This post was submitted by John "Jolly" Bavoso

Early in May, in Johannesburg, South Africa, 24-year-old Noxolo Nogwaza was brutally raped, stabbed repeatedly with shards of broken glass, and had rocks beaten into her face by a group of men until she died from her injuries. Her body was then dumped in a very public part of the township. The motivation behind the gruesome attack was almost certainly Nogwaza’s sexuality – she had just dropped her girlfriend off at home and neighbors reported hearing her attackers shouting homophobic slurs throughout the crime.

Despite the ease with which many would consider these events a hate crime, one specific term has been used in conjunction with this incident: corrective rape. In fact, rather than focusing on Nogwaza herself, many news outlets chose to run headlines in the same vein as “South Africa: Corrective Rape Claims Another Victim,” leading with the name of the crime, as if the term itself was responsible for this poor woman’s suffering and death.

So, what is “corrective rape” exactly? It’s a term that’s only been in existence for a several years and refers to a very specific crime: The sexual assault of South African lesbians in order to “cure” them. This bit of vocabulary entered the global lexicon three years ago when Eudy Simelane, a well-known and openly queer South African soccer player, was similarly raped and murdered. The term has since become a kind of shorthand for any attack on a gay man or lesbian, anywhere in the world, by a member or members of the opposite sex in which the stated purpose of the assault is to convert the victim to heterosexuality.

When I was sent the link to the story about Nogwaza’s death, it was accompanied by a suggestion that I write about it, since I’ve been writing on queer international issues for a number of years now. I’ve touched on the subject of corrective rape briefly in previous writings, but this would be an opportunity to go more into more depth about it – one that I certainly welcomed. I decided I would write a post about it that weekend. But I didn’t. And I continued to not write about it. The problem was: What exactly would I say? Would simply reporting the facts after they had already been reported on elsewhere and adding my voice to the choir of those decrying such a crime really be helpful? And that was the real issue: I wanted to somehow help end these kinds of crimes, but was so completely removed from the situation that anything I wrote would likely just end up sounding trite and redundant.

Finally, I remembered a post I authored in 2009 called “Queering International Journalism?” I wrote this rambling article right after I was introduced to the concept of Peace Journalism, which Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick define as “When editors and reporters make choices – about what stories to cover, and how to cover them – which create opportunities for society at large to consider and to value non-violent, developmental responses to conflict.” Essentially, Peace Journalism is the idea that the way we talk about and report on conflicts can actually help to promote peace. This got me thinking about how this underlying principle could be applied to the struggle for LGBT rights around the world: perhaps if mentions of gay issues and attitudes were included in more of the context of ‘mainstream’ news stories, all readers may understand the circumstances within each country, and the awareness raised may help to stop problems related to sexual minorities around the world before they develop?

When considering corrective rape through this lens, however, I came to a much more direct conclusion: We need to stop using the term “corrective rape” altogether. Why? Because it seems to me that by calling such a terrible act “corrective rape,” rather than just “rape,” or even “homophobic rape” or “anti-lesbian rape,” we may actually be creating an atmosphere that perpetuates the attitudes that make it possible in the first place. The term “corrective” privileges the perspective of the perpetrators, not the victims and survivors, and lends the practice an air of tacit benevolence or usefulness while also suggesting that the victims – or in rare cases, survivors – are in some way flawed. We don’t refer to hate crimes as “corrective crimes,” after all, even though beating up a queer person could be construed by a very twisted individual as helping them in some way. Even just adjusting the terminology to “conversion rape” or some similar construct would serve the function of distinguishing this crime from others, without bestowing some ambiguous suggestion of helpfulness upon the attackers.

Besides, with so many of these crimes ending in murder, the idea that even the perpetrators believe they’re in some way encouraging their victims to “reform” and lead a better life becomes more than a little suspect. It seems to me that it may help weaken any culture of permissiveness and impunity that exists around these crimes if we just called these attacks what they are: violent and heinous punishments directed at those who dare step out of traditional societal roles and identities, not attempts to “help” them see the saving light of having consensual sexual relations with members of the opposite sex.

Having said all of this, is it possible that simply adjusting the dialog around something as horrific as “corrective rape” will actually make lesbians safer in South Africa and around the world? Maybe not; but I believe that by personally not using this term, I will feel much better knowing that I am in no way suggesting that there was anything about Noxolo Nogwaza, or any of the men and women like her, that needed fixing.

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