Source : Sapa /dbm/tk
An email joke doing the rounds at the moment is titled “An incredible story of luck and inspiration for us all!” It shows a picture of an extremely ugly, fat man with a gorgeous blonde clinging to him. Let’s call them Simon and Gwen. Simon is a cultural stereotype of ugliness. His face looks like a tub of lard into which piggish, widely set apart eyes have been pinpricked. Simon’s pimply jowls must quiver and shake when he talks or laughs and his lips look like a slash of garish lipstick. Most (all?) women, brought up with their cultural norms, would find him repulsive. The only thing the couple perhaps have in common are large breasts. In many cultures, large breasts … on women … are sexy, a huge turn on. But not on men. Gwen’s large, perky breasts are the kind most men immediately, instinctively look at (oh, yes, definitely including “sexist” me, my eyes helpless iron filings flung at two magnificently shaped magnets).
This behaviour will always be in spite of the judgement and baying of some feminists, be they ultra, radical or Marxist. Then we blokes, jaws hanging, look at Gwen’s succulent, smirking mouth and long, sensitive fingers. Her lips are surely smirking because she knows what she has, what power she has over “us”. And, if honesty “betrays” us*, we men immediately imagine various forms of sex with Gwen, the oral kind most certainly being one exercise that has us ashamed at our masculine reaction to her, to her body, the sweet torture of her breasts and mouth.
At least that is how some feminists would have us be; be ashamed of who you are. Cry along with Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, “Mama, how I wish I had never been born at all“. Weep, along with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, “Mother do you think she’s good enough — to me? Mother do you think she’s dangerous — to me?” Like Roger Waters, scream in shame and fear at the next line, “Mother will she tear your little boy apart?” Then sob the next ,”Mother will she break my heart?”
Gwen’s sensual, assured smile proleptically suggest a mouthful of ravaging teeth. Our Gwen (is she ours, or are we hers?) has chiseled cheekbones and her nail-bright eyes give her a slightly hawkish look. Which some men, or women for that matter, would have fantasies about because of bondage sex tendencies (in which I do not partake, but do not judge; though I do not mind my bare bottom being spanked just a little bit while I squeal in delight … but it ends there). It is clear — to me — the word “me” assumed by my cultural conditioning — that slinky Gwen has taken possession of our portly Simon. Enforcing this image of female power is her clawed hands draped around his passive body. She is leaning forward, the aggressor, gazing like a snake into the camera. He is leaning back, not resisting but — assisted by the caption which we will come to later — he is also hardly believing his luck. And hoo aah, the nails on her hands? They indeed are talons. And would rake, nay peel, through the skin of a man’s back like a scene from some “Courtney saga” schoolboy sex fantasy in a Wilbur Smith novel. (Well do I remember those teenage, furtive days with one of his books in the toilet.) Gwen’s nails look like the long, razored, plastic kind some girls favour (Dream Nails?). No doubt more for aesthetic than shredding reasons. No doubt.
The reader then turns to the caption beneath the unlikely picture. “This man won $180-million at the lottery and … two days later found the love of his life! What luck!” He found our Gwen. Fancy that. The hawk-like look on Gwen’s face is now so more foreboding.
I chuckled at the picture and the joke, as did many of the senders and receivers of the gag. Why? Because it has the human truth, bitter or sweet, about men, women, power and sexuality. It has an iron truth beyond the cold, intellectual, biased discourses of the likes of Christi van der Westhuizen in her recent blog. One part of the Gwen/Simon joke is that men think they are in power, but often they are not. The subversion of the slave/master dichotomy often happens in history. The master or mistress becomes reliant on the serf for existence.
Bottom line, and nothing much to do with intellectualism: we men often think with our little heads, and always have. It is built into the “pre-brain” or reptilian brain, in our heads. And it’s OK to laugh about it, celebrate our goofy, joyous desires through humour. Ask Bill Clinton about his Monica, Marc Anthony about his Cleopatra. Even though they were world-class leaders, they were just doing what comes (ahem) naturally. Though it has its place, I grow increasingly suspicious of overt intellectualism, at least the kind Christi van der Westhuizen tends to use. They just do not represent the million microsignals that flash between men and women as they decide what is a mutually satisfying relation, be it hetero- or homosexual, monogamist or polygamist. Sex comes naturally — though we should always have restraints such as ensuring it is consensual — unlike arduous intellectual thought. And who wishes to contemplate a passage from Das Kapital or Imagined Communities whilst assisting, on jostling bed, one’s partner to a back-arching climax? Quite simply, Christi just makes too much heavy weather of Zuma’s polygamy.
Notice I said it’s OK to laugh about our sex, and that aspect of our sexuality, not rape. Rape is never a laughing matter.
I don’t particularly care for Jacob Zuma. He is not a world-class leader. I cannot take him seriously, including his statements about sexual hygiene, but I do not have not an issue with his polygamy. That is a cultural paradigm which the likes of Christi van der Westhuizen are using to condemn him and his ilk, without making it clear how men and women should behave or what marital customs they should adopt. Polygamy has been accepted in societies for millennia and I don’t think it is for others to judge.
Christi says, Why “should” some practices continue because they are “cultural” while other cultural practices and attitudes (such as putting the welfare of the group before that of the individual) can be chucked in the pursuit of personal enrichment, as we have seen in this country since 1994?
One thing I dislike about this kind of argumentation is that the question posed is not answered, and thus becomes rhetorical, self-enclosed, the “answer” inarguable. The implicit answer is that the valorisation of some cultural practices over others is incorrect, and serves some, not others. But that is just a natural, historical evolution from certain ethnic practices to others. Various black cultures have evolved from preserving one particular set of customs to appropriating others, maintaining some customs and throwing away others. Notice there is no agency in the previous sentence. Zuma is caught up in an evolution he has no control over. The fact is that there will always be a hegemony in any state system; we all surely know this.
But Christi does put it well when she says: “The ironic consequence, says Mamdani, is that democratic South Africa remains saddled with a dualistic legal system — just like apartheid South Africa. Civil law and rights have been deracialised but exist side by side with an ethnicised customary law applied by ethnicised authorities. HF Verwoerd would have smiled.” Very well put by a very good writer and sharp thinker whom I admire, as do I admire her stance for women. Hence I engage a bit with her article. I respectfully do not agree with all the entailments and context of this statement against the background of other statements in her article.
For a start, would the real Verwoerd smile? I do not think so. He helped design apartheid and would stare in horror at the goings-on in South Africa since the arrival of FW de Klerk. He would not have found Zuma funny at all. The facts are Verwoerd was a full-blooded racist who justified his racial position through the Bible and his party’s ideology. This suggests that Christi has created a fictional Verwoerd, as the real Verwoerd would never smile at a black man in power. Might I suggest in what I have argued above and in what follows she therefore has fictionalised Zuma.
Christi writes: “True to the symbolism of the collection of women as a sign of masculine potency, Zuma has since his acquittal in his rape trial in 2006 married two young women (33- and 37-years old) and got engaged to another. If he marries her, she will be his fourth current wife and it will be his sixth wedding. The recent revelation of his sexual interaction with another friend’s daughter confirms the pattern.” What pattern? Is it a bad pattern? A good one? Christi does not make this clear. I don’t mind her deciding the pattern is good or bad, so long as she explains the template, the model, she is using to judge the pattern.
In a sense she makes it clear in the next paragraph when she dubiously links the “pattern” to Zuma’s “patriachial chauvinism”, but I am not clear as to how she makes the link. It seems partly based on an unexamined dislike for polygamy.
My rhetorical question. Has Christi asked all the president’s wives if they are happy with their married status to Zuma? Well, I will answer my simple question: she has not asked them. But a subtext of Christi’s reasoning is that the wives are enslaved to Zuma, products of his “patriarchal chauvinism” and that they are not his spouses or lovers by choice. Now I know I am now putting words into Christi’s mouth. But it is part of her undeclared subtext and is all over her blog, that these wives had no choice: “The effect [of Zuma's behaviour] can partly be seen in the form of setbacks to women’s human rights.” Christi has avoided the issue of whether or not those Gwens are happy with their jovial Simon, our president. Though I could be proven wrong, I think they are all pretty much happy and want to be with him and love their lifestyle. How many Sandton housewives or Shanghai house-husbands like this state of affairs as well? Plenty.
Polygamy or polyandry from my point of view? Not for me at all. I am happy with my Chook in China and do not wish to share her. But it is also not for me to judge other people’s marital practices and this still needs to be built into Christi’s overall discourse.
My compelling question to Christi is to define, in simple terms, how partners should behave towards each other instead of just dismissing certain sexual and marital customs, evolved or not evolved. She has not offered us any clear template on relational and marital behaviour at all.
Observing South Africa from China? Hilarious! It is a different perspective. Crucial values and norms to do with sex and marriage in SA are being judged, while others are not.
*Betrays us of what? That we don’t fit into some neat intellectual discourse of how men should behave?
There is nothing wrong with opposing polygamy.
Christi may not have asked Zuma’s wives how they felt about the situation, but your answer that she did not is not a conclusive answer either. Christi may still have her chance, and the answer will be what? Would Zuma’s wives dare to publicly disapprove of his behavior? That is the question. That they would be cowed into an answer that benefited the smirking Zuma, is just further proof that they have no power in this world to defy the status of chattel that men like Zuma have ensured for them.
Rod you waste your time writing to us the porn industry awaits you.The picture if Gwens attributes are stamped in my brain- what I would do to her is another matter.
The law in SA is basically unfair and in a sense racist. Indigenous africans indeed. who is an indigenous african is a colored an indiginous african.
My solution is simple. Remove the words indigenous african and allow any person to marry as many people as the want male female .Those who dont agree with it may decide to leave.those who want to marry one wife/husband are free to do so.Those who want to go into polyamorous relationships free to engage as well
Simon and Gwen: who says money doesnt buy you happiness?
Taxpayers in various occupations usually find they can afford a limited number of children, perhaps as follows:
Bankers 5
Businesspersons 4
Lawyers 4
Accountants 3
Surgeons 1
Architects 0
There are 1 billion people in Africa in dire straits. Mr Zuma, who anywhere else in the world would struggle to find a job washing dishes, has 21 children, some by his friends dauhters. But in South Africa he has been given the job of solving some very difficult and extremely serious problems.
May we ask you to, instead of discussing issues in terms of various mores and customs and personal philosophies, feminist or otherwise, tell us the reasons for China’s 1 child policy.
Wow Rod, I KNEW there was still hope for you
I like your analysis of Christi van der Westhuizen’s recent blog. It sad to see her clutching at straws. However, its understandable that she, as a feminist, feels uncomfortable with concepts like polygamy and polyandry but I’m not surprised given her social conditioning.
China has certainly made you grow in unexpected ways….for the good I might add.
btw. Good luck with finding another job there in China!
Rod, I agree that most women probably won’t mind sharing a man, as long as he is powerful or rich, witness Tiger Woods. But anthropologists do point out that polygamous societies are inherently unstable – all those beta men resenting being excluded from procreation and so on. And social instability leads to autocratic politics. I can think of no society that is both polygamous and democratic. And what about development? From a sociobiological viewpoint, polygamous societies follow a procreational strategy of many offspring and low parental investment, as contrasted with monogamous unions that produce fewer offspring but higher parental investment. If you want a society where people can reach their fullest potential in terms of education and health, then polygamy is to be shunned, even if the state assumes full responsibility for these tasks. What is the cost to the taxpayer of supporting the Zuma brood, one wonders?
@Jonathan: ” tell us the reasons for China’s 1 child policy”. Thanks, good question.
..and the Zuma story goes on. Old hat by now! This week our national cabinet will debate and discuss a motion of “no confidence” from one of the minority parties.
Predicted result: “rejected”.
Time wasted: 450*8= 3600 manhours.
Money wasted: @R500/hour = R1.800.000.
Delivering and educating a child could be cheaper than debating the morality of it.
I hear what you say, but I think you downplay the daunting patriarchal system that is part of the ‘culture’ of polygyny (to make the distinction) and which ‘bullies’ women to believe that polygyny is OK. There is a reason that polygyny is still practiced in many ‘cultures’, but not polyandry. Under these circumstances, women in polygynous marriages can hardly articulate an unfettered and informed opinion. Although far from espousing feminism, I thought V.D.Westhuizen’s article was excellent.
You forget to mention that in SA we have thousands if not millions of poor women. Is Zuma not using his power to snare these woman into a better life? And as for customs, it is not Zulu custom to make a woman pregnant and then marry her. True custom works the other way around so this has nothing to do with custom or culture. A red herring here! Why do Zulus still insist on virginity tests? And only women undergo these tests. I rest my case!
Don’t know if it’s because I’m a gay man, but what you wrote seemed tasteless. Could just be you’re attraction to a Barbie doll, who knows.
I liked what Christi wrote, if she’s a feminist by demanding respect for women, then sign me up, I’m a feminist too. I honestly don’t understand how in our society that being a feminist is a bad word/concept.
Then you’re argument, about how men, and in this case Zuma, are just slaves to evolution and impulses in our brains and more so in his case, culture and we shouldn’t think too much about it, the it being sex. I’ve always thought and have been taught by my parents that thinking is always the thing you have to do in any situation where you’re actions can have consequences beyond just you’re own life. And this man’s actions has influence on all our lives down here in South Africa
And why are men always defending polygamy (and there have been a range of people having fun misspelling this word). Why don’t we ever hear from these almost mythical Zulu women defending their right to be wife number 1,2,3,etc.
In fact the only Zulu woman who said something, conscious or subconscious, and who came out of this whole sorry Zuma marriage/sex saga with some dignity or respect seems to be Nkosazana, and that was because she divorced the guy.
Thanks for the comments guys.
I hope none of you who rightly worry about Zuma’s brood’s cost to the taxpayer did not vote for the ANC. I didnt, partly because I cannot take either him or the DIRECTION the party has been taken in seriously. Yet people like Mike Trapido say they voted for the ANC, announced it from centre stage, so to speak, and yet bitches about the party he voted for. HUh???
A key sentence in my blog is that I cant take JZ seriously. The rest is very tongue in cheek, a spoof on intellectualism, and posing the very real possibility that JZ is the Simon to all his Gwens.
Robard – so polygamous societies are unstable. A shattering amount of monogamous relationships are also unstable and end up in divorce. The human condition, alas. So your point is?
Hi Jonathan Haze – the one child policy in China was a short term solution. It is going to create a skewed society of phenomenal proportions. A strong custom in China is the adult children look after their elderly when they are breadwinners. That will not be possible with only one child, or extremely difficult.And in a society where there is not much welfare. Further, there is going to be a disproportionate gender imbalance, far more men than women. That could create huge civil unrest, not to mention raging, itchy balls in a state where homosexuality is illegal.
Again, I am not a polygamist but cannot judge it.
Hi Lilian – thanks for your comments. I agree. But the oppression of women will continue regardless of monogamy or polyandry. It is a separate issue to my blog, which is entirely tongue in cheek whilst not agreeing with Christi vd Westhuizen entirely. So…. if we ban polygamy will that ease the suffering of women in SA? I think not. It is a separate issue. I HATE the abuse of women.
I think the shenanigans of JZ will shake up SA to look at who it chooses to elect to power. As I say in my blog – and in a blog which Thought Leader refused to publish about JZ but which can be found on http://www.book.co.za – I can’t take JZ seriously.
Whats the bet he will be out of power before the end of his term of office, like Mbeki?
Benzol! Go for it young man! Or “Ji yo” as the Chinese say, burn the oil!
Hi Andre – “Don’t know if it’s because I’m a gay man, but what you wrote seemed tasteless.” Well I respect your sexuality. But clearly you wont find a heterosexual’s instinctive attraction to (culturally perceived) sexy women tasteful as you have no taste for it as you are gay. Fine. But don’t judge others for their natural tendency to be turned on by women. And you are judging. I do not judge gays, I welcome them as I hope I will be welcomed.
Yes, to state the fricken obvious, to have sexual desires has nothing to do with the discursive. You dont THINK your way through a sexual, you instinctively heave ho. And the rest of your “argument”, both because of what I have highlighted here, and your garbled English , is “word salad”: “Then you’re argument, about how men, and in this case Zuma, are just slaves to evolution and impulses in our brains and more so in his case, culture and we shouldn’t think too much about it, the it being sex.” What I have just quoted from your comment is just not English or even vaguely coherent thinking.And a complete misunderstanding of what I have said.
You come across as a very angry man and your commentary says more about where you are at than my blog. And I am not trying to insult you.
Hi Rod
Sorry if I didn’t make my point clear. The observation about instability is about the societal and political level: a few powerful men monopolizing most of the available women, thus creating a surplus of frustrated losers. The fact that polygamous unions might be more stable than monogamous unions would only serve to exacerbate the problem at societal level. But I agree that rising divorce rates in western societies (=serial polygamy!) is also a destabilising force, especially in terms of parental investment in the next generation and even failing to reproduce altogether. Nonetheless, it allows both women and men to be serial polygamists and thus ensures a more or less just distribution of procreation opportunities, eliminating the potential for political instability.
My point is, regardless of your attitude to polygamy, that it is an institution that is logically incompatible with desirables such as democracy, equality, stability and progress.
Hi Robard your “My point is, regardless of your attitude to polygamy, that it is an institution that is logically incompatible with desirables such as democracy, equality, stability and progress”. Agreed and that is very persuasive argumentation. I do think JZ’s behaviour is an opportunity for south africans to re-think their assumed values and morals.
Surely a lot more people who voted the ANC, at least from what I am seeing in the media, will think more carefully about their future votes.
I also think JZ’s behaviour means he may not see out his term of office.
He has lost a lot of cred with the international community and that needs to be examined carefully by his party leaders.
Which would be a good thing in my book, JZ out, but is there anyone who would be a good leader to replace him? Nope.
I also realise I am being a tad naive to think that JZ will step down or at some point get Mbeki-ised.
I don’t think taht Zuma’s latest affair will influence his chances for a second term. Besides, who would follow him as president: malema? mbalula?
I shudder at the thought…
Ian Shaw – consider that thought already shuddered at by me as well.