August 2001 Insights Gender Violence Special Issue

Dangerous game of love? Challenging male machismo

Love, in South Africa, can be a dangerous game for girls. Boys use violence in sexual relationships to assert their masculinity. The reliance by some boys, however, on excessive control of girlfriends belies their own vulnerability. How can the ‘normality’ of sexual violence be challenged?

Physical assault, rape, and coercive sex have become the norm in male-female relationships in South Africa making it very difficult for young women to protect themselves against unwanted sexual intercourse, pregnancy, HIV infection, and other sexually transmitted diseases. A recent Medical Research Council study involving 30 Xhosa youth aged 16 to 24 from two township schools in the Eastern Cape examined the circumstances and contexts of violence in adolescent sexual relationships.

Beating is perceived as a normal strategy for punishment and a way of gaining ascendancy and control.

Violence is not only a common feature of sexual relationships, the study found, but also of every day life. Beating is perceived as a normal strategy for punishment and a way of gaining ascendancy and control: husbands beat their wives, parents beat their children, and teachers beat their pupils.

For both sexes, sexual relationships and their inherent conflicts are a significant source of emotional stress and disappointment. For girls the main sources of unhappiness in relationships are infidelity, abandonment, excessive male control, forced sex and violence. For boys, the main preoccupation appears to be the threat or the reality that girlfriends are being unfaithful.

Masculinity is largely defined by numbers of sexual partners, choice of main partner, and ability to control girlfriends. It is on the whole socially taboo in South Africa not to have a girlfriend. Indeed, acquiring girlfriends to offset the possibility of a relationship ending is common practice. Multiple sexual partners feature in intensely competitive struggles for position and status within the male peer groups.

Men are dependent on women submitting to the 'rules' of the relationship and to their strategies of control. If girls fail to abide by the rules - reject 'proposals of love', attempt to end a relationship, refuse to have sex or check up on their boyfriend's fidelity - they must face the violent consequences. Femininity, on the other hand, is based on girls' desirability to the opposite sex. Girls find it difficult to resist violent men for fear of losing the status of having a relationship, and competitiveness within the peer group makes it impossible for girls to admit having been beaten.

Further findings reveal that:

• Men see sex as their right: forced sex is legitimate.
• Male teachers and older men preying on female students conveys the message to younger boys that young girls are 'fair game'.
• Gaining and keeping partners are overwhelming preoccupations for young people.
• Girls prefer wealthy partners who provide them with gifts and money and whom they can boast about to other girls.

• recognition by government that assault and forced sex are criminal acts and that more visible street policing and swift, effective action by the police is essential
• provision of basic self-defence and escape strategies training for women
• improved communication within communities on sexuality
• more equal socialisation of boys and girls from childhood
• improved life skills education classes in schools, which address issues of gender violence, provide non-violent conflict resolution skills, and focus on self-esteem, trust and team-building
• community education campaigns directed at children and adults challenging the 'normality' and inevitability of violence in relationships.