Women's Voices: When Gender Comes to Visit

Warning and Disclaimer: If you take life at face value, if you think there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you think the sky will fall on your head at any time, if you never leave the house without an umbrella, do not read this. All unnamed names in this post are not fictitious, and any resemblance to any actual, living person is not at all purely coincidental. This voice is neither WeavingKenya 2012's (Weaving Women's group) spokesman nor representative.  The unnamed names have every right to sue This voice, keeping in mind these two conditions: - that they remember that they will be the very same unnamed names who will post her bail; - if this voice is imprisoned for slander, defamation, sky-is-falling fallacies, the unnamed names will  visit her every Sunday and bring her oranges.

It all started with a simple question: Are we allowed to invite men to Weave?

The last time the Weaving Women had thrashed it out—not in the pulling-each-other’s-weaves-out-and-scratching-each-other’s-faces-with-painted-finger-nails sense, but in an intellectual fencing sense—it was over a Man out there who had played very loosely with the word “tribal.”

In an essay of less than 750 words, the journalist accomplished the feat of using the “T” word to ad nauseam, to qualify the words tremor, violence, rivalries, and divisions in Kenya. Only once did the “T” word stand up all tribal by itself, and only once did it use an –ism as a crutch to lean on.

This time round, the “T” word is not the issue. The issue is Man, or to put it in NGO-speak, Gender.

The first couple of replies to the simple question were sweet three or so liners from MM and JT: Yes, let’s! They said. The writers used words like “outstanding” and “strong voice” to refer to Man. One of them went as far as saying that Man would be an “outstanding thread in our weaving.” Whoooaaaaa.

Then, like Lazarus, up rose MM II from her sick-with-flu-bed. Yes, yes, I know that Lazarus rose from the grave, but that is beside the point. MM II gave Warhol’s 15 minutes (of fame) a New and Improved 21^st-century twist, the artist would have been impressed.

In her 15 minutes of  quote allocated time online unquote, she managed to prove that she did not live in Three-liner County, by writing a slam dunk of  a dissertation on why Man could not, should not be allowed to Weave. Her argument was not that “Man” and “Weave” do not rhyme. We will get to her argument later for she is the one who got the (basket) ball rolling. What is worthy to note is that for someone down with the flu, she had one very clear head. Is that what Gender does to women with the flu?

The Man Aye-ayers waxed eloquent over Man’s qualities: fabulous, intelligent, sensitive, writes beautifully, clever, the best, sweet, gorgeous, funny, silly, big heart, outstanding, excellent, amazing, knowledgeable, strong voice, brilliantest (no, this was not a grammatical faux pas for all you pedantic readers. Today, the word means “beyond brilliant”). The Aye-ayers must have been quite breathless at the end of the exercise.

Man’s qualities made him more than right, more than ideal, more than perfect. They made him SuperMan. For the record, we don’t do Prince Charming in Africa; we neither have castles, nor do we build them on the ground or in the air. For the record, Africa is still not a country. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I know. That, too, is beside the point.

One Aye-ayer went on to affirm that she “shamelessly want[ed] to and [did] hang around with intelligent, articulate people.” Man aka SuperMan, being knowledgeable and writing beautifully, could obviously string a few words together to structure a complex sentence with capital letters, commas, and full stops in all the right places. That, apparently, made him articulate.

The Nayers had their arguments, too, but without the Aye-ayers qualifying adjectives. So what if this Man was Mr. Oh-So-Gender-Sensitive Perfect? Why, there must be “so many great gender-sensitive men out there,” SN argued, “So???”

MWG was not impressed either. Let Man aka “that Kenyan prof/poet,” a Mortal, in WeavingKenya’s midst! Look what happens when “one man is let into the room.” Can you imagine the distraction?

This voice could imagine the distraction. It would be like setting a bull loose in a china shop. Literally, not figuratively. Forget the broken cups and saucers. Imagine the commotion. The wary get-me-outta-here! Or even the mesmerised look-at-that!

Everyone would forget what they came to do in the china shop; the bull (with all due respect to Man aka SuperMan aka That mortal Kenyan prof/poet) would become the Object of Attention. This voice is not even saying that the Aye-ayers would behave like Johnny Depp fans, or whichever Man-actor is flavour of the month, and swoon at the sight of distracting SuperMan, because we don’t do swoon in Africa. We faint.

This voice cannot imagine men being distracted in quite the same way if one of them were to ask a similar question: do we allow women into our group? Their criteria would need very few adjectival props, depending on their global location.

Criteria for Northern Hemisphere men: Tall, blue-eyed, blonde or Mediterranean look.
36-24-36.

Criteria for African men: Buxom. Skinny/slender/slim beanpoles need not apply.

Criteria for both categories: Curvy. Sexy. Number of brain cells.

Letting a “single man in our midst” MWG thought, would mean that we could not call/address ourselves as “Weaver Women” or “Sister Weavers.” She had a good point there, says This voice. Ever seen Man Weaving? Quilting? Knitting? Would WeavingKenya become “WeavingTitansKenya” or “ShujaaWeaversKenya” for that oomph factor? Would we address each other as “Amazons-Spartans Weavers”  or “WonderWomen-SuperMen Weavers” for gender equality’s sake?

The Nayers accurately observed that there were “too few places” for women “to meet together – in mind” (DF) and that women-only intellectual spaces were “valuable and so few and far between” (WKR).

It is true that WeavingKenya is a “young, tender shoot” to “protect and nurture” (JT); a cherished sacred space for women, an inner sanctum (NG/WKR), a “special space” (CS), a place where women can express their “soulful creativity and innermost feelings” (MWG). Let a single man in our midst? The dynamics would inevitably shift, while “some of us [were] still finding our voices, sharing, experimenting, playing” (NG).

MM II—remember her? The one with a very clear flu-head?—proposed that the Weaving Women could and should intermingle with Man “out there,” for surely we were not going to resemble a Gentlewomen’s Country Club without the club chairs, port, and cigars, were we? Heck no! A chorus of voices rose among the Nayers—can you catch clear flu-head from a distance?—who heartily agreed with the Out There Principle. Yes, yes, “we could re-post their comments, engage them in discussion, just from over there as opposed to over here,” cried NG enthusiastically. Fair enough. Anyone in their right mind would, out of respect, have to agree with Any Woman with a very clear flu-head.

The Out There would be “a space, not the inner sanctum, where our brothers could meet us at the fence to talk and share” (WKR), for Man is not Weaving Women’s adversary. However, to get to the inner sanctum, the holy of holies, Man would have to work very hard at going past the outer court, past the brazen altar, past the veil. The Nayers had very exacting standards. No brill! Fab! Fun! Intel! Excel! jargon for them.

With One Voice, the Nayers and Aye-ayers agreed on this one point: “sexy hulk” would not be and was not part of their criteria, thank you very much.

Stima. Light, electric light. “I have stima!” WM jubilantly wrote, after days of power cuts. She went on ahead to respond to and to tie together in a nice bow all Our Voices above. Thanks to stima that came through for WM, This voice found a no-nonsense open-ended conclusion to All of The Above.

Since the Weaving Women are neither—watch the adjectives line up like toy soldiers— shrinking violets nor “a simpering gaggle of weak-willed women” (WM), since the Weaving Women are outstanding, intelligent, and all the other breathless adjectives, since each Voice belonging to the Weaving Women is unique, powerful,  and cannot be easily dismissed, the way This voice sees it is that we are searching ourselves to see how best to welcome Gender, who’s come to town, without being all encompassing or all exclusive or all loving or all dissenting. No one can be all things to all (wo)men.

In questioning Man’s presence in our midst, we are also questioning how we see ourselves and how we occupy and own our intellectual space. Almost like searching for the Holy Grail. It must be somewhere, no? Don’t see the connection between Holy Grail and Intellectual Space? Oh. Okay.

Memo to MM II, the one who gave Warhol’s 15 minutes a new twist: you might want to write up a ten-thousand-word choric performance on the enlightening benefits of stima (Ode to Stima) in your next quote flu-allocated time online unquote.

After all that hard work of cogitation and of stringing so many words together, This voice, exhausted to the bone, will lie down for a while to rest. Or is she coming down with a clear flu-head?

[Weaving alongside P. Muthoni and "at the fence" with Man (6th of April, 2012 post entry: Weaving)]