Sfebe!
If ever there was a loaded word, this is it.
We grew up in a normalised state of being where a group of boys would congregate on a street corner, or at the shops. Every once in a while they would try, actually they would demand, a woman’s attention. Where there was no response or a welcoming of their unsolicited attention, the next thing that came was that word, in a hiss or shouted at you until they were satisfied that no-one actually wanted you because “o sfebe” (you're a bitch). [
Many of us remember the dread that came with going to the shops, or having to walk past a hotspot, a place of gathering for boys.
We grew up in a culture where if we went to parties, the girl who danced most freely, who owned and was in charge of her body was called sfebe. The interesting thing is that what was meant to make her undesirable also made every single guy try to walk away with her that night. And when she exercised her right to decide and go home with one of them she would further prove to them that she was indeed what they had already branded her, sfebe – a whore. Women who own their bodies and are unapologetic about what they choose to do with their vaginas scare them, so they use the one word that they were told we fear the most.
Sfebe is a word that has for years been used to make women toe the line, a shaky line drawn, guarded and maintained by patriarchy and the fragility that informs the idea of masculinity. Even as young girls we were socialised to fear this status, we were taught to toe the line and tuck our vaginas away. The word was a weapon and we were taught to use it against each other, we were brought up to be the keepers and guards of patriarchy.
These days women are called sfebe for voicing and articulating their thoughts intelligently, we see it all the time on social media. How dare women display any form of intelligence when it supposedly belongs to men? How dare a woman have an opinion and or an idea at the office? We have heard this even in the language of the men closest to us, who come back from work irritated by “sfebe sa ko ofising” (that bitch at the office).
Last week DA MP Natasha Mazonne made a comment about EFF’s Floyd Shivambu’s shoes, a spicy unwarranted comment with regards to their cost. His colleague Mbuyiseni Ndlozi jumped in to defend him by asking Mazzone about whether or not she was fantasising. And there it was, the sexual innuendo, men’s go-to weapon to shut women up. If this weren’t on social media I wonder if he would not have said sfebe to her.
Men move to forbid their wives from being friends with women whose abuse by previous partners is well known to them. Their only sin is their audacity to leave those relationships. Instead of unlearning the behaviour that made those women leave their exes, they would rather obsess about them giving their own wives courage to leave. They are worried that they will teach their wives that abusive marriages and relationships can be left, that there is life and possibly a happier one post any one man. Their happiness either with new partners or alone means ‘ke difebe’ (they're whores) and should be avoided.
Men need to know that while they have the physical strength to hit, rape and kill us, they can no longer make us cower by calling us sfebe. We know it comes out when they see something in us that scares them. It comes out when they see a fire in our eyes that they can neither match nor put out.
Be a sfebe if it means being intelligent, having opinions and using your vagina as you wish.
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