Letters & Opinions

Kenyan men should zip up and grow up

True manhood lies above the belt

Wandia Njoya

2009-05-07, Issue 431

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/56112

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When the G10, a group of Kenyan women leaders from civil society, called on 29 April for womenfolk to abstain from sex with their husbands for seven days as a fast to force the bickering Kenyan leaders to act like they have some sense, I dismissed it as a poor re-enactment 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 express their anger. Some gave weak lines like their wives are 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 and violence against women, with one man boldly saying that 'if my wife refused to sleep with me, she will see' (a euphemism for ‘I will thoroughly beat her up').

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.

The argument that most Kenyan women are not married to Raila and Kibaki doesn't hold. 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 Men for Equality with Women group 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 daylight without minding whether they were our former neighbours 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 everyday. 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 is the same one that is being played on the national stage and about which men complain. Just like these male callers discussing women, Kenya's leaders have no respect for the wananchi of Kenya . They rape our environment, our public coffers, our food reserves, our dignity and our intellect, leaving millions of Kenyans killing each other or dying from hunger. And instead of men 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 penis, and the same has been done to politics in Kenya . From debates about circumcision versus no circumcision to distinguishing between the ethnic groups of the major Kenyan politicians, to the insane orgies of violence visited upon women during the chaos of 2008, the focus of what makes a man is the engagement of his sexual organ. How savage. I repeat, 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.

God made the man with brains and a conscience to think, hands to work for his family, emotions to love his spouse and family and a soul to worship his creator, but Kenyan men have not used the different dimensions of their being to build a more humane Kenya. In 2007 and 2008, they tied their humanity and the identity of Kenya to a single male organ. In addition, they work to enrich themselves; they love themselves and regard the natural and the sacred with disdain. Again, how pathetic.

The G10 have brilliantly proved how pathetic 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. In so doing, they have revealed what is ailing Kenya. A flawed masculinity that has corrupted our sense of national identity and 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 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 above the belt and in every extremity of the male human being. Mere maleness confines itself to a small triangular area below.

* This article was originally featured by The Zeleza Post.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

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