In her song, Soweto Blues, Miriam Makeba laments the absence of men when the police killed schoolchildren in Soweto in June 1976. In her view, men ought to take up their traditional and historic role of protecting their kith.
It is moot whether throughout history men have always exercised such responsibility with distinction.
Men have fought wars and killed on behalf, or in the name, of defending what in pre-feminist days would have sufficed as their women.
John the Baptist lost his head — literally — because a woman named Salome wanted King Herod to show his power by delivering poor John’s head on a plate. The Greeks and the Trojans fought a 10-year war largely over a woman. We are also told that in 1888, artist Vincent van Gogh cut off the lower half of his left ear and took it to a brothel, handed it over to a prostitute named Rachel with strict instructions that she should look after it carefully.
These are some of the silly, glorious things men have done in the name of love or another affection for women.
Imagine, then, my horror when confronted with a Mail & Guardian article (”Every dog has his day”, January 27) suggesting men had been seen getting ”down on their knees to eat dog biscuits out of a woman’s hand”. These ”men” were attending ”a male behaviour-modification and obedience school”. All this is part of a show called Train Your Man.
When did men stop being men and become pussycats who need to be trained in being men? Even worse, be trained by a woman on how to become men. Who told women that the mere fact that we wear pink shirts and some of us don’t mind plaiting our hair and wearing earrings implied that we want to be them? Why should our behaviour be modified just so that we may live up to women’s expectations?
We are meant to be as ”well-behaved and compliant” as eunuchs when we are being collectively emasculated.
Some men may fear that, should we raise our voices, we would be described by experts, who don’t know us from a bar of blue soap, as displaying symptoms of having had terrible relationships with our mothers, partners, sisters or daughters. Bull.
Ours is a society that is hell-bent on having men accept the caricature of themselves as half-evolved women. We are routinely asked to accept ourselves as the missing link in the evolution of chimpanzees to women.
When men don’t close drawers after opening them, or replace the toothpaste lid, why should it be seen as a deficiency in their masculinity — rather than their being lazy bums?
Which woman would accept the stereotype of nagging as an inherently feminine trait requiring a Train Your Woman manual? That is because gender is a synonym for woman. Women do as they please with men and men are too indifferent or politically correct to tell them where to get off.
I know, and I bet each of us knows of at least one woman who is guilty of the ”manlike” crimes that these ”obedience schools” are trying to cure.
Men must stand up to this. It is time men accepted that there is nothing wrong with being men. We owe it to our sons to break the cycle of being ashamed of our manhood.
It is true that some of us rape babies and abuse women. But that should not be the basis of how men measure themselves. Some women kill their spouses for insurance payouts, but no right-thinking person would say this is because of their genetic make-up.
Men must be men on their own terms. Without wishing to be a spokesperson for women, so should they.
The war of the sexes is anachronistic in an age where gender and race profiling are frowned on. As American humourist George Carlin observed: ”Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.”
True to form, our men’s groups are silent in the face of such affronts. These outfits seem to have made it their life’s vocation to rehabilitate men who have fallen off the wagon.
In alliance with these pseudo-feminists, these groups seem to exist only to cure men of the afflictions of their manhood, rather than affirm their manhood.
It was never like this. Men must be able to answer Mama Africa’s question, should she ask why we sat idly when we were collectively castrated.