Gabrielle Goliath

“Patriarchy is brutal. it is normalised in public and private spaces. It deploys entire institutions explicitly and through deception. As a key feminist principle, therefore, I write against the Female Fear Factory in defamiliarising and energising ways. As such, then, I never just portray patriarchy’s brutality at work without gesturing towards its unmaking.”

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“[The Female Fear Factory] is a theatrical and public performance of patriarchal policing of and violence towards women and others cast as female, who are, therefore, considered safe to violate. It requires an audience, and relies on a series of recognisable cues to communicate with those who watch, because patriarchy ensures that we are socialised to recognise these cues in a process of fluency … The Female Fear Factory travels through respectability and through shame, and is normalised through repetition so that we no longer recognise it for what it is, consequently taking it for granted as ‘life’.”

From Female Fear Factory, by Pumla Dineo Gqola*

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*Gqola, P. 2021. female Fear Factory. Melinda Ferguson Books: Cape Town, pp. 13 & 18-19