PHOTO OF THE DAY - Thursday 26/8/10

Fill up the table..

So I attended an SRC event on Thursday evening.  It was put together to celebrate women, within the spirit of women’s month.  I didn’t expect much from it except free food.

I waltzed in at what I thought was ‘very late’ but needless to say, the event began late and I was apparently on time.  I did however miss a performance by Lebo Mashile, who it turned out to have been the highlight of the night because after she left everything plummeted into disarray.

Quite an inspiring woman stood at the podium when I arrived and she was delivering a speech she hoped would impact on the few attentive students.  Even those few seemed disinterested in what she was trying to convey.  It made me think about the purpose of the night, the purpose of the event, the purpose of Women’s month, the purpose of endless talks..  What do we really take out of them?  Do we really listen and internalize and enact?

Yes, Women’s month means well and it carries historic weight but does it encompass enough ground to carry women through?  I don’t think so.  Women have been progressive in the last recent years by making a mark for themselves within many male dominated realms and they’ve done remarkably well in empowering each other.

However, women are still degraded, objectified and sexualised.  They’re still underestimated and judged.  Most women are still very submissive to the pressures of society and the manipulation of men.  Many turn a blind eye to who they are and feel obliged to portray who they are not.  I think women are yet to win the battle and yet to finish the race - called women empowerment. 

It was disturbing to watch guys at this SRC event who stood in front to ‘honour’ female members of the council and yet they pushed to the front of the queue so that they could receive the first serving of food.  No tact, and no etiquette.  Ironically, it was a women’s cocktail dinner but males dominated over the tables, the food and everything else.

Which brings me to the above pic.  So people received two coupons, which would buy them only two drinks at the bar.  Now the two guys at our table tricked people into giving them their coupons so that they could have 10 beers between themselves.   This, I thought, was utterly gluttonous.  I hate feeding into stereotypes but black people do get out of hand once things are offered at no charge – by the way 95% of the people there were black.  I have no issues against my own race, in fact I embrace my black skin but some people in this black skin make me wish this skin didn’t belong to me.

I think the event was a failure and could’ve been better planned.  Better organised and brainstormed to leave the many young women in that hall with resonating messages, unfortunately this was not the case.  And so we celebrated Women’s month at another empty event..