The Female of the Species is more deadly than the Male...?

One of the pet peeves of people living in Africa is when ignoramuses from abroad ask if we have lions, elephants and other wild fauna walking in our streets. How silly, we think, we live in built up cities; what the heck would the animals eat? They don't even have any money to roll up at Mickey D's for a Big Mac or anything. Tsk! Or we might ask the ignoramuses if they have coyotes, moose or grizzly bears in their streets, a question which causes them to look at us like we are unbelievably dim-witted, following which they realize that we have been looking at them with that same look and thinking those same thoughts, then all is understood.

I must say though that in the quaint little town of Victoria Falls wild animals prance up and down the streets like they run the place and there is for the most part a resigned acceptance of this by the human community. It is very common to see little families comprising mommy warthogs and five or six baby warthogs hanging out on your lawn and foraging for grubs or whatever, or trotting around in single file with all their tails sticking straight up. It's the cutest thing. Then there are the baboons. Not cute. Some of them are almost as tall as humans and having found myself on many occasions crossing a street alongside one or window shopping only to notice a baboon next to me gazing curiously through the same shop window, I suspect they think they are people. Very hairy, naked people. Awkward. The thing with baboons that prompted me to mention this anecdote as the introduction to my post on women's rights is that they are incredibly mischievous and have been known to pick people's pockets or throw rocks at people and run away. Here's the thing though. Local lore has it that baboons don't attack any old Joe on the street. They are able to discern the weakest and least enfranchised among us and as a result, in a town crawling with people of all shapes, sizes and nationalities, baboons apparently almost exclusively attack black women or children. o_O

I have recently had an awakening about the status of women in the world and about the rights of girls and women. In the interests of full disclosure I must state that I previously had an aversion to the very idea of women's rights and I must shamefully admit, even children's rights. Eeek! I know, I know, what kind of monster am I, right? Let me explain myself. My problem with women/children's rights was in the fact that I did not understand the need for a distinction between human rights as articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and women's rights and children's rights. I thought to myself, 

Why do women and children need their own set of rights? Why does striving to achieve the basic human rights not translate to the needs of women and children being met, given that they are human beings?

I found it bizarre. It made me angry because I felt that defining a set of protections for women and children was discriminatory and set them apart as being lesser beings. Children are human beings in the early stages of development and so I could understand how they would need protection and how they would need a hand up in getting by in the world but women? Adult women? To agree to a convention that articulated their needs over and above the basic human needs would be to acknowledge that they were not the equals of men and I simply could not abide by this. I also viewed feminists and the few advocates for women's rights that I had come across as unfeminine male bashers and there was no way I was going to sign up to their ideologies. It was my sentiment that as higher mammals with such advanced brain function we should be able to do right by each other and respect each other in both directions: male to female and vice versa.

I do not appreciate male bashing. I consider it retrogressive and very unhelpful to the building of healthy societies and I definitely believe we should be doing everything in our power to reinforce positive masculinities. However, it is an unfortunate FACT that there is an extreme, excessive and alarmingly high amount of female bashing - oppression, abuse, discrimination, neglect and other forms of straight up misogyny - on planet Earth. I have always known how strong and powerful and capable women are, even in the face of the very worst circumstances but only now am I finding out just how bad those circumstances are today, right now, all over the world. It's shocking. My awakening to the real life experiences of women around the globe has been a long time coming and at this stage my understanding of the issues is quite tenuous and fragile but I am getting there. I intend to post a review of the stats on women and girls and and a brief review of the book I am currently reading entitled Half the Sky.  I love statistics. They have their limitations but they really help to make things  clear in terms of the big picture. I will also continue this series by featuring a few outstanding women and telling their stories. I also love personal stories because they make things more real and really bring home the issues. I hope to discover if indeed the female of the species is more deadly than the male. 

Woman and Girl | Diong

P.S The title of this post is taken from a poem by Rudyard Kipling which knowing myself I will probably have a good rant about one of these days.

Finding freedom: In broken images

There are people who have the gift of clarity. They always know what they want and what needs to be done to get it; they can assess a situation and determine the appropriate course of action in the blink of an eye. They shine in a crisis, rounding up the troops and firing out instructions like traders on Wall Street in a dream sequence of pure left brain brilliance. These are the folks who are quick on their feet, witty and resplendent in their ability to produce inspiring and flawless ideas during workplace brainstorming sessions, while the rest of us can only beg, cajole or butt-kick our brains into coming up with ideas that turn out to be so asinine that the team discards them before we even finish articulating our poorly conceived thoughts. These are the folks who then take our dumb ideas, pimp them up and re-brand them into the Hail Mary we have all been waiting for in the boardroom torture chamber. We are reduced to tears, slowly shaking our heads from side to side as one by one we stand and ovate. Let's face it.These people suck. Big time. They make us feel like inadequate buffoons.

The thing is, though, it's not like I don't have great ideas. I have fantastic ideas. Later. When I have had some time to let them simmer a little it turns out my ideas "out-bling" the Hail Mary in the boardroom in their sheer brilliance. They are rounded and balanced and have a low center of gravity giving them good stability. They take into account all the internal and external variables they need to, they consider local context, they are commercially viable and sustainable, they are innovative and exciting. These are ideas to last through the ages and maybe save the planet. I have ideas that give me wings! After applying my mind a little it turns out I can come up with some startlingly sharp thoughts.The problem is I live in a world built for quick thinkers so my life appears somewhat off tempo. But go figure;it turns out I have amazing clarity too. Later. Eventually. A minute after the fireworks. It turns out that after groping in the darkness and wading through the marshlands of my brain, digesting and assimilating the wealth of information around me and simulating all the different combinations and permutations, I really, really get stuff and I am a rather sharp shooter too. So cheers to that!

Here is a poem I found when I was 15...

He is quick, thinking in clear images; 
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images; 
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance; 
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact, 
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses; 
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images; 
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding; 
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

 - Robert Graves- In Broken Images

I read it and thought to myself, well there we go. That's me he's talking about. Clearly...