For the handful of perplexed people who anticipate SA’s Women’s Day this Thursday, the nominally neutral Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation defines gender as a "socially constructed definition" of women and men that is not the same as sex meaning the biological characteristics of women and men.
Gender, says the agency, is the "conception of tasks, functions and roles attributed to women and men in society and in public and private life" — a determination that would have seen my granny roll her eyes before getting on with the business of running her farm near Tonteldoos, high up in the Steenkampsberg.
It is unwise to nit-pick about this. Your reporter had to learn the hard way that the preference for the word "gender" as opposed to "sex" when referring to the role differentiation between men and women was hard won by the second-wave feminists and that it would not be surrendered in the fourth wave to knuckle-dragging grammar Nazis.
The consequences are nevertheless perplexing. Take the march on August 9 1956 by about 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria in protest against the country’s pass laws. The march, one of many anti-apartheid protests at that time, might have been unremarkable were it not that it was a march by women.
Had it been a people’s march by white and black men and women, it would have been a commonplace protest against the "dompas", such as the now nearly forgotten Torch Commando, whose marchers included anti-apartheid activist and later Umkhonto weSizwe commander Joe Slovo.
The irritating thing is that an act of courage or a life appropriately lived — the simple discharge of a duty — is made all that more remarkable because a woman did it.
For the benefit of fourth wavers, the pass laws required black South Africans to carry a document to prove they had official permission to be in an area reserved for white people. The idea, under a policy called influx control, was to limit the urbanisation of rural blacks, thus preserving the privileges inherent in urban life for whites.
If my granny ever entertained the idea of predetermined roles for women, she never let on. Her role as a young widow was to see her three daughters fed, clothed and educated, and off to a better life in the city. This she achieved by working the farm. It was not woman’s work. It is what a parent does.
It would have demeaned her, though, if her accomplishments were qualified as exceptional by being a woman alone, husbandless; that what she had done was a great thing — for a woman. The irritating thing is that an act of courage or a life appropriately lived — the simple discharge of a duty — is made all that more remarkable because a woman did it.
My granny, diminutive as she was in physical stature, was no one’s "little woman". Patronise her at your peril.
The decision to honour SA’s women was doubtlessly well-intentioned; even if women had been a majority in the committee that made the decision, it was patronising nonetheless. The women’s march in 1956 was a great thing in and of itself, not because women did it, but because it had to be done and because it was done with courage and righteous conviction. To view it otherwise is simply sexist.
Race politics are similarly demeaning: the consequences are the same. To view the notable achievements of people as extraordinary because of their race is just racist.
Race and gender — and whatever next humans invent in their desperate search for identity — are no more than social constructs. And while it seems fair and reasonable to take extraordinary steps to redress injustices past and present, the perpetuation of oppressive social constructs will only make things worse, as the push-back against #metoo has illustrated.
This is not just an argument. South Africans have proof in their lived experience. Race hatred remains deeply entrenched in the national psyche despite its biological fallacy. Sexual harassment, rape culture and domestic violence flourish in our society and it is made worse by the marginalisation of the intersection between the instruments of oppression. Sexism and racism are inextricably linked.
My granny might have rolled her eyes, but she would have approved, while getting on with running the farm.
• Blom is a flyfisher who likes to write.
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