Thread by @Wordslinger_C

Part of my job is to provide a space within my classes that accommodate a wide array of views - my only exception is that there are NO "alternate" views on rape or sexual assault/abuse {of any kind}.
This means I many times have to be patient with views that internally kill me.

{Note: I am talking of "views". I continue to insist in the words of Condoleeza Rice that everyone is entitled to their opinion, just NOT their uninformed opinion.

And in terms of praxis, I do not tolerate violence, disrespect, insults, or abuse within my classes}.

So it is with extreme interest that I found myself in a male-only class on culture and music, and in discussing current Gengeton music, the subject of "boy-child" came up, with its usual cyprianesque leanings that eventually stood on 2 pillars: "African Culture" and "The Bible".

Now, these two pillars are very predictable. They ALWAYS come up, ironically, from men, and more interestingly, in {later on in the argument} contradictory ways. I have learnt how to sit back and let the arguments weave themselves, ultimately, to their own cul-de-sac.

One, students insisted that according to "African Culture", "a man could never see a woman as equal to him, he was superior".
I asked, why? They said, because a man is the provider and protector.
I asked - which "African Culture" is this? We hit out first snag. One said - ALL.

I said, okay, let's explore the literature around that assertion. Anyone here with something peer-reviewed we can read briefly and explore regarding these African Cultures?
There was silence.
I asked, where did you read that?
They said, nowhere, that's just common knowledge.

I asked, common knowledge from whom? There was no response.
I said, okay, we'll come back to that.
What does provide and protect mean?
They said, the usual - give money, pay rent, buy food, and protect from attackers. There was some high-fiving/laughing at that juncture.

I asked, so where did you learn that that is your job as a man? To protect women from physical harm?

Not to go the culture route once more, two of them said they got that from preachers and the Bible.

Yes, the Bible.

I asked, where in the Bible? They said, "its there!"

To them, women belonged in the kitchen and home, and men were providers and protectors.
So I said, right, let's open the Bible and consult it. Someone opened their phones and went to the Bible - Old Testament, the patriarchs looking for wives. There was Isaac finding Rebecca...

...drawing water and watering animals at the well. Definitely working outside the home.
There was Esau selling his birthright to his own brother for a bowl of soup. And it says clearly that Jacob loved to cook {Gen 25:29}.
We pause there. These things are becoming uncomfortable

So we jump to the classic "Proverbs 31 Woman" - that effervescent scripture used to show women how to stay in their lane.

Sawa, we open it. I have them read from v1 - where King Lemuel is uttering inspiration taught to him by his mother - and hold this thought coz its important

From v10, "wife of noble character". They start reading. And their voices quickly fade. The Proverbs 31 woman is not subservient as per popular teaching on that. She is rich - she is buying land, dressed in silk, she's doing big business, she's generous to the poor, she's clever.

They start to laugh when they realise, her husband only sits at the city gates - at first glance, he appears to be a useless appendage {their words - kwani anafanya?} that she can do without, coz she seems to be rich and enterprising all by herself.

The students beg we stop reading the Bible on the grounds that it is a "foreign" book that was brought by the colonialists. I tell them, they are the ones who asked we refer to it in the first place.

But I acquiesce. My work is not to shame, it is to coach and teach.

We go back to the boy-child lament.

And quickly enter another cul-de-sac. That of the girl-child having been empowered by "society" to the detriment of the boy-child.

I ask- empowered how and why? They answer easy- women in African Culture were seen as weak and vulnerable.

Ok.
Vulnerable and weak how?
We explore this in-depth. It turns out, women are vulnerable from attack, mugging, rape, sexual assault, harassment. From whom, I ask.
And the reluctant answer - from men.
This becomes a powerful moment of self-reflection for these young men.

From their own summation, it is men who hurt women, hands down.

Later, we talk about the lack of mentorship - all of them say they envy their sisters who seem to receive guidance from their mothers, while their own fathers NEVER talk to them or give them counsel.

I tell them I think they are exaggerating, and they say they're not.

Older men out there - are you seriously not bonding and having meaningful talks with your sons? I find this incredulous. They say you're not telling them anything apart from "usiwache mschana akukalie".

Their sisters are being given tips on the daily about saving money, centering schooling/education, getting their lives off the ground - but they are getting "kaa kama mwanaume" without knowing what that even means. Alaar!

They are being told not to cry, not to be emotional, to be hard - and they have zero knowledge or context about what that means.

One of them points at our King Lemuel and how it is his mother who taught him the wisdom he knows & he wonders why mothers aren't doing that for them

I ask him if his mother is allowed to do that by his own father. He falls silent. The truth dawns on him. bell hooks said it best - men themselves are as much victims of patriarchy as women. Dr Njoki Ngumi calls it patriarchy own-goals, and they are so clear here.

Refuse women from teaching their boys anything {after all, 'women can't teach boys to be men' mantra}, but as a man, do nothing of the teaching anyway. Then only leave them with few snippets that don't make any sense, and you have young men lamenting how their sisters are more

privileged. It makes very little sense!
And I am not here to excuse anyone or explain anything.
I am reflecting on a moment in class this week that gave me pause.

We stop "learning" and they start to share stories of themselves and their peers - stories of losing their way...

...and dabbling in drugs, smoking, alcohol, and not really caring about life or the future. I think about how much these young people are traumatised to become so jaded barely out of their teens.
I am told of fathers kicking out errant boys after spending a whole lifetime not

really bonding, connecting with said sons. I almost get the feeling that these young men deliberately get into trouble to try seek that connection with their fathers that they see their sisters getting from their mothers.
I suppose connection is one of the strongest validators

for "good" behavior? Would these young men calling themselves "boychild" be thinking differently, and not be so hopeless if the older men in society just connected emotionally to them, showed them a better way? I wonder, as I listen to these stories.

One of them says, he got out of a troubling spell after connecting with a safe, older man who is like a mentor to him.

I find this interesting. And I tell them, that is part of Agency - because I want them to imagine they have a choice over their own narratives.

And that choice is not to follow societal toxicity in imagining things are bleak because the "girl child has been empowered". I tell them this is not inherently true - there is enough room in the world for a girl or woman who is not being confined to a house/kitchen.

Bible stories aside, there is a wide array of academic writing that debunks the idea that women were "inferior" to men in precolonial African Societies. While not romanticising precolonial Africa's treatment of women {there were both sides}, it shows that the idea that women

were confined into helpless, powerless selves only beholden to the whims of men as being fallacious.

We start with Ogbomo&Ogbomo (1993) work titled 'Women and Society in Precolonial Iyede' as an example. They start off by telling us the status of women in precolonial Africa

has been poorly researched, and where written about, it has been by 'male chroniclers' who have tended to amplify the status of men and diminished or erased practices where women were powerful, treated equitably, and owned property and other symbols of cultural, political power.

There is a wide scholarship on these matters, including how domesticity was not engendered. I forget the title of an article I once read about how at some point in Igbo life, women were traders and merchants, while the men stayed home to look after children and the home.

In fact, a simple Google search will lead you to scholarship about how gender was very fluid in many precolonial African societies, how the category of "woman" or "man" wasn't fixed - in fact, babies and children were seen as dualities and multiplicities of personas.

Think about it even in modern life. If you take young children and dress them the same, no one would tell if they were boys or girls - it is the colonial versions of gender we embody right now - hair with ribbons and pink clothes=girl; blue clothing & shaved hair= boy babies.

Anywho.

These are my musings about the status of girls and boys, and how we are ushering them into adulthood. We didn't leave class with answers, perhaps. But we left with questions that continue to provoke thought. And a challenge for older men: you're failing your young men.