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In the celebration and honouring of women on 9 August, Gender DynamiX was involved with the ArtsCape Women’s Festival which took place on 5, 6 and 7 August. Gender DynamiX was involved in 3 of the events.
The first event was “Real Women, Real Beauty” in which we looked at how the media and advertising make women feel they need to conform to a certain standard in order to be accepted by society.
Jody Bieber presented an audiovisual of photographs she had done of women of all shapes, sizes, colours and races. She photographed each of them in their own environment wearing lingerie which each of them had chosen for themselves. Among those photographed was a transgender woman. The idea was to show how, even if women do not conform to the standards set by the media, they could still be beautiful. It also poses the question;” what qualifies what a real woman is?”
Pamella Dlungwana further expounded on these false notions of what a real woman should be, by talking about her own experiences growing up in a traditional black African family and being expected to get married to a man while she felt she was attracted to women. She described herself as a typically shaped African woman compared to her sister, who was tall skinny and quite androgynous. She again asked the question: “what qualifies you to be a real woman?”
Jane Bennet wrapped up the session by highlighting how the media and porn industry are presenting women as hairless, shapeless, perfect beings with no smell or feelings. She was very frank and entertaining about a number taboo matters, including vagina plasty and Brazilian But Lifts.
The second event on Friday was about access to shelters for women under the title of “Who Is In? Who Is Out?” The session started with Liesl introducing a shocking video “The Dark Side of Paradise – Corrective Rape” which graphically highlighted the experiences of lesbian women in the townships in South Africa who are subjected to corrective rape in order to “cure” them of being lesbian. Funeka Soldaat from the local organisation Free Gender was also featured in this film. After the filming, she stood up and shared her experiences. Liesl Theron, Director of Gender DynamiX, then went on to highlight the challenges that lesbian bisexual and transgender women face when trying to access shelters. She referred to two lesbian women who have been forced to live under a bridge because none of the shelters in Cape Town are willing to accommodate them because of their  sexual orientation. Synnov Skorge of the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Abused Women and Children screened a few digital stories of women who have stayed in the shelter. She then explained some of the challenges that the shelter faces with respect to providing services to women.
The final Saturday, a workshop entitled “This is my story” was presented. Gender DynamiX began this session with 4 short digital stories by transgender people telling of their experiences and the challenges and triumphs they had experienced in their lives. Sonke Gender Justice screened some movies of testimonies of how men, who they had worked with, had changed their attitudes towards the use of violence to subdue women and children and how they were encouraging other men to change too. WHEAT Women’s Foundation screened 2 videos about the experiences of two NGO’s who benefited from the support Wheat provides to Women’s groups.
Tebogo Nkoana, Outreach Officer at Gender DynamiX and a panellist on the men’s forum at Sonke Justice during the Women’s festival at ArtsCape, brought a man’s perspective to the proceedings. He briefly shared his position as a black transman in the community.
“Being a transman and yet young and black hasn’t been an easy journey,” he said. He shared with the audience how his masculinity has always been questioned, especially when coming out to people who had not known him before.
He also had the opportunity to challenge a question directed at him by a member of the audience, He was asked if he went through “the passage” as a man The man was referring to the controversial African right of passage where young men spend time isolated in the wild and end up having circumcisions which are most often not performed by medical professionals. Tebogo replied passionately that he had not experienced this ritual and emphasised that hetro-normativite concepts and patriarchal behaviours are destroying our youth.
“We keep hearing this thing about how boys should be circumcised in order to become a man, and that leads to disrespecting those who believe differently. I think we shouldn’t use cultural beliefs to discriminate against those outside of these rituals. We should rather unite and learn about our differences,” Tebogo said. |
