[ASU] Kenyan women and the avenues

Tue May 5 11:51:44 EDT 2009

ASU

Please read below, thought this will add another dimension, to the G10
sex ban discussion.

Amani,

Kenyan Men Should Zip Up and Grow Up
Posted April 30th, 2009 by Wandia Njoya in African Affairs

When the G10, a group of Kenyan women leaders from civil society,
yesterday called on womenfolk to abstain from sex with their husbands
for 7 days as a fast to force the bickering Kenyan leaders to act like
they have some sense, I dismissed it as a poor reenactment of the
ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata. I thought the call was inappropriate
and irrelevant, and even dreamed that Kenyans would ignore it or joke
about it. I was in for a surprise.

This morning, several Kenyan men called the radio station talk show I
was listening to to express their anger. Some gave weak lines like
their wives are not married to them, not to those known as the "two
principals," namely Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai
Kibaki. Like the wives don't already know that. But others boldly
voiced their disrespect and outright hatred for women, with one man
boldly saying that "if my wife refused to sleep with me, she would see
[a euphemism for ‘I would thoroughly beat her up']." Another man
boldly declared on television that he would flog his wife.

The comments were shocking. The first reason is the most obvious - it
is unlikely that Kenyan men have sex every night of their married
lives. I am sure that some of those men now proclaiming their conjugal
"rights" go for weeks, if not months, without having intercourse with
their wives. Others fast for 28 days or more from sex for religious
reasons. And now they will have us believe that their marriages will
collapse and that they will die because their spouses have said no
sex? Please.

In addition, it seems strange in this day and age, when the world is
moving towards equity and mutual respect in relations across
continents, that some Kenyan men would be boldly exposing their view
of sex as an assertion of dominance rather than as an opportunity of
mutual emotional and physical exchange between a woman and a man.
After all, what does a man have to lose when he has a edifying
relationship with a woman? If anything, a man whose spouse relates to
him out of respect and love would be more of a man than some slave
master whose spouse relates to him out of fear and lack of options.
The latter man always lives in the risk of his wife deserting him or
worse, of poisoning him - and yes, it does happen in Africa.

It is surely sickening to hear a man vow to flog another adult. It
raises the question as to why a man should marry and mate an adult for
whom he has so much contempt. One may, of course, argue that the man
does not see the woman as an adult, or even a human being. But such
being the case, he is no better than the Southern plantation slave
master who, during the day, would argue that the black slave is an
animal, incapable of human thought or emotion, only to rape that same
animal in the night and bear offspring by that animal a few months
later. If we frown upon sexual intercourse between human and other
animal species as a sign of sickness and an abomination, then a man
who marries "something" he considers lower than human is sick,
abominable and outright evil.

The argument that most Kenyan women are not married to Raila and
Kibaki doesn't hold because men seem to have forgotten as much in
January and February 2008 when they raped women and children who
belonged to the ethnic groups perceived to be on the opposing
political side. Other men who felt demeaned by fleeing from ethnic
violence are quoted in a report done by the group Men for the Equality
of Men and Women as saying that they raped their fellow escapees
because "As men running away to avoid getting killed by other men, the
only masculine way of testing their manhood was by gang-raping women
escapees in broad day light without minding whether they were our
former neighbors or strangers." Why didn't the men remember that those
women were not Raila's and Kibaki's wives then? Give us a break.

So what is the real issue here? It is not sex - since men do not have
sex every day. Neither is it about concern for politics interfering in
marriage. It is about power. The men who are angry with the G10 are
angry that women are asserting their right to choose what to do with
their bodies and with their destinies. It does not anger them when a
woman doesn't sleep with a man; it angers them when she has made the
choice not to do so.

The irony is that this model of power relations that the men want to
impose at home is the same one being played on the national stage and
which men complain about. Just like the men callers with regards to
the women, the Kenyan leaders have no respect for the wananchi of
Kenya. They rape us the citizens, destroy our environment, our public
coffers, our food reserves, our dignity and our intellect, leaving
millions of Kenyans killing each other or dying from hunger. But
instead of men who oppose the G10 offering an alternative model of
manhood and of leadership in Kenya, they are now asserting the right
to behave like Raila and Kibaki within their compounds and in their
bedrooms. How pathetic.

The other issue is that the manhood of Kenyan men has reduced to their
penises, and the same has been done to  politics in Kenya. From
debates about circumcision vs. no circumcision to distinguish between
the ethnic groups of the major Kenyan politicians, to the insane
orgies of violence visited on women during the chaos in Kenya in 2008,
the focus on what makes a man is the engagement of his sexual organ.
How savage. And some of these men will be complaining on international
platforms about how racism stereotyped the black man as over-sexual
and prone to raping [white women]. In the same way, politicians have
reduced Kenya to such narrow-minded power games that now two men -
Raila and Kibaki - have decided to sacrifice our country as they
engage in ego-trips and daring each other to see who will be the first
to blink.

But the hypocrisy doesn't end there. Kenyan men celebrated as one of
their son Barack Obama, who was not raised by his Kenyan father. And
the irony gets better. Obama happens to have a successful wife, a
Princeton graduate - I might add for those men who think that
educating women is a waste of resources and that an educated wife is
sheer trouble. And even as president of the most powerful country in
the world, he takes his daughters to school, advises Black men to
uphold their responsibilities and fathers, and horror of horrors for
the career flogging husbands, he pulls out a chair for his wife!
Should and when the Obama's visit Africa, I hope that at the top of
their agenda is to show how equitable gender relations is good for all
of us and for our children and that it's not just about women. In
fact, the laudable Kenyan men spearheading the campaign to convince
fellow men of the humanising benefit of seeing their sisters, mothers,
daughters and wives as fellow human beings should consider the
possibility of having Obama as their patron. Wouldn't that be great?

In the meantime, it is important to remember that God made the man
with brains and a conscience to think, hands to work for his family,
and nation, emotions to love his spouse and family and a soul to
worship his creator. However, some Kenyan men have not used the
different dimensions of their being to make a build a more humane
Kenya. In 2007 and 2008, they tied their humanity and the identity of
Kenya to a single male organ. Since then, many work to enrich
themselves; they love themselves and disdain the natural and the
sacred.

The G10 have brilliantly proved how pathetic the dominant model of
Kenyan masculinity is. For almost two years, women have been trying to
get the audience of the country in highlighting the suffering of women
and children through petitions, demonstrations and other traditional
means, but the only time they have captured the headlines and national
attention is when they talk about sex. Shame on Kenyan men, on Kenyan
politicians and on the Kenyan press.

The women leaders have a touched a soft spot, and in so doing, they
have revealed what is ailing Kenya. A flawed masculinity that has
corroded our humanity, corrupted our sense of national identity and
that threatens to destroy our country. It is high time that Kenyan men
zipped up and grew up by employing their brains and muscles to make
Kenya a peaceful, prosperous country. And those men who believe they
are nothing like the men callers to the radio station should talk some
sense into their brothers.

Any male species in the animal kingdom can mate and sire offspring.
But it takes a man to build a society. True manhood lies beyond the
belt and engages every extremity of the male human being. Mere
male-ness confines itself to a small triangular area below.

First written: April 30, 2009

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:36 PM, Andrews Ofori-Birikorang
<ao377703 at ohio.edu> wrote:
> Fetcher et al,
> To me it sounds like these women leaders decided to make a solemn declaration of
> 'Sex Harvest Week' for mistresses in Kenya. The other point is it will not be
> surprising to know that many of these politicians who are expected to feel the
> impact of this strike have already not been sleeping with their wives for weeks
> and months under the the excuse of 'working long hours in office, and attending
> meetings and conferences here and there'. In other words, and in addition to all
> that have already been said earlier by my good friends, this whole thing about
> sex starvation brouhaha is much ado about nothing!
>
> But to all the mistresses in Kenya, I say this is your moment! You finally found
> yourselves some powerful advocates for a right to sex for mistresses! I know you
> strongly support the call, and I do too!!!
>
> Peace
> Andy
>
>
> Quoting maingi Solomom <as225108 at ohio.edu>:
>
>> Fletcher,
>>
>> It is an effort, to say the least, and it is true that extraordinary
>>
>> situations call for extraordinary measures. It is also true that it
>> might be
>> imposible to monitor the diffusion of the innovation.
>> My only concern: what is the basic assumption? That men are the
>> problem? I
>> don't think so. Reason one, Most families are at the same level of
>> political
>> participation and so if the man is complicit, the woman is also
>> complicit or
>> is ready to live with it. Two, sex might be the only consolation for
>> most
>> families (women included)who are frustrated by the selfish political
>> system
>> and power structure. This might lead to an imposition of 'sunctions'
>> on a very
>> innocent population of common men. Three, a good number of the men
>> involved in
>> the squabbles are either sexually inactive (due to age) or impotent.
>> Four, it
>> is a move championed by women only without consultation with equal
>> stakeholders (men).
>> This move might destroy the very unit that holds society together. It
>> might be
>> source of family antagonism, misunderstanding, and infidelity and
>> thus destroy
>> a basic unit of society, the family.
>> Finally, in a society where everybody is a politician, this might be
>> a
>> political gimmick (cheap publicity stunt). Lets wait and see what
>> happens...
>> These are my opinions and so they are overly subjective!
>>
>> Solomon
>> Kenyan `High commissioner'
>> OU
>>
>> The significant problems that we face in this world cannot be solved
>> by the
>> same level of thinking that created them- My friend, Albert E.
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