The time to coddle men is long gone. There is no more time to beat around the bush or be nice. Patriarchy is real and it is harmful to women and we need it to stop. The Men Are Trash movement is a testament to this. The Men Are Trash movement is, if anything, a cry for help. And still, men are still not listening.
For years, women have been trying to get attention on their oppression; their abuse. Women organise marches and events, trying to engage men on their suffering. Statistics shows that the femicide rate in South Africa is five times higher than any other femicide rate in the world. In South Africa, one in three girls is raped or will get raped. These are very real statistics. These are statistics that show very specific violence towards women. It is sad that The Men Are Trash movement got the attention of men more than these statistics.
What men fail to understand time and time again is that the movement is not a personal attack. It is a systematic attack. There is a system, especially in South Africa, that allows people to get away with violence against women. Even more, South African black men are bred to oppress women. A black boy will not learn to do domestic work around the house until he is sixteen or seventeen; sometimes he never has to do it in his whole life. This is especially the case when he has sisters for siblings. A black girl on the other hand, starts being domestic from the age of the ten. Black boys and black girls are raised differently in the same household. They are held at different standards. A girl is told that she must be back in the house before the sun sets while a boy can go out the whole night and come back the following day with little to no consequences. An adolescent girl who is promiscuous (as all adolescents are) will be reprimanded and shamed; made to believe her promiscuity is the stepping stone for her failure while an adolescent boy’s promiscuity will often be ignored or even encouraged, believed to be a sign of his impending manhood. Black men are taught to express their manhood at the expense of black women. All this, sets the ground work for the violence that men display towards women in adulthood.
Men Are Trash is trying to bring attention to this systematic violence. We all know that the world, especially South Africa, is not safe for girls. This is why girls are told to come back to the house earlier, told not to dress in certain clothes and encouraged to not drink. This is because men in South Africa have a strange sense of entitlement towards women’s bodies. They view a women walking late, or dressed in a revealing manner or not sober as an invitation. It has been normalised, become a part of our daily lives. More strangely, it is women who are blamed for violence they do not unleash on themselves. Men Are Trash is critiquing the system that allows this.
What is most interesting to note is men’s exceptionalism. In a classroom, when a lecturer comes in and says the class failed the test, it is understood that although there may be a few people who passed, the majority failed and that there was a fundamental problem in the way that particular topic was taught or understood by students. When we speak of black South Africans being poor, it is understood that every black South African is poor but the majority is poor and that shows a fundamental flaw in the way our economic system is set up. However, when we speak Men Are Trash, suddenly men want the focus to be shifted to the few men who might not be trash, saying ‘not all men’. For starters, the ‘not all men’ rhetoric is nonsense and is just as violent: every single man is a beneficiary of patriarchy, whether they like it or not. Also, even the ‘good’ men are still trash because they are enablers. ‘Good’ men do not call out their friends when they are being inappropriate. ‘Good’ men will know about their friend who is abusing their partner but will not say anything. ‘Good’ men will sit and have drinks with people who perpetuate rape culture. They will laugh at jokes that are at the expense of women. They will listen in, even participate, in the slutshaming of women and they will, at no point, say: ‘hey, that’s not cool.’ Husbands watch while their wives are emotionally abused by in laws. There are men who perform the violence and there are men watch it get done. Even more mind blowing, men want to be applauded for being decent human beings. If a man does not violate a woman when she is drunk or treats a woman with basic respect, they want a reward. This is one, a true testament to the fact that men are so trash that those who supposedly ‘are not’ feel they deserve some kind of reward. Two, it is a display of men’s entitlement. Men want to be rewarded for simply being decent humans.
Men are trash for not grasping the concept behind Men Are Trash. There is an outcry by women for men to do some self-introspection, to have some accountability and yet, men are still not listening. Instead they choose to defend their violence against women, choose to deflect it. Men Are Trash is harsh; I’ll give a little on that. No one wants to be associated with something dirty, useless and disposable (coincidentally, that is how black men make black women feel every day). But, Men Are Trash is also accurate. The harshness of it all is necessary because there is no more time to be polite. We are in crisis mode and men are oblivious to this. Women are suffocating in all the violence, the oppression and the unfairness of it all. We are asking men to participate and do the emotional labour with women. Sometimes, participating does not mean talking. Sometimes, it just means listening and listening with understanding. We are asking for men to listen.
The most important thing we can do as a society is hold both men and women to the same standards. This means raising children the same way. Let’s teach young boys consent, teach them independence and teach them masculinity that does not depend on the oppression of women and violence of women instead of teaching girls that they are born to serve at the pleasure of men. Let’s teach boys not to be violent instead of teaching girls ways to accommodate men’s violence. As adults, let’s speak out when we see an injustice. It is not easy. It will not win you a trophy at the popularity contest but it is the right thing to do.