A record number of women were wearing short skirts, 1 in 9 t-shirts and defiant attitudes last week. However, some students were asking, where are the men?
On Tuesday morning the Gender Action Project (Gap) called on male students to take the pledge to be partners and not perpetrators, but few arrived.
A record number of women were wearing short skirts, 1 in 9 t-shirts and defiant attitudes last week. However, some students were asking, where are the men?
On Tuesday morning the Gender Action Project (Gap) called on male students to take the pledge to be partners and not perpetrators, but few arrived.
Similarly, the turnout for Tuesday evening’s menonly discussion of gender violence was low, with only
thirteen participants.
Despite this, the men who attended the event said the forum was a good placento discuss issues of masculinity and the role men need to play in opposing gender violence.
Gap member and pledge organiser Karabo Mohale said South Africa’s skewed gender relations are formed by our social values.
“We need to acknowledge the role society plays in making the myth of what it means to be a man, you form your own masculinity we don’t need to accept what society tries to teach us.”
He would like to see more men acting and thinking in ways which question patriarchy. “It’s cliché but every week should be Anti Sex Crimes Week,” he says.
“People say that a wind of change is blowing but these things don’t happen by magic – it’s time to do”. The pledge asked men to reject violence and to act against structures which victimise and subordinate women.
Mohale acknowledges that campus, like the country, can seem apathetic toward sex-crimes. “If you are violated, you are silenced,” he says, and men contribute to this silencing when they refuse to think and speak out about rape.
But “these are uncomfortable times,” says Mohale, “so it’s time to get uncomfortable.” Mohale believes “there is a willingness and a desire to engage with these issues” among men on Rhodes campus. “I’m wary of being too aware of numbers,” says Mohale. “What’s important is intent.”
