There is a following that believes that by the very nature of men and the nature of women- woman and men should be kept apart because woman is to man what a deer is to a leopard. That, it is therefore impossible for them to be platonic with each other. To protect the pride and honour of the men who follow this teaching, women and men meet only within the nuclear unit or within the approved blood lines.
Women are protected from their inevitable ability to tempt and men are protected from their inevitable ability to succumb to temptation. That is, according to my own deduction.
President Buhari on a visit to Germany, standing next to Chancellor Angela Merkel is [in]famous for saying, “I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room.”
It is the proud declaration of many such as him that, ‘their women’ do not work for a living. Although it turns out that this is an option that some would rather have, just like the option of driving cars.
A comment on an article about women who had changed the face of Sudan, a man had written requesting the writer to add one more female figure who had fought against the practice of female genital mutilation. He stated that although the practice had been aimed at preventing women from sinning, it was no longer feasible because it all began in the mind and not in the physical body as previously thought. This seemed to put the commenter at ease. It seemed to please him that it was now just the mind that had to be controlled, with little physical damage, a different, but less invasive form of control.
This view of control is very unpopular today in an age where there are very few if any, taboos left.
In spite of all the calls to freedom, to do whatever our minds can think of without any harvest, the question still recurs. Can women and men work in close proximity without winding themselves up?
In European culture, unlike the Arab, Ancient Chinese and Traditional African culture, the individual comes first, he creates his own destiny, pursues whatever he desires to pursue, to whom it may concern. But in the other cultures mentioned, everything was done for the benefit of the community, including what Buhari was referring to when he spoke about his bedroom. The control and in some cases the commodification of women served to protect both political and economic power- in what womb which men were incubated, whose clan you expanded, whose name would live on. There were rules to follow and banishment if you did not.
It is now the new millennium and many women are crying ‘foul’ and yet Carrie Bradshaw still chooses Mr. Big, forsaking all others- regardless of where you meet all others, even if it is in the middle of an Arabian desert and the hot desert wind is blowing. And Carrie, admitting that she would never be the wife who stayed in and cooked (well, she still had to choose a ‘take-out’ menu) and that she would never be ‘a woman who wanted children’, allows Mr. Big to buy her a ring. And the possessiveness that is exclusivity, the ‘ring fencing’ that is commitment, the borderlines, the high walls around the little world two people create between themselves, once again, went up.
PurplePretoria 