By Daniel Saenyi
Women have been on the front line fighting for their rights
since time memorial and though it has been a slow process they are slowly
gaining ground soon to be the mightier gender with the recent husband battering
spree. This has been a comic extravaganza for the past few weeks with people
painting the women from Nyeri as the autocrats.
We as a society are so bent on condemning these women that
we forget to listen to their side of the story. This saga could happen to
anyone and we should not brand Nyeri women as any woman can stand up and say
enough is enough the virile way.
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| Woman threatening her husband at a Police station |
What if walloping these husbands is the only way they can
express their cry for help? These women could be in a hopeless marriage with a
useless husband, who do nothing but come home drunk and harass them. For what
it’s worth I even commend them for standing their ground; there is no husband
who provides for his family in every way possible that can receive such
treatment, as we convict the women we should do the same to the men for not taking
up their God given rights as the leaders of the household.
The 21st Century man has grown so soft and lazy
that he has destroyed the image of our forefathers who took their errands
seriously and were proud of it; the modern man sees his accountabilities as a
burden and always finds a way of leaving it to the woman, either coming home
late or having a mountain of imaginary workloads`` in the bar’’. The woman has had to take up the two roles
which will prove to be stressful on anyone, so don’t blame the woman for snapping
with all the pressure she has to go throw day in day out.
Self-defense is another reason that the woman could borrow
to give the men a pounding of their lives, they might not have done this in a
face to face combat but it’s always said that mind is mightier than brute
strength and this case the women were intellectual about it. The best way to
win a fight against a stronger opponent is to apply the element of surprise,
and these women applied it only too well.
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| Portrait of a Man Crying |
The rates of wife battering far exceed the rates of husband
beating in the country and currently only two cases of husband beating have
been reported yet we act as though the Nyeri have unleashed war on the whole
society. Many women have agonized in silence all these years and nothing was
done against the men responsible, so why should we brand the first two cases of
women standing up for themselves?
All the husbands who evade their responsibilities and leave
it all to the women should be critical at one point and put themselves in the
women’s shoes and see if they won’t crack at the first instance of trouble.
It’s not always fair that sometimes you don’t get what you
need from the people you expect to get it from, it maybe love, support, or
care. And if you don’t get it do you let them get away with it or do you fight
for it? The women saw it fit to fight so maybe the husbands could get the idea
and take up their responsibilities, and if the men keep trending downwards
maybe that’s what they deserve.
The Kenyan society always fails to look into the bigger
picture and we focus only on what we have been fed by the media. We run our
judgment based on one side of the story but it’s time to we start peeling the
onion no matter how much it may hurt so we see what’s hidden underneath as
there’s always two sides to a story.
