EUSEBIUS MCKAISER | GBV is a men's problem: here's what we can do about it

A well-known South African author told me how he and his friends accidentally came to the realisation that they were all implicated in rape culture.

They went away for a boys' weekend, which they do annually, and on one of the evenings, someone told a story of having had sex with a woman who had initially “played hard to get”. He had worked on her apparent resistance by being relentless with his “macking”, and when they were alone, he worked on getting her to physically give way to his bodily pressure, to let him kiss and penetrate her vaginally.

They went around the circle and, without exception, every man had a similar story.

Some of the men are married or in committed relationships.

The social context of the sharing had been lighthearted conversation, locker room chatter moved to the bush for the weekend. But at some point, there was a moment of unspoken collective reckoning, he told me, that none of the women had consented to sex. The intended fun of sharing macking stories gave way to awkward quiet.

The story is fascinating on many levels. First, it was only in our conversation that this author mentioned the word “rape” and the term “rape culture”. Yet these stories are, straightforwardly, confessions of rape. A guy who confesses to penetrating a woman vaginally without her consent is not just telling an “awkward story” but simultaneously admitting to being a rapist.

The language, even when we think we are owning up, can be designed to reduce legal and moral culpability. The full description of the circle of sharing is that stories of rape were shared by men who are friends, who admitted to each having raped someone at least once.

It is not the intention to titillate by framing it that plainly. It is important to be accurate as a matter of justice for victims and survivors. The full crime must be acknowledged. It is important, grammatically, to use the active voice, with a clear reference to a male agent who acted wrongly, rather than using passive voice formations — “a sexual violation took place” — so that we describe the wrongdoer and the wrong before we reference the person who was harmed.

Second, these are “decent men”. Men who could be found online condemning rape and rape culture. They are dads who worry about their daughters' safety in a country with our infamously high number of sexual crimes. Some are fluent in the grammar of feminism. In other words, these confessions of rape demonstrate what we should know but don't want to remind ourselves: that all men are capable of attacking someone else. There is no template for a rapist.

It is false to think that only poor men or working-class men or formally uneducated men or men working on construction sites are misogynists. Even men in suits who sound like allies in the fight for gender justice could be perpetrators of violence against women. No men are inherently incapable of violence.

Third, the author's story underlies our collective culpable silence as men. The confessions didn't lead to self-examination, self-rebuke or collective mutual accountability. The confessions led to “awkward” silence.

It was a missed opportunity.

One of the hardest things to do when working with boys and men is to build a so-called safety container, a psychological space within which honest, vulnerable and productive conversation can happen, and healing work can be done.

Men are scared of the consequences of owning up. A rape confession is a confession to having committed a crime. But here you had lifelong friends who love each other, safely away for the weekend from anyone who could hear them, and still they ended the stories wistfully, rather than directing them towards questions of accountability and future-orientated, behaviour-related themes.

And I get it. It is easier to write an essay that puts boys and men on trial ethically than it is to work with boys and men to help shift harmful beliefs, attitudes and values, and to change behaviour. If we want boys and men to be less of a threat to themselves, to other boys and men, and to the rest of the population, we will need to use a complex set of tools to get us to where we need to go.

Blunt legal instruments, especially in a country with ineffectual policing and low conviction rates, will not make society safer. The root issues — eliminating the countless unhealthy masculinities present in our communities and the associated harmful cultural norms — must be tackled. This takes time, patience and multiple psychosocial strategies and partnerships. There is no magic wand to get us where we need to be.

When opportunities are created by activists, specialists or organisations who work in these areas, men should sign up enthusiastically, for several reasons. All of us are works-in-progress, including men who take up leadership roles at camps and within forums that discuss these topics. You do not need to be an exemplar of gender justice before you get involved.

Unlearning the norms is hard work, so rest assured that all men, myself included, have work to do. Your ethical lapses do not make you an anomaly. But it is your choice — and responsibility — to chip away at the toxicity rather than move through the world with your toxicity intact.

Eliminating harmful masculinity is not just about making the world a safer place for women. But it is also liberating for men to let go of ridiculous expectations of what it means to be “a real man” or “a strong man”. We owe it to ourselves to become more fully human. Tackling toxic masculinity benefits all of us. It is not an anti-male agenda.

A good starting point is to learn the basics of emotional literacy. Kiss your son goodnight or tell your male bestie that you love them. Give yourself permission to cry, and to say you are not OK when you aren't. Developing healthier masculinities starts with the basics, such as holding space for boys and men to not pretend to be heroes.

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