What is shaping culture? Men, trash?

Much of the focus regarding Men Are Trash is that men themselves need to start standing up and being better men, in front of other men or at least calling out those that speak about or treat others poorly.

What is certain, is that there is a definite disconnect between the ideology and the understanding of it. So, we decided to forget the literature research and instead focus on exploring it via podcast with as many people as we could to get a clearer view of how they understood the term. We started with comedian and entertainer Siv Ngesi who was in Toronto, Canada at the time. Siv is very vocal about the sins of man and is determined to have his voice heard loudly and often. He is not known as a shrinking violet; his forthrightness and fury were palpable even from as far away as Toronto.

“... you know the problem is definitely toxic masculinity ... I was at the marches, and I can tell you, I don’t think it’s going to get better, I think it’s going to get worse.”

‘Getting worse’ is hardly the way we want this to go and, in the age of corona/Covid-19, who is protecting people from gender-based violence, with some locked away with those who abuse them? The government put a pause on alcohol sales for just these sorts of reasons, the men of our country cannot be trusted, and especially not when they have alcohol as an excuse.

An evocative image from last year was the image of the protests shot from above parliament, the absolute mass of people protesting gender-based violence was in equal parts inspiring and horrifying. How can so many people come out in support, and yet people in South Africa are still being attacked at rates unseen globally.

“I find this #notallMenAreTrash thing funny. #MenAreTrash is a movement against patriarchy, rape culture, sexism and female abuse. What is #notallMenAreTrash about? Defending male dignity? Hao … who said anything about your dignity, fam? #MenAreTrash was never an attack on male dignity. You have created a response movement that isn’t even a response to what we are saying. We are saying ‘women are being raped and killed’, you are saying ‘but I’m a decent guy’. Do you see, we aren’t even having a conversation at all? You are not listening. That’s your biggest liability.” – Tumelo

This paragraph above really evokes the emotions coming out of the #MenAreTrash side of the discussion, but it continues to be a stumbling block. Many commentators are worried about the damage being done to the male psyche when they are being called ‘trash’.

Rape culture begins right at the baseline of abuse, catcalling, rape jokes, locker room banter etc. These are the elements of Rape Culture and all men are guilty of at some point, whether they did it or they remained silent as men around them did it; this is why the term works.

The Rape Culture Pyramid created by Jaime Chandra and Cervix in 2018 shows how the broader South African culture props up rape culture by allowing seemingly lesser abuses to be tolerated. The more we tolerate ‘innocent’ behaviour, the more we tacitly tolerate rape.

This pyramid is one of the vital elements to consider to understand the sentiment behind Men Are Trash. It’s a scale that shows the layers of what constitutes unacceptable behaviour, and a measure for all men to hold their actions against, when they evaluating if they are in fact part of the problem or not.

As a parting thought, I’ll leave you with the words of entertainment mogul, Munya Chanetsa, who had this realisation directly after the podcast interview:

“After some more thought, we shouldn't be called 'good guys'. This is incorrect. We should be called 'normal guys' because we shouldn't be raping and shit in the first place. You can’t get a gold star for not doing something you SHOULDN'T be doing. The whole narrative needs to change.”