I was at a wedding recently. It was a traditional African wedding after lobola had been accepted and the bride and the groom “inaugurated”.
There was singing, as there always is at such occasions. Most of it was led by women — a large proportion being relatives, friends or acquaintances of the bride.
Most of the songs called for the bride to be loyal to her new family and respectful of her husband.
“Obey the rules / If your mother-in-law is a witch, you, too, should be a witch,” went one song. Another’s lyrics warned the wife never to ask for her husband’s payslip, the implication being that a man may spend his money in a “discretionary manner”, but that that should be expected. And then my favourite: “A man is an axe / He is meant to be shared.”
Ah, the beauty of societies that have seen through the folly of monogamy, I said to myself.
But who was I kidding? Who said it is only societies that have accepted polygamy (or rather polygyny, since polygamy allows for both men and women to have multiple spouses)?
Despite more than 30 years of the feminist movement, men still hold sway over how relationships turn out. And they are helped by the women who love them.
Sitting at a bar with a few of friends — all male and married or in stable relationships — we discussed the Judge Siraj Desai saga. Or, more pointedly, how we would have reacted had we been Mark Isaacs (the cuckolded spouse) and somebody had slept with our partner, consensually or not.
None of my friends were prepared to discuss that, it was too ghastly to contemplate.
Who could blame them? Nobody has ever sung about a woman being an axe who could be shared among other men. In fact, another friend, absent from that meeting, once told me that his father and uncles told him when he got married: “There are only two reasons to divorce your wife: if she is a witch or a slut.”
That directly contradicts what a woman should be according to the wedding songs. But if she is a witch, the proviso is, I guess, that she is following her mother-in-law’s example — which would render her a good wife. But there is no respite for a straying wife. Divorce is the only solution.
I pride myself on having good friends who are respected members of their societies or trades. They are all appalled by men who beat their wives or girlfriends. I need not mention how they feel about those who rape babies. All of my friends would be considered marriage material, unless, of course, their potential spouses knew them as well as I do.
I am just like them. Birds of a feather have indeed flocked together. I don’t beat women. I say the nicest possible things and regularly open the door for them (the women, that is). And, like my friends, I cheat on my partner.
We have many justifications for cheating. My favourite has been that it is a form of outsourcing happiness. We all agree that once women are settled, they forget what it was that they saw in us that turned them on in the first place.
By our partners we are seen as beer-guzzlers whose only saving grace is that “he loves the kids so much, the other day he babysat the whole day while I went out with the girls”.
Of course we love our kids, we are not asking for rewards in that regard. What rewards, you might ask. Sex, of course. If you behave yourself — say the nicest things, ask how her mother is doing, like David Beckham and call about 20 times a day — you get laid.
No such effort with a mistress — or a woman you meet at a congress of the world’s leftists. She reminds you of the person you were before being domesticated. She laughs at your jokes. She creates the impression that she looks forward to having sex with you, rather than just fulfilling an obligation she tied herself to.
Forget the pretence, straying is about feeling good about oneself. And in a world where women see no virtue in us, and there are no animals to slay to show our worth, infidelity is the next best thing. We hunt them, conquer them and live for our next conquest.
It helps a lot that the world is filled with women who stand by their men, like Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson’s wife Jacqueline and many more like our sisters and mothers whose songs at weddings encourage philandering.
The wedding may have been in an African village but, as Hillary and Jacqueline have shown, it is much more than an African thing. It is not even a black or white thing as some of the sisters have suggested for now wanting to start dating white men.
As lonely as this will make me, a new men’s movement is essential to help redefine ourselves. This movement should not just be about men not raping babies or beating their spouses. It should be to teach boys to set their own agenda and to not be carried away by that of a society that legitimises men hurting those we love the most.
The men’s movement should say you need to communicate (not only articulate) your needs properly to have them attended to. If you and your partner’s needs cannot be matched, terminate the relationship and move on. These things happen — sometimes people are, despite their best intentions, incompatible. Men should start to realise that a woman’s ability to stomach a man’s imprudence is nothing to be proud of — by either the man or the injured woman.
Most importantly, the movement should say selfish heartbreakers are no worse than wife batterers.