Diana Mwanyangapo
As an avid reader of literature and a firm believer in how stories and narrative interventions shape and inform our lives, I came across the classic, “I was not sorry when my brother died, nor am I apologising for my callousness” from Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions did nothing less than reinforce the assertion propelled by the #Men are trash song.
I was nearly left in a conundrum to reconcile the paradox that ensued, as I was also confronted by Andreas in The Purple Violet of Oshaantu, where another version of men living in harmony with their wives was projected, thus: “She is doing fine. She is always doing fine. She has a good husband” (p. 80).
This made me re-evaluate my view of life as I started to realise that perhaps as a society we have failed to think of life holistically.
Instead of nuanced and perceptive interpretations of life and society in its multifacetedness, we have perhaps myopically restricted our worldview to dualities, binaries and Manichean dichotomies, which are coloured by stereotyping and name-calling.
We have perhaps created a world of them against us – male versus female; good versus evil, and so on.
In the midst of all this, perhaps we have left little room for the flourishing of humanity by particularly erasing the possibility of gender complementarity and co-existence – principally through the erasure of the boy child’s equal need for mentorship, nurturing, grooming and socialisation.
This is not in any a ploy to downplay the evils of patriarchy and the horrors of gender-based violence but simply to introspect and say that as we continue to empower the girl-child – rightfully so, of course – we unfortunately forget that the boy child in many respects equally needs to be empowered.
The question is then, who will be there to stand as an equal life partner for this empowered girl if the boy child is not equally empowered?
As I play the devil’s advocate here, could it be possible that we need to think beyond #Men are trash, especially as we recognise that being born as a male does not mean that one automatically becomes an evil species, an alien and vampire-like being, which ironically, most of us, the female gender, love and hate, and therefore we demonise it in every respect?
To extend this debate a step further, as just another child, is the boy child to some extent not equally vulnerable and important in socio-cultural and feminist discourses?
This is certainly not meant to stir the hornet’s nest and to negate what champions of gender equality have done to date, but to allow us to think beyond the idea that men are simply trash that is fit only for the Kupferberg dumpsite.
This includes my yet-to-be-born sons, brothers, male pastors, male university lecturers, fathers and grandfathers as well as male feminists – can we simply say that they are nothing else but trash?
When we project such an image, what help is this for the young generation that grows up with this uncomplicated and parochial perspective that being evil is a gender (male) trait and not an individual trait?
Who then is this boy child? Without going into the debates about social constructs, all I can say, at a metaphorical level, is that the boy child pupates into a man – a tate – as the Oshiwambo language would say.
It is a male being who is invariably regarded as a rapist, murderer, monster, thief, heartbreaker and incorrigibly irresponsible piece of trash.
Most girls say ‘he is just but garbage’; they blame him for almost any failed relationship and have pre-concluded that all men are the same – and that they are worse off than a dog.
The million-dollar question in all this is: should this be the complete picture and all that is as well as what both the boy child and girl child should grow up knowing as the complete image of life?
My submission here corroborates what Professor Wandere once said: “Empowerment of the individual means that we create a society where both men and women can make choices in life based on their abilities, preferences, and circumstances. When you save the boy child from all these, by defending and fighting for his rights, you save a whole generation. That boy, upon growing up into a responsible man, father, and husband, mentors his generation in the same way”.
The very same holds equally true for the girl child; yet, one could argue that women’s empowerment and the fight for the girl child have so far been a great achievement in feminist discourses; yet, in some respects, the boy child seems to be an unheard voice that is precluded by the on-going endeavour to safeguard, uplift and empower the rights and status of the girl child through feminist workings.
I think it will be a remarkable societal feat if both men and women, girls and boys and none of the above, could be given the same space, voice and benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps it is equally so in this view that other sectors of society have started organisations like the ‘Boy Child Initiative Network’, which is an innovation that is committed to grooming boys for purposeful living, assisting them to recognise and achieve their potential.
From the foregoing, one can reckon with the Boy Child Initiative Network CEO’s words: “Disputes between a boy and a girl will invariably be settled in favour of the girl. Such stereotypes reflect degrees of the onslaught of trauma meted on the boy-child by society. These have adverse effects on the psychosocial balance and development of the boy-child. If we do not fix these anomalies and reverse the imbalance, these young ones may turn abusive in future”.
Such a remark corroborates the present idea that there is a social but subtle bias against the boy child in our categorisation of men as being nothing trash. Neshani Andreas’s balanced presentation of men in The Purple Violet of Oshaantu as encompassing the evil and the good is, therefore, insightful.
We need to think beyond a limited and limiting view of men and women so that we can mould our girls and boys to be better citizens.
Whereas girl child organisations are doing a lot for the girlchild, as the Namibian society, we can also take a leaf from organisations such as Save the Boy Child South Africa, The African Boy-Child Initiative, and Raising Legends – A Boy Child Initiative.
But to do so, we have to seriously think beyond the #MenAreTrash mantra and think of the boy child as an equally vulnerable child in need of mentoring.