Thembisa S. Mshaka Tag

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By Thembisa S. Mshaka Patriarchy is an attention whore. When men raping and sexually assaulting women is the topic, the survivors are routinely relegated to the shadows, and the men wind up in the spotlight. Whether we see the actual perpetrators, or the men (and the women who love them) rush to defend them, the conversation is diverted to the perp’s well-being. The impact of being accused on them. Their careers. Their families’ rights to privacy and respect. And once the coddling of the offender has been taken care of, the patriarchal gaze turns with condescension to the women who survived....

07 February, 2020 /

So my new favorite Sunday show, The United States of Tara comes to a close this weekend. In a nutshell (pardon the pun) Toni Collette deftly dances between her central character, named Tara, and that woman’s other personalities, or ‘alters’: T, a petulant, hypersexed teenager; Alice, a prudish but alluring homemaker cut from Donna Reed’s cloth; Buck, her male alter who lives at the intersection of trailer trash biker and delusional Vietnam vet. And then: there’s Gimme, the feral child, an alter that screeches, cowers, destroys and even pees on sleeping relatives in the middle of the night. The show has led me...

04 April, 2009 /