I have been meaning to write this for quite a
while now. The anger having always been the hindrance from writing anything
concrete, I feel as though I should at least prepare a cup of ginger-root tea
first before I even attempt to put these words to paper. How do you hold
yourself from being pissed while writing something that you know will lead to your
pissed-off-ness? How? The inability to keep my cool in situations that show me
the kind of people I associate with has always been my dilemma.

I have come to realise something very vexing.
Everything has become political with me, not using the term screwy, though,
political as in I tend to question a lot of things, and in doing so engage in
conversation with a number of people who seem to be as questioning if not
learned in particular areas. And I am quick to cut anyone who disrespects my
politics. Or anything I talk about so as to justify the kind of ridiculous
things they believe in (Read: their politics). Not to say that anyone who I
disagree with has ridiculous beliefs and opinions, it becomes hard to keep a
straight face when the said individual shows signs of being on the opposing
side of what I am about, and in doing so shows no level of intellect so as to
put my stance to consideration so I could respect his, or hers. Tit-for-tat.

Okay, the whole purpose of this rant happens
to be based solely on an argument I had with someone I still consider a very
good friend of mine, amongst a number of others, because of our opposing
opinions relating to the controversial MenAreTRASH hashtag. It has never been
secret how I feel about the hashtag, neither was his stance, but the problems
began when our harmless conversation on the actions of men and the reasons why
the hashtag is justified became a heated debate that led to him saying
something I thought he would later regret having said, something quite harmful,
however on the contrary, he showed no signs of having been of slippery tongue.
Basically, what he said was that the entire reason why he does not agree with
#MenAreTrash is because saying that does not help anyone, and he “refuse[s] to
call men trash for being themselves.” I
for one was utterly flabbergasted. This person is someone I believed to be my
friend and having been so close to him I believed that his beliefs would mirror
my own at a certain extent whereas he understands and will understand what I am
about, but then to be honest, it merely showed me the kind of person he was, as
well as the majority of my other male friends. From what I gathered, and I made
him aware of this, it appeared as though he was saying that men should not take
accountability for their actions because that is who they are, somehow like
they cannot help it. It made me question why he would say something so bizarre,
but then it hit me. We grow up, as boys, believing and being told that we do what
we do because we are boys, that boys are characteristically naughty and
whatever they do will simply be passed off as ‘boys being boys’. Society
perpetuates this behavior to an extent that it ridicules the girls for the
decisions and mistakes of the boy all the way to their adolescent stages, it
continues all the way to their adulthood even where the girls are further
conditioned to be subordinate to the boys, but then that’s another conversation
all on its own.

Men are so privileged, and it is hard for
them to account for their decisions and actions if those are not going to prove
beneficial to them. From this statement it shows just how most
men think, which is similar to what Dr. Pumla Dineo Gqola said in the Rape
Myths chapter of her book, RAPE: A South
African Nightmare.

These boys grow up believing that they are just being
boys, not acknowledging the level at which they are breaking themselves
internalising this misogyny that they will later curse the women they will
later meet with. Society shames the woman for the actions of the man, and
praise the man for the good, not paying attention to the fact that he did wrong
before, and women are not acknowledged for their own contribution to this final
piece. ‘Men are being themselves’ simply
means that, to me, it doesn’t matter how a man responds to something, he is
merely incapable of behaving otherwise, that a woman is to blame for being
beautiful, for being smart – she threatens him somehow – for being too
something, and whatever he does is a response to that. I understand that this
appears like some ‘women good, men bad’ scenario, I do not care. On many a
times men have gotten off to hurting women, to killing women, without
reprimand, and such is infuriating because it is often other women who let these
men off the hook with their beliefs of this statement, having internalised it
also from their conditioning while growing up in gender-unequal circumstances.
The woman does something to man – she must have said something, she must have
done something; why else would he have hit her? There was this one time when
Namhla Black posted something on Facebook, that a guy would literally hit a
girl and the men on the streets would look on, and when she hits back they will
then start to intervene asking her why she’s hitting him, stating that he’s merely
doing so because he likes her. WTF? I’ve also heard of this. Apparently hitting
me speaks louder volumes than a ‘Hello’ text on Messenger.

There is no such thing as ‘boys will be
boys’, this only breeds dysfunctional men with fragile egos, broken men who
find their power by belittling the women who ought to be submissive to them,
and when they are not so – because our society has birthed a new range of
powerful and independent women – the only way he can break them is with his
fist, because men are physical people, not mental. Apparently.

This is not even about men being trash. It’s
personal. It’s about you as a person, and what you believe in, what you stand
for. I don’t believe that a person who knows that they are not trash will be
offended by being called something they are not. If you are for the archaic
binary that sees men being at the top of the chain with very little narrative
for the woman who is better than you, and vilifying her for that, then you will
most certainly find that it hits home. Hard.

It must hurt for all the ‘good men’ to be
called trash, I guess, so excruciating being boxed with the other men who do
bad things to women, right? That’s probably why they fight against it so
zealously. It must burn them to be likened to rapists, to abusers. It must be
painful. In the same way that being slut-shamed does, being battered and
bruised, trapped in cyclic circumstances. And murdered. All the pain that women
feel. I’m sure it hurts just as much, right men?

Men police and sexualise female bodies, and
you will know it, too, because it is these ‘good men’ who supposedly see it on
the news that a young woman was raped and will ask why she was wearing a short
skirt, why a prostitute will lay rape charges, and why she was alone at night. He
would even go as far as to tell his daughter that she would never wear
something like that, or that he has to extend her curfew. You know these good
men. These good men are your Fathers who shout at your mother and tell her to
shut up, that she’s just umfazi, and
he is a man, hence his voice is law. Your uncles who cheat on their wives, and
have many illegitimate children unaccounted for. Or perhaps your brothers whose
beds know the backs of more girls than the girls know the ceilings of these
boys they sleep with. Your friends who hit their girlfriends because he thinks
she’s cheating on him, or perhaps because she is and won’t answer his phone
calls at certain times and her WhatsApp online status is hidden. And you watch all
this happen. You don’t say a thing. you do not see a problem with it, because
you have been so accustomed to women being under the thumbs of these men so it
comes easy for you to rape the girl you bought a drink for at the club but
wouldn’t give you her numbers. You’re trash.

It could also be you, the guy who goes to
church and respects women, speaks for women, and is friends with women, but
your speaking for women is selective of certain positions and moments where you
will be silent when it suits you. Silent doesn’t always mean consent, but you
cannot be on our side only when it suits you.

I would like to believe that there are better
men out there. Men who look out for their families and other marginalised
people who need the help and looking out for, but the statistics are just too
much for me to pay one man too much attention for having done something THAT HE
WAS SUPPOSED TO DO.