NOT ALL MEN, BUT SOMEHOW IT’S ALWAYS MEN II
I recently came across a post on Instagram that deeply resonated with me. It was a writing that suggested a social experiment to be conducted on the men who say, “Not all men” as a retort when women talk about the pains, fears and madness that is simply being female in today’s world.
It stood out to me because I really would give anything to see it carried out. When women cry about the years of being sexually abused, harassed, assaulted, killed, maimed… When women are angry, and speak about the fact that men have continued to destroy and oppress us in our numbers, the problem pointed out is usually the fact that she said, “men”, as opposed to the generally acceptable and more pleasing “some men”.
As usual, I will be blunt and express my anger to whatever extent as feels best to me. When men were killed for being good looking, women joined the ENDSARS movement without batting an eyelid. I barely saw any opposition from the camps of females. We all joined in, advocating for the lives of our brothers, fathers, sons, boyfriends, men we were never even going to be related to.
Somehow, every time the unjust and usually brutal killing of yet another woman is reported, we have these same people running around like headless chickens and blaming it on the victims of the heinous crimes. We see the popular retort, “Not all men”.
This phrase is said by the self same men who were mad at the whites in the war against racism, when they created the “All lives matter” movement as a retort to “Black Lives Matter”. We all saw the manipulation clearly, and how that movement threatened to lead attention away from the specific problem, which was, and still is, the killing of black people.
The experiment with snakes would look like blindfolding some men who say “Not All Men”, and throwing them in a cage with snakes. They wouldn’t even have to be real snakes or venomous snakes, but they’d be put in there and when the blindfold is lifted, I’d pay to watch their reactions in there.
And then they’d be told that not all the snakes in there are venomous. The point of this experiment, is that it is a natural instinct to be afraid of something that we know can hurt us. It is a natural human instinct to try to fight back and to hate whatever or whoever causes us the most pain.
These men are likely to be afraid of all the snakes, whether or not they are venomous. The fear would most likely be higher in the men who have been bitten by snakes in the past, because from their experience(s), it was not a nice feeling to be bitten by a snake.
After years of women being killed by their sexual and romantic partners over the most basic and useless arguments, why exactly is your message “not all men”? Why do you feel the need to stand up in defense of the men who are mostly complacent in the killings and abuse of women? Why do you think that you have a right to try to coordinate or control the anger of a world of women who have lived in abject fear all our lives? Women who have been beaten down and cast out and shut up with the fact that it’s not all men when we speak up against those who hurt us? And that’s when they choose to even believe us. Phew!
I do not wake up every day thinking that it is every single man who is complacent in women’s suffering. I do not at all believe that every single man kills, rapes and maims women. But where the fuck is the empathy?
Most of the time, those who do not do it, are more interested in using that fact to shut up women, than to do something to help. Except their mothers, sisters, wives, nieces, cousins, or a woman related to them by blood or association is affected, they continue to make it about themselves and how innocent they should be painted in the cries for help that women write or sing or act.
How is my abuse about you? How is your anger relevant to me when I have lived all my life thinking that love looks like being beaten around and treated as less, because it is all I’ve ever known? How do you have the right to be angry about however the fuck women choose to express their anger?
In the Islamic communities, honor killing is an acceptable practice. Children are married off to grown ass men every other day. And your problem is that we do not add “some” when we talk about our oppressors? Hot damn!
I do not give a rat’s tail about what is acceptable to men when I write or speak or say whatever I have to say about the divide between men and women. Women are human beings and our anger cannot be micromanaged. I, for one, will not be silenced or shut down. I will continue to speak through my words. I will continue to scream at the top of my fucking lungs, because I can, and because I will not be pushed down and destroyed in silence.
For the women who have said no as politely as they could and still got beaten up, raped and murdered. For Ini, whose only offense was seeking a legit job. For the mothers whose husbands made to get the “husband’s stitch” after childbirth. For my mother, who is dead, but lives on in my heart, my bloodstream, and in my stories of her.
For the little girls yet unborn and the ones already here who get fingered by some uncle or brother. For the Muslim girls who have been killed for having a functioning sexuality, even when they were raped. For the wives, whose husbands hit, manipulate and destroyed parts of them that will never heal.
For my best friend, who was groped on a bike and traumatized severally by men. For the fear of wearing what I want because I am afraid it’d be an invitation for the wrong male attention. For all the years women have spent giving out their numbers to men they don’t like, just to get away from harassment and prolonged conversations.
For the babies who have been raped and killed, and those who survived it. Those girls who were abused and groomed by their own fathers and impregnated. For women in the entertainment industries, who are harassed by producers continuously.
For the future and past women, secrets that were never told because of fear and shame and because it will always end up being our faults that we were abused, I WILL NEVER STOP!
If all I can do is tell these stories through my craft. If all that I can do, is scream at the very top of my lungs and be as angry as I wish, then so be it. I will never apologize for my experiences, or however my anger and hatred for abusive men, manifest.
Even Christians , who consider themselves the holiest of all, pray for death on the devil, their oppressors, and their enemies - both imagined and real. But women have no right to merely wish death on our oppressors?
Mind you, while I am somewhere in Africa, merely wishing a painful death upon my abusers, some men are out there actually doing the work. Some men are out there actually raping, killing and hurting women. But my words in my defense are so much of a problem to you?
Well, fuck you! I will never be silenced. Even if one of them bloodthirsty men catch up with me and kill my body, my blood will not be silenced. I am that aggressive.
Maybe ask yourself why it is so important to you to try to set yourself aside. How am I supposed to know which man is going to kill me the next minute for fuck sake?
Dating men is actually even a great risk, because most of the murdered women, were killed by their romantic and sexual partners. How do you say “I love you” this minute, and then kill me the next? And possibly for not ironing your damn shirts! What the fuck happened to your hands? You can even outsource for it!
Who can be trusted then? Imagine if these men fought against gender-based violence with the same energy with which they try to shut women up for expressing our anger and hurt over years of “bullshitry”. Yes, I wish men death. I wish men who have hurt women, horrible, ugly deaths. Those who try to shut us up despite how hard it is to speak up about these things, by telling us that it’s not all men. They gotta go too. Heat up the damn incinerators!
If you are so innocent, you’d be fighting for women to live better, not trying to lower the volume of the women who talk about what is going on. They then proceed to tell you that “Women kill men too”. What a joke! Bring out the statistics and let’s compare. Even if women killed a man every hour for the next year, the numbers of gender deaths would still not tally, because guess what? A woman is killed, most likely by a sexual partner, every damn 11 minutes!
It is not all men? Well, I never said it was. Your actions kind of gave you away…