The prejudice that follows women simply because they are women is endless, notwithstanding the harsh realities of what happens to some of our sisters in countries across the globe.
I remember reading an excellent article by a foreign writer in India who was finding it difficult to rent an apartment because he was single in a country where marriage is equivalent to respect and easy rental as opposed to bachelorhood; a personal experience came rushing back.
“I will rent it to you if you promise not to have men coming here at odd hours or sleeping over, which single girls do,” the elderly woman said to me when I enquired about an apartment she had to rent—this was a few years ago. She even had the gall to say it would have been easier if I were a man, as if single men are free of such adventures.
But for the sake of this commentary, let’s keep it simple and let things flow from the perspective of Beyonce’s “If I were a boy”. This ladies’ anthem connects with women who have had to endure what so many of us know so well—men who just don’t seem to get it.
No this is not open season on male-bashing, though that can feel pretty good depending on the mood you are in. It is simply a conversation about what some women have to put up with; like the woman whose man buys her everything but is hardly ever at home. Yes, the kind of man who showers you with gifts when it is his attention you crave.
There is always that woman who is so pretty and always well put together you cannot help but stare when you see her, even wishing you had her body or her hair or that jeans she is wearing, but the man in life rarely tells her that she is gorgeous. She goes around getting the stares and the compliments smiling for the public who embrace her and all the while ‘the one’ she picked has trouble paying compliments.
We know them all too well; men who boast that they have an attractive woman to their friends and flaunt her whenever they could but somehow never take the time to let her know, and she is yearning to know. She wants to hear it from him, is dying to hear it from him, but he said it once three years ago and still believes that is enough.
And how about that man who goes home every night to a clean house and food on the table but never says thank you to the woman who would have been at it all day? Then on the days when he should take her out for a meal he spends the time instead drinking beers with the guys or playing pools somewhere he has never taken her.
Then there are the guys who miss birthdays and anniversaries and rate them as, “just another day because I am here all year”. But to miss any of theirs is almost criminal.
They talk on the phone for hours with their friends and it is rude to interrupt, but chatting with your girlfriend is deemed another pointless gaff about “the same old things and can be cut short”.
To list everything would take all day, but more often than not it the simple things that men completely miss in relationships that contribute to the problems.
Sometimes lending an ear is all that is required and understanding that there is a thin line between being disrespectful to his woman and being friendly with another. (thescene@stabroeknews.com)
