By Anyang’ Nyong’o
Our daughters, sisters and mothers are making a point that the mishap at the Nairobi Governor’s office should be discussed beyond the two individuals involved, Governor Kidero and Hon Shebesh. I stand with them. It is a fundamental issue regarding how men in authority should handle women who may seem to offend them; and how women should respond to threats of aggression or oppression.
Governor Kidero is on record as saying that it was perhaps “a moment of madness” that could have led him to slap Hon Shebesh, an action he deeply regrets. What caused the madness is still subject to investigation, and the story will still have to be told in full.
Ms Shebesh was upset beyond measure that Dr Kidero slapped her; that slap, in itself, and notwithstanding “the moment of madness”, was inexcusable. Many feminists and women’s rights activists, and their male counterparts, have come to her defence. But both are not insensitive to the peculiarity of this incidence, coming as it did in the midst of intense political controversy that the strike engendered.
Assuming that Shebesh actually assaulted the governor, how should he have reacted? There is a school of thought which says he should simply have defended himself without lifting a finger against the lady. Beating a woman, for whatever reason, is inexcusable. But then some argue that such meek self-defence on the part of a man is what encourages feminine violence against men. We have seen cases recently of men complaining about “husband beating” and “male battering”: women thrashing their men and at times causing grave bodily harm.
Let us put it this way: neither men nor women should behave violently towards the opposite sex whatever the case. But history is replete with examples of thousands and thousands of cases of men behaving violently against women and getting away scot-free. In other words, violence against women has been institutionalised and culturally tolerated in many societies for a long time when compared to violence against men by women.
Many women equal to their make counterparts due to their education and social status in society may be past victims of this institutionalised and cultural violence. Some were abused and sexually molested by men who appear decent in public but are actually social psychopaths.
Such women may actually be constantly repressing deep-felt anger against male chauvinism and patriarchal power. This can easily flare up into uncontrolled rage at any slightest sign that a man is taking them for granted, refusing them recognition, denying them access to power or simply being stupidly inattentive to their self-evident needs.
That is why we should not treat the Kidero/Shebesh mishap glibly: it should be a wake-up call for us to deeply examine the issue of violence against women and support programmes and policies that will eliminate such violence and address pending psychological problems among our people inherited from past wrongs.
Institutional and cultural set ups that tend to nurture such violence should also be sorted out. It is due to the high regard in which we hold the two public figures that makes us use this incidence to focus on a wider societal problem. This is not an issue that should be handled with political partisanship: we shall not go far that way. Nor is it an issue which is amenable to simple solutions involving agreeing or disagreeing with how Kidero and Shebesh will settle their particular matter. However that matter is settled, a much bigger issue will still remain staring us in the face: to what extent are we going to tolerate sexual and gender violence in our society?
Since the violence of women against men is the exception, the issue, which is really at hand, is male violence against female. Men need to be civilised and to realise that while they have the responsibility to play the father figure in their various families, this responsibility bestows on them the honour of being liberators of the female folks and not their oppressors and exploiters.
To be a liberator is to harness, uphold, nurture and defend the rights and dignity of those you liberate.
It is to give power to the liberated without necessarily expecting something in return; to labour without expecting any reward. The women want men in their lives who will take care of them, give them recognition, accept them for who they are and share true love with them.
In the absence of this, and in the rather frequent occurrence of what seems to pass as “functional partnering”, there is actually a growing hostility.
This may explain short fuses that blow up quite frequently between young men and women, hence what is correctly seen as growing gender violence in our society. Should this matter be ignored or should we as a society begin doing something about it?
I really don’t know what is to be done although I recognise the problem and deem it to be an important issue. Men, having enjoyed for long the structural advantage of dominating women and having authority over them, have the onerous task of being the liberators. The mindshift must occur first and foremost among men before women liberation can be fully achieved
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