It is in everyday's conversation. I had lunch with a 22-year-old young man other day. Who referred to all the women he dated as "this chicka or these chicks". He misconstrued the women's courage to tell him he is handsome as being desperate to be in bed with him. With that mindset, you are unlikely to find him disturbed by the war against our women. This morning I came across a tweet from someone I'm following. And it read "this woman didn't do my laundry". I think I am qualified to be over-sensitive when I come across men who will make women look and sound like our labourers.
It is a generational crisis. We are all comfortable with women locked in this box and stereotyped. Some of us grow up with single mothers. Strong women who take up the role of both parents. Some do it so well. And then you will have a child raised by that woman demanding to know where or who his father is.
Society dictates that we should know both our parents, even though when the other one was a mere sperm donor. Never cared for you. But you want to know about him. For me that is the beginning of raping our women. Making our mothers feel inadequate. Carrying them back to the heartache they protected us from. Our communities breed rapists all the time. We just don't see it that way.
The very few women that are tired of being submissive are stoned with words that I don't think I would get the spelling right. And the famous one is "they have no respect". It's because they have unshackled themselves from patriarchy that we embrace from our Parliament to our workplaces. We don't see how we contribute to rape, but we do. We wait for 16 Days of activism against women and children abuse to pledge support to our women. We use Women's Day to mock them instead of celebrating the few that swim against the tide of sexism, racism and bigotry.
Think about it. We breed rapists everyday. We just don't realise it. Why? Because we refuse to highlight the important role women play in our society. We are okay with them just being the providers but not leaders. Those who are leaders still have to be submissive and subscribe to patriarchy. We breed generations of women abusers. All the time.
