Residents of Grahamstown and particularly students of Rhodes University have begun their reflections on the Silent Protest against sexual violence which took place at the university on 7 August.
Residents of Grahamstown and particularly students of Rhodes University have begun their reflections on the Silent Protest against sexual violence which took place at the university on 7 August.
One of these students is the chairperson of the Gender Action Project, Gorata Chengeta, who serves on the planning committee for the protest.
If you Google Gorata Chengeta, you’ll find that she’s rather active on social media. You’ll learn from LinkedIn that she’s a “new media student and gender activist” at Rhodes.
Her Facebook profile will give you a look into her interrogation of controversial issues such as race, gender and gender violence.
She serves as a living example of the efficacy of digital media in relaying lived experiences and spreading awareness of gender issues.
Chengeta thinks that the ability of the digital media sphere to promote social justice is “an important topic because a lot of the things (she has) learnt about gender, about violence, about feminism have not necessarily been from reading academic text” but have come from engaging with social media.
Chengeta finds value in the sharing of “real-life experience” that digital media provides as it has allowed her to make the link to broader issues such as patriarchy and misogyny.
Beyond the physical distance which the digital media space allows, in the sharing of real-life experiences, survivors of rape and sexual violence are able to choose to wear a T-shirt on the day of the Silent Protest which identifies them as a “survivor”.
The identification of survivors is not an issue that goes without careful consideration by the planning committee, as Chengeta explained that there is a “tension between raising awareness about the very big problem of sexual violence but also protecting the feelings of people who've been through it”.
She stressed that survivors should never feel “pressure” to identify themselves as such, and are free to choose which parts of the protest they feel more comfortable to participate in.
The planning commission combines real-life interactions of survivors and supporters of the Silent Protest, with the use of social media platforms to share information about the protest and to continue the conversation around gender issues and gender violence.
On the day of the protest, the hashtag #RUSilent was trending on Twitter.
One might dismiss the engagement on digital media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as “slacktivism”.
However, Chengeta points out that the degree of tangible support grows each year, and that this year's was the “fourth protest that I've participated in and there've always been at least a thousand people participating".
She feels that the ability to sustain the conversation beyond the date of the protest is a challenge that exists in both the digital media space and in real life as she reminds supporters that "It's something that hopefully you think about, you reflect about, and you have to ensure as someone who believes in this cause that you're not perpetrating violence on a micro level in your everyday interactions".
The "everyday interactions" which Chengeta sees as being contrary to the message of the Silent Protest and the Gender Action Project is “the way we talk about people who've experienced sexual violence” and the use of derogatory words to describe our perceptions of the sexual behaviour of others.
She said we should be mindful of not merely focusing on a rape survivor’s “inspirational value” because this can result in not “really engaging with the trauma that they've experienced”.
Chengeta said we should continue to acknowledge the strength of rape survivors but should not lose sight of the fact that there is a wider societal problem to be addressed.
