"I am Going to Show you, you are a Woman."

Taken from this article on the 'Lezget Real' website - definitely worth a read.

"Her attacker acted like an animal who wanted to kill, strangling her with barbed wire;  “I thought he was going to kill me; he was like an animal. And he kept saying: ‘I know you are a lesbian. You are not a man, you think you are, but I am going to show you, you are a woman. I am going to make you pregnant. I am going to kill you.”  The attacker was known To Gaika, a neighbor."

These words spoken to a young lesbian woman while she is being brutally raped by a man who has beef with the fact that she is a woman who is not heterosexual, who does not conform to the so-called prescribed gender roles that society dictates and who is simply expressing the person she truly is. For this she must suffer.

It's obvious, I don't have to call out the blatant misogyny here. This is about power, it's about reifying male dominance in a patriarchal society. Nothing more, nothing less. South Africa and much of Africa is still very far behind when it comes to embracing progressive notions on gender, gender identification and sexual orientation. Most of this nation's citizens still seem to be under the impression that there are set roles that men and women should play which under no circumstances should be violated. Stuck in the Dark Ages and failing to rise to a new level.