It takes immense courage for anyone to speak publicly about their own, very personal humiliations – yet this is just what a large group of women did last Friday. They were part of a Rhodes University campaign aimed at putting an end to gender violence.
It takes immense courage for anyone to speak publicly about their own, very personal humiliations – yet this is just what a large group of women did last Friday. They were part of a Rhodes University campaign aimed at putting an end to gender violence.
Some of the women wore T-shirts identifying themselves as rape survivors, while others had their mouths taped closed to show how women are silenced by shame and society’s apparent indifference to gender violence. These women also showed courage by allowing themselves to be constrained, almost suffocated by the tape – and not eating, drinking or talking for the whole day. What amazing courage of conviction they showed us all.
There were numbers of men – not enough – who showed up in solidarity T-shirts to express their sentiments against gender violence. The theme of the men’s campaign was to tell everyone that real men do not rape – nothing could be more obvious.
Yet in spite of this groundswell of anti-gender violence emanating from campus, the incidence of rape in our community is still extraordinarily high. There is no acceptable level for such crimes – even one incident per century is too much. Every week our newsroom receives from the police a litany of sexual attacks on women that numbs the mind of the reader and obscures the terrible degradation experienced by the survivors of these attacks.
The student-led campaign to stop the war on women’s bodies was successful in that it created considerable interest on campus, and to a degree, in town when protesters marched to claim back the night on Friday evening.
However, it is disappointing that we Grahamstown residents have neither participated in such action nor created our own. Surely the commander of the local police station should be driving such a campaign for the whole town so that everyone can become aware of the scale of gender violence? Why does the mayor of Makana not speak out openly and loudly about how abhorrent rape is?
Keeping quiet about gender violence could be construed as condoning this despicable aspect of our society.
The students have done it, is it not time for members of the Grahamstown community to speak out – or get taped up?
