Thread by @IntwaliBruce

So, #MenAreTrash...

It's a #Thread.
Some details are sensitive, but sharing them is necessary👇🏾

First of all, origins:

On April 28 2017. South African Sandile Mantsoe stabbed his girlfriend Karabo Mokoena, doused her in petrol, burned her, and buried her remains in a shallow grave. The body was discovered the next day, burnt beyond recognition. It couldn't be identified

Until May 10, by her mother.

Around the same time, 3 year old Courtney Pieters (also from SA) goes missing. Her body is found dumped on May 13. It will later emerge that Mortimer Saunders, a childhood friend of her father who was living with the family killed her. He raped her,

Then gave her ant poison, assaulted her to force her to drink it, then strangled her with a towel. All because, in his words "there were ill feelings between him and Courtney's mother".

These two murders came into public spotlight at around the same time. One Twitter user then

Made a thread documenting these and other women's murders/disappearances, and soon others were sharing their own experiences with abuse and violence at the hands of boyfriends, husbands & other men in their lives . The hashtag #MenAreTrash was soon being used by women to voice

Their anger.

Over time it grew into a movement which even though, yes, calls out individual men, is much more aimed at the patriarchal system we live in. When people use the sentence, they don't usually mean to say every single man who's ever existed is trash.

It is meant to call out a system in which the trashy *very* often get away with their trashy behavior and crimes. In SA in 2016, a woman was killed every 4 hours. Femicide rates in El Salvador, Jamaica & Guatemala are even higher. Studies estimate 50% of women in Papua New Guinea

Have been raped, 86% of women beaten during pregnancy, and about 60% of the men have at least once participated in gang rape. Port Moresby, the capital, is dubbed "The Worst Place in the world to live for women".

Women are routinely gang raped and killed in India. Hundreds of

Underage girls are impregnated in Rwanda. Stories of women's plight are commonplace all over the globe, and more often than not, the abusers get away with it

We live in a world where in many countries, society forces raped girls 2 stay silent in the name of culture & protecting

reputation. In many countries women can't drive, own a bank account, go to school, wear want they want, not wear what they don't want, have a job, earn the same as men with whom they share the exact same duties, and so much more.

You'll be hard pressed to find a woman who has

Never been catcalled. Men are trash, and the trashness is as much institutionalized as it is ingrained in societal practices and personal behaviors.

And then we have men who don't necessarily do all these awful things, but who don't lift a finger when it's their colleagues,

friends, relatives who do. I'll let y'all in on a secret: a passive bystander to violence or oppression is as guilty as the oppressor.

So when women, out of anger say that men are trash, before giving in to the instinct to jump and say #NotAllMen, first take a moment to listen,

To understand where the anger is coming from. And when you feel the urge to retort "what about your father?", remember that the world is full of trash dads. Those who cheat on their wives, those who are abusive to their families, those who are wonderful family men but are also

Rapists and pedophiles and abusers of other women.

Remember that these women know wonderful men. But they also know "wonderful men" who ended up being major disappointments. Remember that even though they're willing to give men the benefit of the doubt, the truth is that they

Don't really know you, cause they have friends who were drugged and raped by their male friends. Remember that, hen you meet in a dark street at night, and they walk as far away from you as possible. They don't 100% think you're an awful man. They just aren't sure. And the

Collective evidence society provides them on a daily gives them no reason to want to test your goodness.

Try to look past yourself, your hurt ego & positive identity. You will understand that it's really not about you as an individual... unless you know deep down that it is.

Lastly, remember that only consistency in your actions, and owning up to your mistakes whenever your fail, is the only thing that proves you're not trash. Not words.