Let’s stop the battle of sexes and just make love

 A happy couple after sorting out their differences Photo: Courtesy

As you read this, thousands of women are wailing, kicking and screaming in Nairobi’s maternity hospitals.

From the dingiest hovels masquerading as hospitals, where angry-looking babies arrive screaming at the squalor that will define the rest of their lives, to posh five-star medical facilities where pretty babies pop out reeking of pizza, women are pushing like crazy and cursing the ignoramus who made them pregnant.

Thousands more are in the process of getting pregnant right now as countless men plan or hope to do something tonight that might ‘accidentally’ make someone pregnant.

You see all these people sitting stiff in your matatu? All those people walking down the street? The serious-looking people punching on computer keyboards with one finger at the office like the world depends on it? You see the big men and women being driven past in bigger cars and the cops providing escort? University students, tycoons, pastors, hawkers, even that handcart pusher and cobbler? They are all dreaming of sex!

Question is, who do they intend to sleep with in this proud, religious and traditional African city where men and women hate each other with a passion and homosexuality is a preserve of decadent foreigners?

In any forum where women are gathered, the subject of discussion often veers to men. How men are unfaithful dogs. How men are irresponsible. How men are lazy and dirty. How men stupidly love their mothers and breaking women’s hearts. How they are afraid of successful women. How men are nothing but devils...

Oh yes! Women agree that men are only good for donating sperm because they are selfish lovers and lousy kissers who are not even good in bed anyway.

What these women will not admit, at least publicly, is that it was real fun when that man who dumped them was ‘using’ them (it would be interesting to meet a woman who makes love while fuming with rage at the injustice of it all).

Men are no different. When drinking, they lie to each other that women are scheming and cold-blooded gold-diggers who are unfaithful, ungrateful and nagging creatures. Yet, the moment a barmaid sweeps by, their eyes involuntarily follow her undulating bottom till she vanishes into the distance.

This ‘we hate men’ and ‘women are stupid’ chorus is no different from the nonsensical charade between Kikuyus and Luos who spend the whole day insulting each other during the day, only to sneak into blankets at night in pairs.

Let’s face it. Any man ‘who hates women’ is stuck with a shady one and any woman ‘who hates men’ was dumped by or lives with a nasty goon.

How about we just kiss and make up? We can’t pretend to be engaged in a battle of the sexes while sneaking off at the earliest opportunity to sleep with the enemy! Every hater has a member of the opposite sex who scratches his or her when the urge strikes.

If we hated each other as much as we pretend, there wouldn’t be a pregnant woman in sight.