Where are our men?
Sam Wilson asks SA men to take a hard look at themselves.
The 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children campaign kicks off today and lasts until the 10 December.
This year, as every year, Women24 brings you I Stories from Gender Links, where real survivors tell stories we’d rather not listen to.
This year, like every year... I am asking you to read them, and hold these women – and the survivors in your own life – in your heart, and really think about what it must mean to live through such appalling abuse.
However, this year, I am not just talking to the women of Women24, but I am specifically addressing South African men and asking this question:
What are YOU doing about gender activism?
Each time we run the Female Nation Survey, I am appalled by the absence of men in South African families. Be they simply not there, or to absorbed in work to parent, or too distracted by sport to care... the majority of working South African women are both the primary breadwinners and primary caregivers in their families.
And those men who did hang around, how do they pitch in? The stats tell me... by beating up their wives and children, more than any other nation of men anywhere in the world.
I am not painting all men with a tar brush. What I am asking is: why are the nice men among us (and there are many hundreds of thousands of GREAT men), not ostracising this great swathe of deserters and abusers?
Why aren’t men that don’t pay maintenance ridiculed by their peers? How is it that men who beat up their wives have any friends at all? How can rape be a frat house joke? Why are nice men not especially careful to treat women with respect, and to judge other men by that benchmark?
As someone who has worked in gender activism, and counselled rape survivors and taken young children to court to confront their abusers, and looked into the eyes of far too many terrified, pain-ridden women... I want to take this opportunity to say to South African men:
Shame on you.
This is too horrifying a situation to be expressed only in women’s voices. It’s time to pitch in, and help clean up this mess.
So I am asking you, men of South Africa – what are you personally going to do during this 16 Days of Activism?
Sam Wilson is the Editor-in-Chief of Women24, Food24 and Parent24. You can follow her on Twitter @SamWilson1 but only if you want to find out far too much about her personal life.