Not Your Body
EXHIBIT ONE
A lady advertised for the position of an accountant and specified that no men were allowed to apply for the position. Of course the issue of discrimination came up. After she explained her reason, the complaints had retreated to the outer ages Andrometer Galaxy.
She said she was tired of fighting with male accountants about the need to include sanitary towels in a company policy.
Condoms? No problem!
Pads, tampons, moon cups and what have you? “Is this relevant?, say the men who do see the dysfunction between a system that wants men to have free condoms but women to be denied free sanitary towels.
EXHIBIT ONE SUBSECTION ONE
I work with women and it is wonderful for us to not beg for time off because we’re menstruating. Phone calls go like this:
“Yo. My back’s on fire and I’m bleeding like a stuck pic and my uterus is trying to push itself out of my body.”
To which we colleagues answer like this, “Take all the time you need girl, we’ve got you covered. Rest up and have some alcohol handy-ignore the doctors who say it’s bad for you!”.
In an ordinary workplace, there is no room for such understanding of periods. I don’t think ANY woman should be working during her periods unless it’s her choice to do so. But as long as men are in the picture, menstruation is a woman’s problem.
EXHIBIT ONE SUBSECTION TWO
I don’t know where you were when a Kenyan Member of Parliament was thrown out by her male colleagues for bringing her baby to the office. Thrown out like a disease. I leaned back and sipped my tea as I watched fathers with children of their own, posturing and yelling furiously at her, to get out.
I really wanted the women to pull their skirts up to their underwear and drag the men out by their shoes. Because that’s where they belonged. In the gutter. If women can work with you on the condition that you never get to see them being women, then it’s damn time women started a parliament that had no men in it. INNIT?
If your parliament does not represent working mothers and their children, you’re a parliament of men. If your parliament does not advocate for childcare centers for ALL women to be able to work and know their baby is safe someplace, that’s just plain sad. If you can’t provide the centers, then let women bring their children to work.
EXHIBIT TWO
In Uganda, public service has decided that there is a certain type of woman who is worthy of services, down to refusing them to enter parliament if they are dressed ‘inappropriately’. I ask you, do you only cater to hijabs and colonial like suits? Is that what the Ugandan population is made of? Ugandans tend to defend dress codes but maybe my wires are crossed because I tend to see the idiocy behind them. A journalist being refused to cover an event of a prominent politician because she’s wearing trousers. Public schools that refuse mothers to visit their children in trousers thereby creating a new generation of myopic politicians. Let me wrap this up. I can feel the headache coming.
EXHIBIT THREE
When FitClique founder Mildred Apenyo founded a women’s only gym, men were PISSED. They cried discrimination and rightly so from their point of view. However, I and one other lady who approached me have the exact same story – we were both ordered to leave the gym of Speke Resort Munyonyo on account of our dress code. Women are tired of being told by men that they’re not dressed right FOR THE MEN. All the women in us are tired.
And if we wake up one day and start men excluding services, events, discos and gyms, I hope from the examples above that you will see where we are coming from.
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