Tag Archives: rape

shilpa ray – nocturnal emissions (2012)

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Off Last Year’s Savage. I love this video, which, according to Shilpa Ray, is a commentary on the conservative reproductive rights lobby, inspired by the Todd Akin controversy.

Here comes that ticker tape parade
Bless all my lucky stars
Cause I’ve saved the day
There goes my ego exploding
In mushroom clouds all over
My third world body

Well this air’s better
And I’m wetter
And taste just like ice cream
Don’t ever wake me up, bitch
Don’t ever wake me up
From where the gifts are pouring
The fans adoring
All the trophies that I win
I am the King
I am the King

Pretty soon I’m gonna have to let it go
Pretty soon I’m gonna have to let it go

In my fifteen hours of sleep
There’s no more suffering me
Maybe some suffering for you
This is my regime
And it’s perpetual pageantry
There’s no existence of my mistakes
No humility

Well my dick’s bigger
My breasts are thicker
Whatever power means
Don’t ever wake me up, bitch
Don’t ever wake me up
From where I’m well fed
I’m well bred
Shitting 24ct bricks
I am the King
I am the King

And pretty soon I’m gonna have to let it go
And pretty soon I’m gonna have to let it go
Pretty soon I’m gonna have to let it go

In my 15 hours of sleep
Here comes that ticker tape parade
And there goes my ego exploding
Here comes that ticker tape parade
There goes my ego exploding
Here comes that ticker tape parade
There goes my ego exploding

disrupt

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Published on 4 May 2016
Having followed the #RUReferenceList and #RUInterdict, Activate has put together a feature-length documentary about the silencing of students and staff within the space that is currently known as Rhodes University.

DISRUPT stands to continue the conversation surrounding this mistreatment of survivors and the ways in which the university management and police have failed us. It is a direct response to the use of legalese – in the form of an interdict against involved parties – to try and force the university back into “business as usual”.

Featuring interviews with members of the student and staff body, footage from the two weeks of protest and the resulting use of police force on students and workers, DISRUPT serves as both a chronological documenting of the events of the last three weeks; but also uses the window of the #RUReferenceList protests to shine a light on the institutional issue that is rape culture.

huma seminar at uct this thursday

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humaHUMA Seminar Series

“’Then you are a man, my son’: Kipling and the Zuma Rape Trial” presented by Lucy Graham (UWC)

When: Thursday, 30 July 2015

Time: 13h00 – 14h30

Venue: HUMA Seminar Room, 4th Floor, The Neville Alexander Building (formerly known as the Humanities Building), University Avenue, Upper Campus, UCT

One of the strangest incidents during the Jacob Zuma rape trial was surely the moment when Judge Willem van der Merwe, handing down his verdict that exonerated Zuma, addressed Zuma with the following words: “Had Rudyard Kipling known of this case at the time he wrote his poem, ‘If’, he might have added the following: ‘And, if you can control your body and your sexual urges, then you are a man, my son’”.

It is now nine years since the Zuma rape trial, and yet this allusion to Kipling’s famous poem has been passed over by other commentators on the trial. Of what exactly is Kipling a spectre as he appeared in the judge’s verdict, and how do we read the judge’s strange politics of (dis)affinity that arises out of his rescripting of Kipling: his insistence on the developmental and racialised difference of boyhood and manhood, while at the same time his possible consolidation of a more absolute difference based on gender? How was discourse and performativity during and around the Zuma rape trial related to the history of “Zuluness”, and to the reception of narratives of intraracial sexual violence by the ANC? What significance does an analysis of the Zuma rape trial that takes into account colonial history have for contemporary South Africa, and specifically for the UCT: Rhodes Must Fall movement at the University of Cape Town? In this paper I am interested in the ways in which spectres of colonial patriarchy continue to haunt the South African present.

3600 a day – asanda kaka & valentina argirò

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It is estimated that over 50% of South African women will be raped in their lifetime and that only 1 in 9 rapes are reported. It is also estimated that only 14% of perpetrators of reported rape are convicted in South Africa.

asanda kaka - 3600 per day2

The installation “3600 A Day” at Infecting The City – Cape Town, 2014. Photo: Asanda Kaka

This past week, I experienced a powerfully evocative art installation by Asanda Kaka and Valentina Argirò addressing (no pun intended!) the silent magnitude of this scourge during Cape Town’s annual public arts festival, Infecting The City.

On approaching the rows of dresses hung on crosses, one’s face materialises in mirrors positioned in the “head” space above the dresses, making it impossible to distance one’s own body from the figures represented.

Venue: Cape Town Station
Date: 14 & 15 MARCH 2014

asanda kaka - 3600 per day

The installation “3600 A Day” at Infecting The City – Cape Town, March 2014. Photo: Asanda Kaka

ARTISTS’ STATEMENT

According to a report issued by UNISA, at least one rape case is reported every four minutes in South Africa – this translates into approximately 360 cases per day. 3600 A Day is an installation of women’s’ clothes, donated by women in support of the project. The exaggerated number of 3600 serves to highlight the magnitude of the problem and the number of unreported cases of violence against women and children. In a visual shock of magnitude, the installation warns against the normalisation of such violence.

Installed on crosses, the dresses represent the individual, yet also communal impact that abuse has on all women and children in this country. Reflected in the mirrors on top of the crosses are the faces of those who approach – possible victims, perpetrators or bystanders.

ani difranco on exploitation of young women

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An excerpt from a 2007 interview with Ani DiFranco where she speaks about life as a teenager, anger, rape and exploitation, and on finding the tools to stand up for yourself in a world where you don’t feel respected. If you want to watch the whole interview, there are 5 parts on Youtube.

i’m sorry i have to post this

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TRIGGER WARNINGS: rape; lethal violence; murder.

I have just dreamed again of being Anene Booysen at the moment of her rape and immediately after it, my pooled blood congealing as my insides lie unseamed in the dust outside me, hacked apart from me, the jagged outside slammed inside me, in my last flickers of awareness the spasms of their hate ripping through me, thudding waves of blows, my head a heavy, dull explosion… the swirling, pulsing aftershocks of pain… going cold, knowing I can never be back together again, that I am smeared asunder into the ground like a fly or a cockroach or an ant, irreversibly crushed. It’s that final. I am no longer me, just a slowly drying patch of gore, beyond being gathered up and revived, soothed, cradled, stitched, kissed better, healed. No one can fix this, not my ma, not the hospital, not God. There is no “if” or “but”. I am aware that this is how I have ended.

I have no words strong enough to express the horror of this experience every time it happens to me, this dream. Yet I need to try to write it out of me in the hope that I never dream it again. Shhh, I tell myself, shivering uncontrollably, curled rigid and foetal, it was only a dream.

But it isn’t. This really happened. Really happens. Continues to happen. And that is what is most horrifying of all.

woman, object, corpse: killing women through media

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Linda Stupart wrote this about Reeva Steenkamp, and also the YOU DECIDE billboard and corpses and objects and women.

Africa is a Country (Old Site)

Since Valentine’s Day everyone has been talking about the murder of Reeva Steenkamp, although rarely in those terms. We know that her boyfriend, Oscar Pistorius, shot her four times and killed her while she was behind a locked door in their bathroom in a gated estate. We know that he has a history of domestic violence, a penchant for shooting things. We know absolutely everything about his extensive sporting achievements. The main thing, however, that we know about Steenkamp is that she was a model, and that she was really hot. 

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the rape of persephone (homeric hymn)

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The Rape of Proserpina – Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1622)

I) HAIDES ABDUCTS PERSEPHONE
Homeric Hymn ii to Demeter (abridged) (trans. Evelyn White) (Greek epic circa 7th or 6th B.C.)

“[Demeter’s] trim-ankled daughter whom Aidoneus [Haides] rapt away, given to him by all-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer. Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Okeanos and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus, which Gaia made to grow at the will of Zeus and to please Polydektor (the Host of Many), to be a snare for the bloom-like girl – a marvellous, radiant flower. It was a thing of awe whether for deathless gods or mortal men to see: from its root grew a hundred blooms and it smelled most sweetly, so that all wide heaven (Ouranos) above and the whole earth (Gaia) and the sea’s (Thalassa’s) salt swell laughed for joy.

And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy: but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Polydegmon (Host of Many), with his immortal horses sprang out upon her — the Son of Kronos, Polynomos (He who has many names). He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting.

Then she cried out shrilly with her voice, calling upon her father, [Zeus] the Son of Kronos, who is most high and excellent. But no one, either of the deathless gods or mortal men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit: only tender-hearted Hekate, bright-coiffed, the daughter of Persaios, heard the girl from her cave, and the lord Helios (the Sun), Hyperion’s bright son, as she cried to her father, the Son of Kronos. But he was sitting aloof, apart from the gods, in his temple where many pray, and receiving sweet offerings from mortal men. So he [Haides], that Son of Kronos, Polynomos (of Many Names), Polysemantor (Ruler of Many) and Polydegmon (Host of Many), was bearing her away by leave of Zeus on his immortal chariot – his brother’s child and all unwilling.

And so long as she, the goddess, yet beheld earth and starry heaven and the strong-flowing sea where fishes shoal, and the rays of the sun, and still hoped to see her dear mother and the tribes of the eternal gods, so long hope claimed her great heart for all her trouble… and the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea ran with her immortal voice: and her queenly mother heard her.

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silent vigil this wednesday in cape town

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Via Malika Ndlovu:

Stand Up! Be still. Join the Tower of Silence in reflection and protest against the silencing, a pillar of honouring and mourning. Wear white  (a symbol of spirit, light, cleansing, unity beyond gender, language, political or religious agenda) and join this 1 hour vigil against the violence epitomized by the death and brutalisation of Anene Booysen… and too many of our daughters and sisters like her. This Wednesday, 13th February 2013, on the steps of St George’s Cathedral, from 12 pm to 1 pm.

Bring a photograph on a placard of anyone you think we need to remember in this way too. We will not be sloganeering or shouting retaliations against our lost sons, brothers who have perpetuated this crime against their own and her humanity. Our collective presence and solidarity speaks volumes and calls for multiple responses to this complex situation, affecting an entire nation. We make this physical visual statement on the eve of onebillionrising.org global campaign and the president’s “State of the Nation” address. For us, these faces, these stories, these discarded bodies and all the reasons why this continues to happen in the world and all over South Africa – THIS is OUR ‘State of our Nation’ call to address!

mouchette

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Final scene from Robert Bresson’s 1967 film.

“The small town is plagued with alcoholism, marital infidelity, unbridled masculinity, violence, and moral ambivalence. Mouchette’s father and brother, we have already seen, operate by selling liquor on the black market, with complicit police that turn an indifferent eye to a crate left behind. They, like other townsfolk, are paid in shots of alcohol, consumed without speech. Following Sunday mass, the village parishioners leave church and hastily head to the bar before the bells cease to toll. Mouchette’s dying mother has to hide gin from her abusive spouse. Even the town’s interdependent poacher/warden pair, Arsène and Mathieu, bring an end to their cat-and-mouse charade in the woods by sharing a drink from Arsène’s canteen full of gin. The motif of alcohol and its abuse stands as a distinctive mark of the moral decay of Mouchette’s society; however, the corruption of this town is not limited to alcoholism… Indeed, Mouchette’s society is one of extreme decadence and lawlessness, one that is ripe for a scapegoat upon whose back it can collectively discharge the burden of its vice and one from which the victim will gladly depart.”

Read more about the film HERE.

as long as we exist, we will be raped – sisonke msimang

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(First published HERE.)

anene

I read an article on Thursday morning. It said: “The victim had been sliced open from her stomach to her genitals and dumped.” The radio is full of this story. Full of politicians and posers, trying to outdo one another. Like funeral criers. But it will end, the show. And there will be marches and petitions. There will be statements and rage. But it will happen again. Until we are inured to shock. It will happen again. Until our bones are worn into dust and our teeth crushed into the sand. It will happen and happen. Until we invent a way to stop being women. Until we find a way for our blood to no longer bleed between our legs. As long as we exist, we will be raped.

So, no, I will not march. I don’t believe my marching will stop this war. I will cry, as I have been already this morning. And maybe, I will begin to feel my way out of the lurching, heavy knowing after I have spoken with others. With the mothers and the sisters, the brothers and fathers – those like me, who have girls.

There is only this: a dead, hollow knowing that has always been knocking at my heart. From the minute she was born, it fell in step with the rhythm of my breath: to raise a girl in this world, to raise her strong and healthy and proud, to ensure that she survives and then to insist ferociously that she laugh and dance and think and dream, is to choose the most heartbreaking and joyous path. It is to tempt fate every single day, it is to fear that her breath will be strangled by a stranger. It is to live with the horrible possibility that this could be your child.

Anene was raped and mutilated because she was a girl. It was her vagina and her breasts that they wanted to destroy. It was her walk and her talk. It was her girl-ness. These parts of her were broken and sliced and pulled apart, not by monsters, but by friends. Each of her 10 fingers were broken.

Ten fingers and 10 toes. I kiss my baby girl goodnight. Ten fingers and 10 toes, I counted them when she was born just to be sure that she was real. I found love in the spaces between each. I cried at the weight of her. Tiny and strong.

Tonight, I will kiss her neck in the bath and she will wiggle away from me. ‘Stop it Mama’, and I will pinch her wet bum and she will sparkle. Tonight, she will be safe. But they will not stop killing girls.

And I will die defending her. Let them wear my bones into dust. Let them crush my teeth into the sand. Only this will stop the war. That we be prepared to die – our bodies barricades against the fingers that should not be there. The knives that slit. The guns that lodge. Let them lodge in me. In us.

Anene’s mother said that if she hadn’t seen her shoes, she wouldn’t have known that it was her own child. Her intestines? Her intestines.

God help us. And if God will not, Let the women be the barricades. The men, surely will follow.

Sisonke Msimang writes and comments on gender, race and politics. She works with Sonke Gender Justice Network, and is a Yale World Fellow.