Local youth shares the of toxic masculinity traits that harm society.
Neo Ramatlotlo writes:
Sitting with my female friends and hearing how they feel unsafe by being in an e-hailing service or taxi alone, walking alone during the day sickened me. These are everyday activities that I never have given a second thought – why should my female friends feel like prisoners?
Sitting with my male male peers, stressed as if they are 45-year-olds because they feel pressured to have their own car, house and job or else they aren’t considered a man, made me question what it is to be a man. The laughter when a guy I know is made fun of for not being intimate with a girl or for getting tearful when he fails at a job interview that his family was counting on to subsidise their meals. Seeing my friend shrink before my eyes when he was called a ‘small boy’ because according to the men’s club, he doesn’t earn enough.
I used to think I don’t need to worry about the violation of men or women because I’m not physically or sexually abusive as though to say ‘I’m not the problem’. But actually I am, most of us are. My wants turned into actions in Grade 10 through being part of a youth programme. I was challenged by our mental health therapist, we call Coach Sam, who asked what we want to change in the world and explained that we needed to be that change. Without hesitation I said domestic violence, so coach Sam arranged night classes with gender expert Genevieve Savary Williams for me to attend.
Genevieve and Coach Sam kept raising examples for the ways we cultivate a culture that breeds violence. I was guilty as charged so I started to learn to change my behaviour and engage in conversations around the topic.
I realised that although the stats say two out of three South African girls will be victims of violence and sexual abuse, the truths my friends were sharing was a way higher percentage. I didn’t know how to help them but knew only one way, to become a man who doesn’t accept the culture or add to it.
I despised men who has laid a hand on a woman or had sexually assaulted them but after educating myself, I realised that those acts are just the tip of the iceberg. My actions, and those of so many of my friends, were a huge percentage of undetected causes that lie below the surface of the public acts most of us think are despicable.
I have come to realise that the way my friends and I were talking about women and looking at them as if they were pieces of meat gave permission to the cultural norm of sexual violence. I now understand how being a bystander and watching a friend share nudes on a group chat or insult a woman because they got rejected by her, gave other men permission to degrade and objectify women. So often I would have just kept quiet or laughed awkwardly instead of correcting my friends’ bad behaviour but I now realise if I don’t challenge it, I’m aiding femicide.
I learnt how detrimental it is to a young man’s mindset when they are boxed in being a ‘real man’. How they should look all mocha, always be chasing the next sexual conquest, and be loaded financially to be considered a man. This causes a man to feel powerless and sexual violation is a quest for power not sex. I refuse to accept that by the end of today eight families will be grieving the death of a woman they loved.
It is important that we change the narrative on what being ‘real men’ is. We should encourage men to be emotionally strong the same way we encourage them to be physically strong.
I challenge peers to move in a new direction. If you want to grow and be better than the statistics, join the Growing Champions conversations that I lead where we are working on becoming the solution. Let’s write a new culture where men and women are fearless together.
