Posted Tuesday, February 21 2012 at 20:00
For some time now, central Kenya has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons: men drinking excessively; young men being blinded by illicit brew; suicides en mass; claims of shortage of children and women being offered cash to bear; and now battery of husbands by their wives.
Where there is smoke, there is fire. Central has turned into infertile ground for the family, and feminist activism can’t escape blame.
First, it is wrong for some people, including some men, to make utterances that seem to justify battering of husbands by wives. Do they find out why men in Central drink excessively, in the first place?
Which law says a husband who is drinking should be hacked with a panga or scalded with hot water?
Men all over the world drink. Go to any bar anywhere, they are full of men drinking, and they don’t abandon their roles. So there must be something that is troubling men in Central.
Women in the region are influenced by feminism, and so subject men to mental torture, now turning physical. For instance, the problem of lack of children in nursery schools does not seem to lie with men; who would offer cash to women to bear children if men were the problem?
Indeed, battering of husbands heralds the coming of age of radical feminism. The Kikuyu are quick to discard their culture in favour of a foreign one. When it comes to Western culture, our women are very good at picking up the ball and running with it. When the idea of gender equity was popularised, Kikuyu women were the first to wear trousers.
Feminist groups have established offices where wives report husbands perceived to misbehave.
The demonstrations in Central of women carrying twigs and castigating men’s drinking and inability to sire are organised by those groups.
And the issues have been played out to depict women as heroines out to rescue their men from self-induced slavery.
FRANCIS NDUNG’U WAWERU,
Nairobi
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Male chauvinism
As tongues continue to wag about the stubbornness of Nyeri women, there’s one thing that should be clear to all.
The Kenyan woman in general has become more independent and more forceful in asserting her authority in a male dominated society.
A woman’s place is no longer in the kitchen. In fact she has taken her struggles a notch higher by sometimes breaking a few noses to break the chains of male chauvinism.
She has become the stronger sex, smarter, more active and even healthier because unlike her male counterpart, she rarely indulges in senseless drinking binges that take toll on body and mind.
I think the wife who hammers some sense into the head of an irresponsible husband deserves commendation not condemnation.
GERALD MAINA NDERITU,
Kitengela
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