One day my fellow women, men will eat us alive.

***Give me 24 hours to elaborate on this prophecy.

Parable of a parsimonious world

Where do I begin this story? From the moment I walked out of my house looking like I was lathered in 3 layers of Vaseline, or the moment I realized that given the chance, men would chew us (women), skin and bone?

I do not mean that as a joke.

As a certified pedestrian and a religious user of public transport, I am accustomed to the chit-chat that surrounds boarding African buses; from the complaining men to the pestering children.

On this fine Sunday Morning, I have decided to take a break from the warm and endearing solitude of my home and wander to Chirimba for lunch with my favorite people and a motherly homemade meal. The bus is not full but is predominantly filled with men and few scattered women.

I am not one to eavesdrop on conversation but if you are making known your unsolicited opinion, I will hear it and I will judge you for your poor thinking.

A man speaks on how he beat his wife for not being home when he arrived. I suck my teeth and roll my eyes at the stupidity. The men nod their heads in agreement and mutter words like, “she deserved it” and “she had it coming.”

Hai!, I am thinking, marriage but at what cost?

Another man quickly adds a layer of misogyny by pitching into the crowd that men need to ‘discipline’ their wives when they ‘act out’ and such issues should be kept in the secrecy of marriage as it may look like abuse.

Look like?

Look like abuse?

My eyes search frantically for the man that uttered these words and my eyes lock his over the driver’s rear view mirror. It should not have been him, I am not sorry.

To the men I share this space with, a good woman is ‘obedient’, ‘submissive’ and ‘quiet’. The perfect woman of culture should need crave the guidance and protection of a man; she is like a child to be catered for, looked down upon and beaten when they oppose their superior.

To be a ‘good’ woman, one must channel their inner doormat and prostrate themselves before their self-appointed disciplinaries. She is a selfless martyr to the whims of men, an embodiment of the archaic norms we are so desperate to abandon. May we find inspiration in her self-neglect.

Beat some sense into her quick before she utters the word ‘equality’ or ‘right’. Such nonsense words.

If she says no, she is disrespectful; if she questions the agenda, she is challenging and outspoken; if she disagrees, who the hell does she think she is?

A woman who pursues her career is deluded to think that a man would want her with all those qualifications, but if she stays at home to take care of her family, she is too dependent. Women should be reprimanded like a toddler, treated like a glorified servant, serviced like a car, and worked like a horse.

And do not say aloud that you do not wish to marry, they will pity your future spouse like they did not just hear you say that you choose to not want a man. Women should centralise men in their lives.

Our voices are stifled, ambitions belittled, as we are taught to shrink and fade into the background. We are conditioned to conform to predetermined roles, molded into docile creatures of compliance. We are told to prioritize marriage and motherhood, as if our worth lies solely in our ability to nurture others. Career aspirations are met with skepticism, as if success outside the domestic sphere is an anomaly rather than a rightful pursuit. The labels of weakness, irrationality, and emotional fragility are perpetuated to undermine our autonomy and dismiss our opinions. From the moment we are born, society eagerly hands us a predefined script. If you choose not have children, you are selfish. If you outsource help, you are lazy and not wife material; women must bond over smoke, back and joint pains.

Men? Men will defend each other with their dying breath. It does not matter that the act was despicable or dehumanizing; ‘boys will be boys’, ‘She asked for it’ and ‘A woman must serve a man first.’

Men are never in the wrong and should never be held accountable, these men narrate. The action or reaction of a man is always as a result of woman. Did Eve not tempt Adam? He was a seduced innocent man. He beat her because she did not polish his shoes, he was a neglected husband. If he stepped out on his marriage, it is because his wife was not tending to him, he was an unloved spouse and if he does it again, his mother failed to raise him right. Zero accountability whatsoever. “Like a compass needle that points North, a man’s accusing finger always find a woman.”

 I am in an active state of disbelief and my heart is racing at several haibos per minute. Truly, that is all women are to men? And to think, they lay next to their spouses every night with such contempt for them lodged in their chests, I shiver for the days they bare their teeth.

Here come the men in my mentions talking about, ‘Not all of us are like that’. Oh sorry, sir, that we do not have the time to individually check who is dangerous or not, or who has the sharpest teeth. My sincerest apologies that we choose not play Russian roulette with our lives, it is just that the subtle garden variety misogynist is harder to spot. Did you not hear of the man that killed his wife for not cooking rice correctly? Or the man that ‘accidentally’ stabbed his girlfriend? Can’t be too careful, don’t you agree? If you want to debate my thoughts, you would have to pay me for my time and if not, my mentions are not the place to be empty headed.

As I was saying, every time he hits you, it is because you are being a ‘bad’ woman. You do not listen, you are radical and you are loud. You have forgotten your place but worry not, his hands will show it to you. God forbid a woman makes more money than her husband, she will undermine his authority (but if she wants to make him happy, she must give him every money she earns and he will decide the budget, what a good woman!). If you find yourself with a man that has an inferiority complex, be sure to shrink in size to accommodate his ego. Tuck away your steel-spine and worship the nothing he gives you.

The bus is now approaching town and this war against women will be over soon, my throat is burning but even I know, their ideas are deeply rooted over years of belittling women; it is a losing battle. There ideologies are as old as Adam’s apple. I turn to look at the passing buildings when the women finally speak into the conversation.

The woman with a child nestled on her lap says that is a woman’s duty to serve a man and she must know her place.

Know her place? What place? In the kitchen? On her back? Why can that place never be something good or something worthwhile? Like driving a Mercedes Benz AMG?

A ‘good’ woman is expected to conform to a dizzying array of expectations set by society, as if their approval is the ultimate validation. I pity them for supporting a system that does not serve them because at the end of the day, no matter how hard you ride for them, for the system designed against you, receipts will be due. Maybe deep down, they believe that pandering to man and belittling the experience of other women at the hands of the men in their lives exempts from the violence and inequality. Listen, it does not matter how much you support patriarchy as a woman, it is a system that will never benefit you.

These are the same ‘good’ women that feel betrayed and cheated when, after following the rules set and regulated by men on how to be a subservient woman, they get no reward for it. They wonder how they got the cream of the violent and nonchalant crop. They shake their fists to the heavens on the unfairness of it all, and that is the system they scrap their knees defending. Hatred and bitterness brews for the ‘bad’ women who lived their best lives untouched by those standards and got the best happiness can offer.

This woman sees the look of horror on my face at this and she jokingly says, “You will understand when it is your turn.” My what? I have never said, “God can continue forbidding” faster in my life. Lord, I see what you are doing for others, may it never be my turn. The notion that a ‘good’ woman serves men first is but a remnant of a bygone era—a parody of reality that crumbles under the weight of its own absurdity.

Women must fear men (like we already do not take one hour out of each day to do so). We do not feel safe; we still cross the street when a man is walking behind us, broadcast our location to five friends until we get home, and constantly look around when we walk on sparsely populated roads. I dare not think of marrying because I might get beaten, or killed for following my dreams, or not cooking the nsima to his liking. What if my partner views women as objects of sexual gratification, home decoration, and chore completion? As a woman, you could live long enough to see old age or die at the mercy of a violent man, even men fear men. And listen, there is no excuse for laying your hands on anyone, no justification for violence. How do we create monumental change in the dynamics? Negotiating for our lives and rights clearly isn’t working.

Moral of the story: If a man so much as raises his hand at you, put on your running shoes and hit the road at full speed! Abusive men will strip you of your individuality, your self-esteem, your freewill, and/or worse, your life.