“You strike a woman, you strike a rock” – the famous quote from the 1956 women’s march on the Union Buildings.
Apparently, many took that quote to mean you can therefore strike a woman over and over again.
Women’s Day is to commemorate that march, nothing more.
It is not the country celebrating women, because if women were celebrated, you would not see headlines like ‘Second gran raped in a week’ or ‘Judge cuts sentence of girl’s rapist’.
It is not about women’s pride and dignity, because the majority of women are deprived of their pride and dignity when their own husbands rape and abuse them.
It is not to celebrate women’s diversity, because when a woman is too different – so much so that she is attracted to other women – she stands the risk of being correctively raped like so many others before her.
I am proud to be a woman, but I am ashamed because I live in a society where women are treated as tools and objects instead of like humans.
I read about incidents where girls and babies are raped to death. I will never get used to that phrase. Raped. To. Death.
As a feminist, I would like to talk about how the media pressures women to follow a certain ideal. Hell, if the media wasn’t telling white women to be skinny, they’d start making us feel self-conscious about something else like our bone density.
But every time I want to engage with these issues, it’s like in the peripheries of my mind are all the women who aren’t as privileged as me to be pressured by the media.
Women, Children and People with Disability Minister Lulu Xingwana is currently pushing forward the gender equity bill and has been calling for more independence for women. Source: News24
All the women who are living in poverty – women like those who have worked for my parents. Women who were strong, raising families alone. I remember how Johanna worked until the tumours got too bad that she was too weak. I remember how the government didn’t pay her a cent from her Unemployment Insurance Fund before she died.
I also remember how she had to send her daughters away to live somewhere else because there were so many rapes happening where they lived.
I think of the woman who now works for my parents. How the father of her child refuses to admit that the girl is his daughter.
So many Black women are treated inhumanely in our country. The Struggle promised a change, yet so many live in the exact circumstances they did before.
Our President’s supporters didn’t bat an eyelid when he was accused of rape. So many people around me in my first year found out a popular guy was accused of rape – and instead called his accuser a cheater, a slut, a liar.
They didn’t even bat an eyelid.
Raped to death.
I hope when I’m old, I won’t still be hanging my head in shame when I think about our society’s treatment on women and girls.
Fucking raped to death…
