BY RUKUDZO M MANGOMA
I REMEMBER fondly an experiment we held in high school about density. We tried to sink a tennis ball into a dish of water, the results were that the ball always popped up.
Fast forward eight years later and this experiment led me to the observation that men and women are different and for a valid reason.
The link between the tennis ball experiment and men and women is that no matter how much we try to deny and suppress both masculinity and femininity, they always find a way to pop up again.
Men and women are clearly different from the way they look and even the way they express emotions.
This is not a new discovery, ask any of these questions to my grandmothers and they would ask you: why are you stating the obvious?
Keep in mind that my grandmothers have not gone to university, are not computer literate nor are they on social media, but a student in sociology or development studies will beg to differ.
Their argument is that men and women are basically the same and that sexuality occurs on a spectrum, which means sex or gender is based on feelings not rational.
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I for one, with the option to choose between my grannies and graduates would side with my grannies.
To believe that men and women are the same is not true in anyway, it is to believe a delusion.
A delusion is anything that goes against reality. For example, I can dream being a football sensation Christiano Ronaldo, but in reality I am not. In fact, I am not even Portuguese.
As much as people want to change from girls into boys and vice-versa, this in my view will not work. Like the tennis ball, both masculine and feminine characteristics will sooner or later reveal themselves.
While researching endlessly, I came across a story about a couple which did not want their daughter to conform to pink and blue colours nor play with dolls, so they bought her a miniature truck.
One night when her father went to check on her, she responded by saying, “Sssh!, the truck is sleeping”.
This is reality, the consequences of people believing in delusions and not reality will make them do foolish and reprehensible things.
Food for thought, if men and women are the same, then why are women more selective in choosing a partner for an intimate relationship compared to men who are far-less deserving?
Today, especially in the developed countries, men and women in tertiary institutions cohabit in their dormitories and even share the same bathrooms, a practice which was frowned upon five decades ago.
This is because our forebears foresaw the danger associated with cohabitation.
In my opinion, cohabitation is a scapegoat for marriage. This is because in cohabitation you will be basically doing everything that men and women do as husbands and wives.
Cohabitation removes reasons for entering into formal marriages. This usually works to the disadvantage of women as they would have demeaned their sexuality.
Other disadvantages of cohabitation are that it provides fertile grounds for pre-marital sex.
Sex, to which we know is one of the highest forms of reaching emotional, physical and spiritual connection, would be treated as a sport than anything else. It incentivises rape and sexual abuse of women.
As the world tries to put an end to “rape culture”, we on the other hand promote it by providing grounds we men with bad intentions and lack of self-control are free to do as they please.
American lawyer and author Larry Elder once said, “if you incentivise bad behaviour you will only get more bad behaviour”.
Today, the repercussions range from an increasing number of single parents, especially among women, teen pregnancies and poor sustainability of marriages.
As far as most women are concerned, this is just not true. If sex does not mean anything, why would any woman feel violated by an uninvited touch? Do you think a man whose leg is touched by a woman he does not know, feels as violated as a woman does when her leg is touched by a strange man she does not know?
For example, actress Jennifer Lawrence said during an interview, that during an intimate scene with her co-actor, she felt uncomfortable. She said although it was her job, somehow she felt violated and uneasy.
However, her co-actor did not feel the same. To him, it was actually great because he was with a woman, an attractive woman for that matter.
This is one of the reasons why sex has been solely restricted to marriage.
Experience and research shows that sexual intimacy within the confines of marriage is satisfying both emotionally, psychologically and spiritually than sex outside marriage.
Anyone who tells you that sex is basically the same and means as little to women as it can to many men is lying.
The area where most people fail to understand is that men and women are different, but it does not mean that one of either sex is weak.
Men and women were meant to complement each other where abilities are limited.
Consider team sports, how each individual is strong in areas where their teammate is not, but it does not mean that the other teammate is weak. They actual combine their strengths to win and achieve glory.
So in the case that you are confronted by any of these gender-biased radicalists trying to convert you to their miscued ideologies as no differences between men and women, I suggest you trust granny, trust the tennis ball and trust common sense. Men and women are different, period.
- Rukudzo M Mangoma is a graduate in development studies from Great Zimbabwe University. He writes on key issues regarding development.
