Protect the Penis and Vanquish the Vagina

So dear JZ doesn’t like the fact that (an imitation of) his genitals is on display. The ANC marches for human dignity and the Zuma children are pissed off that everyone can see their dad’s dick (wasn’t that the case before the painting was exhibited anyway). All because Brett Murray decided to paint the Presidential Penis. Big woop. I am sitting in the Netherlands, a country with more water, sheep and types of cheese than I care to count. A country whose inhabitants I have happily boasted to about how beautiful my homeland is. And yet, no matter how lovingly I describe the landscape, people and culture, the question that is always asked is “Is it safe there?”. And what, may I ask, can I possibly say to that except “No”. Holland is a country where it is perfectly acceptable for young girls to ride their bikes around the neighbourhood at night and for children to walk to school without being mugged. It is a country where women do not have to fear the man walking on the opposite side of the street, and where locking your car doors means you’re paranoid, not careful. My aunt, who lives here, tells me that when slowing down at a traffic circle once, a man tried to open her car door. Screaming, she kept one hand on the steering wheel and did her best to stop him getting into the car, when it turns out that all he wanted was to ask for directions. My intention is not to start a Europe vs. Africa debate, or tell my fellow Seffricans back home that Europe is so much better. It’s not. There are aspects of this society that are so backward I need a whole other post to discuss them. (Let me just mention that people are still able to smoke in some restaurants here. Ja. Smoking. Remember that?) But what I am saying is that while I am trying hard to enjoy a trip that I have paid through my arse to finance I can’t help but be dismayed at the media attention, time and government finances that are being thrown at a little prick that (was) on display in a Johannesburg gallery, when the safety of a good portion of South Africans is threatened daily.

All over South Africa, women are being raped, abused and murdered. Women are told to fear men or seek their protection, not see them as equals. The penis stands for a lot of things in our country, and not many of those are positive. Like the spear (the one that is used in battle, not this fucking painting), it is capable of violence.

And yet the polygamous president of the country with some of the highest rape statistics in the world and who himself was the subject of a highly publicised rape trial a few years ago (remember that anyone?), is a little pissed off because now we have all seen (an artist’s impression of) his member?

Forgive me for going Germaine Greer on you, but really, when is it going to be the Vagina’s time to shine? Or to get a little attention? Yes, the vagina, remember it? The female reproductive organs which get more time plastered across pornographic websites and in hospitals where they are sewn up and tended to after being brutalised by men than they do in the South African spotlight. I can’t actually imagine half our country getting worked up about a vagina being depicted against its will in a gallery, because in South Africa, the vagina is objectified every day, in every way, and at every stage of its development. The female body is ripped apart by the male gaze, subject to digital manipulation and visual dissection. Not an hour goes by when a woman’s body is not violated in some way. It is so insidious that we don’t bother to question it anymore. We just accept that it is part of life. Natural.

And yet, when our president is himself exposed and objectified, he fails to use this opportunity to gain insight into the female experience. He has just encountered the plethora of emotions that accompany bodily objectification; feelings of vulnerability, loss of dignity and hurt pride, having gone through what South African women endure on a daily basis, and he doesn’t use this position to empathise with the members of his population who experience this everyday? Fuck him man. One man’s genitals are on show and the whole country gets excited. Really? REALLY?

Forgive me for not caring for JZ’s human dignity one bit. While our president SHOULD be attending to the little problem of, oh, say, baby rape, for instance, he sits in a corner and licks his wounds, sending his legal cronies to fight what shouldn’t be a battle to begin with. This self-obsessed, power-hungry polygamist is wasting legal resources, time and money fighting an unsuspecting artist who painted his winky, when there is a war on women’s bodies going on right under his nose.

How could women possibly live safe, dignified lives in a country run by a phallic-occupied man who has more wives than brain cells? What is the possibility of escaping objectification, sexual violence and injustice in a country that spends more taxpayers’ money trying to shackle its artists than its rapists? And really, let’s be honest here, how can we ever expect to escape the frightening possibility of our daughters, sisters, mothers and wives having unwanted penises thrust into them, when our country is more focused on the member that exacts this damage, rather than the vagina’s who bear the brunt of it?

Very little I’m afraid. Vanquish the vagina and protect the penis.

We live in a perverse society.

Let us live and strive for freedom in South Africa men’s land.