In his recent memoir Siya Khumalo includes feminist critiques of men and homophobia.
I once heard some of my friends discuss violence against women. Without exception, they, male and female, agreed it was unacceptable for a man to hit a woman who is not his own girlfriend. Consider, also, a conversation I overheard at a bus stop. ‘I don’t date a man who doesn’t beat me,’ one woman was saying. Her friends thought this was excessive; it was enough for him to warn and threaten to beat her, wasn’t it?
But the first woman’s argument was, how would she know that he really cared to have her (and have her to himself) unless his jealousy and possessiveness boiled over now and then? … By offering her body to patriarchy’s son, this lady at the bus stop was serving her role in the tribe perfectly.”
The woman who needed to be beaten, Khumalo says, was helping to reinforce the culture of wife-beating. She had become an advocate for her own victimization, seeing violence against women as a necessary proof that men were … I don’t know … too stupid to resolve disputes without fists? so incontinent with their feelings that they easily lost control? only strong enough to pick a fight with a weaker opponent?
Hatred of gay people is of a piece with wifebeating, Khumalo says.
Homophobia isn’t a stand-alone prejudice. It’s normalised so all other violence and bigotry may be tolerated when it comes.
Tolerable prejudices are the gateway drug to harder stuff, the solvent in which the next scapegoating prejudice can dissolve.
No one who hates his brother, whom he has seen, can claim to love God, whom he has not seen.
source:
You Have to Be Gay to Know God
Siya Khumalo
2018. Kwela Books, Cape Town, South Africa
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