Our Young Male MPs are Machos Who Wallow in Rotten Pigsties
By Philip Ochieng
Apparently, although machismi derives from an Italian word that English has long nationalised, it does not appear in many English dictionaries.
That, probably, is what explains the fact that my use of that word in my column last Sunday to describe the male members of Kenya’s new Parliament has provoked a number of question marks through e-mail.
Either that or, like most other Kenyans, they are simply prone to spoon-feeding.
They are just too indolent to bother to look up words in their own dictionaries. For machismi is simply the plural form of the Italian word machismo, which is prominent in my Collins Dictionary, where it is defined as “…a strong or exaggerated masculinity…”
A machismo, then, is what Western women’s liberation movement used to call a “male chauvinist pig.”
A machismo is a male bigot, a man extremely narrow-minded in his androcentrism — a word which, as I implied in that column, defines the exceeding male-bloatedness which Luo patriarchy shares with such Jews as Baruch, Hilkiah, Jeremiah, Shapan and others whom King Josiah of Judah retained in the seventh century BC to create the staunchly sexist and now thoroughly controverted “Deuteronomistic History.”
The “ismo” ending of machismo analogises the holder of that title with such other Italian “superlations” as generalissimo (the general of all generals, namely, the supreme commander of a state’s combined armed forces); and with Dante Allighieri’s promotion of Beatrice (in The Divine Comedy) from a mere Donna Gentilla to a Donna Gentillissima (a lady of all ladies, a lady in the superlative).
HERDED LIKE COWS
But, if so, then machismo must stem from an “ordinary” form. Yes. The form macho has been familiar to most members of the Western women’s liberation movement ever since the beginning of the 20th century, when Britain’s Suffragettes launched a militant campaign for women to wrench for themselves the right to vote in all public elections.
Mark that. Western women have systematically bagged that right for a whole century.
That is why it is unbearingly embarrassing that, in the 21st century — when other societies have liberated their women in everything — from politics, academia and industry to science, informatics and star-travel — Kenya’s male law-makers, most of them my son’s age-mates, still think of their own mothers, wives and daughters as domestic animals: to be harnessed like oxen for the plough and herded like cows for sale.
As a noun, according to Collins, macho means “strong or exaggerated masculinity” and, as an adjective, it means “strongly or exaggeratedly masculine”. Collins is unassailable.
As we saw from Kenya’s male MPs when they “debated” a new Marriage Bill the other day, to be “strongly or exaggeratedly masculine” is not the same thing as to be a professor emeritus of sociology.
Even our youngest and most educated male law-makers are machos who wallow in the most rotten pigsties.
They just cannot open their mouths without immediately spewing forth the most stinking air of ignorance of human nature, of human history, of social dynamics, of the forces that drive humanity forward.
Apparently, although machismi derives from an Italian word that English has long nationalised, it does not appear in many English dictionaries.
That, probably, is what explains the fact that my use of that word in my column last Sunday to describe the male members of Kenya’s new Parliament has provoked a number of question marks through e-mail.
Either that or, like most other Kenyans, they are simply prone to spoon-feeding.
They are just too indolent to bother to look up words in their own dictionaries. For machismi is simply the plural form of the Italian word machismo, which is prominent in my Collins Dictionary, where it is defined as “…a strong or exaggerated masculinity…”
A machismo, then, is what Western women’s liberation movement used to call a “male chauvinist pig.”
A machismo is a male bigot, a man extremely narrow-minded in his androcentrism — a word which, as I implied in that column, defines the exceeding male-bloatedness which Luo patriarchy shares with such Jews as Baruch, Hilkiah, Jeremiah, Shapan and others whom King Josiah of Judah retained in the seventh century BC to create the staunchly sexist and now thoroughly controverted “Deuteronomistic History.”
The “ismo” ending of machismo analogises the holder of that title with such other Italian “superlations” as generalissimo (the general of all generals, namely, the supreme commander of a state’s combined armed forces); and with Dante Allighieri’s promotion of Beatrice (in The Divine Comedy) from a mere Donna Gentilla to a Donna Gentillissima (a lady of all ladies, a lady in the superlative).
HERDED LIKE COWS
But, if so, then machismo must stem from an “ordinary” form. Yes. The form macho has been familiar to most members of the Western women’s liberation movement ever since the beginning of the 20th century, when Britain’s Suffragettes launched a militant campaign for women to wrench for themselves the right to vote in all public elections.
Mark that. Western women have systematically bagged that right for a whole century.
That is why it is unbearingly embarrassing that, in the 21st century — when other societies have liberated their women in everything — from politics, academia and industry to science, informatics and star-travel — Kenya’s male law-makers, most of them my son’s age-mates, still think of their own mothers, wives and daughters as domestic animals: to be harnessed like oxen for the plough and herded like cows for sale.
As a noun, according to Collins, macho means “strong or exaggerated masculinity” and, as an adjective, it means “strongly or exaggeratedly masculine”. Collins is unassailable.
As we saw from Kenya’s male MPs when they “debated” a new Marriage Bill the other day, to be “strongly or exaggeratedly masculine” is not the same thing as to be a professor emeritus of sociology.
Even our youngest and most educated male law-makers are machos who wallow in the most rotten pigsties.
They just cannot open their mouths without immediately spewing forth the most stinking air of ignorance of human nature, of human history, of social dynamics, of the forces that drive humanity forward.
Published in the DailyNation newspaper on March 28, 2014
