That is how a girl proves she is a woman
And speaking of not having the right to have rights –
“According to African culture, the man is the overlord,” said Peace Atwongyeire, 42, a handsome counselor whose face adorns local billboards saying she is not ashamed to be H.I.V.-positive. “You have to say yes.”
Because a man buys a wife from her father for cows or cash, he “owns” her. If she refuses sex or insists on a condom, he may beat her or throw her out of the house.
Also, condoms thwart pregnancy, and “I prove my manhood by having children,” said Mr. Bitti, a father of 14. “That is how a girl proves she is a woman. In Africa, you cannot tell anyone to stop having children. They will even think, ‘I would rather have AIDS and leave my children when I die. At least I will have produced my three.’ ”
And then abandoned them to misery; terrific.
Oh, and does the wife want to have 14 children? One hates to recommend polygamy, but hopefully this burden was shared among several wives. Even in a fine hospital, which I doubt, such constant childbirth would thoroughly ruin one’s health.
And who says there is only one African culture? And who gets to decide what that culture is?
How nice of them to explicitly stake manhood on one’s ability to manipulate and control the lives of women. All the assholes over here have learned not to say that kind of thing out loud, which makes for much harder legwork. Now we just need people to start caring and everything will be peachy…
Quite.
We’re always hearing that the one sure-fire known way to cut the birth rate is to educate women – which kind of gives the game away that millions and millions of women around the world are involuntarily bearing lots more children than they want to.
These quaint customs are all part of the rich diversity of human life on the planet. We shouldn’t take a Western cultural imperialist perspective and assume universal human rights ,that would be unacceptable.
Dammit, what’s the term for members of an oppressed group that helps maintain the system of oppression? I’m blanking…
@themann, 1086.
co-dependency?
Stockholm syndrome?
Never mind educating women, we should be arming them…