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?

Old Ladies and Why They Are Annoying

I feel the need to point out to Jodie Stokes that I have a serious writing streak going this week, and it is all because of her. Of course, she may find none of my posts entertaining in the slightest, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this is the fourth blog that I am writing in 3 days. Go me!

So, what is today's topic then? Well, I was thinking along the lines of old ladies. Most specifically how I love them despite their annoying tendencies. Even more specifically, those living in Cross Street.

This morning, I was sitting at work. Doing, well, work of course. What else would I be doing at work? Play games you suggest? Pfft... clearly you don't know me at all. Or know me all too well ;). Anyway, there I was, working, when a phonecall comes in. Usually there is a scurry for the phones, a race to get there first so that the  call can count towards our call count at the end of the week, winning us a box of chocolates/cookies depending on what's on offer. Unfortunately, this one didn't get through to my line, and Gary answered it, only to pass it through to me. Leaving me one count short for this week. Thanks Gary!!

Anyway, I digress. On the other end of the line was Marion. Marion was one of my neighbours in Cross Street, and is also a client of my company's, so of course she always tends to contact me at work instead of calling me on my cell. No matter. I answered and we chatted for a few minutes before she asked me if I could do her a favour. Could I come over to take a picture of the scarecrow that she had built with friends whose department was imminent. How much would I charge? Knowing that this would be a 5 minute job and not being too concerned about charging for a quick shoot for an old friend, I told her that I would do it for free and would shoot down there during my lunch hour.

Lunch time came, and off I went to the familiar courtyard that was essentially my garden for two years. I knew that Marion would be there, but I also suspected that some of my other old neighbours might be hanging around, and I wasn't disappointed. Hillary was standing by the watch the quick shoot as well and have a chat while I worked my magic. This is where the slightly annoying bit comes in, because while younger people may realise that you have a job to get back to and things that need to be done and are in a slight rush to get going, old ladies tend to forget this fact in lieu of catching up. And so we chatted about me and my job and my house and my boyfriend and my cat and my parents and my car and Michael, one of my former housemates. Michael, of course, was one of the subjects of discussion that they were most interested in. While I was friendly with the ladies next door when I stayed in Cross Street, Michael was their saviour, constantly offering to cook, garden and offer company, and the lack of Michael in their lives seems to have had an adverse effect. They miss him terribly and wanted to know all about everything that is happening in his life. As he is currently living with my parents, I was the go-to-girl for knowledge, and unfortunately did not have much of it to give, since I myself have not heard from Michael in a long while. Michael, if you are reading this, you need to tell people that you are alive!

Once I had managed to get a few shots, I was ready to head off when Marion stopped me in my tracks. "Can you help me with something else?" Sure, I thought. As long as it's quick. See, another one of the ladies on Cross Street, Rosemary, who I do not know quite as well as she was not one of the neighbours in my courtyard, recently inherited a laptop. She came into the office about a month ago and one of my colleagues, Andrew, helped her set up a Gmail account to receive emails and installed Firefox on her machine. He made it really easy for her, adding a link to Gmail at the top of her browser and showing her that all she needed to do was click it and she would get her emails. Apparently this was too much for Rosemary, and she couldn't handle the complication, so had decided to give up on this email idea altogether. Marion didn't want this to happen, so she passed Rosemary's machine on to me and asked me to do something about it. Something. Anything. She didn't specify what aside from suggesting perhaps adding another email address to her account, a solution that was in fact no solution at all. What really needed to be done was to setup Microsoft Outlook on Rosemary's machine and have it pop up as soon as she opens her computer. That would be ideal. Of course, Microsoft Outlook is a lot harder to use than Gmail, but at least Marion knows how to use it, so we will have to see what happens.

And so, I have now setup a laptop with Microsoft Outlook, a task that took a lot longer than the expected favour of a few photos. But that is possibly the most annoying thing about old ladies - it is so darned difficult to say no to them! It feels like it should be a crime!! And so, I endure endless conversation and favours that take ages in order to please these women that I call friends. And you know what, it feels a lot more rewarding because they are insanely grateful for it. As opposed to most of the clients that I help over the phone.

Perhaps I should start working at an old age home teaching the elderly how to use computers. Or take photographs. Or write. I like this idea! Any takers?

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.