Will You be an Ally?

Karen Petersen
Jul 28, 2017 · 4 min read

I was keen to get involved in something worthwhile for Nelson Mandela Day this year, so I was delighted when Di Neo contacted me unexpectedly regarding her campaign, #ImYourAlly.

I met Di Neo over a year ago at a networking event and we stayed in touch over Facebook. I discovered that she is a filmmaker, writer and an activist. She is the founder of Kei Media, a production company with a mission to provide world class LGBT entertainment that reflects and celebrates the diversity of the LGBT community and to promote and advocate, through media, for the respect and observation of LGBT human rights.

The #ImYourAlly campaign is a project that aims to form social cohesion around LGBT equality by creating and collaborating with allies of all races, nationalities, religions, sexual orientations and so forth. It’s a media campaign with a fresh slant promoting inclusivity that takes a stand against the appalling level of violent and brutal hate crimes committed against LGBT people, especially lesbians in the townships of South Africa. Di Neo is deeply concerned about how people see corrective rape as normal and is trying to combat that mindset.

With this brief background, I agreed to open our work premises for her team to shoot photo and video footage for the campaign.

I arrived on a cold, damp Saturday morning and was soon joined by Di Neo’s crew of photographers and videographers who set up their equipment in our end office. We were joined by a continual stream of people from the LGBT community who chatted amiably amongst themselves while waiting their turn to be videoed.

It was a fascinating day for me as I met interesting people with different stories. From high school to middle age, from the suburbs to the townships, from creatives to electricians, all had one thing in common — an alternative form of sexuality and the various struggles that go with who they identify themselves as. They are simply normal people who are often considered abnormal. Although, I am gay myself, I learnt so much from these people and I was inspired to find out more.

Sadly, there are no accurate statistics about hate crimes against the LGBT community. They fall under the wider umbrella of hate crimes, such as xenophobia and racism, all of which are despicable. One of the vile practices that has increased in recent years has been “corrective rape” — the belief that heterosexual rape will “cure” a lesbian. I can’t think how this is logical as it would push me further away from men, not bring so called “healing” to me. It is abhorrent behaviour causing untold suffering.

According to the Daily Maverick in June 2012, a 2004 study by Unisa’s applied psychology professor, Juan Nel, found that less than half of incidents of rape and sexual abuse against gay and lesbian people in Gauteng were reported to the police. 73% of these said that they did not expect to be taken seriously, 43% were afraid of suffering further abuse from the police and 33% did not want to disclose their sexual orientation to the police.

In 2014 photographer Clare Carter reported horrific life stories from Black lesbians in South Africa. Do yourself a favour and read some of these stories to gain an understanding of what is happening.

“1998–2000 report by the United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs ranked South Africa as highest for rapes per capita, it has repeatedly been described as the rape capital of the world: 500,000 rapes a year; one every 17 seconds; one in every two women will be raped in her lifetime. Twenty per cent of men say the victim “asked for it”, according to a survey by the anti-violence NGO, CIET. A quarter of men in the Eastern Cape Provinces, when asked anonymously by the Medical Research Council, admitted to raping at least once — three quarters of whom said their victim was under 20, a tenth said under 10. A quarter of schoolboys in Soweto described “jackrolling” — the local term for gang rape — as “fun”.” Frightening words from the UK Independent.

Wagingnonviolence.org stated in March 2015 that out of 2.5 million inhabitants in Cape Town the Human Rights Council of Southern Africa reported that there were up to 10 cases of corrective rape on a weekly basis. And those are only the cases that are actually reported. We already know that around 55% are not reported, so add at least another 10 cases per week. That’s about 80 corrective rape cases per month in one province.

In June 2016, OUT online magazine reported that 14% of Gautengers agreed that it’s acceptable to be violent to gay and lesbian people. That represents around 1.26 million people in the province who will probably turn a blind eye to corrective rape.

“After everything we’re going to do to you, you’re going to be a real woman, and you’re never going to act like this again”.

Corrective rape is accompanied with torture and brutality, often ending in murder. How do we live in a world where this is condoned or ignored? How do we deal with this kind of attitude? We need individuals, men and women from all walks of life to protect these women. To stand up and say I’m your ally. To speak out when others say that they asked for it. To take a stand against violence and brutality.

Will you be an ally?

Karen Petersen

Written by

social media marketer/writer/coach/funlover/scooter freak/founder of Network Explosion

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