Sexing the Subtext, Vol.8 Issue 3

Volume 8 Issue 3

ctglobalist.com

The Cape Town

Globalist U C T’s st ude n t int er nat ional af fairs m ag a z i ne

Sexing the Subtext The Cape Town Globalist

aids

|

porn

|

fan fiction

|

bonobos

1

15 million

South Africans have no access to basic sanitation

40% of households in Cape Town’s informal settlements have no access to basic sanitation

360 murdered

in Khayelitsha last year, on average one a day

2

Find out more and support our work

call: email: website: facebook: twitter:

+27 21 361 8160 info@sjc.org.za www.sjc.org.za Social Justice Coalition @sjcoalition

The Social Justice Coalition (SJC) is a grassroots social movement campaigning for safe, healthy and dignified communities in some of South Africa’s largest, most under-developed and dangerous townships.

The SJC’s main focus area is Khayelitsha, Cape Town, home to more than half a million people, most of whom live in shacks made of wood and metal sheeting.

With branches across Khayelitsha and working with many other organisations, the SJC promotes active citenzenship through education, policy, research and community organising to ensure that government is accountable, open and responsive.

The SJC’s two primary campaigns are Clean and Safe Sanitation and Justice for All. Through these campaigns we seek to improve access to and quality of some of the most basic services and rights guaranteed in our Constitution.

visit us:

Khayelitsha Office SHAWCO Centre, G323 Mongezi Rd, H Section Site C, Khayelitsha Cape Town, 7784 AUGUST 2013

Contents

Editor-in-Chief Amy Thornton Deputy Editor Chris Clark Content Editors Chantel Clark Anade Situma Ashleigh Furlong Alicia Chamaille Layout Editor Daniel Rautenbach Deputy Layout Editor Aimee Dyamond

Appetisers

Sexing The Subtext

6

15

Infinite Gender

18

Sanitation and Sex Offenders

News bites Tidbits you may have missed

8 Q&A with Professor David Benatar

9

Armchair Globalist Defining Human Trafficking

CTG President Carissa Cupido Marketing Chantel Clark Finance Aimee Hare Contributors Alexandra Swanepoel Alicia Chamaille Ashleigh Furlong Charlotte Scott Fadzai Muramba Gareth Smit Kirsty Rice Lori-Rae van Laren Lyndall Thwaits Melissa Newham Rolf Rhodes Sinead Power Sofia Monteiro Zarreen Kamalie

A photo essay exploring the borders of gender

The relevance of sanitation to sexual security

20 Fistulas

The hidden affliction of African women 22

The Upside on AIDS

Where we are winning the war on AIDS

24

Supply and Desire

25

Monkey Business

The economics of sex Bonobos: the ‘Erotic Ape’

News 10

The Salad Revolution Insight into protests in Brazil

11

Shifting Sands

12

Transitions of power in Egypt and Zimbabwe

The March of the Turks Civil rights in Turkey

Cover: James Ballance

The Cape Town Globalist is published four times a year by students at the University of Cape Town. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Cape Town Globalist, the publication sponsors, the University of Cape Town, or Global21.

To contact the CTG, email ctglobalist@gmail.com

The Cape Town Globalist

Philosophy, Art and Science Contributions 13 Global21 Contributions from the SYDNEY GLOBALIST

and singapore GLOBALIST

26

The Porn Polemic

28

Vicarious Release

30

Who’s Your Daddy?

The ethics of porn The erotic phenomenon of Fan Fiction Evolutionary sexual programming

3

The Cape Town Globalist is a member of

Global21

1 NETWORK LINKING FUTURE WORLD LEADERS

Network of International Affairs Magazines 5 LANGUAGES www.global21online.org 5 CONTINENTS

11 UNIVERSITIES 245 000 STUDENTS

Yale University • University of Toronto • University of Sydney • Hebrew University • Institut de Sciences Politiques • London School of Economics • Peking University • University of Cape Town • University of South Australia • Oxford University • Ibmec University 4

AUGUST 2013

Editorial I

nwardly raise your hand if you were entertained as a child the first time you realised you could type ‘boobs’ on your calculator. I do not have to see your hands to know they are all there. Twelve-yearold you thought it was hilarious.

The theme for this edition is the ubiquity of sex. It comes into everything. The obvious things: sex explains how you were born; it is the reason you drooled over your high-school crush; and the reason why you really want to go out to that party tonight, because you know he or she will be there. But sex can be subtle too. It is also the reason why you were dressed in blue in your baby pictures and not pink; the reason you went to a co-ed school or not; the reason why your body is wracked with disease; the reason you painted your nails; and a whole host of other actions for which the motivation can be boiled down to our reproductive hard-wiring.

‘Sex’ is such a broad theme that this edition really needs to be 100 pages long instead of its mere 32. There is so much to cover between gender, sexuality, disease, ethics, animals etc. We actually rearranged the magazine to try to accommodate everything. We cut out the ‘Curtain Call’, which is usually the last article of the magazine to give the really fascinating articles more room to stretch out and explore their topic.

Issues we do manage to cover include finding the positives in the AIDS landscape and airing a little-known affliction of impoverished women called obstetric fistulas. We try to understand the relevance of the toilet saga to the sexual security of township women. Our writers also explore lighter topics like why bonobo apes have orgies and the economics of sex. Under Arts, we look at the phenomenon of Fan Fiction and debate the ethics of porn for the Philosophy section.

On a different topic, all three of our news articles are about ordinary people reacting against the injustices of their governments. The service delivery mandate of government is spotlighted in Brazil. In Egypt, we examine how people and governments handle transition of power. Lastly, we write about the age-old tension between freedom and control in Turkey, this time flavoured with a religious tinge. That all three of our news items hone in on protest-action around the world shows that we live in changing times. History is being made. Save this one for your grandchildren.

Sex is a source of curiosity, physical reverberations, fun, extreme embarrassment, violence, stupidity, lust and life. Our cover art depicts a pretty average-looking man with a pretty luscious-looking peacock tail. In the words of the artist, “no matter what we are doing, we always have our crest up”. This is why this magazine thinks it informs almost every action we execute, thought we think, and relationship we form: sexing the subtext of it all.

Amy Thornton

Editor-in-Chief

The Cape Town Globalist

5

News bites Not A Kid’s Meal

Statistic

Froome’s Next Race Christopher Froome became a household name after winning the 100th Tour de France, earlier this year. Froome may have cycled for Britain, but his Kenyan roots have made Africans around the continent proud. This was Froome’s first win, having come second in two previous Tours. Froome is currently undergoing anti-terrorism training for his next big challenge: Colorado’s third annual USA Pro Challenge on August 19-25. The anti-terrorism training has become mandatory for race participants following the Boston Marathon bombing and will consist of how to recognise suspicious packages and procedures for reporting their suspicions.

15,2 50

centimetres is the average erect penis size of South African men.

percent of 17 year old South Africans have had sex

200

Number of calories the average person burns during 30 minutes of sexual intercourse

1 in 4

Burger King’s zero tolerance drug policy did not stop a four-year-old from finding a loaded marijuana pipe in his Kid’s Meal in Michigan.

After police involvement a 23-year-old employee admitted to hiding the pipe in the store. How it got into the child’s happy meal is still a mystery.

The child’s grandfather was displeased with the discovery and reported seeing a suspicious car outside the store before entering. It was later exposed to belong to friends of the aforementioned employee and contained further drugs. The three friends are pending drug possession charges.

teenagers contract an STD/STI every year

Statistics courtesy of orange.co.uk, b ashasexualhealth.org, statssa.gov.za, loveli

School Tragedy in India Modimolle Monster

Neptune’s New Moon

S/2004 N 1 is what Neptune’s 14th and newly discovered moon is being called until a suitable name is picked out. US astronomer Mark Showalter recently spotted the minute moon while tracking the movement of a white speck appearing repeatedly in photographs taken of Neptune between 2004 and 2009. It is estimated that the pint sized moon completes a circuit around Neptune every 23 hours. The moon is so small that NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft failed to spot it in 1989. This new moon will probably be named after Greek or Roman mythology as is tradition.

6

Judge Bert Bam of the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria has found Johan Kotzé and Andries Sithole guilty of murdering Kotzé’s 19-yearold stepson, Conrad Bonnette. On the 3rd January 2012, Ina Bonnette (Kotzé’s ex-wife) was kidnapped, attacked, tortured and raped at Kotzé’s Modimolle Limpopo home by Kotzé, Sithole, Pieta Mohlake, and Sello Mphaka. Mohlake and Mphaka were acquitted of the murder of Conrad Bonnette, who was shot in hearing range of his mother. The murder was ruled to be pre-meditated and although Kotzé and his co-accused were sentenced to life in prison, the co-accused claim to have been threatened into the crime

23 students between the ages of four and twleve have died with another 25 being treated for food poisoning in Bihar, India. The incident has been received with mass outcry around the world at what has been called an avoidable tragedy. The students were poisoned after eating a midday meal that was part of a nutritional plan in the district. However, many of the district’s schools failed to pass the inspection. The school’s cook apparently complained to the headmistress about the peculiar odour of the cooking oil but was told to serve the children anyway, resulting in the tragedy and a missing headmistress.

AUGUST 2013

appetisers appetisers

Syrian Deadlock

cs of sex

5,26 million 20

is the estimated number of South Africans living with HIV

Percentage of Americans who have had sex with a coworker

½ 25 103

of the South African population has been tested for HIV

The Syrian crisis continues to worsen, without any resolution visible in the near future. The UN Security Council has reached a deadlock as Russia and China have thrice blocked the UN from taking action against Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. This is in the face of an average of 6000 people a day fleeing the country, many for Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. Already, Syrian refugees make up 10% of the population in Jordan. The deadlock has led the United States to consider providing the Syrian opposition with weaponry, a controversial move that has polarised debate in the US Congress.

Percentage of Americans who are living with an incurable STD

Number of times per year that the average person has sex

bbc.co.uk, news24.com, sport24.co.za, ife.org.za, .timeslive.co.za, womansday.com

From Russia with Love

Edward Snowden has become a household name after he leaked information pertaining to the government of the United States’ mass surveillance programmes. The scandal has rocked the world and opened conversation about privacy and the power of governments. Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong before releasing the damning evidence, is now in Russia and has been granted temporary asylum for a year. Since Snowden’s escape from the United States, the country has been scrambling to minimize the damage and trying to extradite him so that he can stand trial for espionage and theft of government property.

Russia’s decision to grant Snowden asylum has further soured already tense relations between the two nations.

The Cape Town Globalist

Terrorism and Pop Culture Meet

Rolling Stone magazine has been strongly criticised for their cover featuring the alleged “Boston Bomber”, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The cover features Tsarnaev looking decidedly like a celebrity with his mop of curly hair and piercing eyes staring at the camera. Beneath the image are the words, “THE BOMBER, How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster”. Critics claim the cover glamorises terrorism, fails to take into account the victims of the attack and rather makes Tsarnaev seem like the victim.

A Family Feud

Visit Your Parents or Face the Law In China it is now a legal requirement for children to visit and keep in contact with their elderly parents. The rewording of an already existing law stipulates that children who fail to keep in contact with their parents could be sued and may even face imprisonment. The law is not something new to the Chinese; for years now disgruntled parents have been suing their children for failing to provide adequate emotional support. Despite the rewording of the law, it does not specify how often children need to visit their parents and therefore leaves “emotional support” open for interpretation.

Former President Nelson Mandela’s recent health crisis has been somewhat overshadowed by a family feud which has revealed a deeply divided family. The issue at hand was the reburial of three of Nelson Mandela’s grandchildren from Mvezo to his hometown Qunu. Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, was taken to court by 15 members of the Mandela family to compel him to move the bodies. The application was successful but not without controversy, after it emerged that the Mandela family had used free legal aid from the Rhodes University Law Clinic to fund their court case.

ashleigh furlong, alicia chamaille & chantel clark 7

appetisers

Q& A

with

Professor

David Benatar

UCT’s Prof. David Benatar is the author of the controversial book Better Never to Have

Been, which argues that it is morally wrong to have children. Sex and procreation are

inextricably linked. If Darwin was right, our human purpose is to further the species.

Indeed, the desire to have one’s own brood is both a biological and a very emotionallyresonant matter. In this Q&A with Sofie Monteiro, the Professor argues that sex and reproduction should in fact be completely divorced.

What is anti-natalism?

Why are you comfortable in stating that it’s It is a view that we should not bring new lives not harmful to not exist? into existence.

Nothing bad happens to those who never come into existence. While it is also true that nothing Where would you position anti-natalism good happens to them, because they do not exin terms of other philosophies such as utilitarianism*, and what are some of your other ist there is nobody who is deprived of that absent good and thus the absence of that good is not bad. ethical beliefs?

There is thus no downside to never existing. (ExNot all anti-natalists are utilitarians and not isting people may regret not having procreated, all utilitarians are anti-natalists. The view that but that regret only makes sense if the regret is stands in strongest contrast to anti-natalism is for themselves, not for the children they never pro-natalism but anti-natalism is also opposed brought into existence.) to views that are indifferent to procreation.

I can accept the argument that it is better not What are the implications of accepting this to have been born for say, a baby that is born and only experiences trauma and pain before philosophy? What can we do or not do? dying two months later. But, on balance, I feel The most direct implication is to avoid pro- that I have experienced more pleasure than creating. It does not imply that it is wrong to pain, so why is it the case that it is better for me have sex. According to anti-natalism, one may not to have been born? have sex as long as one takes appropriate preYou are asking me to summarise some careful cautions to prevent the procreation that, in and detailed arguments in a few words, but here some cases, might otherwise result. are a few considerations. First, there is very good evidence that people underestimate the amount of bad in their lives and thus self-assessments that one’s life contains more pleasure than pain are unreliable. Second, it is, in any event, too soon to tell Your argument assumes utilitarianism. If whether you will experience more pleasure than you are not a utilitarian, does your thesis pain in your life. Terrible things could still befall you. Third, and most basically, the issue is actually still hold? not whether your life contains more pleasure than Contrary to what many people think, my pain. Never existing, as I explained previously, has argument does not presuppose utilitarianism. no downside. But existing does have serious costs.

My arguments are neutral between competing It is thus better never to come into existence. ethical theories.

Terrible things could still befall you

*The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy defines ‘Utilitarianism’ as follows: “the claim

that an act is morally right if and only if that act maximizes the good, that is, if and only if the total amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion.”

8

Extinction is part of the natural order. It is likely to happen at some point, assuming we’re like every other species on the planet.

If human extinction is a near certainty why pursue anti-natalism or voluntary extinction?

You are correct that sooner or later humans will go extinct. However, all things being equal, it would be better if this happened sooner rather than later, as there would then be fewer generations of people who would suffer. (This does not imply that we should kill everybody. Nonprocreation and murder are quite different.)

There is thus no downside to never existing What has been the public response to your book?

Reactions have been mixed. As I predicted, many have responded with outrage. These include those who have not read and refuse to read the book and thus do not actually know what it says. It also includes those who have read but misunderstood the arguments. Some philosophers, including those who disagree with me, have engaged seriously with the arguments and I have responded to them. On the other side, I have been pleasantly surprised by the vast number of positive and appreciative responses that I have received from people with whom the book has resonated. CTG

Sofia Monteiro

is an Honours student in Economics

AUGUST 2013

Human Sex Trafficking in South Africa

armchair

Human trafficking evokes images of Eastern European mailorder brides. But, it is a phenomenon happening right here in South Africa. Alex Swanepoel discusses the challenges of the fight against human trafficking in our own country.

The sex trade industry is a menacing beast. It lurks in the darkest corners of our society, unknown to the naïve but omnipresent to the ones whose lives it destroys. In South Africa the number of victims is undetermined, making it an especially difficult creature to control. What we do know, however, is that South Africa is implicated in the global human trafficking ring in a big way. My interest in the subject started with the CNN Freedom Project’s “Ending Modern Day Slavery” series. I started to question my own country’s position, and what I discovered was chilling.

Human trafficking in South Africa includes the child sex trade, domestic servitude and commercial sexual exploitation of women, as well as the trafficking of young boys to work as street vendors and agricultural labourers. According to the United Nations, South Africa is a final destination ‘hotspot’ for human sex trafficking. International crime syndicates gather victims from within South Africa, other African countries and as far as Europe and Thailand. Sex traffickers in South Africa target impoverished young people living in rural areas with promises of employment in big cities. They gain the trust of their victims by feeding them dreams of hope and financial security. Once the victims are lured away from their homes they are drugged, raped, and photographed for blackmail purposes; their clothes and shoes are taken from them to prevent attempts of escape; and they enter the forced sex labour market as ‘sold’ commodities.

A great challenge in the fight against human trafficking in South Africa is the absence of awareness surrounding the issue. As a generally informed citizen, I was not even aware that South Africa had a human trafficking problem.

Sure, the sex trade itself is pretty obvious (‘ladies of the night’ standing on Kenilworth Main Road in stilettos and short skirts give that away), but South Africa’s high rape and sexual assault statistics aside, human sex trafficking was an issue most South Africans associated with Asia, Eastern Europe and the seedy underworld of the US (think Taken and Eden). Not home. Not the beautiful city of Cape Town, even with its obvious social hierarchy and socio-economic disparities. It is a taboo topic; it’s ‘dirty’, it makes you feel uncomfortable, and it will probably never affect you.

Human trafficking is a human rights violation. It is a fundamental violation of a child’s right to protection and safety.

It is restrictive of the right to freedom of movement. It infringes upon a person’s freedom of choice. It strips away victims’ dignities. It contravenes Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “no one shall be held in slavery or servitude”. It is disempowering and contributes to society’s obsession with portraying girls as easy objects for sex. Women and children deserve to be constitutionally protected from forced sexual labour. So what is South Africa

The Cape Town Globalist

doing about it?

South Africa is notorious for inadequate anti-trafficking efforts. The US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report places us on the Tier 2 Watch List for human trafficking. The report ranks countries on three levels according to governmental efforts to combat human trafficking. Our efforts are deemed insufficient due to non-compliance with the minimum global standards for trafficking elimination, lack of protection for victims who come forward, and substandard sentencing of those responsible. The government has long been disinterested in the face of other more pressing socio-economic concerns (which ironically contribute to South Africa’s rising human trafficking endemic). Other contributing factors include sex tourism, which spiked dramatically during the 2010 FIFA World Cup; parental irresponsibility (some parents traffic their own children for financial gain); lax border controls; and the faltering social morality that provides the demand and supply chain for the services provided by human trafficking victims.

Sex traffickers in South Africa target impoverished young people living in rural areas with promises of employment in big cities.

On Monday, 29 July 2013, President Jacob Zuma signed the “Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Bill” after six years of being in the pipeline. This is a significant step forward in South Africa’s movement towards meeting its international obligations to eliminate trafficking under the United Nations Protocol on Trafficking in Persons.

The bill provides a legal definition of human trafficking. Before, trafficking as a legal offence had been difficult to prove in court. Courts were only able to charge convicted traffickers with kidnapping, rape and sexual abuse, and sometimes those convicted walked away with a meagre fine. Now traffickers can be convicted of actual trafficking with onerous sentences attached: life imprisonment and/or a R100-million fine, as well as compensation payable to the victim(s).

Facilitating the trafficking of humans and using the services of victims of trafficking are also defined as punishable offences under the bill. However, South Africa has struggled with the implementation of laws in the past.

“There needs to be advocacy around ensuring what is written in policy is related in practice,” says Luke Lamprecht of Women and Men Against Child Abuse. The hope is that the bill will be put into operation as quickly as possible, so that ordinary citizens and the state are best equipped to wage a fair war in keeping our children and women safe from human traffickers. CTG

Alexandra Swanepoel

is a third year student majoring in Economics & Finance

9

news

The Salad Revolution Ashleigh Furlong looks at all the ingredients of the recent protests in Brazil, and considers whether they have the potential to be considered as more than a light starter.

“T

he Salad Revolution” or “V for Vinegar” movement, named after the vinegar carried by protesters to lessen the effect of tear gas, began in Brazil on June 6th and spread faster than the Brazilian football team can score goals. What started as a protest against a 20 Brazilian cents bus fare increase soon grew to be a multi-class, multi-issue protest, spanning the whole nation. What much of the international media identified as a major concern of the protests was opposition to the country’s hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and their recent hosting of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup. In reality, the demands of the protesters were much more complex than issues surrounding the hosting of soccer tournaments, but soccer has become a symbol for all that is wrong in Brazil: corruption, overspending and a divided leadership.

Soccer has become a symbol for all that is wrong in Brazil: corruption, overspending and a divided leadership.

Ashleigh Furlong

is a second-year student majoring in Film and Media Production and English Literature

Ansuné Image: Tânia van Rêgo der Merwe is a first-year student majoring in Law & 10 Media and Writing

What is complicated about the Brazilian protests is that there was (and continues to be) not one group protesting for one issue; instead there were numerous groups, all in various states of organisation, often with conflicting demands. On the one hand, many of the protesters were middle class citizens, who in the past ten years have found it increasingly difficult to land high-paying jobs, and the upward social mobility of many poorer Brazilians has led to the elite becoming decidedly disgruntled with having to share much of their political and economic power.

On the other hand, many of the lower and middle classes were also protesting over the lack of public services, symbolised by the increase in bus fares. This comes at a time when there is an economic slowdown in Brazil and rising inflation. This follows a period of exceptional growth since the 2008 financial crisis, which has left many Brazilians questioning why the country’s economy is now in trouble.

The increase in bus fares was just the catalyst needed to hurtle an already tense nation into chaos.

The high taxes which Brazilians pay (the average citizen paying 40.5% of their salary to tax) is also a contentious issue and with all protesters at least united in their claims of widespread corruption in the government, citizens are no longer willing to hand over their income to what many believe is an ineffectual government. Brazil is currently

placed in 43rd position on the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index.

It comes as no surprise then that Brazilian citizens are unhappy about hosting the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2014 FIFA World Cup as it has translated into billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money going towards new stadiums. This flies in the face of the yet-to-surface promised investment in public services and assurances that the costs would be covered by private businesses, not the government.

The benefits (or lack thereof ) of hosting a world cup tournament are much debated. Such debate has been seen in South Africa where, following the 2010 FIFA World Cup, there were conflicting views as to whether the tournament was indeed beneficial for the country. Before the actual hosting in 2010, similar arguments to those seen in Brazil were made against the hosting of the tournament in South Africa.

What has further angered many Brazilians is the police force’s violent reaction to the initial protests. Hundreds of arrests, police using teargas on peaceful protesters, the use of rubber bullets at short range, and reports of some members of the police removing their identification so that they could not be reported for abuse, have all contributed to further protests. The Defence Minister has acknowledged that the police acted “arbitrarily and violently”.

Like the Arab Spring, the Brazilian protests have largely been driven by social networks. Images and video footage, often captured on protesters’ cell phones, were distributed on Facebook and Twitter and helped to fuel calls for citizens to “come to the streets”. Millions of Brazilians heeded these calls and the streets were flooded with protesters.

But for any comparisons to recent events in the Arab world, the reality is that the Brazilian protests are not as revolutionary as many may hope. It seems unlikely that “The Salad Revolution” will bring about a revolution in the traditional sense. Nevertheless, the protests have been widely dubbed the most important social movement in Brazil in 30 years.

There is no doubt that millions of Brazilians are fed up with the government, and it would appear that the government is listening. Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, has made promises which include anti-corruption measures, a greater investment in public transport and consideration of political reform. What remains to be seen is if any of this will come to fruition and whether it will be enough to placate the masses. CTG CTG

AUGUST 2013

news

Shifting Sands The Arab Spring of 2011 continues to send political shockwaves through the Muslim world. Zarreen Kamalie delves into its dramatic aftermath, examining Egypt’s second transition of power as well as the forthcoming Zimbabwean elections while the world holds its breath.

I

t has been two years since Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi bravely set himself on fire, igniting one of the greatest multinational revolutions since the fall of Communism. A year after Egypt’s first democratic elections, we witness the inevitable turbulence and struggle that comes with the beginnings of any new democracy.

As the Arab nation struggles to find its footing as a democracy with its second ousting of their president, we analyse the events that led to the country’s current state and then look towards Zimbabwe and what Robert Mugabe’s new five-year term means to Zimbabweans and the world.

Two years ago when mass protests took place in Tahrir Square, there was widespread unity that held great promise of possibility for a new era of democracy. A year later, that promise is yet to be fulfilled. On June 30 2013 political party Tamarod organised mass demonstrations of millions of discontent Egyptians in Cairo and other cities, calling for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to step down.

Soon, Morsi was faced with a 48-hour ultimatum issued by the army to meet the people’s demands or face an imposed solution. By July 3, Egypt’s military chief announced that Morsi had been deposed. So what exactly brought Egypt’s first democratically elected president’s rule to an abrupt end?

Despite having credited himself as Egypt’s “guardian of legitimacy”, Morsi’s actions first came into question when he issued his November decree that gave him increased authority. While his supporters believed this was done out of necessity to move the country forward, others were less convinced. Questions were raised again when the leader appeared to implement governmental reform by reshuffling his cabinet, only to replace a number of ministers with members of his own party, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Many felt that this was an inaccurate representation of the Egyptian civil society, thus deepening social divides.

The divisions among civilians are one of the problems that arose from Morsi’s rule. The Egyptian people remain as divided as ever over ideological and religious beliefs, with intolerance and exclusion hindering the process of democratisation. Violence swept through the country in the months spanning January to June, mainly between members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and their opponents consisting of liberals, leftists and secularists. Sectarian violence in particular has increased since Morsi’s ascension and deposition, and politically stimulated violence continues as Morsi supporters hold daily protests demanding his reinstatement.

At the other end of the continent, with a history of civil and political violence, some were convinced that this year’s elections in Zimbabwe would echo the events of 2008. The

The Cape Town Globalist

world looked on nervously as thousands of Zimbabweans cast their vote, hopeful of a result that would solve the country’s issue of unemployment, depleting health systems and a failing economy. Martin Jambaya, a Tsvangirai party official, claimed that “there [had] been no transparency in the voters roll, no free media access and no freedom for political meetings”. Reactions to the results of the July 31 elections in Zimbabwe range from outrage from opposition group MDC, whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai called it a “sham election”, to congratulations from African neighbours on Mugabe’s seventh consecutive term. Western powers remain openly skeptical of the outcome, supporting claims of election rigging and irregularities. Tsvangirai claims to have evidence to support his allegations of fraud and unfairness, and intends to present it in court in order to “legitimise the illegitimate” Similar socio-economic problems are present in Egypt.

Things continue to move slowly, as plans for a transition (which include a review of the constitution Morsi supported and prospects of upcoming parliamentary elections in early 2014) have been rejected by the Muslim Brotherhood and criticised by the leftist and liberal parties. If Egypt’s current interim government fails at this crucial transition point, the state runs the risk of being established upon violence and corruption, particularly after a revolution that was meant to bring liberation to its people. It can be argued that Morsi paid too little attention to the task of necessary reform to address the growing issue of unemployment and poverty. The country’s interim president Adly Mansour needs to address the unification of the people by establishing a constitution that satisfies all areas of society, as well as an effective electoral system that meets the standards of democracy.

Violence continues as Morsi supporters hold daily protests demanding his reinstatement.

After over thirty years of independence, Zimbabwe is yet to establish these same standards of democracy, as reports of corruption were already present weeks before the elections. A number of Zimbabwean citizens are also in doubt of the credibility of the outcome and look ominously ahead to the future. Some fear that MDC’s boycott of the results could create a political crisis, perhaps similar to that presently in Egypt, in an already unstable nation. Both Egypt and Zimbabwe are poised on the brink of a transition of power. It is up to their respective civil societies whether they experience ‘more of the same’ or meaningful change.

CTG

Zarreen Kamalie is a first-year student majoring in Politics and Social Anthropology.

Image: Kodak Agfa 11

news

The March of the

Turks

The 2013 urban protests in Turkey resulted in a swell of citizen-led protest reminiscent of the Occupy movement.fadzai muramba investigates how a peaceful sit-in escalated into a political skirmish over freedom of expression and Turkey’s endangered secularism.

O

n the morning of May 28, 2013, 50 environmentalists camped out in Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park in order to prevent its demolition and preserve the park. The environmentalists were protesting the urban development plan to commercialize Taksim Square and create space for a shopping mall by removing the trees.

Subsequently, police intervention into this protest lead to mass demonstrations encompassing 78 of Turkey’s 81 provinces.

Turkey is considered the largest democratic state in the Middle East. However, democracy is a contract between civilians and government, which charges the state with the protection of civilians’ rights. In their bid to maintain social order, the police used a heavy-handed approach to disperse the peaceful protesters, using tear gas on the crowd, raiding their campsites and burning down their tents. Although Turkey has a history of police brutality, it remains unclear as to why the attack on a peaceful sit-in by environmentalists was so merciless. As a result, the size of the protests grew as a call for support against the police crackdown and a wider spur of outrage developed into the largest protest seen in Turkey in decades.

The range of the protesters was broad, from conservatives, secularists and communists, to Kurds, feminists, and women in headscarves

fadzai muramba is a third-year student majoring in Sociology and International Relations.

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With no centralised leadership beyond the environmental protest, the protests have been compared to both the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. The range of the protesters was broad, from conservatives, secularists and communists, to Kurds, feminists, and women in headscarves. Across political divides, protestors supported each other against the police and registered their indignation.

The demonstrations were effective because they were well-organised. A fully operational kitchen and first-aid clinic were carved out of an abandoned concession stand in the back of the park. Protestors brought food to donate, and dozens of volunteers organised themselves into four shifts. 2,654 online funders financed an advertisement that was published in The New York Times, which featured demands for "an end to police brutality", "a free and unbiased media" and " open dialogue, not the dictate of an autocrat."

It is safe to assume that these protests were no longer just about a cluster of trees; it was a mass demonstration of greater dissatisfaction.

The issues of freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and the government's encroachment on Turkey’s secularism through restrictions on the

sale of alcohol became the central focus of the protest. The event demonstrated 2.5 million Turks doing whatever they could to protect their country’s legacy of personal freedom and secularism. After ten years in power, the conservative Erdoğan regime had encroached on citizens’ rights, and the demonstrations acted as a reminder that Turkey belongs to the people.

On 29 May, after the initial protests, Prime Minister Erdoğan gave a speech reiterating his commitment to the redevelopment plan. According to Erdoğan the demonstrators were mostly looters, political losers and extremist fringe groups. He believed that they went hand-in-hand with 'terrorists'.

The speech seemed oblivious to the police’s use of tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons resulting in more than 8,000 injuries. Or, the protesters retaliation by throwing rocks at the security forces. What fuelled the protests was the police’s use of force, driven not by the need to respond to violence, but by the desire to prevent and discourage protest of any kind. There were reports of police targeting journalists, beating demonstrators, and denying detainees access to food, water, and toilet facilities for up to 12 hours during the protests.

In support of the police actions, head of the Police Union, Faruk Sezer, said the police’s poor treatment of civilians was due to fatigue, long hours and constant pressure, which led to inattentiveness, aggression and a lack of empathy. In sum, the police relinquished all accountability for the brutal eight deaths, 4900 arrested and 116 detained.

The economy met the biggest hurdle when Istanbul's stock exchange experienced a loss of 10.5% in a single day, the biggest one-day loss in a decade. The unrest had a dire effect on Istanbul and the larger tourism economy with warnings sent by various embassies advising their citizens traveling or residing in Turkey to be on the alert for potential violence. Moreover, Istanbul’s bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics may be revoked.

The 2013 protests left an impact on Turkey that will be difficult to recover from. Politically, the protests may be a turning point for the Erdoğan regime’s authoritarian rule.

Most importantly, the future prospects to enact a new constitution based on a presidential system might have been damaged. It remains to be seen if the protests will tarnish or support Turkey’s image as a model for the melding of Islam and democracy. The situation in Turkey highlights that civil rights vs. social order are the biggest challenge of a democratic state. Nonetheless, how can citizens challenge the state’s obligation to protect their rights? Is there a line between protection and civil rights infringement, and who decides that the line has been crossed? Perhaps, the real question is how to achieve a balance of power where the state is in control and its citizens are content. CTG

AUGUST 2013

Catastrophe and the Arts

Global 21

Sylvester Long evaluates the ethical responsibility of art to act as an instrument of catharsis.

U

nfortunate as they are, catastrophes are an inevitable part of our history. During World War II, we witnessed state-sponsored persecution and the murder of close to six million Jews by the Nazi regime; on 9/11, we witnessed the destruction of the World Trade Centre by terrorist hijackers; more recently, in Tohoku and Fukushima, we witnessed devastation in Japan caused by both natural and manmade disasters. But equally inevitable as these tragedies are, the works of art that ensue are often stirring and compelling.

Such works cover a broad range of media, including film, photography and fine art. What makes these artistic responses stand apart from others? The following paradox may shed some light: where catastrophe is concerned, art brings pleasure through pain.

Nobody enjoys revisiting old wounds, yet art offers catharsis, expressing and permeating painful moments through sharing. Just as we feel a need to justify bad occurrences in our lives, art offers meaning to the illogic and randomness of catastrophe. One can almost see a necessity (however small) in a catastrophe, if it leads to the creation of good.

There is, however, an opposing belief that catastrophe should not be represented; that art immortalises the pain of a tragedy at the expense of its victims. With its sensitive subject matter, art about catastrophe is confronted with conflicting ethical responses and how well the artist meets these challenges yields either great recognition or controversy.

Roman Polanski’s award-winning film The Pianist exemplifies the best qualities of literary art. It also raises the most interesting questions on art, such as its representation of reality. An adapta-

tion of the memoir of Polish-Jewish musician Władysław Szpilman, the film traces Szpilman’s five years of struggle for survival in Warsaw, amidst the backdrop of Nazi occupation and the Holocaust. In Polanski’s work, there is both information and emotional provocation. What his art offers is a depth of experience, meaning that as consumers of the film, our understanding of the Holocaust becomes more personal than objective: in the film we see the Holocaust and the oppression of the Jewish people; we see Szpilman’s decline from wealth to starvation. Beyond that, we see the poignant loneliness and fear of a survivor, depicted masterfully by the subtle performance of Adrien Brody. In art, we see the unseen so for art to transcend objective media about catastrophe (such as the reporting found in newspapers) the artist does need to exercise some discretion in representing reality.

Regardless of its recognition or controversy, art about catastrophes leave an indelible impact on those who consume it. For those of us fortunate enough to avoid the catastrophe, we need the imaginative powers of the arts to empathise and understand these tragedies.

Nowadays, such art is prevalent and iterative. We cannot always explain adequately or consistently why bad things happen to innocent people; and depending on who you consult you may find very different responses, but surely these catastrophes produced art. To quote Julian Barnes, whose novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters inspired this article, ‘perhaps in the end, that’s what catastrophe is for.’ G21

Sylvester Long

writes for The Singapore Globalist

The Business of Learning Madeleine King explores the international corporatisation of Western university education.

Along the United States’ eastern seaboard, a vine of socio-political elitism, academic expertise, and financial wealth has taken root. The eight privately run Ivy League universities it bears Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania - have been responsible for the tertiary education of some of the world’s most influential politicians and thinkers. Harvard alone has seen the likes of Barack Obama, Ban Ki-Moon, Benjamin Netanyahu and Bill Gates walk its red-brick corridors.

While these mainstays of private tuition have long made their presence felt on the international stage, their hegemony is threatened by the rising influence and changing nature of schooling corporations. The resulting international education marketplace is rapidly blurring, the once dichotomous public-private pedagogy. Universities across the world, state-run or otherwise, are transforming into transnational actors, intent on harvesting a global crop of the young and well educated.

As the Western world sways to the neoliberal rhythm of the 21st century, the liberal tenets of yesteryear’s welfare state – a system that popularised models of public, equitable schooling – have never appeared more irrelevant. Peter Leuner and Mike Woolf wrote extensively on higher education’s new commoditised persona. They cite the U.S. government’s proposal The Cape Town Globalist

to the World Trade Organisation in 2000 seeking the removal of national barriers to global provision, as “firmly locating international, ‘borderless’, or transnational education within the context of international trade”. This, they argue, has propagated a “knowledge economy” inhabited by for-profit corporations, or education management organisations (EMOs) as well as university shareholders with vested financial incentives in the international propagation of tertiary education.

As a result, the traditional privatepublic university binary is faced with a new third party contender: NASDAQ-traded organisations such as American InterContinental University, Stratford University, the U.S.-based Corinthian Colleges, Inc. and the UK’s BPP University College.

While none of these can boast the tangible presence of Yale’s neo-gothic arches nor the leafy boulevards of Harvard, their entrance into the international education market and their financial raison d’être has accelerated competition with other privately operated institutions in securing the malleable minds of the world’s educated youth.

How much longer will the notions of ‘private’ be draped with reverence upon them? Western education is essentially becoming a non-state corporate actor, traversing national borders and leaving a particular genus of tomorrow’s political, social and economic leaders in its wake. G21

Madeleine King writes for The sydney Globalist

13

THEME COVER

SEXING THE SUBTEXT Infinite Gender

The Upside on AIDS

by Gareth Smit and Gabrielle Demblon

by Kirsty Rice

Sanitation and Sex Offenders

Supply and Desire

by Sinead Power

by Melissa Newham

Fistulas

Monkey Business

by lyndall thwaits

by Lori-Rae van Laren

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AUGUST 2013

sexing the subtext

INFINITE GENDER

Text by Gabrielle Demblon and Gareth Smit Images by Gareth Smit

S

outh Africa is believed to have more intersex people than most countries in the world. Yet, intersex remains largely misunderstood.

“It’s a complicated story,” says Sally Gross, director of Intersex SA. Intersex refers to a person who is not distinctly identified as either male or female. For example, an intersex person could have XY-male chromosomes, and a female outward appearance.

The Cape Town Globalist

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sexing the subtext

Thanks to an amendment lobbied into the Promotion of Equality Act by Gross, South Africa’s progressive constitution does explicitly recognise intersex. “The problem, though, is that our regulative ideas as expressed in law are often streaks ahead … of people’s attitudes and what officials actually do.”

Gross explains that the discomfort around the topic of intersex stems from society’s preoccupation with and conflation of sex and gender. “The gender classification is something in our society that determines the way that the baby is going to be reared – blue for boys, pink for girls.”

“Why? Why should the fabric of one’s life depend on having South African Bureau of standards compliant genitalia relative to gender classification? Why should penises and vaginas be privileged to that extent? Why should there be myths of ideals? In fact, people come in all shapes and sizes.”

Photo essay

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AUGUST 2013

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y - Gareth

It is common medical practice for infants born with ambiguous genitalia to undergo ‘corrective’ genital surgery using a ‘best guess’ strategy for determining what gender (strictly male or female) an intersex child will be most comfortable with.

However, medical studies suggest that these unnecessary surgeries, usually performed at birth, often lead to gender identity issues during adolescence, causing considerable psychological trauma.

Gross, born intersex, did not undergo this type of surgery but was raised as a boy. “This confusion of sexual orientation, sex, gender – the whole mishmash – you don’t come born with a knowledge of the distinctions.”

“Was I gay? Well, I didn’t have a sexual attraction to men or boys. I wasn’t sexually attracted to girls either . . . Was I transvestite? I didn’t have any inclination to cross-dress, so that didn’t fit. Transexuality seemed to be a possibility, though the phenomenology wasn’t right . . . I guess it’s sort of something that one can’t really win.”

“We need to downplay sex, and with gender - open it up. Why should a kid not decide to experiment with wearing dresses when the kid is born with male genitalia? If that is where the child finds the comfort zone – fine. But we’re not a grown-up world.” CTG

The Cape Town Globalist

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sexing the subtext

Sanitation and Sex Offenders

What contributes to the perpetuation of sexual violence? It may not be what you think. SINEAD POWER reveals the role played by inadequate sanitation and toilet facilities in townships. She urges us to pay attention to an issue that is often neglected because it is viewed as ‘unsexy’.

S

outh Africans know that election season is in full swing when the contentious issue of toilets in informal settlements dominates the headlines. Whilst the link between sanitation and public health is well established, what South Africans are not as informed about is the glaringly obvious causal relation between the lack of sanitation services and disproportionately high levels of crime in such settlements. Inadequate access to sanitation has a direct impact on the personal safety of many township residents. By walking very long distances (often at night) to find a toilet, residents are at risk of attack over the course of the journey. Routinely this relation affects the most vulnerable in these communities, most notably children, women, the elderly and groups susceptible to hate crimes. There is a distressing lack of information currently available to extrapolate links between the lack of water and sanitation services with sexual violence against women.

More than ten million South Africans live in overcrowded and under-serviced informal settlements, and face numerous obstacles to living safe, healthy and dignified lives. According to the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), 18

the mass-member based social movement campaigning for safe and dignified communities in South Africa’s most under-developed townships, residents of Cape Town’s Khayelitsha informal settlement have identified a lack of sanitation and water facilities as one of the largest obstacles to their safety. National norms and standards stipulate that there should be at the minimum one toilet shared between five families.

Yet the City of Cape Town - the municipality responsible for providing adequate sanitation and ensuring these services are maintained - has acknowledged that in some areas of Khayelitsha, “more than 100 households use one toilet.” Moreover, in Khayelitsha, as in many of South Africa’s informal settlements, residents have to walk large distances to find a functional toilet (that is not broken or unusable) or a ‘private’ space to relieve themselves. En route to these functional toilets or private spaces, residents are often assaulted, robbed, raped and murdered. These contact crimes against individuals arguably affect poor communities to a greater extent where social services are limited, inadequate and shared by many.

AUGUST 2013

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It is widely acknowledged that a lack of access to sanitation disproportionately affects women. This is because not only do women bear the burden of collecting water for their families, but women cannot relieve themselves in public the way men do without attracting negative attention. Furthermore, women have different physical needs, such as menstruation, which demand a greater need for privacy and hygienic facilities.

Women are vulnerable when travelling to facilities within the community, using such facilities or relieving themselves in the open when facilities are absent. Alakhe Mbuku, a resident of Khayelitsha who spoke at the Sep-

(that lacks sanitation facilities and street lights) that is conducive for these crimes to be committed. In South Africa, this seems by and large to not be the case.

The lack of data available on the correlation between the high prevalence of women being sexually abused and the lack of access to sanitation is not an exclusively South African deficiency. According to a 2011 paper published

by Sanitation and Hygiene Research for Equity (SHARE), although the link between poor sanitation and safety for women is recognised in academic and advocacy group literature, it tends to be given only a passing mention.

Furthermore, of the little information that has been doc-

“Four guys pulled me over and pointed at me with a gun.

One stabbed me in the right arm – I thought they were going to rape me. Luckily, people saw me crying so they ran away. Ever since, I am so scared to go to the toilet at night.”

Female, aged 22, would like to remain anonymous.

Stabbed while going to the toilet. Her community does not have enough toilets.

The Social Justice Coalition 2013 Booklet on Safety and Sanitation. Pg. 14

tember 2011 Sanitation Summit, said that the risk of rape and sexual assault comes hand in hand with poor sanitation. The United Nations has found that, ‘inaccessible toilets and bathrooms make [women and girls] more vulnerable to rape and other forms of gender-based violence.’ In informal settlements, like Khayelitsha, without the ability to lock the toilet door and without sufficient lighting (especially at night as there is a lack of streetlights in Khayelitsha), the toilets and the surrounding areas have become hotspots for rape and sexual intimidation.

Whilst ‘poo-litical protests’ have dominated the media in recent months, I find it incredibly disturbing that there is seemingly no information available on the clear link between the lack of access to adequate sanitation and South African women’s experience of humiliation and violence.

High levels of sexual violence against women are increasingly prevalent in South African society, with police reporting 64,514 recorded sexual offenses from April 2011 to March 2012 country-wide, and in the same period, 48,003 cases of rape.

It should be noted that the crime statistics account only for reported incidences and therefore may not reflect the true crime rates, as South Africa’s Medical Research Council estimates that only one in nine rape cases are reported to the police. This may be due either to the shame associated with rape or the lack of faith in the criminal justice system. With such shockingly high crime statistics, the logical deduction of policy-makers would be to address systemic causes, such as the dangerous urban environment

The Cape Town Globalist

umented, it is generally in the context of refugee camps rather than daily life aspects of urban environments.

The author of the SHARE paper calls for research to focus on the link between poor sanitation and safety for women specifically and concludes that “interventions aimed at providing adequate sanitation must not only provide facilities. They must also ensure that the toilets can be used in a way which allows women to maintain their privacy and security, taking into consideration the demands of the community and the culture”.

En route to these functional toilets … residents are often assaulted, robbed, raped and murdered.

This is a sentiment with which I strongly agree. There needs to be mobilisation within government structures to address more systemic problems in order to rectify soaring crime rates in informal settlements. By focusing on the so-called ‘toilet wars’, political parties are cheapening the daily war that is raged against South African women and children. Moreover, politicians are undermining and de-legitimizing real violations that Khayelitsha residents experience daily. Whilst parties loudly politicise the issue of sanitation to advance their own election agendas, countless marginalised individuals are silently falling victim to the most heinous of crimes. CTG

Sinéad Power is a Justice and Transformation Honours student, specializing in Social Justice in Transformation

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Fistulas:

A Hidden Affliction

What happens when you get raped with a bayonet? Or, have to give birth without any skilled help? Fistulas are a graphic and unpleasant topic, yet around 3 million women live with the condition on a daily basis. lyndall thwaits writes about this difficult topic that has been passed over too many times.

A

t the best of times, I am not particularly fazed by the graphic details of medicine, but learning about fistulas is not something I will ever forget. Fistulas are one of the top causes of maternal mortality in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Fistulas from violent rape are so prevalent in Congo that Medicines sans Frontiers (MSF) named it a “crime of combat”. Everyone knows about AIDS and TB, but it is unlikely that many of our readers have even heard about this shockingly common affliction of impoverished women. The issue is ‘unsexy’ and a little gross, and so this life-threatening matter is often shunned from the media for more glamorous topics.

Traumatic fistulas are predominantly found in areas of conflict, such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a fistula develops from an incidence of rape.

The Cape Town Globalist spoke to Dr. Roberts who works at the Barberton Hospital in Mpumalanga to gain some insight into fistulas. Dr Roberts describes a fistula as “a passageway between epithelium lined organs that are not normally connected, in this case between the vagina and either the rectum or bladder.” In other words, a hole 20

that forms between the vagina and the bladder or rectum, often rendering sufferers incontinent.

There are a handful of causes for the development of fistulas, but the most commonly observed in poor countries are traumatic and obstetric fistulas. Traumatic fistulas are predominantly found in areas of conflict, such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a fistula develops from an incidence of rape – usually with a foreign body like a stick, bayonet or bullet.

Obstetric fistulas account for roughly 90% of all fistulas which are caused by obstructed or prolonged labour. Dr Roberts explained that during prolonged labour, the pressure of the baby’s head on the vaginal tissue and pelvic bones results in the necrosis of tissue that is compressed and a fistula develops (either vesicovaginal or rectorvaginal or both). Significant portions of the bowel, bladder and urethra can be damaged.

Obstetric fistulas are a preventable condition, but the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 60% of African women don’t give birth with any skilled help.

Hence, fistulas have now almost exclusively become a mark of the poor, uneducated and very young woman who is married at an early age and does not have access to the necessary medical care. This is particularly cruel as the treatment for fistulas is entirely surgical; facilities of which

AUGUST 2013

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these women rarely have access to.

Unfortunately, this rather concealed element of women’s health has consequences far beyond just the physical.

Woman often suffer from psychological, economic and social ills after the development of a fistula and many woman who do not reach medical care in time, die.

The statistics are frightening; the most recent estimates by the WHO indicate that the number of woman living with a fistula are set around the 3 million mark and between 50 000 to 100 000 new cases are added to this figure each year. They also estimated that there is one maternal death every minute, 99% of which occur in developing nations across the globe. The high risk areas that have been identified are those in sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Dr Robert’s most recent case of a vesicovaginal fistula was in Patient T who is 24 years old and from Mozambique. Patient T arrived 6 months after the birth of her baby in the district hospital. At the time of birth she went through 5 days of difficult labour, she reported that her baby was eventually delivered and died. She has since been living in a constant puddle of urine.

Dr Roberts describes Patient T as having “complete involuntary control over her bladder because she no longer has a sphincter to control the outflow of urine, therefore as soon as urine is produced it runs out…” This constant trickle of urine or incontinence is a tell-tale sign of a fistula.

Other complications of the injury include being unable to walk due to nerve damage (known as drop-foot); sores forming on the legs due to the acidity of urine; a constant smell of bodily fluids; and infection of the bladder, kidneys and general pelvic region.

Apart from the physical consequences of one or many fistulas developing, these women often experience social torment from their family, friends and community. They are often abandoned and left to die on the outskirts of their community, socially excluded and helpless. Dealing with the physical manifestations, the death of their infant and exclusion leads to many women with fistulas attempting or committing suicide. They are also usually divorced by their husbands and cannot earn any income because the people around them refuse to be near them because of the smell

The Cape Town Globalist

and constant puddles of urine which plague them - something even Dr Roberts experiences from hospital support staff.

One of the biggest treatment facilities today for fistula patients is the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia which is a high risk area, itself. The hospital not only performs surgeries on woman to repair the damage, but also trains other doctors and provides employment for fistula patients after surgery on a sustainable farm or in the wards.

The hospital’s services are free, another feat for woman as many of them who do manage to reach a hospital can’t pay for the care they need. The doctors at the hospital operate on around 2 200 cases a year, but this is nowhere near the amount needed to catch up with the current and evergrowing number of cases.

Apart from the physical consequences of one or many fistulas developing, these woman often experience social torment from their family, friends and community.

Organisations like the WHO, MSF and the Worldwide Fistula Fund are calling for solutions for high risk areas.

These include education for the expecting mother as well as the family (a cultural belief that difficult labour is punishment from the ancestors for bad behaviour or a curse from an offended party is shared by many of the high risk communities); delaying early marriage, because some girls are married off to an older man as early as their 10th birthday, to allow for the woman’s body to be ready to carry and deliver a baby; and implementing more clinics in the rural areas which can identify high risk cases.

Patient T is one of the lucky ones who will undergo surgery to hopefully fix the fistula so that she can return to her community and live a relatively normal life, but many are not as lucky as she is. Until maternal health is given the exposure is needs, fistulas will likely continue to burden the people that need the attention most. CTG

lyndall thwaits

is an Honours student specialising in Media Theory & Practice.

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The Upside on AIDS AIDS has become one of those topics that nobody wants to discuss because it seems too depressing. But what if things are actually getting better? If we never talk about it – or only talk about the gloomy things - we will never know. KIRSTY RICE updates us on how South Africa is actually coping and what positive inroads we have made with the disease.

“I

nvincible AIDS”, “Stalking AIDS, “Fatal Destiny”, “How to Survive a Plague” and “Hope for the Living Dead”. Similarly titled publications from the 1980s show dated feature articles with other Zombie and Apocalyptic terminology. The discourse is a well-established one, most of it present well into the 2000s. Our parents and older siblings are haunted by the ‘Armageddon of AIDS’, that “surging epidemic and plague, raging the continent”. Unfortunately, perceptions tend to be transgenerational – they run through veins and are seemingly impossible to change. Yet change is here, despite most holding close the infectious despondence AIDS is incor-

Some Causal Pathways between Gender Dynamics and HIV Risk Behaviour

Male physical and social dominance

22

rectly seen to be congruent with.

Testament to this is President Obama’s sweeping visit just weeks ago. The American head of state remarked that: “South Africa has faced a heavy burden from HIV but the great news is that the country is now leading the way in caring for its citizens—paving the way for a brighter future for South African people.”

Whilst it is true that AIDS in South Africa constitutes one of our most challenging long-term problems, the available data shows an upbeat trend. In 2000, popular statistics predicted that 25% of South Africa’s population would be wiped out by AIDS by 2010. 2010 has come and gone;

Violence against women

Gender inequality Male control over economic resources

Women’s economic dependence on men

Inability to negotiate condom use: fear of violence

Unprotected sex

Inability to negotiate condom use: fear of abandonment

Source: Gupta et al (2008) Structural Approaches to HIV Prevention. The Lancet, Vol. 372 (1): 764-775 AUGUST 2013

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South African AIDS Sufferers Percentage Infected

18%

17% 17%

16% 14%

15% 15%

12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2%

5%

5%

0%

1990

2000

2010

Source: UNAIDS

HIV infections have instead plateaued and the rate of infection has actually decreased. According to UNAIDS records, from placing first in the world ranking of countries most inundated by the virus, South Africa has dropped to fourth. The question that then arises is this: What exactly is South Africa doing right?

A speech by a UNAIDS executive director proclaims, quite correctly, that “AIDS today is more than a mere issue of health – it is a developmental issue, a human rights issue, a gender issue and an inequality issue”.

The factors that prolong a heavy prevalence in South Africa stem for a multitude of factors, most notably stigma, an inability to be open about HIV status, poor knowledge, discrimination and violence. Vulnerable groups include the usual crew of those marginalised in society.

The startling truth of it resides in the stone cold fact that if you are a black woman between the ages of 15-49, have not received tertiary education, and are positioned in a low socio-economic demographic, you are more likely to contract AIDS than any other group.

Sex-workers and women who fall simultaneously into substance abusers constitute a heavy portion of this highrisk group. In all provinces, antenatal HIV testing rates are over 90%. But the gut-pulling statistic is this: 1/8 infections are the direct result of intimate-partner violence. Every minute, a woman contracts AIDS. That means for every 100 minutes, 12½ of those infections are the result of domestic rape cases. One might wonder: where’s the upside in this?

The dire need for prevention has forced NGOs and researchers to think and respond innovatively. Fighting this disease needs a combination of obvious easy fixes (getting the easy things done well) and more creative solutions to tackle the slipperier side like stigma. There has been a significant shift from focusing on persuading individuals to change their behaviour (e.g. LoveLife billboards), to projects aimed instead at mitigating broader societal factors that preserve high-risk behaviour patterns, like prevailing gender dynamics.

In the last National Strategic Plan against AIDS, UNAIDS-South Africa channelled its resources into making cost-reduced antiretroviral medication (ARVs) available on a widespread-basis. Review shows that early intervention with ARVs for pregnant moms can radically reduce the infant’s risk of contracting the virus. Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s campaign to roll-out ARVs to mothers

The Cape Town Globalist

has been so effective that mother-to-child infections have declined by 63%. Indeed, mother-to-child infection rates almost halved in just two years; a good example of getting the basics right.

On the more creative side, a recent randomised control trial, called IMAGE, used microfinance as a successful intervention to address socio-economic fault lines. Considering the larger populace of women in South Africa who lack financial autonomy, IMAGE provided micro-loans in order to erode economic reliance on male benefactors.

Such dependence may be reinforcing certain behaviour patterns that put women at risk of contracting HIV, like transactional sex. The improved economic independence provides women with a little more bargaining power in the bedroom when it comes to condom use.

Another example is Project Masiluleke, which in 2008 used cell-phones to promote free HIV testing. The project based its strategy on the notion that although AIDS is everywhere, knowledge of status and openness for fear of stigma are still minimal. Masiluleke attached information relaying the locations of free testing clinics to main cell phone networks “Please Call Me” messages – and it worked. Counselling clinics reported that patient screening doubled to 13 million patients in just two years. For the more naïve generations, stigma and knowledge is partly tackled through information targeted directly at youth: Kami, the first muppet on Tekalani Sesame to have HIV, debuted in late 2006.

...mother-to-child infections have declined by 63%.

Over a decade ago AIDS was considered internationally as “a threat to national security”. It’s clear that we have come a long way, and no doubt that the fear of the ‘apocalypse of AIDS’ has somewhat subsided. From the careless comments in 2000 by former president Thabo Mbeki that AIDS is a uniquely African problem, our current president, Jacob Zuma, has adopted UNAIDS’ policy and goals for the next stage of the intervention, 2012-2016. Zuma has even added a fourth goal of South Africa’s own: ‘zero new infections due to mother-to-child transmission’. Access changes attitudes – and this is exactly what South Africa is doing. To the rest of the world, we’re glimmering, glimmering with just the slightest tangible spark. There’s still a long way to go, but we’re holding the hope that there exists a real possibility of an AIDS-free generation. CTG

Kirsty Rice

is a third-year student majoring in Psychology, English and History

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Supply and Desire: The Economics of Sex

Modelling the sexual economy means making the ultimate objectifying assumptions about sexual partners and gender dynamics. melissa newham takes a step back to measure the intimate details of our sex lives using the cold eye of economics with some surprising results.

T

he topic of sex in economics, although fairly recent, falls naturally into this field of study which is all about the allocation of scarce resources and utility (pleasure) maximization. Sex and sexual partners are economic goods in this simplified framework and human decision-making about sex can be theoretically modelled and empirically tested.

Economists start with the assumption that males and females enter a ‘market for sex’ to satisfy their intimate needs. Evidently sex is worth paying for as prostitution is a multibillion dollar industry employing millions of sex workers worldwide, predominantly females. On the assumption that men can get sex either from marriage or prostitution, economists Lena Edlund and Evelyn Korn provided an economic analysis of this choice. Their article “A Theory of Prostitution” (2002) created a stir when it was published in the well-respected Journal of Political Economy.

Money does not seem to lead to a greater frequency of sex or more sexual partners.

melissa newham is an Honours student specialising in Economics.

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In their paper, Edlund and Korn take the grossly simplified view that wives and sex workers are ‘substitute goods’ as both provide men with sex. They argue that wives are ‘normal goods’ and prostitutes are ‘inferior goods’ in that men prefer marriage over prostitution as their income rises. They also assert that, assuming a woman cannot be both wife and sex worker, a woman is less likely to enter the sex trade if marriage presents a greater income source than prostitution. Both these effects may explain why prostitution is less common in higher income countries.

Edlund and Korn build on earlier work by renowned economist Gary Becker, who applied economic principles to the selection of partners in the early 1970s. Becker’s “A Theory of Marriage” argues that mate selection and marriage occurs only when it is profitable for both parties. The implication of this is that men tend to marry women that have similar traits to themselves in terms of wealth, education and intelligence etc., and that money can get you a good-looking partner.

Rather than providing an economic theory of sex, economists Blanchflower and Oswald tease out the connections between sex, money and happiness using econometric, or statistical, methods and data on roughly 16 000 Americans. They find that more sex is positively associated with a self-reported measure of happiness. The effect is statistically significant and large, and true for all ages and genders.

However, determining the direction of causality is tricky here - does more sex equal more happiness or do happy people simply have more sex? The happiness-maximising number of sexual partners in the previous year is calcu-

lated to be one, speaking in favour of committed, monogamous relationships.

Does money buy sex? The study suggests not. Money does not seem to lead to a greater frequency of sex or more sexual partners.

There are interesting relationships observed between education and sex. The analysis suggests that sex may bring more happiness to highly educated people than the lesseducated. The results also suggest that highly educated males have less sex than average, and that highly educated females have fewer sexual partners than any other group.

If educated people have less sex and sex yields greater additional happiness for the more educated it would appear that sex obeys the important economic law of diminishing marginal utility; the more sex we consume the less ‘extra’ satisfaction we get.

Lastly, it is evident that economic factors can affect sexual behaviour. Marina Adshade, economics professor at the University of British Columbia, explains the effects of economic influences on sex in her recent book Dollars and Sex. Despite what shows like MTV’s 16 and Pregnant may suggest, Adshade claims that teenagers are less promiscuous now than in the past. This can be explained by tougher economic conditions that have increased the cost of teen pregnancy and created an incentive to be more sexually cautious.

Divorce rates have also been falling in the last 10 years which Adshade links to technological change. Internet dating has increased the market for dating and marriage. As economic theory goes, in a larger market there is a higher probability that people will find what they want which should lead to stronger marriages. But with all the stories of being busted for infidelity through social networks, surely technological progress has positive and negative effects?

Returning to the links between education and sex, Adshade notes that the increasing number of females going to university is promoting a change in the traditional structure of relationships. In many countries there are now more females than males on campus, consequently more women are opting for partners that are less educated than themselves. As the more educated spouse typically has greater earning potential we expect to see a greater number of relationships with homemaker dads.

To some, research into our intimate lives may seem embarrassing or offensive; however sex is an undeniably important part of our lives that is closely linked to our happiness. Past research shows that like other aspects of human behaviour, sex can be analysed within an economic framework. However one must note that economic models concerning sexual behaviour are intended to provide simplifications of complex processes in reality. They do not presume to explain the choices of everyone in society but the behaviour of people on average. CTG

AUGUST 2013

sexing the subtext

MONKEY

BUSINESS Congo’s Bonobo apes take swinging to a whole new level, and might hold the key to a more intimate means of resolving our differences. lori-rae van laren investigates.

T

he Democratic Republic of Congo is hardly a place that we associate with peaceful conflict resolution. But some of the country’s inhabitants have found a controversial, but seemingly effective, way of solving their problems.

The bonobo apes or pigmy chimpanzees are found almost exclusively in the remote jungle regions of the Congo Basin. These primates were only discovered in the 1930s, and since then the country has been far more occupied with ongoing war than the discovery of new wildlife. The bonobos form part of the ‘Great Apes’ primate group: the others being chimpanzees, orang-utans and gorillas.

While chimps are known to be aggressive animals, their bonobo cousins choose to solve their problems with sex rather than violence. Unlike chimps, which have been known to wage war with one another over territory and food, bonobos hardly ever engage aggressively with one another. This has earned them the nickname ‘hippie chimps’ who take the mantra of ‘make love, not war’ to heart. In the bonobo community, sex is used to settle disputes over food and territory. After an argument, bonobos will hug and kiss rather than continue fighting. Essentially, these apes have harnessed the power of make-up sex as an effective method of conflict resolution.

Scientists have attributed the peaceful lifestyle of bonobos not only to their unique method of conflict resolution but also to the fact that bonobo groups are led by females rather than males. Males remain with their mothers their whole lives while adolescent females leave and join groups by associating themselves with the dominant female of the group. The highest ranking male in the group is usually the first born son of the dominant female.

The most common form of sex amongst bonobos is female to female in order to form power alliances within the group, but bonobo sex ranges from oral sex to group sex and male to male sexual activities. Almost every member of the troupe is a ‘potential sexual partner’—even the youngest in the group take part. The only sexual relationship that is frowned upon in the bonobo community is between mother and son. Bonobos also often have sex face to face, a trait previously thought to be unique to humans.

Just like us, bonobos have close friends and cliques, conflicts with one another and experience jealousy. They are also the only primate besides humans that have recreational sex—their reproduction rate is the same as chimpanzees even though they engage in sexual activities as often as every two hours. Perhaps even more disconcerting is the fact that bonobos use sex as a basic form of communication: don’t we also use sex as a symbol of affection and for

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the establishment of hierarchies?

If it’s not enough that these apes look so similar to us, some primate specialists have suggested that the sexual characteristics of the bonobos confirm our evolutionary descent from a common ancestor. Our desire for close bonds with one another (even if this bond cannot produce offspring) may stem from the prehistoric necessity to keep our pack alive and intact. Our characteristic of separating sex and reproduction would also be explained. Some scientists and conservationists believe that studying these creatures may answer questions of why humans are so obsessed with sex and whether or not female rulers are more successful than male rulers.

The unique group dynamics of the bonobos and their research importance will hopefully put these creatures in the public limelight. Bonobos are in danger of becoming extinct as their meat is considered a delicacy in some African countries and their home is rapidly being destroyed.

If we’ve learnt anything from Hollywood it’s that there’s no quicker way to shoot to fame than a sex tape, especially if it’s a controversial one.

Essentially, these apes have harnessed the power of make-up sex as an effective method of conflict resolution.

A far more subtle observation about the nature of human beings is also available to us through the study of these primates. Unlike other apes, bonobos have never had to fight for survival. Bonobos have always lived on the south bank of the Congo River while chimps and gorillas have always co-habituated (and fought over) the north bank of the river.

Scientists assume that the reason why chimps and gorillas are so aggressive within their own species is because they have always been at war with each other over resources such as territory and food. Chimps are aggressive because it’s the only life they’ve ever known. Human conflict in the Congo only really escalated when a new group of people (the colonialists) sailed up the Congo River. Since then, the Congolese people have also fought with others and within themselves for territory and natural resources.

Perhaps African leaders can also learn a thing or two from our closest animal relatives. It hardly seems likely that a government model of girl power, mommies’ boys and unbridled sex will go down well at the next AU meeting, but the monkey business model of conflict resolution seems to be working in the wild. CTG

lori-rae Van laren

is an Honours student specialising in Justice and Transformation.

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PHILOSOPHY

The Porn

Polemic

This is an issue that has enraged housewives, agitated gentlemen and excited teenage boys since before Hugh Hefner first shuffled out in his silk slippers with a bunny on each arm. CHARLOTTE SCOTT opens up an age-old debate to ponder how much we should trust our gut or our lust when it comes to extreme pornography.

O

n July 22nd, David Cameron announced new restrictions on online pornography. Mostly he’s worried about child pornography, but he also wants to criminalise the possession of extreme porn, particularly that which simulates rape.

Skipping right over the big question of whether that’s logistically possible or effective, the other big question is “Is extreme porn wrong?”

‘Extreme’ porn usually involves a combination of bondage, penetration, physical violence, the subjugation of women, mild electrocution and, most controversially, simulated rape. It all gets filmed, sold on DVD or put up on the internet for public viewing. Child pornography involves a completely different discussion than the one here, because children can’t give meaningful consent.

...alcohol is a far greater contributor to violent crime than porn will ever be.

In the porn industry, nothing is off-limits as long as everyone consents. But is everything really permitted, or should we be morally appalled at such a debasement of sexuality?

After Anene Booysen and the 2012 Delhi Gang Rape Case, can we just stand by while an industry openly makes money and entertainment out of the physical exploitation and subjugation of women?

What of societal effects? Isn’t violent porn idolizing and encouraging rape and violence against women? Is the flood of freely available porn on the internet, and the general trend in sexualisation of various forms of media, desensitizing us to sex and physical intimacy? Perhaps some of us are thinking back to Huxley’s Brave New World and the unnervingly dispassionate attitudes towards casual sex.

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Is consent enough to make anything ethical?

Like we’ve all been told since primary school, this body is nobody’s body but mine. And if it’s really my body, I should be able to do what I want to it, so long as I don’t harm others in the process.

This also harks back to the liberal principle that mentally competent adults ought not to be prevented from expressing their own convictions, or from indulging their own private tastes, simply on the grounds that in the opinion of others those convictions or tastes are mistaken, offensive or unworthy.

By consent, I don’t just mean saying ‘yes’, but a meaningful choice, which requires that there be real alternatives to the option chosen. This means that women working in the porn industry because they can’t get work elsewhere and really need the cash aren’t really consenting.

If a lack of consent is what makes rape wrong, then surely giving consent is what makes simulated rape permissible.

Consent is a new principle, relatively speaking, but is it a good one? Many people say ‘no’. Some call it a debasement of human dignity, leading to an uncivilized world of chaos and nihilism.

But they said that about Elvis Presley’s pelvic thrusts too.

There are more challenging examples. In Germany, 2001, Armin Meiwes killed and ate Bernd Brandes after Brandes answered an online ad looking for a “well-built man, wanting to be eaten”. The killing, chopping, frying and eating of Brandes was filmed, and there is no doubt that Brandes consented and even attempted to participate.

If consent is all that matters, then Meiwes did nothing wrong. But maybe the Meiwes case makes you feel uncomfortable, even a little ill. And it’s easy to see why those feelings make us think there’s something wrong with that.

AUGUST 2013

PHILOSOPHY

But unlike many conservatives, I don’t particularly trust my disgust instinct. It misled me about Brussels sprouts in childhood, and it’s misled others in more substantial issues like homosexuality and inter-racial marriage. Just because your gut doesn’t feel right about it, isn’t enough to condemn it.

But isn’t pornography degrading to women?

‘Pornography’ is defined by some feminist writers, like Catharine McKinnon, as that subset of sexually explicit material that depicts women being dominated or degraded in such a way as to endorse their subordination.

Although I don’t want to brush over this very real concern, the question remains whether the material is endorsing actual subordination, or merely simulated subordination. Just because you enjoy watching simulated rape, doesn’t necessarily mean you think it’s ever ok to actually rape someone.

Many feminists don’t define pornography as intrinsically bad. Some feminists argue that pornography is an important form of sexual expression that does not harm women, and may even benefit them by liberating women’s sexuality from the oppressive shackles of tradition and sexual conservatism.

Meanwhile, for women who autonomously choose a fulfilling career in porn, the claim that they are victims of exploitation is offensively patronizing and paternalistic.

And then there’s the question of societal effects.

There have been several very extensive studies. All of them are hotly contested.

As Ronald Dworkin says, “no reputable study has concluded that pornography is a significant cause of sexual crime: many of them conclude, on the contrary, that the causes of violent personality lie mainly in childhood, be-

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fore exposure to pornography can have had any effect, and that desire for pornography is a symptom rather than a cause of deviance” (Dworkin 1993: 38).

This is probably true. But just because pornography isn’t the main cause of sexual crimes, doesn’t mean that pornography isn’t a cause at all. Consumption of pornography may, on its own, be neither necessary nor sufficient for violent sexual crime, yet it might still be a cause if it increases the incidence of it. What’s probably likely is that pornography can have a marginal affect on people who were already somewhat predisposed to violent sexual crime to begin with.

I don’t particularly trust my disgust instinct.

If this is true, which some psychologists think it might be, then watching porn is a lot like drinking alcohol. Many people regularly consume it; most people can consume it responsibly and without any negative psychological effects but a small percentage of people, already predisposed by a variety of complex factors, can be tipped over the edge by it to do something they might not otherwise have done.

Of course, alcohol is a far greater contributor to violent crime than porn will ever be.

As a society we have to walk the fine line between allowing for most of us to freely consume porn, while somehow trying to prevent the very few times in which the consumption of porn might have a negative affect. Which is a lot easier said than done, as I’m sure Cameron knows.

What we definitely shouldn’t do, if we’ve learnt anything from prohibition, is ban it. Because I for one would much rather live in a world with a regulated porn industry, than with an underground one. CTG

Charlotte Scott is an Honours student in Politics, Philosophy and Economics

27

philosophy arts

Vicarious Release Gender repositioning, cultural appropriation and homoerotic pairings of well-loved literary characters:rolf rhodes reveals the erotic make-believe that is Slash fiction.

H

olmes “bucks” and “sobs with relief ” while “Watson pants, stilling and holding Holmes close”. Legolas “lets his fingers, and mouth follow Aragorn's body”. Sam Winchester feels “Dean press a kiss against his jugular, sucking gently”. Harry cups “either side of Malfoy’s face” and “presses his lips against those soft delicate lips”. Tony Stark is “desperately pressing his lips to” Steve Rogers’.

Whose homosexual wet dream is this, exactly? Welcome to Slash. Something you’re much more likely to have heard of, read, or perhaps even written if you’re your everyday ordinary male-gaze-subjected woman, than if you’re a man. But why? Is it something similar to the male fixation on lesbian porn? Maybe. Chances are it has something to with the so-called ‘mirror neuron’ and western gender impositions.

Before I lose you entirely; Slash is a subgenre of ‘Fan Fiction’, which is a literary fan response to popular TV shows, films, comic books, and novels. The original story, which is known as the ‘canon’, is reappropriated to the author-fan’s wildest desires (and wild they are).

Slash Fan Fiction is unique in that it pairs same-sex canon characters which aren’t in any way romantically involved in the canon text, like Kirk/Spock of Star Trek (the original Slash pair). The name ‘Slash’ deriving from the slash (/) used to indicate the writers fantasized homosexual couple.

In his book Buy∙ology: Truth and Lies About Why We

The original story, which is known as the ‘canon’, is reappropriated to the author-fan’s wildest desires (and wild they are).

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Buy, Martin Lindstrom explores the underlying neurological mechanics of advertising and how the mirror neuron works. He is specifically interested in women writing gay male fantasies.

“In 1992, an Italian scientist named Giacomo Rizzolatti and his research team in Parma, Italy, were studying the brains of a species of monkey—the macaque—in the hopes of finding out how the brain organizes motor behaviours.

Specifically, they were looking at a region of the macaque brain known by neuroscientists as F5, or the premotor area, which registers activity when monkeys carry out certain gestures, like picking up a nut. Interestingly, they observed that the macaques’ premotor neurons would light up not just when the monkeys reached for that nut, but also when they saw other monkeys reaching for a nut — which came as a surprise to Rizzolatti’s team, since neurons in premotor regions of the brain typically don’t respond to visual stimulation.”

What it basically means is that for these monkeys doing the thing and watching the thing being done is psychologically equivalent since it registers in the brain as one and the same thing. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining (fMRI) and Electroencephalography (EEG) - two ways to measure activity in different parts of the brain - studies of human brains revealed that the finding holds true for us too, not only when watching something being done but also when reading something being done. “In short, everything we observe (or read about) someone else doing, we do as well—in our minds.”

Hold on, does this mean women writing Slash want to have the psychological experience of being gay men? Not

AUGUST 2013

arts

quite. Actually, weirdly, there is this flummoxing element of homophobia in the Slash community.

In “Normal female interest in men bonking”: Selections from The Terra Nostra Underground and Strange Bedfellows, Nina Boal writes that there is a tendency for Slash writers to say of a Slashed pair that they “aren’t gay, they’re heterosexual men who just happen to fall in love with each other”. One Slash writer wrote that the Kirk/Spock pair “aren’t limp wristed faggots; they’re men”.

Why do these women want to vicariously experience being a heterosexual man having sex with another heterosexual man? Partly because they are heterosexual women who have fantasies about heterosexual men. One Slash writer, Leslie Shell, writes that “two heterosexual males becoming involved in a sexual relationship is my standard definition of Slash. Why specifically 'heterosexual' males? Because I view Slash as a product of female sexuality...What I want as a woman, how I view sex and intimacy is not reflected in male homosexuality”.

Why not just write from the perspective of one of the female protagonists then, falling in love with and then ‘bonking’ the heroic male? It seems the female characters just don’t satisfy some aspect the Slash writers and readers want to experience.

Cat Anestopoulo reasons that most Slash writers are ‘average’ women and do not or cannot identify with a heroine because they are “devalued” by the internalisation “of the values of our culture” and therefore make “a worthless object of identification”. Or, the heroine is such that, because of her “beauty and seduction”, which make her an “alien, incomprehensible creature” to the average woman. The female writer doesn’t “want to be her” and doesn’t “want to feel the emotions she feels”.

Often, heroines have no depth or character beyond the universe revolving around the hero. The hero has (sexual) agency - he can do the ‘bonking’ instead of having the ‘bonking’ done to him — and depth of character which the (female) writer wants to experience and make use of in her The Cape Town Globalist

exploration of heterosexuality. A heroic male character perspective (a woman from inside a man) pairs with another heterosexual man.

There is the possibility for the fan writer to create a character of her own devising; a heroine with the strengths and capacity to act usually granted the hero. But this practice is frowned upon. They’re known as ‘Mary Sue’s’ and are typically despised. It might be that they tend to seem badly written because of hyperbolic use of clichéd heroic qualities.

Something tells me a simple sex change would transform the same repulsive and clichéd character into a well-loved hero.

They’re usually the centre of attention, they’re attractive, smart, confident yet shy, cute and clumsy damsels-in-distress yet assertive and persevering. They’re basically the best of everything, even if slightly contradictory. Which is bad? Something tells me a simple sex change would transform the same repulsive and clichéd character into a wellloved hero. It’s what mass entertainment has sold us.

Contextualised in prevailing gender dynamics, Nina Boal explains that writing “female/female sexuality” is far more challenging because she would have to create an alternate universe in which the heroines don’t have to “centre their lives around men” whilst not “retreating into a lesbian separatist commune” either, a space in which they can interact with men without apotheosizing them.

It “goes against the grain of societal conditioning to make the women the centre of the story rather than adjuncts to the male characters” she writes. It’s stuck in a kind of feedback loop where any attempted heroine is simply ‘unbelievable’/‘annoying’. Slashers have to make use of what they’ve been sold (and are buying in to). CTG

rolf rhodes

is a third-year student majoring in English and Classics.

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science

Who’s your Daddy?

Alicia Chamaille explains Robin Baker’s controversial theory on our evolutionary sexual behaviour. Men and women vie for the best outcome for their respective sexual interests. For women with many sexual partners, men engage in ‘sperm wars’.

W

hy do we have sex on such a regular basis?

Is it because we enjoy it, or are we simply fulfilling a biological function? A controversial theory published by Robin Baker in his book, Sperm Wars characterises human sexuality by the evolutionary demands of our species.

Baker’s theory outlines exactly how humans are programmed to pursue reproductive success. This does not simply mean the rate at which we have children or how many biological offspring we have, but also how many generations are born because of our reproductive successes or failures. Baker explains that in the reproductive process, it is the male partner’s objective to prevent sperm warfare (explained below) from happening within his partner, as well as simultaneously ensuring his sperm has the best possible chance of winning such warfare, should it occur.

The objective of the female partner in a reproductive pair, on the other hand, is to outmanoeuvre their partner and influence which sperm has the best chance of winning the war of fertilisation.

Sperm warfare is the term for the war that literally takes place between the sperm of one or more men within a single woman’s reproductive tract. Each person is programmed to act in a way that gives him or her the best possibility of winning the battle. Consequently, our bodies use our brains to manipulate us into behaving in a way dictated by this programming. In other words, the occurrence or threat of sperm warfare dictates every aspect of human sexuality.

“...soft-porn spiced with potted neo-Darwinism.”

Alicia Chamaillé is a second-year student Majoring in History, Gender Studies and Classical Studies

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According to Baker, one in 25 people are born of sperm warfare. In the case of roughly 10% of children, the man who thinks he is their father does not sire them. This is possible due to sperm remaining fertile for up to five days inside the female reproductive tract (reaching its peak fertility after two days). In order to enhance the overall reproductive success of human beings, men are in some ways programmed to seek to inseminate as many women as possible while women are programmed to want the sperm with the largest chance of successful insemination to impregnate them. Logically speaking, it is possible for this algorithm to result in infidelity, but Baker maintains that some of the most successful reproductive partners are those who have remained faithful.

Baker makes an interesting proposition regarding female fidelity and the circumstances that are necessary in order

for insemination to occur. For insemination to be possible, a man must have ejaculated up to five days before, or twelve hours after, a woman has ovulated - that is, when a woman is at her most fertile. However, because a man is often unaware of when this period of fertility occurs, by concealing her fertility, a woman supposedly has power over who ultimately inseminates her. Baker cites studies of Western societies that show women are more likely to have sex with someone who is not her partner during her fertile phase and have more sex with her partner during her infertile phase, in order to support his case for the power of hidden fertility. The studies relate this to a slim discovery rate for an isolated case of infidelity and 50% discovery rate with long-term infidelity.

The threat of infidelity is why Baker states routine sex is the most common of sexual experiences as it allows men to not only guard their partners from other men and the threat of sperm warfare but also to keep her ‘topped up’ with his sperm. Conversely, women can use routine sex subconsciously - to confuse men into not knowing when the best time to inseminate is. A man’s body knows exactly how much sperm needs to be ejaculated into his partner, while women decide how much sperm to keep. In essence, Baker’s assessment of humanity’s sexual behaviour is that, “our story will be one of men’s bodies trying to make the best out of a bad job, while the woman’s body outsmarts and out manoeuvres them almost at every turn.”

Due to the controversial nature of the book’s contents, some of which includes using rape as an example of a sexual strategy and a near dismissal of homosexuality, Sperm Wars continues to receive both criticism and praise. The scientific community pronounced that the theory is not substantiated by satisfactory evidence and that it provides an overly mechanistic, as well as what some critics have called a depressing, view of sex and human sexuality. One critic from the Newstatesmen & Society wrote that “Singlehandedly, [Baker] has pioneered a whole new genre: softporn spiced with potted neo-Darwinism”.

Another widespread concern is that although Baker claims not to show partiality to any of the sexes, much of the discussion beyond that of evolution seems relevant only to the problematic disruptions in patterns of routine sexual behaviour caused by the promiscuity of women. In other words, the theory reinforces longstanding archetypes of badly-behaved women. Furthermore, whilst some women certainly enjoy casual sex, it is unlikely that those aiming to conceive will be the ones having sex with more than one man within five days. CTG AUGUST 2013

The Cape Town

Globalist UCT’s st udent int e r nat ional af fai r s mag a z i ne

The Cape Town Globalist is looking for new team members for 2014 to continue bringing our magazine to life with high-quality content, interesting angles and strong style. We are looking for the following positions: Society President: This person heads up the ‘society’ side of the magazine and organises our launches and speaker events.

Marketing: We need someone to market all aspects of the magazine, our oncampus profile, and event marketing. Lots of social media involved.

Deputy Layout Editor: The Deputy Layout Editor assists the Layout Editor in laying out the hard-copy magazine. Basic knowledge of InDesign required.

Treasurer: We need someone to oversee the magazine’s finances for publication, events and marketing; amongst other duties.

2 x Content Editors: Content editors are responsible for editing the articles of the hard-copy magazine. There could possibly be other duties related to web content or contact with our international network of blogs. We need at least two content editors, possibly more.

If you are interested in being part of our team, please email us on ctglobalist@gmail.com with a letter of motivation that is less than one page and a brief CV by 16 September.

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Centre For Film and Media Studies Master Of Arts Degrees 2013

Fim & Media Ad PG Applications deadline: 31 October 2013 We offer MA degrees in the following areas: • Master’s in Film Studies by dissertation only • Master’s in Media Studies by dissertation only • Master’s in Media Theory and Practice by course work and dissertation • Master’s in Political Communication by course work and dissertation • Master’s in Rhetoric Studies by dissertation only • Master’s in in African Cinema by course work and dissertation • Master’s in Documentary Arts by course work and creative research production • Master’s in Screenwriting by course work and creative research production

Contact us for more information: Facebook:

cfms.uct@gmail.com

Centre For Film And Media Studies - Uct @FilmandmediaUCT @aFriCanCinemaUniT

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For a full list of courses, visit the Centre’s website, www.cfms.uct.ac.za

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