Men Should Mind Their Own Business

There have been lots of hashtags on twitter courtesy of KOT (Kenyans On Twitter) that have been dedicated to women. There are even groups that specifically exist to talk about women such as MAWE (Men Against Weaves). All this is fine and I believe in freedom of speech as well as association so people are free to talk about whatever they want and to join associations to which they feel they share similar views. That’s all well and good. Camaraderie and passion are great things. However, this does not mean that they are immune to critique.

My issue is with the confusion that comes with this camaraderie. A lot of members of these groups and associations as well as those who begin and those who blindly follow these hashtags, are confused. Let me explain. The hashtags generally go on about the things women do or do not do that make them not likely to be frontrunners in the relationship or marriage race. Women, especially in Nairobi are thought to be the least worthy of this great trophy called marriage and are derided for their lack of cooking skills (as if only women should be able to cook) and general impossible standards.

Associations such as MAWE go on and on about how men do not like weaves and that they should be burned. There are women who join in on this not realizing they are part of the perpetuation of patriarchy, but that’s another article. There has been uproar over the price of weaves and the spending of so much money on them by women. Women have been chastised for wasting money on fake hair instead of loving their natural hair(as though a man could understand the complex relationship women have with their hair and that not all women are blessed with easy to work with hair and also sometimes a girl just wants to have fun with different styles). On things fake, women have been lectured on giving men a ‘raw deal’ and advised to let go of fake things, be it hair, nails, eyelashes, boobs, butts and told to embrace their natural selves. All this as various women are described as ugly online by men who are complete strangers, and as the light skin girls versus dark skin girls debate rages on in the background.

All these people are confused. A man can only be with one woman at a time anyway. Even if the said man practices polygamy or is one of those dumbass ‘playaz’, he can only be with so many women. No man can be with all the women in the world. And even most importantly, not all women in the world want you. Hard to believe, I know. Some guys be walking around thinking they’re God’s gift to women. I’ll repeat, not all women in the world want you. That being said, men should realize there’s a difference between fact and preference. Whether you prefer long dresses and natural hair over mini-skirts and weaves, doesn’t make mini-skirts and weaves awful. That’s just your preference and you need to realize your preference doesn’t rule the world.

It always humours me the way some guys go on about how they wouldn’t marry such and such a woman. Dude, who says the woman wants to marry you? Listen, cool down on the ego trip and take a seat. Preferences are perfectly fine. We all have them and should have them, otherwise we’d date everyone. However, you can’t expect everyone to fall within those preferences. I bet there are guys who’d want all women in the world to look like the fantasy in their heads of what a woman should be. Why? You can’t have them all. So what is the real reason behind this sort of thinking?

Men should mind their own women. Figure out what your preferences are, and then look for that kind of woman. Leave the rest alone, they’re none of your business. Also, the fact that you want to be policing grown women, especially complete strangers, says something about you and is insulting. You’re basically saying that these women are stupid and don’t know what’s best for them and they require your ‘expertise’ in making decisions about how they dress and what they do with themselves. All this is in a bid to make you happy with their decisions that are really yours because you made them for them, regardless of what they want for themselves, because who cares what they think, right?

This kind of reasoning is selfish and disgusting on so many levels. The policing of women isn’t in just creating laws in Uganda to keep them from wearing mini-skirts, it’s in the stripping of women that are thought to be indecently dressed by touts on the streets, the rape of women that say no to advances from a man that wants them and the online deriding of women for choices they have made. At the end of the day, it goes back to the fact that a lot of men believe women incapable of making decisions for themselves and treat women as beings made solely for a man’s pleasure and service and not as individual beings with ambitions and a voice. The evidence of this is all over the world.