Drama queens: Why most Kenyan women need anger management classes

 Anger among women has become so common that we now have a phrase coined specifically for this lot; drama queens

In the gone by eras, women were motherly and loving caregivers. Some would even, out of love, give up their careers to take care of their husbands, children and homes.

When they, for instance, wronged their men, they would tearfully apologise in style by, say, cooking them their favourite meals.

Fast forward to today. Our women are no longer the compassionate, protectors and peacemakers they used to be.

Unlike back in the day when they, among many other things, promoted wholesome family life, nowadays women are responsible for instigating most of the divorce and separation cases.

“It’s crazy, we now have female kidnappers, hit squad members, suicide bombers killing people without a care. In Nairobi, killer wives has become commonplace, husbands no longer sleep easy,” says Nicholas Owinga, a city resident who, like many other men, doesn’t understand why women have all of a sudden becomes overly rebellious, bitter, angry and bloodthirsty like, pardon the pun, men.

Social media tirades, female crooks, morning radio rants

You only need to pay attention to their social media posts, newspaper reports on the rise and rise of female crooks, husband batterers, those who kill their own children, kidnap toddlers or steal babies in hospitals or their tirades and rants on morning radio or in newspaper agony aunts’ columns.

“There must be something wrong with our women today. There are a growing number of peevish, easily irritable, grumpy, bad- and short-tempered women in this country. Listen to call-in sessions on FM radios, close to 90 percent of the callers are angry women, calling in to castigate their boyfriends or husbands,” says Allan Kuria, a concerned city resident, adding that we perhaps need a country-wide anger management classes for our women.

Seemingly, everywhere you turn, there is a furious, bitter Kenyan woman; nasty emotional expressions that were previously only associated with men.

However, the interesting thing is that men are blamed as the sources of almost all this anger, bitterness and disappointment that bedevil women.

“Besides our aging mothers, women who recently fell in love and, perhaps, well-kept mistresses, are there any women who still have nicer to says about men?” a wag loudly wondered on Facebook last week, before, as expected, a lynch mob of furious women rounded him up and subjected him to a social media mob justice, calling him, among other nasty names, sexist.

Sanctioned male bashing as source of entertainment

As a social observer, the message you pick from these trend is that domestic wrangles are not about to end, especially at this time when women have assumed a self-righteous, holier than thou attitude, with some in their perpetual moral superiority mode, even where men are victims.

Sadly, this development seems to have sanctioned and normalised male bashing as a source of entertainment or a female pastime.

“Men are blamed for this anger. No woman takes responsibility, even when they are the ones on the wrong. In domestic violence against men, the seemingly general consensus is that the male victims deserve it. But, unfortunately, when the coin is flipped, it’s always assumed to be the case of a ‘beast and a harmless beauty’,” argues Kirk Muhanji, a social commentator.

Muhanji, further argues: “None of single mothers, for instance, ever acknowledges that they are responsible for the falling apart of their relationships or marriages. All you hear is about how deadbeat their baby daddies are. Women now employ underhand tactics to paint men in bad light. Like when they stir the hornet’s nest and things get tough, they scream loudest and, in the end, win sympathy”.

Attempts to get a word from women on why the growing anger was met with the same old defensive, self-righteous and subjective arguments.

Desperate to come off as socially and politically correct as possible, a hissing Annett Sikuku, without noticing the irony in her statement, told this writer women are tired of being referred to as “the weaker sex”. Thus, in her own admission, their anger is sort of justified.

Women blame everything on men, including water shortage

“Men have been behaving badly for so long. What is wrong with women retaliating? After all, men are the source of the anger that women now express on social media and in radios,” says Sikuku.

When they are not complaining about the sorry state of the men in their lives to anyone who cares to listen on radio, at the market places or at chama meetings, they are blaming men in general for having ‘locked their potential’, be it in business or at work.

You can only empathise with men, for they have been turned into a punching bag of sorts. Even the ongoing drought, famine and water shortage will be soon blamed on the poor souls!

In the process, men have men been labelled as ‘sources of disappointments’, ‘dogs’, ‘hyenas’ and all sorts of other nasty names, including beasts, who only want to use and dump women.

“It now ingrained in our minds that each time we see a member of the female species about to blow, there is always a man attached to the other end of that fuse,” says Erick Omondi, a sociologist, adding that the fact that women always play victim, even when they are guilty and the stigma that surrounds male victims of domestic violence have made it difficult for men to open up about the injustices perpetrated upon them in homes and in the work place.

Today, whenever a woman gets sufficiently infuriated, even by the weather, her boss, her car, or the house help, rest assured it will be projected to a boyfriend or a husband, with conjugal rights denied or rationed.

Why the fury, gloominess unlike back in the day

Some social observers say the unbridled fury, in some cases, is just an attempt to have control over men, which in most cases backfires terribly.

“It’s a control mechanism, which basically heavily borrows from psychologist Ian Pavlov’s school of conditioned reflexes. They push a man’s buttons until they discover what angers them, and then use that to annoy him whenever they want,” says Hassan Nyawanga, a clinical psychologist.

The psychologist says some women are now using anger as a way of having their way, especially when their say is ignored.

“Their eventual goal is to get their men toeing the line and perhaps become ‘yes men’. Younger and so-called modern women want relationships and marriages ran on their terms. They want to hear nice things like, ‘I love you sweetie’, ‘you are cute and the best’ and since they are not forthcoming, they now resort to anger to cajole men into behaving themselves,” says Nyawanga.

Anger among women has become so common that we now have a phrase coined specifically for this lot; drama queens.

Acting crazy and expressing one’s fury is almost cool to some younger women.

“You only need to be keen at forums, say, Twitter, when gender issues are being discussed. There are always these younger, quarrelsome, bitter and angry women who are always waiting for the slightest of provocation to tear into the male enemy,” says Nyawanga.

These group, the expert says, are normally composed of women who have had unpalatable experiences with men, mostly in relationships.

So common is expression of anger among women that verbal abuse, sneering, sulking and violence now pass for normal female behaviour.

Thanks to soap operas, which are now a permanent feature on all local TVs programming, younger women now believe one of the best way to express fury is to smash something valuable against the wall whilst yelling.

Or to open the door, windows and shout loud enough about their frustrations for neighbours to hear.

Survival tips for men against angry women

Unfortunately, men, on the other side, have no other option but to control their emotions. And those men whom anger is directed at sort of deserve it!

Basically, what this means is that in contemporary relationships, key survival techniques is cultivating the rare ability to spot and almost immediately detonate a temper tantrum from a woman before it explodes.

“Every guy, it seems, has to cultivate the ability to duck when a flying object is flung in their direction, because women expressing fury is almost socially sanctioned female way of venting and is normalised,” says Muhanji.

He adds: “But most importantly, for sake of peace, love and unity, men must muster the ability to feign repentance, even in those moments when have no clue why their women are mad or what they did wrong”.

Seemingly, what we have is a generation of fed up women who, for a very long time, have watched men behaving badly.

Thus, they have said, “enough is enough! We, too, can yell and express anger to have things going our way”.

“Today’s men are in trouble. We have a new gender order in which men are paying for the sins of their forefathers courtesy of women empowerment and enlightenment,” concluded Muhanji.

As far as coping mechanisms to handle the growing population of angry women are concerned, them it’s important that every man learn to behave themselves, be nice and generally lay low like an envelope or walk around with their heads down, lest flying objects, courtesy of furious women, hit them hard.

More importantly, men are advised to zip up and learn to buy flowers more often if they want peace at home.

However, it’s high time women looked inwards for source of their anger and tantrums, they can’t blame men for all their woes on planet earth.