news, but on the same day, countless others suffered the same fate elsewhere – and life carried on as “normal”.

Yet more were savagely beaten, stabbed and mutilated before and after the humiliating crime. In those instances, too, a society too familiar with the horror to be shocked shook its collective head and moved on.

Some suffer the further and continuing punishment of being rejected by the men in their lives, and are often accused of having created the conditions under which the rapes and violence took place and of being too filthy to associate with.

The stigmatisation of rape survivors creates a double-edged sword. First it makes it necessary for most to opt to be anonymous, even when they report the crime for criminal investigation.

As a result they remain a statistic, people with no names who don’t get the full empathy being somebody’s daughter elicits.

Second, it creates a devastating conspiracy of silence in which countless women know they have been and are victims but dare not share their feelings beyond very tight, trusted circles.

Estonian thinker Slavoj Žižek’s powerful theory of violence is probably the best upon which to understand South Africa’s macabre orgy of sexual violence against women, including infants and girls. It can also help us understand why so many of us are able to sleep at night despite such a crisis.

Žižek says visible violence – like a man raping a woman, brutally assaulting and killing her or any other human being – is subjective violence.

This is generally the outcome of what he terms objective violence, conditions and structures in society that are regarded as pillars of normality but that are inherently a violation of the freedom and security of others.

Alternatively, they set up the conditions under which the violation of others will become possible, acceptable or elicit only token outrage which fizzles out as soon as the next incident hits the news. Understanding the origins of our society’s contagious rape culture is our best hope in fighting it, but we have to be prepared to slay big holy cows.

These are institutions, rules and mores we believe give us a sense of normality and cohesion but also serve the dual purpose of making us a society that cannibalises itself through the most horrific violence against its own.

Aspects of our different traditions and religions, and their influence on our politics and economic structures, contribute in many ways towards perpetuating a culture that knows no race or ethnicity – and is entirely geared towards validating the assumed but incorrect genetic superiority of the male. It defines female propriety as accepting the role of second best, of modesty, waiting your turn and remaining silent lest you are regarded as too forward or loose. It is an invisible violence inculcated into the mind of every child as representing the virtues of true social order.

Organisations that are trying to fight the epidemic are privately regarded as hysterical because they allegedly exaggerate the problem. This apologetic mode posits that there are only a few misfits in society who perpetuate gender-based violence in an otherwise gender-equal society.

It is a position littered with qualifications in order to avoid the contradictions it creates and encounters often. It prevents society from taking stock of what it does daily to reproduce on a large scale a community of males who believe women are inherently inferior.

The perpetuation of female victimisation is everywhere. In the workplace not only are women getting paid less than male counterparts doing the same work, they are also expected to serve tea, take minutes and other tasks considered too demeaning for their male colleagues. Such expectations are as irrational as males being prepared to open the door for a woman but revolted at the idea of carrying her purse or pouring her tea.

We live with this contradiction because we are taught from an early age that it is normal, and any critical inquiry into why this bizarre normality needs to survive one more generation is actively discouraged.

More disturbingly, many children grow up with false notions of sexual relations. They are raised to believe that sexual intercourse is for the exclusive pleasure of the male; that male promiscuity is a sign of virility and masculinity, but the idea of a woman doing exactly the same is seen as abominable. It is hardly the case that both genders are treated equally in discouraging promiscuity in general.

We participate in traditions and religions in which the male is entrenched in a superior position just for being male, while angry and perverse moral judgement awaits those who dare to challenge such notions. It is considered heretical to challenge these because they are perceived to disturb the sense of social normality we have known for generations.

However, this normality is precisely the circumstance under which in our context, at least, we are faced with an onslaught against women which will in the end give us a society of hypocritical robots who have neither the capacity to reflect on its origins or the will to put an end to it.

Of course, not every country has a rape epidemic like South Africa. But if we accept that rape is a crime of power and dominance rather than natural sexual desire, it is impossible to dismantle this rape culture if we do not tackle honestly the destructive influence of patriarchy and its apologists. It is even less likely when our political parties and leaders hypocritically claim to want to alter the status of women for the better but simultaneously take decisions which undermine confidence in women. Some use their political positions to feed grotesque egos which find validation in female sexual conquest.

When, in 2009, Western Cape premier and DA leader Helen Zille appointed an all-male provincial cabinet, she insisted that appointing women would have amounted to tokenism as none were “fit for the purpose”.

It was a mind-boggling justification which suggested that in the entire Western Cape there was not a single woman fit enough to warrant appointment to her cabinet. Apart from this being impossible, it demonstrated abject failure on Zille’s part to recognise the profundity of the moment she faced. It required that she do what was necessary and just for the advancement of society, not just women.

There have also been several instances of senior politicians demonstrating sexual predatory instincts by preying on young women believing that their powerful political positions amounted to some kind of sexual advantage.

Former ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe is perhaps the most prominent example of this but his punishment for sexually harassing a vulnerable young woman member of staff was an exception rather than the norm. Men routinely harass female staff members and colleagues, often invading their personal space without missing a heartbeat.

It is not unusual for some men to expect sexual favours from women in order to get the career advancement their male counterparts don’t have to do special favours for. Refusals are followed by accusations of arrogance, being uppity or, in several instances, of being a slut anyway.

These things persist because they are regarded as normal. In many ways rape is the final devastating act, a shocking toss of the coin between itself and being killed or dying. After all, the humiliation and rejection many women suffer as a consequence of being raped is a horror that causes many to wonder if dying wouldn’t have been better.

Women are also often complicit in their own oppression by accepting a false normality under the guise of everything from political discipline to tradition.

This battle will not be won if they don’t reject this lie in both its conception and its manifestations, and refuse to co-operate with any social, economic and political structure which seeks to relegate their position to second-class citizens who deserve second-class rights in their own society.

We shall also fail until the position of women in general becomes a central, urgent, political and moral issue. To do that we need leaders in communities, business and in politics who are not so easily given to what Žižek calls “the neighbour thing”, where someone we profess and are assumed to love is actually treated like an enemy in our subliminal actions. Entrenched subliminal actions require constant shock treatment, and nothing short of a radical revolt against our backward traditionalism upon which we premise our sense of normality will deliver any tangible results.

It is precisely because of the patriarchal traditionalists in our midst who are looked upon to lead that we have such a moral crisis on our hands. We should all be sickened towards revolution.

- Songezo Zibi is convenor of the Midrand Group.

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