Download Right to Respect awareness campaign at UKZN College of Humanities

Picture by UKZN HIV/AIDs Unit
College of Humanities
by: Melissa Mungroo “[email protected]”
Published. 04 Sep 2014
Right to Respect awareness campaign
at UKZN
A
Right to Respect awareness campaign
at UKZN, which aimed to create
greater awareness of sexual rights, was
hosted by the University’s HIV/AIDS
programme at the Howard College Theatre
The event was officially opened by the
Executive Director of Student Services, Dr
Sibusiso Chalufu, who welcomed guests.
The main speaker, Dr Maheshvari Naidu,
an anthropologist at the School of Social
Sciences, highlighted the recent series of
brutal attacks on women.
Naidu’s talk was titled: Getting Behind
the (Fore)skin: Know yourself, Respect
Yourself’. Her address took on a metaphoric
standpoint with the emphasis placed on
the nature of human beings and their
interpretations of identity markers in line
with racial, sexual and gender differences,
within the broader context of feminism.
‘As a starting point, those identities such
as race and gender are not given factual
realities but social constructions within
different communities of people. Because
they are constructions, does not mean
they are fiction or do not exist, rather they
have fluid and shifting meanings. They do
Main speaker Dr Maheshvari Naidu (second row, third right) with UKZN’s Dr
Sibusiso Chalufu (back row, left), University staff, students and external stakeholders
at the Right to Respect awareness campaign event.
hold meanings because people have taken
on these constructed markers and selfidentify as Black, Black African, as White
and so on. So we often enact ourselves
within these roles of racial and other
differences.’
She borrowed from Jacques Derrida’s
theory of Différance , and the idea of ‘to
defer’, pointing out that ‘this theoretical
borrowing helps us see that sexuality
and sexual orientations (and other
“differences” can be seen as différances)
and are much more complex than what we
may want to pigeon-hole and judge them
to be.
‘Adopting this view of “delaying” the
assumed meaning, or signification, in the
sense of metaphorically looking beyond
the foreskin, helps us come a little closer
to the idea and behaviour that dis-respect
based on judgment and intolerance doesn’t
make much sense.’
The notion of ‘difference’ also played a
huge role in Feminist theory, said Naidu.
‘Feminist anthropologists have shown how
women’s bodies have been appropriated
and rendered “docile” and made passive by
multiple social realities including cultural
or so called traditional practices by men
over women.’
She encouraged the audience to – ‘be
comfortable in your own skin. Be yourself,
because everyone else is taken’.
In her closing remarks, Naidu said: ‘As
women in the midst of pursuing degrees
and intellectual careers, we should be
able to recognise when certain acts of
masculinity force us to be complicit even
without us being aware of it.
‘Engaging in transactional sex for the
consumerist Gucci bag and holiday
abroad, giving in to sex just because you
do not wish to offend or lose the partner,
or giving in to the occasional condom-less
sex, because he promises to withdraw in
time, makes women complicit to certain
masculine sexual scripts. It turns us, the
signifiers, into how and what signification
the men give us, so knowing yourself is
the ultimate respect you can give yourself.’
Ms Nomonde Magantolo, UKZN HIV and
AIDS Support Unit coordinator, said, ‘The
Howard College Campus HIV and AIDS
Support Unit hosted this reproductive
health
education
and
advocacy
programme in celebration of women’s
month. This programme of edutainment
was well attended with all five campuses
being represented. The audience was very
responsive to the inputs and participated
in the entertainment.’
First year anthropology students, known
as The Anthros, performed a comedy
sketch in which they enacted and parodied
stereotypical identity markers, or so
called ‘differences’. This enactment was
received extremely well as it also skilfully
highlighted the performative nature of
identity and difference.
Campus Health clinic and External
stakeholders provided critical health and
wellness information screening to both
students and staff on the day as part of
the Right to Respect awareness campaign
event.