While traveling on Africa’s road less traveled, he learned about male privilege from her “penis envy.”
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Narrow slivers of light pierce between the wooden slats around us, slicing the room’s dark, dust-filled air with white stripes. We eat in silence, relieved by the certainty that neither will ask the other if everything is okay.
She scoops the last bit of matoke into her mouth and wipes her hands on the dirty jeans she’s worn every day since we met. Her tanned arm extends toward the man watching us from the doorway as if she is going to show him a ring, and with a quick curling and uncurling of her fingers he perks up and comes over to remove our plates. I wonder if she practices those African gestures or if they now come naturally to her.“Good?” the man asks.“Ugandan food is always good,” she replies, with a smile.
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Her bus is leaving soon; mine, a few hours later. We talk about how routine it is to meet the most interesting person of your life while traveling only to say goodbye to them a short time afterward. Cynically, we comment on the predictability of the whole process starting over again at the next destination.
“It’s like the story of that man who keeps pushing the rock uphill,” she laughs.
“The curse of Sisyphus,” I say.
“Curse? The man was blessed with purpose. He was given something to do all day, every day.”
“I don’t think that’s the…”
“You know, I just want to call bullshit on the last ten days.”
I am used to her sudden outbursts of indignation, insight, and humor. I even look forward to them, but this time, the intensity of her stare lets me know this time is different.
“What?” I ask. “I thought we were having an amazing time.”
“That’s the problem! I have been traveling in East Africa for six months. You’ve been here two months, and the last ten days with you have left me with some of the most authentic, special experiences of my trip.”
“Well, now that you’ve seen how I do it, I’m sure you’ll be able to do it on your own, too.”
“You arrogant bastard! The difference between you and me is not that you have better travel skills. It’s that you have a penis!”
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I’ve seen her negotiate hard with pushy taxi drivers (all men), and gracefully ignore foreign-tongued cat calls on the streets. I even witnessed her defending a woman being harassed on a bus for wearing a short dress while I stayed quiet and reasoned that my cowardice was really a form of deference for cultural relativity.
Playing the girl card seems entirely out of character for her.
“Is that where you’re going with this?” I ask. “Aw, poor little hot, blond German girl. Life’s so hard for you in Africa. Isn’t it?”
“You’re right,” she mockingly concedes. “Maybe I am just being a sensitive little girl, but let’s talk about this: When you and I first met, we went to a bar, some random local invited us to his house to taste homemade moonshine and you accepted… for both of us. At his house he invited us to stay the night. You agreed for both of us.
“In the middle of the night his baby woke up crying, and we got to listen to his wife sing that beautiful lullaby and they told us the whole history of the song and taught us a few lyrics. The next morning he went to chop wood and invited you to go with him. While chopping wood you met his brother living in the next village and he invited you to his house. And you accepted for both of us.”
She continued, “now replace yourself with a woman. We walk into that bar, the only two women in the place, and start drinking, which is probably not too smart of us, and then a local invites us to his house for moonshine. You’ve been here long enough to know what that means, but we’ll say he happens to be a decent guy who doesn’t rape us at his house. We stay over, the baby cries, the lullaby gets sung, and the next day when he gets up to chop wood, would he have asked one of us girls to go with him? Would we have gotten that ‘all bros’ invite to the next village? Do you need more examples? I have plenty! The next day you—”
”You get privilege as a woman, too,” I interrupt.
“Yes, sometimes. But here, a woman has access to a smaller section of life. You can move inside the home and out of it. You, as one of the boys, even as a foreigner, get access to a world so much bigger than mine. As a brown man living in the US, how do you not understand how idiotic it is to say, ‘If I can do this, so can you’? It’s what people say when doors open in front of them and they never have to look back to see them shut on everyone else.”
She stares silently out the open door for a long time and then puts on her backpack, gives me a kiss on the cheek, and places some shilling notes on the table.
“I’ll get the check this time… For both of us,” she says with a wink. With that, the most interesting person I met this week walks out the door and never looks back.
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Photo: Getty Images
Wow there is a sense of entitlement here if I ever heard one. This woman is making universal declarations of privilege based on a six month trip through Africa. She is banking on the experiences truly oppressed women via some loosely grouped “sisterhood” to claim that she has it so bad because a man invited a man to join him in some activities. She also has a problem with how he answered for both of them. Does she realize that in doing so he was taking responsibility for not just his actions but hers as well? That’s the part of… Read more »
“and the next day when he gets up to chop wood, would he have asked one of us girls to go with him?”
I chopped down a tree once. I was back breaking labor that took hours. I had the advantage of having running water when I got thirsty and could run inside when I got too hot and tired. That sure as sh*t aint a “privilege”.
Listening to the wrong woman. A pretty, and privileged white blond girl is not who one should be speaking to about the crisis with women in Africa as she’s more then likely been spoiled and pampered her whole life. That seems obvious by her non-issues items that she is raising along with her lack of awareness. Had you spoken up on that buss, you may have ended up dead. That is male privilege my friend. Male privilege, penis envy and all the rest of the nonsense are the conjuring of privileged, educated, middle class white women in first world countries.… Read more »
@ DJ,
Bravo!!!
The same goes here in America when these same privileged, middle.and upper middle class, well educated white women try to speak for women of color whose lives are vastly different than their own. It is a total joke!
The same privileged white women, who by the way, still think men should pay for their dates and men should be their servants.
Check out this vid I came across on a HuffPost discussion,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQUGx5Rg740
It’s 2016 and she still thinks we men are little more than a footstool.
Wow, just wow, Jules.
Well said DJ
Penis envy indeed. I notice that the most common people to complain about male privilege are those that hate being women and are blind to the vast privileges they hold.
Well Said Zemus,
I think a lot of females are struggling with the changes in gender roles as much as men are. Both men and females are unsure, confused and unhappy. Our roles developed over 10K years and are part of our DNA (evolution).
Everyone is confused and some (men and females) get angry. When you go against your DNA (evolution) you are going to be unhappy. Some are open minded and some just get angry.
It is human nature to blame others for their unhappiness.
Well said also, Jan! Very well said.