By Kayode Ajala
Not too long ago, I found myself in a gathering of women. My wife had practically dragged me to her friend’s in-house birthday party. I’d been very reluctant to accompany her to that event because I had a very strong inkling of the kind of gathering it would turn out to be. My wife’s friend was one of those unapologetic and unrepentant feminists. She was, in my opinion, over educated and irritatingly self-opinionated. I was sure that her in-house birthday party would be filled with her ilk. And I was not wrong! After my several excuses fell on deaf ears, I’d reluctantly tagged along just to please my insistent wife, making a mental note not to spend a minute more than was necessary at the place.
Predictably, the party was a women’s affair. I soon found out to my discomfort that I was the only man in the midst of several sophisticated, educated and very vocal women. My wife sat across the expansive living room, chatting with another friend of hers and whenever I caught her attention, I gave her a look that sent out sparks of amber like a faulty traffic light. And she would smile back at me mischievously as if nothing was amiss!
I soon resigned myself to fate and began to guzzle the delicacies that seemed to be flowing endlessly, not to talk of the choice drinks that flowed like waves of the Atlantic. The music was playing at a very low din, such that we could hear ourselves above the din. And come to think of it, I was actually beginning to enjoy the party until the women, as they always do, started to discuss men and the problems they have with the male gender. This time, the topic was wife battering or better still, men who beat their wives.
You should have been there to see the agitation that was ignited once this topic was broached. Practically, all the women present struggled to outdo the other to make a contribution, with some of them raising their voices a shade more than was necessary. They seemed to think that I had suddenly become one of the figurines used to decorate the living room. They prattled on as if I was not there. What could I do? I simply sat there quietly and made myself as inconspicuous as possible as I soaked in their agitated conversation.
The diverse and variegated contributions that came out of their mouths were however united in the condemnation of any man who raises his hand against a woman, be it his wife, his sister, his mother, his concubine or even his maid. Hear some of them:
‘Any man who beats a woman is a spineless creature.’
‘A weakling and a coward,’ said another.
‘Indeed, such a man is not fit to live.’
‘In fact, such a man should be castrated and fed with his balls,’ another chipped in.
‘Haba, isn’t that taking it too far?’ I almost interjected in response to the last speaker but I checked myself in the nick of time.
See, I am at heart a male chauvinist but in practice, a champion of the equality of the sexes. I would never endorse the oppression of women by men and vice versa but on that occasion, I itched to rise up in defence of my brothers. However, I cringed at the mere thought of the verbal attacks that would be unleashed on me if I attempted such a misadventure. So, I remained in the mute mode. Not even all the Senior Advocates in Nigeria could have won an argument against that congregation of agitated women. But as I sat there quietly, sipping from my glass of choice cognac, one question kept dancing in my head like a ping pong ball gone out of control; What would these women have to say about wives who beat their husbands?
They would probably say that husbands who get mauled by their wives deserve to be mauled or even killed, or that women are too fragile to take on any man physically. They might even conclude that such a scenario, a man being beaten by his wife, only exists in my imagination. And as this flashed through my mind, I remembered a drama that played out right before me a couple of years back.
A much younger friend of mine who’d just gotten married had come with his newly wedded wife to spend the weekend at my place. Right from the time they arrived, I’d quietly noticed and resented the rather overbearing nature of the wife. My young friend was a very quiet, easy going and rather unassuming gentleman. But not so his wife! She had an opinion about practically everything under the sun and obviously wanted to have the last say in all matters. Of course, this irritated me. But then, she was not my wife. Her husband wasn’t complaining and I would only have to endure her company for the weekend. So, I bottled up my resentment.
That night, my young friend and I, in company of my wife and his, stayed up late into the night. Eventually, my wife and I retired to our bedroom upstairs, leaving our guests in the guest room downstairs. Not quite an hour later, the housemaid whom we’d also left downstairs came banging on our bedroom door, raising the alarm that the young couple in the guest room downstairs were having a brawl. I took the flight of stairs two at a time and arrived at the door of the guest room in a jiffy. True, I could hear the sound of violence from within but the only voice that kept floating into my ears was the voice of the wife…my young friend was just grunting and snorting. The woman kept shouting…
‘Don’t kill me o…You will kill me today…Don’t kill me o.’
I banged on the door loudly and called on them to open the door but they didn’t. Yet, the woman kept screaming frantically, ‘Don’t kill me o.’
It was clear that if I didn’t do something drastic, I would have a casualty in my hands. I had to stop my young friend from killing his wife right inside my house. So, I rammed my shoulders into the door panel. After the third attempt, the door caved in and I staggered into the room. When I regained my balance, the sight that greeted me left me gaping momentarily. My young friend was on the floor. His wife who was much heavier was sitting atop him and punching him violently at the same time. As she pummelled him, she kept screaming, ‘Don’t kill me o…You will kill me today.’
I looked at my friend. He was already bleeding from the mouth and from the nose. And his wife continued to pound away with reckless abandon screaming, ‘Don’t kill me o…You will kill me today.’ I pulled her off him with all the strength I could muster.
‘Do you want to kill this man?’ I screamed at her, ‘For heaven’s sake, who is killing who here?’
We spent the rest of the night administering first aid to my injured friend and placating the wife who was still rearing to unleash more violence on her husband. I couldn’t wait to see them leave before that weekend was over. I’m still wondering what those agitated women at that party would have had to say if they had witnessed what I witnessed that night right under my own roof.
The usual thing we hear and read about are tales of husbands battering their wives! But the equation, I tell you, is different in some relationships. It is the women who beat the husbands. It sounds like a man biting a dog in a society such as ours, where being a husband is like receiving the grace of the heavens. But it is true. And women who beat their husbands do so, not necessarily because they are the bread winners in such relationships. What often causes this is a certain animal brutality. And this is not even a function of education. There are educated ladies who with a single backslap can send their husbands to the hospital.
Brothers, let me bow out with this parting shot. What my young friends’ experience teaches us is that we must be very alert when choosing a wife. Any woman who looks physically superior is out; any aggressive, violent type is also out; if she is quick to abuse, drop her fast; if she looks like she will develop muscles in the future, just forget it; and if she says she is attending or has attended karate lessons, don’t even think about her. Her only objective can be to try out her skills on her husband. If you doubt all these, go and ask my young friend.
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