Zahra Gordon

The New Year has come and gone without a new post from me! Here’s a topic that continues to deserve attention. 

It seems like I’m always “talking.” This post is based on another conversation I stumbled into. This time I was speaking with two friends, one male, one female. The discussion began with us debating whether or not it was worse for a woman to abandon her child than for a man to do so. I argued that it was unfortunate when a parent, any parent, abandoned a child. 

Well, my male friend believed that women have an innate relationship to motherhood; a connection that men don’t have to fatherhood, which is why they (men) can just “shoot out millions of sperm” and keep it moving. This of course has to do with the fact that women are the beings who give birth. Hence, he concluded, it is worse for mothers to abandon their children. Now, this is a guy who’s nickname for me is “Mama Africa.” About ten minutes into this conversation I was labeled a feminist and he kept saying my arguments were un-African.

He agreed that men shouldn’t abandon children and dislikes the fact that it happens so often and I’m glad he recognizes this imbalance. On the other hand, it just so much easier for men, he says. I made a point that not every woman goes through 9 months of morning sickness, other sickness and labor and is just madly in love with her baby at first sight. Why is it so wrong for women to be indifferent sometimes to a being that has caused them so much pain? Why do men have the monopoly on selfishness? It has become so normal for men to abandon children that its been misconstrued as a consequence of nature and in turn un-natural when women do it.

He went on to describe the essence of a woman. The first thing that came to his mind to describe our essence were breasts. This was also problematic because it spoke to limited notions of femininity and even the objectification of the female body. Then my female friend (a Biology minor) dropped some knowledge on us about men being able to produce breast milk. She was not sure whether the milk was enough for sustenance, but the mere fact that male breasts have this capacity to produce that is never spoken of leaves a lot of space open for re-imagining gender roles.

Basically, I feel that gender roles are a creation of society. There is nothing in our biological makeup that says women are better at taking care of children because they give birth. In the same manner, there is nothing about feminism (here meaning the idea of female opposition to societal norms) that is un-African. So as much as I appreciate a man who knows that he is fully responsible for any child he fathers, I also appreciate a man who considers a woman’s right to chose motherhood or “selfishness.”