Thread by @marcusolang

So, about this #MoreThanBodies conversation happening on the TL right now: I’d like to talk a slightly different bend to it.

Stay with me for a moment. [This is unfiltered, typing as the thoughts come along.]

It’s very easy to downplay or outright ignore how much upbringing influences our choices as adults. I’d mentioned this at some point before: I genuinely believe we underestimate how powerful the element of nurture is in influencing and moulding human behaviour.

My dad used to cook. He used to clean. He used to do the dishes.

He’d sometimes get home from work earlier than my mom. Many times, actually. And I have no memory of ever staying hungry, my brothers and I, simply because mom wasn’t home yet.

What I saw in them was a partnership - a union in which roles weren’t divided by gender, but purely by need. A thing needs doing? The thing will be done.

Something he’d keep saying to us - sometimes with a hearty laugh, sometimes in that tone that only an African father can pull off - was a thought he’d often pose as a question:

“If you’re not doing these things, who do you expect to come and do them for you?”

That thought has remained firmly rooted in my mind to this day - the idea that there are no “masculine” nor “feminine” tasks; the task is the task, and what needs to be done shall be done.

Those little seeds became the backbone of some of my core beliefs to this day.

Which brings me to my point.

A key part of “nurture” is what we see growing up, as well as what we continue to expose ourselves to even as adults.

Just as seeing my dad actively part in household tasks has stayed with me to this day, I believe growing up in a space where there are “mambo ya wanawake” and “mambo ya wanaume” fosters an attitude that matures into problematic and abusive behaviour.

Think about it for a moment.

“It’s a woman’s job to cook.” Then what happens if she doesn’t feel like cooking tonight? What happens if she can’t cook? #MoreThanBodies

“A woman must keep her house clean.” What happens when she doesn’t have the energy at the end of a long day, whether at the office or right there at home? #MoreThanBodies

“When a man wants sex, it’s his wife’s duty to provide it.” Leaving aside the fact that sex is supposed to be mutually pleasurable, what happens if she simply doesn’t feel like it? #MoreThanBodies

You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Those attitudes bring in the entitlement, and the entitlement ushers in the abuse.
The emotional abuse.
The physical violence.
The sexual violence.
And more.

My firm belief? It’s those little parasitic seedlings that grow into the monstrous weeds we see in many cases of gender-based violence.

Which is precisely why the example my father set for us remains ingrained in me: The idea that life is not just rules and roles, but about conscious, shared responsibility.

For which I’m eternally grateful.

**to 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 a slight different bend to it.

ADDITION / TANGENTIAL: At some point, I’m going to come back to talking about:

1. Many christians and that "God hates divorce" story, PLUS;
2. That "Wives submit to your husbands" story, PLUS;

3. My deep-seated revulsion against bridal showers and the lies that most of them propagate in the name of “happy marriages”...

...and how all these things continue to offer excuses and opportunities for abuse down the line.

Because friends, women are being killed by the dozens, in body and in spirit, because of these stories and lies.