The United Nations has recorded a 20% global increase of gender-based violence cases during the lockdown period, it is for this reason that the United Nations has dubbed Gender-Based Violence the “Shadow pandemic”. Issues such mass retrenchments and salary cuts have left households unable to take care of their fi­nancial obligations and have left women trapped indoors with their abusers without the social support structures which women had when life was normal and people could leave the homes before the pandemic. Toxic masculinity has led to men committing copious amounts of femicide in South Africa daily because some women ­find themselves without the economic resources to be able to leave abusive situations.

The systematic exclusion of women in the mainstream economy has left women vulnerable to abusive men because they rely on them for survival as this period of the lockdown meant that a lot of the jobs which women did to make a living were prohibited by the law.

The discourse of gender-based violence must be broadened in scope to include more than just violence between men and women and queer bodies but to include the intentional systemic violence that is visited upon women through economic exclusion. In society, women are lagging behind men economically as well in positions of power as a result men do not have the mental software to view women as their equals even in intimate relationships because, at schools, work and in society women are always systematically placed in subordinate positions to men.

Corona Virus has allowed society’s imagination to be stretched and has challenged the heterosexual misogynistic way of looking at crimes of violence visited upon women as insufficient in that now it cannot be said that women should be careful about where they go at night or how they dress as women are killed and abused by intimate lovers, men that they know and trust.

It has become clear for all to see that men are violent, they are violent even to themselves so we need to have a critical look at what makes men violent towards women and why they think that they need to assume ownership of women, an example would be when men say “stop kill OUR women, these are OUR mothers and sisters.” This notion that women are not supposed to murdered or abused because men have some sort of relationship or ownership to women which is demonstrated by the use of the word “OUR” is insufficient and problematic in that women do not belong to men.

Women are humans and humans have the inherent right to life and dignity and men should understand it as such. Men need to see women as humans with the agency.

Women live in perpetual fear of being violated even in spaces that are supposed to provide safety and protection such as police stations and centres for justice The government has introduced sensitivity training for police officials however victims of gender-based violence have experienced more violence and abuse in the hands of officials to the point where women end up not following through with reporting perpetrators. The mishandling of rape kits and evidence has led to a lot of rape cases falling through the cracks in the hands of trained officials.

There is little to no recourse for victims against incompetent or corrupt police officials although police officers may be trained in terms of sensitivity, there are no ramifi­cations when police officials mishandle gender-based crimes.

Lastly, there are no safe spaces for women, there is no easy or safe way of being a woman even in so-called progressive spaces such as the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) women face microaggressions on a daily basis from men in the MDM sexual coercion is sexual violence.

So, men must understand that it starts with these microaggressions where women feel compelled to agree to situations to avoid being stranded because they have been given a lift by a man who although he may be a comrade seems to be expecting something in return. Unwanted sexual advances by male comrades leave women feeling scared and forced into situations that would rather not be in. Men in the movement need to socialized to understand and avoid rape behaviour and rape culture.

Power dynamics need to be understood by men in the mass democratic movement. Political, social, economical and even physical disparities between men and women need to be etched into the minds of men so that they may understand how these microaggressions are rape. Women have been fortunate enough to ­find alternative forms of justice outside of the conventional justice system such as the social media space where women get social justice by exposing their abusers.

Men in the MDM have featured in many of the rape incidents across social media and many of them seem to think just because their rape wasn’t the conventional “gratuitous violent” rape from a stranger to a stranger, then what they did to women that they knew was not rape.

Men in the MDMt need to take on the responsibility of educating themselves and seeing women as fellow human and deserving of safety and respect, once the movement gets itself correct this change of behaviour will be translated to society as a whole.