Unspoken Rules for Women in South Africa

I read an article this morning entitled "Unspoken Rules for Women in the United States". I was pointed in the direction of the article by two friends, one of whom wondered out loud what a South African version would look like. I started wondering the same thing, and decided to try and write one up.

"Welcome to the South Africa, little girl! We are so glad you have arrived. Here is a list of rules to live by, just to get you started:

1. Your race is going to dictate where you end up in life. People will try to tell you that Apartheid is over, but the ramifications that come from years of suppression are still very real. Your race will determine which Universities you are able to attend and which jobs you are able to get. If you are black, coloured, Indian or oherwise non-White, your race will make you 'previously disadvantaged', and you will be given preference for any positions available.
   
2. Technically you may wear what you choose, as long as what you choose is what society chooses for you. Short skirts are both encouraged and out of the question. Wearing one will certainly put you into the "sexy" category, which is strongly encouraged by society, but at the same time will advertise that you are open for business so to speak and by wearing one, you will be asking to be raped.
   
3. Your weight is not your personal business - it is public domain. You can expect to be judged for being too big, too small and too average. In fact, you can expect to be judged for pretty much everything that you do. It is the tendency of society to judge.
   
4. Your sexual preference is not your personal business either. Though you have a right to your sexual preference, the public will assume that they have the right to try to change you. This process can take on a number of forms, from social pressure to rape, all of which may be seen as either acceptable or deplorable according to the society that you are a part of. Either way, these reactions are often unlikely to lead to any action being taken in your defence.
   
5. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are not raped. It is your responsibility to dress appropriately, speak appropriately, have the appropriate sexual preference and live the appropriate lifestyle of a woman. Should you choose not to follow these appropriate guidelines and end up being raped, it will be your fault for wearing a short skirt, flirting, being a lesbian or going out in public while wearing, saying or being any of the above. Should you contract a STD from such an encounter or fall pregnant due to such an encounter, this is also your responsibility.
   
6. Should you decide to take advantage of the education that you are offered and the workplace opportunities that are open to you, you will still be expected to maintain a healthy sex life, have children, cook, clean and do your womanly duties. Having a job is no excuse for neglecting the job that you were given at birth.
   
7. The fact that you are female also determines that you are 'disadvantaged' and jobs in companies will be set aside just for women. Congratulations! You will be allowed to work in a company where you will be treated as disadvantaged and, despite working just as hard as or harder than your male equivalents, you will always earn less money and garner less respect than they do.

We hope that this helps! Good luck out there!"

And yes, this did come out a little more cynical than I had intended, but for the most part, it is rather accurate. What would you add or remove?

Serious Post

There are a number of posts that I have been meaning to write, and most of them are based on blog posts that my friends have been writing. One of them in particular is going to have to wait until the final HP movie arrives in Grahamstown and I get to relive the 11 years of HP love by going to watch it.

In the meantime, however, I thought that I would write a blog that is hopefully not going to be too long or too bitchy. This one is inspired by two posts that I find are pretty connected. The first blog post was mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago by my boyfriend. It was a video posted by Skepchick blogget, Rebecca Watson. The video, which can be found here, mentioned very briefly an encounter that Rebecca had within an elevator. The video is long, the mention is brief (if you want to listen to it, you can jump ahead to 4:30 and it ends at 5:50), but I thought I would summarise the situation for anyone who might be reading this.

Rebecca was a speaker at a conference in Dublin, and she was on a panel where she spoke about sexism in the Atheist community. After the panel was over, she spent a good deal of time with people at the bar and ended up announcing that she was tired and leaving. A man then followed her from the bar to the elevator and, once inside, said that he found her interesting and wanted her to have coffee with him in his room. Rebecca explains that this made her uncomfortable and is not something that men should do. And I completely agree. Even if he had the best intentions at heart, it is just plain creepy. There are better ways to go about asking people to have coffee with you - invite them to have coffee somewhere public the next day, for example. But approaching a single foreign woman at 4am in an elevator where she cannot walk away is not a good plan.

Now, I am not a Skepchick follower, and probably never would have heard about any of this if Grant hadn't told me. See, Grant is an awesome awesome boyfriend and a feminist supporter, and got incredibly upset about the reactions to the video, including a rather sexist approach from Richard Dawkins, someone who Grant greatly admires. In any case, I heard about it, it pissed me off a little, and then I carried on with my everyday life, grateful for the fact that I have an amazing boyfriend who cares about feminist issues.

A couple of days later, Amy posted a blog about the Slut Walk in Seoul, and she posted a picture on the top of her article which I found to be incredibly appropriate and which reminded me a lot of the Rebecca Watson scenario.



I absolutely love this poster. I think that it takes a completely different approach to assault, and I think that it is something that needs to be said. A lot of the comments that Rebecca got from her video were people saying that she shouldn't have been out until 4am, that she was in the wrong somehow, that her behaviour (or previous behaviour) led him to believe that he might have had a chance. It reminds me of the "men" who says that women who wear short skirts are asking to be raped or that a women who stays after having sex and asks for breakfast and taxi money must have had a good time and therefore cannot have been raped. The onus is always put on the woman to be careful, to be demure, to make sure that their integrity is kept in check so that they do not get raped, but what about the men who do the raping? Why aren't they being targeted? Why aren't people telling them how to behave to ensure that they do not rape or assault or harass someone?

Now, as I said earlier, the guy in the elevator could have had completely harmless intentions. He really might have found her opinions interesting and wanted to sit up and chat with her for a bit. And there is nothing wrong with that. But there are ways to approach people, and approaching someone who just from a conference where she discussed sexism and is clearly aware of her sex and how it affects peoples perceptions of her, in an elevator, alone, at 4am and then asking her to come back to your room for coffee is not a good way to do it. Hell, approaching anyone alone in an elevator and asking them to come back to your room for coffee is not a good plan. Especially if you do not know that person and have never spoken to them before. It is creepy as all hell, and whether his intentions were good or not, that doesn't take away from the creepiness!!!

Anyway, that is my ranting done. Hopefully HP will be coming out in Grahamstown this weekend (I am holding my thumbs so hard that they hurt) and I will be able to post my HP love post very very soon. Until then, I will be trying my hardest to stay awake.