Kneo Mokgopa - Manager: Communications & Advocacy
News
Content notice: Graphic description of acts of gender-based violence
“You want to understand how power works in any society, watch who is carrying the shame and who is doing the shaming.”
Shailja Patel
Growing up, I was taught all kinds of myths about Black women. I was taught, on the playground, in Disney films and from the
Generations soapie that women are delicate things, that women are unambitious and are happiest waiting for men. That Black women who worked were lesser women who could not attract a man. I was taught that women were bad, that Eve created sin, that when women menstruate, their presence rots the meat, curds the milk and curses the people she may be around. That, when women masturbate, birds come to the windowsill to whistle “Lovin’ You” by Minnie Riperton. That girls have cooties. That the pursuit of women will bring you nothing but misery. Through the legend of virginity, I was taught that only men could make girls into women by penetrating them, that women feel no joy from sex but ‘give it up’ to please men whom it is women’s duty to please. Amongst all of this absurdity of myths and lies, I was taught that Black women are not human, but domestic agents, unintellectual and absent from history.