Women are no Saints

Women are as equally bad and evil as men. Mamdani (2001) in his book on the Rwandan genocide ask a very important question: Was the perpetrators of the genocide only males?  He found that women played an active role in pointing out potential victims and they were standing by supporting and encouraging their male counterparts to kill. This made women equally the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.

We must ask that same question when we want to determine the gender of the perpetrators of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. In all these cases you will find that women must be attributed equal perpetrator status as that of their male counterparts. 

If you read the autobiography of Frederick Douglas and if you read James Walvin’s book titled ‘The trader, the Owner and the Slave’ you will soon realise that women during slavery were sometimes crueller than male counterparts. In Frederick Douglas’ book he explains how a slave owner’s wife asked one of her ‘white’ sons to beat up their mulatto brother because she hated the slave girl by who her husband had the child.

Karel Schoeman in his book ‘Kinders van die Kompanjie’ explains how Dutch women were against soldiers and vryburgers taking Khoi women as wives. The Dutch women of the Cape Colony considered the Khoi women as barbarians and thus it would have been a sin if any of the men married any of the Khoi women. The children that were born from these relationships (between Khoi women and Dutch men) were rejected by the Khoi and by the Dutch women and they were raised as servants in the homes of their fathers. 

The attitude of ‘white’ women during apartheid was no different than that of the ‘white’ males. The ‘white’ women like in the case of the Rwandan genocide supported apartheid openly even though they did not commit the physical atrocities. Thus, I cannot help but feel a sense of sympathy for ‘white’ males because today when you talk about the atrocities of apartheid, colonialism and slavery you imagine a ‘white’ male with a whip or a gun. Feminists strategically removed themselves from the atrocities of the past by painting them also as victims of a ‘white’ male dominated world. However, this is one of the biggest fallacies or dogma modern day feminists follow. History shows that women at times were also active participants in the atrocities of the past like for example Queen Isabella I of Castile who violently converted Jews and Muslim, and funded Christopher Columbus’ expedition to the Caribbean. An inconvenient truth feminists would like to hide is that women were staunch supporters of slavery, colonialism and apartheid, and at times they were active participants. 

I personally have been more abused by women than men. When I say abuse I refer to both physically and emotional abuse, of which I regard emotional abuse as the most destructive of all. All men who abused me or tried to abuse me did it through physically means which allowed me to fight back once I was strong enough. However, being abused through psychological means, if it starts at a very young age, shatters you self-esteem which fills you with self-doubt. Doubting yourself holds you back and literally over time mentally enslaves you. My experience is that women are masters in abusing men emotionally.

Part of my life I grew up in a monastery and the nuns used to employ both emotional and physical abuse. If we were naughty we were made out to be sinners (emotional abuse) and had to kneel on gravel for long periods of times (physical abuse).  Luckily I only stayed there for two years of which I am grateful because if I stayed there for longer I do not think I would have recovered, like many others. This is one of just the many incidences of abuse I experienced at the hands of women.

After reading this I hope men would start a process of de-demonising themselves and speak out against the abuse they experience at the hands of women. I know it is hard for any men to speak out against abuse because it is harmful to their egos. However, if this demonising of men continues there will be any egos to protect.