before 2017, i knew nothing about feminism, rape culture and #MenAreTrash. in some ways, I even thought it was ridiculous.
but even then, i had not catcalled a girl, let alone touch her without her consent.
this is a thread.

what I did do, though, is see these things happen and look the other way. i saw sexual violence and I looked the other way. i wish I knew better.

but I want to make a few points. the first one is that you don’t need to bury your head in anti-SGBV in order to respect women and their agency to consent. when you see women as your equals, their agency becomes important to you.

when you see women as people who have choice, you begin seek it.
so, even if you don’t know about the complex set of ideas and norms that drive SGBV, you would not commit it because you see women as human.

so, a lack of awareness should never be used to justify rape. a large part of SGBV has absolutely nothing to do with awareness.
men know what consent is— it’s something we do often. what men don’t believe is that women should be given an opportunity to consent to sexual acts.

the second point is, you should probably read up on anti-SGBV literature.
most people look the other way because they look at SGBV in an isolated way.
many people don’t know the extent to which SGBV occurs in society.

in a word where we saw SGBV and its root causes the same way we see other social injustices, we would all call it out every chance we got.

when the #FishRot story broke, there was a sudden, sustained and wide wave of people calling out corruption. it was because that story showed the extent to which corruption exists and how heavy its effects are on the Namibian economy.

last year, when the stories broke, we genuinely saw a great deal of men call out SGBV. it was good to see, but that reality was short lived. it was short lived because we would soon realize that calling out rape means calling out patriarchy. this is my third point.

the cornerstone of our society is patriarchy. most of the way we relate to each other and most of how we (especially men) is based on patriarchal beliefs.
fighting rape requires us to introspect and divorce ourselves from those beliefs. it’s easy for some, it’s hard for others.

so, at the beginning, we thought it was all nice and cute sympathizing with the survivors. then we realized that we would need to call out our friends, sever ties with people, change the way we do things, and that was it. we continued tweeting about soccer.

we also realized that dismantling this system meant that we lose some of our privilege. patriarchy is privilege. it’s a system of power. breaking down rape means breaking down patriarchy. this is my final point.

rape is a consequence of patriarchy. a fight against rape is therefore a fight against patriarchy.
if patriarchy is about giving social power to men and excluding women from it; then fighting against rape is about taking power back. it’s about demanding and not asking for it.

so, no. feminists will not be kind. they will not pet our feelings. they will label you if you’re not progressive enough to unlearn your harmful beliefs. they will hold judicial instruments to account. they will do whatever they think is necessary to take that power back.