I have decided to not be chivalrous towards strange women and self-professed feminists!

As a young man growing up in this gynocentric world (in the motherland as well as here in the diaspora) I was taught to do such things as to open doors for women and allow them ahead of myself when entering a room. I was instructed that a man ought to rescue damsels in distress which translates to helping them with tasks they cannot do themselves i.e. lifting heavy objects, changing tyres or coming to their defence when they are under any physical threat. Heck, when I was primary school in the Motherland we were taught that a man/boy should under no circumstances lay his hand on a female and I subscribed to this ideology. Ironically, the girls in my school were not taught to be feminine and that resulted in many boys my age being defencelessly attacked by girls. Although this was obviously abuse, our mind-sets were programmed to neither retaliate nor report these animalistic females. However, if I could now turn back the hands of time (like R. Kelly) I would stomp the brains out of many of those girls. I know it sounds outlandish but as the title says I have decided that chivalry is a stupid ideology in a feminised/gynocentric world such as the one we live in whereby women are no longer women but self-conceited, self-entitled equals.



I never thought I would feel this way about women at large but the trip down memory lane, fervent research on the subject of feminism and my recent conversations with groups of ignorant women have really created bad blood between myself and 'independent'/feminised women. Speaking to one @Africanindiaspo sister I recently got introduced to in particular pushed me overboard, let's call her Emily for the purpose of this post. My first impression of Emily when I first met her through a mutual friend was that she was intelligent as I had been pre-informed of her academic accolades but that changed when she opened her mouth.



The first discussion Emily and I had in a group situation was about the importance of women staying at home in order to nurture and instil values in their children at the sacrifice of high-flying careers. That struck a nerve with her even though some of the other @Africanindiaspo sisters understood where the men were coming from in regards to this discussion. It was in fact a couple of @Africanindiaspo sisters who had started the debate as they were proponents of the ideology. Whilst this sharp disagreement on Emily's part was an indicator of the feministic viewpoint she holds to heart I thought it was fair that she and many other women prefer to be high-flyers with wild children - each to their own as the old saying goes.



However, knowing my stance on child rearing and feminism, Emily decided to give herself a second opportunity to disgust me when we met for the second time in another group environment. This time she had back up. The discussion on this encounter took the form of the first one, at least before I presented perspectives on how decent men are increasingly becoming repulsed by the whoring behaviour of the modern women. This is because many of them sleep around with many men (many many many many men) in their youth/prime when pursuing careers and then want to present their leftovers (in their 30s/40s) to 'good/decent men' in order to gain security and have children before railroading these same good men with divorces and child support/maintenance. I mentioned how by this time the tables would have turned as the men would be in their prime whilst such women would be like used up cars with high mileage but still trying to fetch a good price. That's not a good deal right?



Well Emily did not have the intelligence to register this truth, her rebuttal was only about how women do not care much about relationships and children. That is that 'I am independent' spiel propagated by Beyoncé the married mother of one. Hmmm that explains the many IVF clinics that cater to older/mature women who have been single most of their lives, can no longer have children but are desperate for them nonetheless. Films such as Sex and the city in which women are depicted as independent and sexy in their 50s and 60s, not lonely, undesired and isolated like the local government and even common sense purports do not help either. It seems many sisters typically cannot separate reality from fiction which is why they even have unrealistic expectations of a 'perfect' man, one with money and is 6ft tall with an athletic build – no care for character. I digress.



I thought I would go one step further and emphasise to my crowd of feminists just how indispensable men really are by mentioning how men are responsible for the design and development of the majority of the infrastructure and innovation we enjoy. I added that the protection of any society is underpinned by its men being frontline soldiers with sufficient prowess. Of course Emily had to say that women could just as easily be frontline soldiers without compromising the security of a battalion as they are, in her opinion, just as athletic as men. Using that logic Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the fastest woman in the world, is just as fast as Usain Bolt right? How one could so delusional escapes me but then again these sisters were not using logic but were allowing emotionalism and self-entitlement to lead their thought process just like the myopic ideology of feminism they subscribe to.



I mean this in the gentlest and most loving way possible my dear @Africanindiaspo brothers and sisters but women innately cannot apply logic. It is not in their nature to do so and that is perfectly fine because men make up for that. There are many weaknesses that men also possess that women make up for such as the ability to nurture children and to micro-manage activities, the problem is that men acknowledge this complementarity whilst women dismiss it altogether. With all the book-intelligence of the sisters I was sitting with they still did not want to accept facts/common knowledge. Personally as much as I love my partner I am convinced that were she to be given the power and responsibility of leading our home she would crack (like cocaine) which explains why many positions of leadership in business are given to men. Think about it, men are not affected by anything at any moment of the month whilst nature itself determines a woman's feelings/mood cyclically. Can you imagine trying to rationally make strategic, life-dependent decisions and then communicating them effectively to your subordinates whilst experiencing severe cramps? I am sure that any reasonable person would agree that intelligence will not help in this predicament, not Emily though. For her these physiological and emotional challenges that women face do not detract from their abilities to compete with men. I think many women secretly wish they were men these days. That is how bad ‘equality’ has gotten, there are even contraptions on sale that allow women to use the bathroom whilst standing just like men. Anyway this is when I realised how ridiculous independent/feministic women really are. Now that they enjoy the privileges afforded them by the blood, sweat and tears of self-sacrificing men they feel as though they can build their own railway lines and create strong armies with their never-compromised strategic and decision-making faculties.



I resigned from then on to take this equality malarkey for what it is when interacting with women because as much as I was shocked by how prevalent it is I was also disappointed with myself. A few years ago I had seen a gentleman slap his other half after they had been arguing in a car when she called him a son of a b****. My instinct at the time was to rush to save this damsel. I was only restrained from doing so by the consideration that this guy could have a weapon and lash out on me. Well, if I saw a woman antagonising a man like that again and getting slapped for it I would do like Craig David and walk away (I wouldn’t care if it was a Monday). Worse still if, going forward, I ever see a woman initiate a physical altercation with a man I will just grab some popcorn - equal rights does equate to equal lefts after all. They are called consequences for actions ladies and gentlemen. This is a truth I will engrain in my daughters as I will never rescue them from consequences of belligerent behaviour. I will also teach my sons to not only not beat girls but to not beat boys also. Instead I will teach them to defend them ferociously from anyone who physically harms them irrespective of their gender - that my friends is true equality.



I am sorry that this post is much longer than usual but I really wanted you my brother/sister to understand the reasons for my new stance. I will only be chivalrous towards my partner, mother, daughters, relatives and little precious girls who do not know any better than to demean manhood and claim to be independent. Anyone else does not get any help from me. Chivalry has dead in my heart, I have left The Temptations.

 

'Women you cannot have your cake and eat it, decisions to be independent have ramifications attached to them' -@Africanindiaspo

Is dowry/lobola a reasonable request when a girl is not a virgin?

Growing up I always thought why. Why do teachers teach people to do jobs that they themselves are not willing to do? Why do I have to go to school? Lol I am sure every child has asked themselves that question when they were being dragged out of bed in the morning. Therefore it should come as no surprise that the other day I asked myself the question, 'why are @Africanindiaspo men still paying dowry for women who are not virgins on the day of marriage?' Grab some milk and a cookie and let us do this.


You see I grew up with a strong desire to get married young and have children with a woman who would have been my childhood sweetheart. In my young, 'churched'/traditionalised mind sex outside of marriage was a taboo. One had to get married by paying a bride price which we call 'roora' in my vernacular language in Zimbabwe (also known as lobola/dowry in other countries) before enjoying the pleasures that matrimony brings. At least that is what our elders instructed us to do whilst many of them, men especially, engaged in adulterous affairs which cost many of them their lives as AIDS ravaged the country. I digress but will have to touch on this 'four letter word' in another post.


So yeah I grew up with the idea that sex was not something to enjoy before its time as a result of the traditional and religious instructions I received. That, coupled with my father's threats about how he would strike me with an axe if I had ever had sex as a young man helped to keep me in check when I was back in the Motherland. However, that fear subsided when I moved to the UK and started to realise just how promiscuous Britons, as well as @Africanindiaspo brothers and sisters in the UK, were. Although I was somewhat of a Mack back home (ask Mark Morrison) my contact with women had been limited to chat up lines and innocent hugs but here I was, not in the land of milk and honey, but the land of liberal expression of sexuality. Needless to say I was the butt of many jokes as I was constantly mocked for being a virgin by my friends and colleagues - something I was not ashamed of growing up back home. Shamefully, I adjusted in order to fit in and in no time I was having casual, sexual relationships with @Africanindiaspo sisters as well some British women. Knowing what I know now about the effects of a loose sexual lifestyle I wish I had remained a virgin until I was ready to commit because there is absolutely no shame in not whoring yourself around as a man. In fact it protects you from the likelihood of contracting STIs/STDS and also protects you from having unwanted children which the government will penalise you for having.


Another reason I wish I had remained a virgin is that now that I am in a committed relationship I hate to even imagine that anyone could have done something with my partner. That makes me realise the number of men I have robbed of the privilege of being the first and last man their other half enjoys. I regret my part in that although the women I was involved with were equally responsible for what we did which brings me to the next point.  As I mentioned, some of the relationships I had were with @Africanindiaspo sisters who claimed to be virgins (it's not for me to call it) who may already be or are yet to be married. Each of these girls' families would have asked or will ask for a bride price for their daughter as a prerequisite for giving her away. I'm sure you see where I am going with this.


In my limited understanding of lobola/dowry it is meant to be a token of gratitude extended, by a man and his family, to the family of the bride to be. Some gifts are given to the father, others to the mother, aunts, etc. as a way of saying thank you for raising a well-mannered, home-centred and pure/virgin wife who will take care of me and my people and bear us children - the key quality being a pure wife. I believe this to be true because in all traditional/patriarchal cultures there is an expectation of a woman's father to keep her chaste for the day he hands her over to his son in-law. In historic Jewish culture if a man married a woman who turned out to not be a virgin (one who would not bleed on the marital bed) the groom would take the bed sheet and present it as evidence to the woman's father and subsequently stone her to death outside of his house. In Zimbabwe the purity of a bride is also a big deal. Growing up there I understood that your average man did not want to marry a woman who had been with other men as he felt it would be an indication that she is capable of infidelity as she would have tasted something different and thus able to generate comparisons that would send her into the arms of other men. Additionally, in Zimbabwe if a young woman does not turn out to be pregnant she is assumed and expected to be chaste, so much so that if she became pregnant her father would demand the impregnator/terminator to marry his daughter. It is felt by most elders that no one would want to marry her if she remained single and a surcharge termed 'damages' is added to the cost of the dowry or lobola to punish the young man for damaging his daughter's purity/marketability without a licence to thrill/kill. So important is it to appear to be a virgin that women devise means of seeming to be one on their marriage day. One friend even told me that Chinese folk in Zimbabwe are selling rehymenation kits which allow women to give an impression of chastity to their new husbands. 


Can you imagine the deceit that forms the foundations of these kinds of marriages and the fraud being carried out by these fathers by requiring a bride price for damaged/faulty goods? Fathers and families are no longer guaranteeing the chastity of their daughters and the girls are not confessing their promiscuous ways to their fathers. At the end of it a simpleton of a man is left to acknowledge a harlot as a virgin. That just shows how far we Africans have deviated from the moral fibres that made us once laugh at the moral decay of the west. In my opinion when a non-virgin woman is married off her father has two options. He can either trace the steps of all the men his daughter has slept with and use the occurrences and frequency of intimacy with all these men to apportion to them the lobola he would charge to an individual man were she a virgin. Alternatively he can just be glad that any man still wants her and ask for nothing at all. Otherwise (taking the melody from the Encore song by Jay-Z and Linkin Park that says 'what the hell are you waiting for?') men 'what the hell are we paying for?' 
 

Really what is the purpose of this transaction? I think parents are not facing up to the state of the daughters they are raising, many who, on top of being non-virgins typically cannot cook or clean. They should be happy that someone wants to marry their princesses rather than trying to adhere to traditions in a way that only benefits them. Things have gotten so bad that one friend of mine even said to me that a woman without children today is the equivalent of a virgin. Imagine that. Last I know some of the most promiscuous women of our time such as Rihanna, Lady Gaga, etc. are childless. Such a premise leads us to accept then that if an @Africanindiaspo woman led such a lifestyle as Rihanna’s whilst at university abroad or away from home and then found a man who wants to marry her later in life her father can acceptably still charge a bride price. Put yourself in the shoes of the poor man marrying an untrained, unsubmissive, emotionally-wrecked Rihanna wannabe who has been beaten up by a Chris Brown wannabe and having to pay for her. It is a true shame. Some fathers should really be recompensing some men for being brave enough to marry their 'experienced' daughters. And for the fathers who do have virgin daughters please do not commodify them by charging extortionate amounts unless you want them to be treated like cooking oil and sugar by their husbands.


I have said my peace. Until next time, let us share let us grow!

'We Africans need to be fair and honest in the observance of our traditions/practices' - @Africanindiaspo