Masculine Fear And Bravado Don’t Mix Well With Gunpowder

by Kopano Ratele and Mbuyiselo Botha

On Friday morning, 14 December, a young man called Adam Lanza went to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, United States, and killed 20 children, all aged 6 or 7. He also shot dead the school principal, and 5 other staff of the school.

Lanza was known to the principal. His mother worked at the school.

Because he knew Lanza, the principal buzzed him in, whereupon he went to two classes and fatally shot most of his victims.

Reportedly an intelligent and quite person, Lanza is said to have started his murder frenzy by killing his mother and the last person he killed was himself.

South Africans might feel the mass shooting at Sandy Hook is so far removed from us to hold any lesson for our society.

It could be said South Africa has enough problems and can't be expected to expend mental energy on what, were it not for global news networks that brought the event to our awareness, is a distant distant American tragedy.

Yet what happened in Connecticut holds obvious lessons for any society grappling the scourge of gun-associated interpersonal masculine violence.

The recent fatal shooting of Reeva Steenkamp by Oscar Pistorius, among many other cases, suggests that armed violence is far from an unknown phenomenon in a country.

Besides their guns, there is seemingly one other equally significant and banal commonality between Oscar Pistorius and Adam Lanza: their gender beliefs.

Apparently, Lanza and Pistorius liked guns. It doesn’t take complex deductions to observe that their attraction to arms was founded on ideas of a certain militarized masculine subject prevalent in the US and South Africa.

We don’t know much about what Lanza thought about guns. We just know he had them.

We know from interviews and his affidavit during his bail hearing plea what Pistorius thought about guns.

In any event, both men owned licensed guns. The Paralympic superstar reportedly kept a firearm underneath under his bed when he went to bed at night – just in case there was an intruder. Masculine fear and bravado don’t mix well with gunpowder.

As in the US, South Africa is not dealing very well with the problems borne of armed masculinity gone awry.

Because we have not experienced mass murders in which a lone gunman walks into an educational and mows down students and teachers, it may seem to be a good reason for us to think that such events as occurred in the US will remain uncommon in South Africa. 

It is a clearly a good historical reason. But it would be self-deluding to think we shall never have mass murders in South Africa.

Even though we have never strictly had mass shootings at educational institutions, we have experience of mass murders as a society. We have had race-related shootings in Pretoria by a lone gunman. We have had police shooting unarmed people during apartheid in Sharpeville and Soweto.

Recently, heavily armed police mowed down miners in Marikana. The horror event might be represented as a tragedy by the president, but who is being fooled that this was clearly state-legitimised mass murder.

Even though we have never had mass shootings like what happens every few years at US educational institutions, we have experienced of shootings at schools or on the way from schools, by gangsters and fellow students.

But what must make us take note of what happened is that guns are implicated in a significant, although declining, number of fatalities and injuries in South Africa. 

For the most part, what has prevented mass murders in South Africa of the kind seen in Columbine High, Virginia Tech, and now Sandy Hook Elementary, is nothing of our own doing. What has protected many more women and girls from being shot to death by boyfriends and husbands is not a well-thought intervention plan by us. For the grace of god, we are always a day from accidental or premeditated violent death and international injury as much from familiars as strangers.       

In a touching address about the shooting during a press briefing President Barack Obama said “we are going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of politics.”

He was talking to Americans. But he may as well have been talking to us in this country.

We may as yet have no experience of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, but something perhaps more insidious happens every day in South Africa, because the scores of murder victims do not even make news.

The only way we can prevent the many spectacular tragedies or murders that may lie in the future is to take meaningful action now. Incidentally, compared to Western European countries South Africa is shown in global violence reports to be a very violent society – even without mass shootings at schools. Of course, when compared to the Honduras and Cote d'Ivoire, we come off better looking. And of course, many countries do not have report regularly or have reliable data.

That said, part of that action to prevent even more horrible murder events will mean another radical go at gun culture, ownership and possession.

Perhaps, though, the most lasting solution will be to act and offer new models of nonviolent masculinity to the men who like and use guns.

We have to find ways to disarm violent masculinity of its attractions.

We should be giving boys as much attention, not less

First Published on TimesLive | 13 June, 2012 11:19

http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2012/06/13/we-should-be-giving-boys-as-much-attention-not-less-ilive

What’s up with all this attention and resources given to boys and masculinities, an associate and the head of a non-governmental organisation said to me a few months ago after I informed her about a talk on boys I was preparing to give a few days afterwards?

The person who asked me this, it’s significant to note, is a sexuality and gender equality activist with a specific interest in children and youth rights, meaning a likely ally.

Complaints about the funding and space given to the “fashionable topic” of masculinities are nothing new to me. I still find them disquieting though.

There is little confusion in my mind, however, about the significance of gender and sexuality as analytical categories in studying boys’ and men’s lives, as well as of course in trying to understand the societal subordination of girls and women.

I am also clear that, as in the case of white representation of black bodies and lives, as a self-avowed scholar on boys and men within feminist spaces, mine is both an invited and privileged position. Since I depend on their camaraderie, but also their on-going critique of my thought, I remain indebted to many African women, feminists, women’s liberationists, and womanists for their philosophical hospitality.

Such solidarity is especially important as some students, activists like my associate and researchers on gender and women have, from the beginning, raised their eyebrows at my interest in the subject of gender. They see this as usurping the space carved out by women’s liberation movement and feminism. And thus, perhaps like all self-aware white teachers of black children, I have experienced myself as both a stranger and comrade at being invited to teach within women’s and gender studies.  

I do appreciate why there is some reservation against men and women studying and working with boys and men. Much in the history of disciplined enquiry has been studies of men’s knowledge, actually.  

However I am convinced that the general argument that tends to support sentiments against a focus on boys is misplaced.

There is cause to bemoan the dwindling resources for NGOs working on women’s and girls’ issues. But to blame those working on masculinities is not to see the forest for the trees.

It is also incorrect to think that there have been buckets of money specifically allocated to the quality education of impoverished black boys for a productive, creative and meaningful life. Where money has been thrown at black boys from deprived homes, there still isn’t the kind of close and attentiveness that is required to radically change the world around them.

I was reminded of my associate’s displeasure about the attention given to boys when I read the Department of Basic Education’s report on the ‘2009-2010 Annual Surveys for Ordinary Schools’ released last month.

Two numbers that generated several media stories are 109 and 45 276. The first is the number of Grade 3 learners who fell pregnant in 2009 in South Africa, a dramatic increase from 17 in 2008. The second is the number of learners who fell pregnant, which was down from 49 599 in 2008.

These are unbelievable numbers. What they are suggestive of is that, in spite of the rhetoric about women and children, post-apartheid South Africa continues to desperately fail its girl-children. And it’s about much more than schooling.

None but a miracle girl begets herself pregnant while still in Grade 3 or at any other time. There is a boy somewhere in the background. More often it is a boy in the body of a grown man. And there’s the rub.

In turn, sex in Grade 3 suggests rape.

No girl wants to be sexually violated, however economically desperate, skimpily dressed or drunk she may be. The main cause of all sexual violence is a gender traditionalism that underpins men’s social psychologies of sexual entitlement over female bodies.

It is true that in many countries girls and women continue to confront violence and unjust discrimination on daily basis on the basis of age and gender.

It is true too that in many societies, China being the prime but not only example, there is still a preference for sons over daughters.

Furthermore, in many families and societies around the world girls and women still tend to enjoy less self-determination than the other sex. Unlike the latter, they can’t play as freely, get coerced into sex, may be forcibly married at an early age, are unable to take a walk without being harassed, are prohibited from leaving their homes unaccompanied by males, and can’t dream too big.

It is out of such conditions which characterise girlhood and women’s existence that schoolgirls get left with the baby.

Unless there is an empowering feminist sexuality and gender education for girls, their sisters and mothers, together with appropriate laws and their enforcement, they will continue to be preyed upon by males.

Yet, it is ludicrous to believe that male-children are in the same boat as older males. Boys are not men. They are developing beings. Rather than be punished for the sins of their fathers or unfairly advantaged, they ought to be educated for an egalitarian and compassionate society.

Failure to mould boys into fans of equality falls on the shoulders of adults.

Very few boys are born dictators, and none runs the world. Usually it is patriarchal traditionalism, with the complicit support of the majority of men and women, which creates the rules and norms that allow heterosexual men as a group to dominate the gender and sexual order.

While they may get some benefit from men’s gendered sexual power, boys also suffer great consequences from the social order. Like girls, boys in many countries face the ravages of social and economic inequalities.

The gender order is not geared to make boys live happier, healthier, and longer lives. In fact, being a boy, especially a black boy from a poor neighbourhood, puts one at heightened risk of premature death from accidents and violence.

By educating a girl for a feminist, educated, confident, happier and healthier life, without empowering a boy with progressive education to make them egalitarian, democratic, non-violent and healthier life does not just mean we will be faced with the problem of pregnant children for the foreseeable future. It retards the general quality of life in our society.

It would make girls’ present and future lives better if we also gave boys the kind of education that makes them more caring about girls’ needs and aspirations. 

Naturally, to work with boys and men only without due regard to the negative effects of the gender order on girls and women is to tacitly support the status quo. 

Instead of asking “what’s up with all this attention given to boys”, we ought to be asking, what kind of attention shall we give to boys to make their own lives and as well as girls’ full of worth?  

The kind of attention we need to give boys, especially black boys, is one that turns them, in their hearts and brains, into true believers of women’s and girls’ rights to their bodies and ambitions. If we don’t, we will continue to fail many girls, but also persists in underachieving as a culture.

You say violence, rape, murder. I say love, peace and happiness!



Love can offer you a place of safety



There is all this enraged talk about rape, violence and murders in South Africa right now - and rightly so. But we have known for a while that there are just too many people being murdered, too many being raped, and that crime and violence are highly prevalent. We have known this for a long time.

In an earlier post, a colleague stated that: 

"the leaders are either out of ideas how to turn things around, restore meaning to the lives of these young men and women, or they couldn't give a toss for the young black men and women".

I can agree with the possibility of the second bit, but tend to disagree with the first part. It may not be that the leaders have run out of ideas, and instead that the options that might work are the options that they regard as insignificant. The options that might work, like paying attention and changing the small, daily aspects of our lives, that might make the difference are not even given a look-in. Small things like the need for love and the meaning of happiness and what they mean to young men.

So after interviewing a few young black South African males about the importance of love and happiness in ideologies of masculinity, I found that most young men need love. They actually do. Really.

This got me thinking and reading even more about men, love and happiness. Then I had to remind myself that I am a psychologist too, not just a researcher. I am new in this business of being a psychologist, so I forget sometimes.

Psychology, as you might know, is a field that could make significant contributions to the current depressing state South Africa finds itself in, emotionally speaking. The discipline continues to underchieve, but it has such a great potential for this society. Through the discipline psychology we learn the undeniable role of emotions in our lives, and currently, for me, the importance of paying attention to the affective lives of young black men.

Of course, cognitions and behaviour are important, but even though we all would agree that we are "feeling beings", affect tends to be regarded with suspicion by business and political creatures, or otherwise relegated to the private sphere. However, through psychological studies prove again and again that emotions like love, hope, gratitude, shame, and happiness can actually change a person's perceptions and outlook on life. But let me stick to love. As one of the young men I interviewed stated:

"since I met her, she has shown me so much love, and I have become a responsible man, I do not only think of myself, but I have to think of her too. When I buy myself a chocolate, I know I have to buy for baby too..".

So please tell me you don't think love can make a difference in this world. I will wait for your response.

Of course this is not irrefutable proof about the importance of love in young men's lives. But it tells you this young man thinks love has changed him. 

Anyway, all I am saying is that our political leaders and government directors and corporate heads need to forget, for a moment at least, about the traditionalist way of doing things as being the only way that works. Don't buy more guns and bullets for the police to intimidate black young men. Take down the boom gates. Stop building prisons. Ignore that traditionalist leader's voice inside that says love if for "birds". Young men, like young women, need love. Black men, like white men, need to be cared for and to care for others. We need to teach these men that it is okay to love, to be loved. That it's not so bad to laugh, you know. That being happy is just what one needs sometimes, maybe ultimately. That it is okay to cry if you want to. Pat Conroy puts it very well for me when he says

"I thought that at birth men are allowed just as many tears as women, but because they are forbidden to shed them, they die long before women do, with their hearts exploding or their blood pressure rising or their livers eaten away by alcohol, because that lake of grief inside them has no outlet. Men die because their faces were not watered enough".  

So in my quest to understand how young men experience love and happiness I came across more than I had expected. The look of a young men who is in love and is not ashamed to say that he is, the look on his face when he talks about his loved one and how she has influenced the positive change in his life...just priceless.

I really do believe that love can make a difference. Maybe the rates of murder won't drop by tomorrow, maybe there won't be less cases of rape in the next week, but surely in the long run we will have a society filled with caring, loving, responsible men who are good fathers too and not men who will abuse their families. If men love, in the long run we won't have 12-year-olds who repeatedly rape their 3-year-old sisters. We will not have men who abuse other young men. We shall not have have young men who are frustrated by the fact that they cannot meet the standards of white men or older, wealthier black men. 

We all suffer from the effects of violent crimes in one way or the other. And currently the situation of continuous traumatisation is just causing further and widespread decay in our societies and hearts. We are causing all manner of injury to ourselves, by ignoring our emotions. Violence has become so normalised, so ordinary. Murder is normalised, rape is normalised, abuse is normalised, and all these and more are reported on our televisions and radios eachday and all because, YES, they are happening.

But so is laughter, so are acts of peace: these are happening too. What if we made love, like a normal thing. How about getting strange and weird stories on television and radio about tenderness to each other. What about each of us making it okay for the 5-year-old to see mom kissing dad, granddad embracing uncle, friends enjoying each other. What if we teach the kid to understand that it is good to love and see if there will be a change later on.

I have a good feeling things will change for the better then. Not instantly, but they will. If, that is, we try something different. Like teach love. If we let ourselves change traditions that are not getting us anywhere. Like pay close attention to positive emotions. If we  transform ourselves and this way change our societies. Like hugging a young man today. 

Refashioning the local: Black masculinity, class and clothing

The latest issue of the South African feminist journal Agenda has published my article on masculinity and clothing as signifiers of race/class identity. One of the questions that motivated the study was to explore why poor black men spend so much money on clothes. Though reductive, my argument is that despite their socioeconomic status, young men in the townships seek to produce powerful self-images through expensive, designer clothing. Their clothing and the discourses they value and perpetuate around clothing (such as masculine individualism) are derived from a model of masculinity found in the magazines they read. The upper-class masculinity in Gentleman's Quarterly provides an imaginary of masculinity which participants deployed to resignify their class aspirations. The abstract can be found here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.2011.630578

Fashioning Masculinity: Retrospective 2 - The Elusive Perfect Space for the Fashioned Masculine Body

There is a reason academics have events at academic venues or maybe at the occasional museum or gallery. See, spaces have a tradition of use and certain kinds of events with certain kinds of people and certain kinds of activities belong in certain kinds of venues. You wouldn't expect a soccer match in an art gallery or even on a basketball court, that is if you have the luxury of single-use spaces. At any rate, when we were brainstorming this event, way back in January, we decided to upset the tradition of the academic event and instead merge the form and content according to our topic, masculinity rather than, according to our roles, academics.

At first we wanted a shebeen, there was a murmur of a museum, then a boxing ring, then a gym, then a sports stadium, then a men's clothing store and off we went to find these places so people could sit in a space where masculine bodies were transformed, maintained, fashioned and ultimately regimented into an acceptable masculine form. We wanted to show the facticities of crafting manhood whilst having a conversation of how masculinities are brought into being.

The idea was grand, its execution was not, as we just could not find the perfect space. We entered a wonderful process of discovery but ease of use for an academic event, not so much what with the chairs and tables that needed to be brought into Green Point stadium, who knew that most 'upmarket' stadiums did not have their own furniture. The arduous bureaucracies that had to be navigated were not quite what we were accustomed to (an engineering plan for a stage, I am just  interested in why people are the way they are and like to hear people talking about it in an exciting space; what do I know about an engineering plan for a stage or a waste management plan or a security plan or a medical plan). 

Redesigning an unconventional space to merge with a traditional academic event was a challenge and nevermind that boxing rings disappear from community halls and one has to drive around to find it, we never did. Or reallising that in black townships community spaces or halls, truly are community spaces and are always busy, they are filled with the sounds of children, and adults accessing the state and in Mitchells Plain we even saw men with AK47s guarding something or other. There isn't the luxury of single-use spaces and the wonder and excitement of unconventional usage. They do have their own furniture though!

If anything the tradition in black under-resourced neighbourhoods is overuse of certain spaces which clearly indicate a lack of infrastructure. However the expectations of providing multiple plans to hire the local gym in Langa by the municipal authorities so stymied me despite having the resources of an organisation behind me, that we decided to look elsewhere. The bureaucracy and its demands, indicate that perhaps there is more need than usage indicates as with less gatekeeping, more people would make use of community spaces. If we found it difficult, how hard is it not for the average resident in Langa to hire the community sporting facility?

Anyway, the hunt for the venue delayed us, so did the wait on marketing and in the end we capitulated and did not merge form and content. Masculinity had to emerge in the conventional academic tradition in the conventional space of the Medical Research Council without the sensory experience of a space men made themselves in. We did bring together people who would not ordinarily have been in the same room, voicing similar concerns, interests and hopes and perhaps the bland backdrop showcased the spectacular and some unconventional connections a lot better than the smell of sweat might have.

Everybody needs someone to look out for them, but the social fabric around young white men doesn't need as much repairing

Earlier this month I was asked during a public conversation why white young men do not die at the rates of black young men. Who is protecting them? Or is that what's protecting them?

I am experiencing some kind of Groundhog Day. I feel as if I said this yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. If you have heard, don't stop reading.

As you may know, levels of violent death are never uniformly distributed across the sexes. That's a well-established finding from research. Males die from violence at much higher rates than females. You may also be aware that age is a significant predictor of dying from violence.  

But here are other variables that put an individual at risk of dying from violence: how much money you have, where you live, and race among others. There are studies from the United States and from Europe, and a few from Africa, in support of this. In South Africa you are more likely to die violently, on average, when you are male, in your late teens or early adulthood years, when you are black or coloured as opposed to white and Indian, live in a poor and low-income neighbourhood, live in a metro than in the more rural municipalities, live in Cape Town in comparison to Tshwane. Those are only some of the variables.

However, the question I was asked though is why: why are young white men at a decreased risk from dying prematurely? One of the major reasons is because men who do not achieve socially respected masculinity are likely live in or get into violent situations. Say that again? They are likely to live in or get into violent situations. That is to say, an attempt to achieve culturally valued manhood is interwoven with other reasons. Some of these are structural and others personal.

Studies show that, for instance, Khayelitsha has higher levels of homicide than Constantia. Why is this so? Because young men who live in Constantia are better protected against assaults or murder. It’s not only because of the alarms, spikes, and barbed wires. It’s because of conditions in the two areas. It’s because of their life circumstances, which in the end reduces the choices available to them to make something of themselves, that young men in Khayelitsha, most of whom are unemployed, will put themselves at greater risk of victimisation while trying to get recognition and success as men.

It's a damning situation. You can die slowly and on your feet from poverty, hunger, and distress. Or you can go out, in a world that says risk is good, take your chances and be shot to death.

Of course the risk a stock market trader takes is different from the risk a would-be bank robber takes. They are all trying to get money. But the risks for the latter can be deadly. The one with his qualifications has a lawful space to take risks with other people's monies; the other, whose education has left him standing at the corner with few prospects, has very few opportunities this side of the law and so steps outside of it. 

This is not to condone criminality. It is to explain the difference between young white men and young black men. The difference, which looks like one of race, like it is essentially racial in nature, is actually about historical economic advantages and the legacies of inequality. Social and economic advantages mean life advantages. It contributes towards a longer, safer, and happier life. Historical socio-economic discrimination imply that young black men today will find it harder to enjoy a happy, protected and long life.

But they were born after apartheid, I have heard it said. Their parents were not. Those parents raised them, for better or worse. Those parents may not have jobs today. If they have, those parents are not able to support them to go to university or with connections to get an internship into a good company. And most of those young men who die still live with the abjection that their parents experienced under apartheid.    

In societies that are racially and economically highly unequal the odds to get respect are stacked against young poor black men then. Whereas young middle-class and rich white men live in conditions that offer them protection, young poor black men have decreased safety nets. The conditions that make some young men better protected include things like a having a room of one's own instead of living in a small crowded house. Being able to spend time surfing the net as opposed to standing at the corner also helps. Surfing the net will keep you off the street. Having a job as opposed to standing at the corner will keep you out of trouble for a chunk of the day. Having a car instead of walking past a group of young men standing at the corner will get you past the corner. If that corner is next to a place where people drink, that adds to the risk. If you like to get drunk, it does not help: alcohol tends to make some people more likely to get into fights. If you are a teenager or young adult and your own father and mother are drinkers or even just disengaged from you, that removes a layer of social protection. All these factors multiply the risk as they interact. 

There are other factors that put some and not other young black men at increased risk of premature death. These are psychosocial.  They are gendered. Because of their psychosocial vulnerabilities and feelings of not being valued by society, young men may lash out at those nearest to them. The historical gender system denied their fathers their manhood which the sons are trying to regain, the traditionalist cultural system of gender has miseducated them, the education system has warped their sense of social equality, and the economic system excludes them. Men’s violence, then, often enough functions towards deflecting their internal states of vulnerability of being a surplus group. They get violent with women or engage in fights with other men to deal with feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, abandonment or insecurity. Some of this violence will go unremarked or have any visible consequence. Yet this violence is what puts a man at risk of dying violently. In a situation where another man is unwilling to walk away or talk things over, the ensuing argument is likely to result in injury or death of one of the protagonists. As the South African police have said, over 50% of what they call “social fabric-related murders and attempted murders result from arguments which subsequently deteriorate into fights”.

White young men don't die at the same rates as black young men because they have much better protection. They have far more opportunities to achieve culturally successful manhood without resorting to physical violence. And unlike young black men, the socio-economic fabric around young white males does not need as much repairing.       

Fashioning Masculinity Retrospective 1 - Making Visible Uncelebrated Black Manhoods

Fashioning Masculinity, the event we anticipated and prepared for over the last seven months has come and gone. We are hoping the event starts a tradition of thinking about men as men with nuanced and careful deliberation.

In the first of a series of posts, I want to tell you some about the making of the event, and let you into some of the unseen activities that went into this new tradition we are trying to start. Now granted, we borrowed, like most traditions do from elsewhere. Masculinities and the thinking around it and its contestations has a history and we are inheritors and borrowers and also we would like to think innovators in this conversation about the makings of men.

The history of masculinity, as a concept that is good to think with, is tied to feminism of course and the recognition that gender is an organizing feature of society. Feminism, in turn, moves to resist patriarchy and overturn the oppression of women. Thus, the genesis of masculinity studies is aimed at understanding men as men. Feminist masculinity scholars  and activists are connected by the desire to uncover how and why men as a gender receive patriarchal dividends from the subjugation of females, de Beauvoir's second sex. Progressive black masculinity studies are provoked by black men's condition as oppressed, suffering from an unformed, deformed or denied masculinity, escaping into alcohol, drugs, rape, unsafe sex and beating black women. (This reality of black women bearing the brunt of black men's anger of course occurs in the world despite the mostly unfounded fears and discourse of white women as the object of black men's insatiable lusts). Right there we can see the ties to Black Studies. And then of course there is Critical Race and Subaltern Studies which make sense of black man's violence through the concepts of alienation and hypermasculinity driven by deprivation and inequality.

Kopano Ratele's innovation in this tradition is to consider black men not merely from their pains and psychic wounds but from their transcendence of their wounds. For every one black man who does not abuse a woman, there are at least three who live in the world with kindness, gentleness, community of spirit and care; this despite suffering the pangs of hunger, want in a world that maligns and wounds them in ways too large to comprehend and so small  we barely think it significant. How have these men been fashioned? Which traditions of care and self-love are they drawing upon? And how can we reproduce these traditions to create a kinder, gentler and enabling world for everyone? The stories of the good and nurturing black father, lover, son, brother, friend, colleague and comrade, the ones we can learn from, are largely unwritten, untold and unexplored. Some of these stories are as inspiring as they are common like that of Tyrese Bani and Vuyani Mnyamana, young men who grew up hard but have learned that disciplining the body can be a vehicle to changing oneself on the route to elsewhere. The statuesque Tyrese Bani from Port Elizabeth is a model and budding photographer doing his Bachelor of Arts degree. The articulate science student, body-builder Vuyani Mnyamana, has a low centre of gravity and a cool demeanour. Both are completing their studies at the University of the Western Cape. When they start to talk about working on their bodies at the gym, getting up at 5am before they go to their classes, something else you can't miss is how men are made, not born.  You also see and hear what is there, and made possible by other black men, but very much ignored in favour of the tsotsi, skelm and swagerring dominant image of young black men. 

 

Model Tyrese Bani and body-builder Vuyani Mnyamana, both students at UWC, in conversation with masculinity scholar Kopano Ratele and Kharnita Mohamed (not in picture) of the Institute for Social and Health Science's Programme on Traditions and Transformation, at the Fashioning Masculinity event on 16 August 2011



This starting premise, of masculinity of care, is what founded the Fashioning Masculinity event, and the series of events to follow: a critical exploration of black manhood that is not mired in despair. We desire to start a conversation about a black man many of us recognise in our everyday dealings with the men who sit around our boardroom tables, in our offices, at our dinner tables and who share our beds, our homes, our blood. When we stop to think about them, these good black men, we blindly count ourselves lucky and treat them as exceptions and not as a seventy-five percent majority, so as to comfortably hold onto the stereotypes of that other black man raging in a township, a suburb, or a mansion somewhere.

Are we trying to excuse and ignore the pain and suffering caused by the angry black man so wounded he is cannibalising himself and those around him? No! We are trying to make visible the unacknowledged, uncelebrated, everyday and kind black manhoods that already exist. We are trying to surface the kind of masculinities that already exist not in our academic perches but in the same township, suburb or mansion in the tired and yet persevering voice of a man trying to advise another on a better way to live with himself and those who love and/or would love him. These are the masculinities that men like Stephen Mentor, men's programme coordinator at CASE, is also trying to bring to the surface. Working out of Hanover Park on the Cape flats, a place riven by endemic structural, direct, and psychical violence Mentor and his male and female colleagues are trying to heal and change men's relationshisp with other men and women in their lives so as to change the place.



Stephen Mentor, men's programme coordinator at CASE, speaking about presenting the organisation's work in Hanover Park at the Fashioning Masculinity event


In allowing ourselves to rethink traditions of masculinity, we hope to provide space for positive traditions that exist to thrive. One thing that I was reminded of by Nadia Sanger and Melanie Judge at the event is that masculinity is not just tied to having a penis. Disconnecting masculinity from penises brings us to the optimistic realisation that traditions can be transformed to make all of us, men and women, girls and boys, flourish.
  




Feminists Nadia Sanger and Melanie Judge at Fashioning Masculinity event, MRC, 16 August 2011

 

Public Seminar on Masculinities, Gender-based Violence Prevention and Gender Equality in the Global South

Sonke Gender Justice Network, Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust, and the Women’s Health Unit at the University of Cape Town will be hosting a public seminar under the title: Conversations on Masculinities, Gender-based Violence Prevention and Gender Equality in the Global South. The seminar is to be held on Monday 8^th August 2011, 17h30 to 19h30, at the Lesley Social Sciences Building, University of Cape Town. The speakers are Dr Gary Barker, founding director of Instituto Promundo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Washington, DC, USA who is also founding co-chair of the Global MenEngage Alliance; Mazibuko Jara, Senior Researcher in the Law, Race and Gender Research Unit, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and Kopano Ratele, Professor in the Institute of Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa, who is also co-director of the Medical Research Council-University of South Africa's Safety and Peace Promotion Research Unit and member of Sonke Gender Justice Network board. Professor Diane Cooper, Director of Women's Health Research Unit in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at University of Cape Town will act moderator.

Fashioning Masculinity

Fashioning masculinity is an interdisciplinary event hosted by the University of South Africa’s Institute for Social and Health Sciences’ (ISHS) Programme on Traditions and Transformation (POTT) Changing Traditions strategic project. This event will be focused on men and the ways in which they are fashioned and fashion themselves.

Men fashion themselves every day, through the clothes they wear, the demeanor they inhabit and/or the bodies they build and groom. Men’s clothes and bodies signify social meanings like status, geographic location, race, ethnicity, affiliations, aspiration and generation. Even the absence of ‘conscious’ self-stylization is gendered. Both a mechanic in grease-covered overalls and a male executive in his uniform, the corporate suit express particular kinds of masculinity. Men’s bodies and clothing act as visual symbols of different types of manhood. Clothing and particular kinds of bodies therefore enable and produce articulations of differing masculinities. However, neither clothing nor the bodies of men exist outside of tradition as they are subject to a system of recognition. We assume a man in a suit is some kind of corporate executive and a man in grease-covered overalls is a mechanic as these are their traditional forms of attire. This event will look at this relationship between fashioning, masculinity and tradition.

Fashioning masculinity aims to enable interesting and inventive ideas to emerge about tradition and the traditions, historical and contemporary of masculine self-fashioning, men’s representation and stylization in the streets, media and fashion industry.

Fashioning Masculinity will launch the Changing Traditions Project 2011 theme - Changing Traditions: Everyday Lives of African Men. It is the first of three events and will culminate in the biennial travelling pitso in Ethiopia in November. Changing Traditions’ is a trans-disciplinary, international and Africa-centered undertaking that focuses on the traditions surrounding the production of wealth, identity, peace, and equality.

You are cordially invited to submit an abstract for Fashioning Masculinity. Please distribute the call for participation widely.

Deadline for abstracts: 25 July 2011

For further information contact:

Kharnita Mohamed kmohamed@mrc.ac.za 021 938-0478

Candice Rule crule@mrc.ac.za 021-938-0535

A dozen leading thinkers working in Africa who take men seriously

Over and over we get asked the question: Why men? Few people realize that it is possible to be male, a feminist, an African and to recognize that men as men should be a serious object of inquiry. Not because men means human, as earlier feminists have taught us but that feminism itself has changed. Here are 12 leading thinkers working in Africa, in alphabetical order, who consider masculinities a critical object of study. You should invite them to your corner if you want to know why investigate African men.



Mbuyiselo Botha



1 Mbuyiselo Botha

2 Lindsay Clowes

3 Malose Langa

4 Anne Mager

5 Nyameka Mankayi

6 Sakhumzi Mfecane

Anne Mager

7 Robert Morrell

8 Dean Peacock

9 Kopano Ratele

10 Graeme Reid

11 Tammy Shefer

12 Thembisa Waetjen 

 

Of course this isn’t an exhaustive list. But it is pretty close. There may be others whose work you believe belongs alongside these thinkers. Tell us.

You will notice something peculiar about the list. Almost all of these people are based in South Africa, which is open to several interpretations.


Above all though, it is concerning. How can it be that there are no thinkers working in the rest of Africa who consider men’s genders as worthy of critical intellectual attention?  And if it is not the case, why have we not heard about them?

We got to budge and make some room around the braai for others

Years back I picked up Manthia Diawara’s We won’t budge: An African exile in the world because it looked like the sort of book that interests me. The blurb, and read me. Flipped through the contets and I said, buy. I did. Read the book and obviously didn't forget it. Liked the story and narrative style quite a bit.  

At the end of the book Diawara intersperses his memories of starting a new job as pantry man at a restaurant with remembered feelings about gor-jigen, jege and jaa. This is a moment full of contradiction, but illumination too.

Gor-jigen, jege and jaa were local terms used in the Bamako of the author's young days for man-woman, cowardice in males, homosexuality. Back then a job in the pantry was associated with femininity, gays, or one might say, deficient manliness. I suspect there might be some of that associated with men preparing vichyssoise or salad in restaurant still. There are of course other kinds of jobs and other activities in different places with similar associations.

In Cape Town they have other words with like associations, like moffie. In Johannesburg townships they have is’tabane. In other cities they will have other words. What all these names and labels have in common is that they underline the importance of sexuality to masculinity.

A fascinating narrative about what it means to be young in Mali, arriving in France in 1972, and ending up in the US, We won’t budge, which was published in 2003 and has sold thousands of copies, is not really about masculinity. Then again, it is. Very much so.

So what is it about? It is about an Amadou Diallo getting killed in America, young people wanting to get out of African countries to Europe and the US; about exile, home, identity and alienation; about music, Africa’s failures, racism, migration and writing; about kin and family ties, getting caught up between tradition and modernity, globalization, cultural assimilation, and cosmopolitanism. Is that all? No, actually. The book is about many things. It is after all a story “about how one African sees the world”. And this African sees and reflects on quite a number of things of the world he travels. It would be better if you read it for yourself.

One question that has bugged me for a while is why does a memoirist who spins such a good yarn fail to underline that this tale is about African men as a gender, about their powerlessness and power, their hardships, evasions, triumphs, fights, and freedoms? Because the question of African males as men, imbricated with the question of African men as Africans, is one that has tended to get barely a look. 

Men's gender power games, troubles and pains is one gaping hole in many stories of the failures on the continent or inequalities within countries. To be sure, looking into this man-hole changed only around two decades ago; but not by men here. (Interestingly it has been mostly African women who have investigate manhood). And, where change about how to think of the economic, political and cultural problems created and expereinced by men has come to these parts, it's been very slow.

Even then, the consequences for societies arising out of men’s gender practices still get short shrift, left, it seems, to sexually, frustrated women, lesbians, wacky feminists, sellouts, brainwashed men, gays, and queers in general.

Why is it so hard to recognise that masculinity is a key axis of social divisions between not only men and women but also intra-male group struggles? The thing is, how a man imagines himself is the flipside of how he views women. How a man loves a woman can’t but be about the cultural construction of manhood. The way one “holds” his body, “pictures” women, views other men, drives, gives his name to his offspring, names his penis, names women’s genitalia, drinks, prays, sings, shakes hands, kisses and braais – these being only some of many signs – are instructive because they are markers used to “separate man from boy”, not only boys from girls.

The moral of the story? How you hold your body around the braai is what ties you as one sort to your men-tribe. That can’t be too difficult to comprehend.

It is, though, one moral of this story. The main theme is that doing stuff in order to affirm masculinity can be everywhere but usually remains unspoken.

I have my eye trained on a map of Africa, but I have the world in my head. If you look and listen closely, men’s innocent activities, including writing about their activities, are the marrow of social power. What one needs to do is simply point them out, to speak about them. That is where to start.

To be sure, in themselves, as activities that make you sweat or test you’re your limits, rock climbing or playing footsie are ok, actually. Yet there is no getting around the fact that time-use highly favours powerful men – and the rest of the male group gets the patriarchal dividend. Unless a man has a few slaves at home to cook for him, intellectually stimulate his pre-teen son, bathe his infant daughter, and wait for him with nothing but do-me-bad-stilettos on the kitchen counter, me-time for men is time to cash in some hegemonic masculinity shares. Unless, that is, the use of time has been democratically negotiated, paid for or agreed to let none say there is no sweetness to be king of one's shack.

Doing stuff that on the surface appears to have nothing to do with men’s power over women and other men while it is precisely about patriarchal masculinity is of course how tradition works. At its most effective, tradition never announces itself by name. It happens while we appear to be doing, or not doing, other things – like not washing dishes, like watching rugby, like sitting in a strip club, like sitting on company boards with other men.

A publisher’s blurb and customer reviews of We won’t budge can be found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.ca/We-Wont-Budge-African-Exile/dp/0465017096

A 2006 review of We won’t budge published in The Independent newspaper in the United Kingdom appears here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/we-wont-budge-by-manthia-diawara-469225.html