It is disheartening that August 9 cannot be a day where we fully embrace women without talking about men. As men, not only do we kill women, rape women and abuse women physically and emotionally, we even steal their shine. We become the main topic on a day where we are supposed to be cheerleading and celebrating women, especially black women.
Even the president’s speech on Women’s Day shone the spotlight on how men are the real problem behind gender-based violence (GBV). Not that this was a new revelation, only if President Cyril Ramaphosa and his team were regular readers of this newspaper and column, they would know that we have been singing this song for many years now.
The focus shifts from women because they are suffering a lot at the hands of men, such is the intensity of the erosion of women, women’s rights, women’s lives and power.
Nevertheless, there are also issues that women have to deal with as women. Those are more reasonable than the gruesomeness that comes with femicide and rape. Through facilitating a conversation with women on Tuesday, at the Women’s Day event hosted by Woman On Woman organisation, I learned that women tend to protect the transgressions of their husbands or boyfriends. They tend to make excuses for their men, lowering the moral standards for men and shifting the blame to the next woman.
Questions were asked in the room, such as “how do women deal with the fragile male ego and the insecurities that we men project in romantic relationships?” But it was the question that was directed to the women by a woman that stood out for me. The lady asked: “Why do women pursue and stay in relationships with married men? It was met with the right amount of disagreement. It was not the right question to ask. Perhaps a conversation that could be unpacked.
The wrongness of the question is how it positions women in the infidelity that married men commit. The question should have been: Why do married men not respect their marriages enough to not have extra-marital affairs? Again, the woman who asked the question made this problem of cheating a women’s problem. She absolutely ignored all the norms. Men generally pursue women. Men typically lie about their marital status.
Married men take off their rings, they make all sorts of claims to other women to ensure that they give them the attention they are seeking. Married men lie. One could swear that after being pronounced husbands to their wives, they silently say: “To cheat you until death do us apart.”
Married men are the ones who do not respect their wives. They are the ones who in most cases fail to honour their vows. I am going to even start saying, “We” because I am part of the “I do, I do” gang. I suspect that there is a silent prefix, “un” on the word “faithful” when we say this in our vows, “To be faithful to you alone.”
Moreover, women should start confronting their boyfriends and their husbands for not being faithful to them or for not honouring their words. It is not the women they are cheating with that are the fundamental problem. It is understandable that a woman would expect the next woman to feel their pain and understand where they are coming from. But it shouldn’t end there.
On the question of why women continue to stay even after finding out that these men are married, let’s understand that many men lie, habitually. We go as far as promising the women we are cheating with heaven and earth. These women stay because we tell them that we are getting divorced and we will be starting afresh with them soon. They are constantly reassured that they will live happily after the divorce with us, a divorce that may not even be on the cards. Others may call these women gullible, some will understand that leaving someone you fell in love with, who falsely displayed characteristics that you are looking for in a man is hard.
As we reflected on the strides of women, black women in particular, we equally disclosed the challenges that women faced. Evidently, the biggest threat to women coming together and being one is women themselves.
I hope that in the near future, Women’s Day commemorations will be about women’s progress and that their challenges will not be centered around men. The least we could do as men on Women’s Day is to say; “I am sorry” to all women.
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