The Bishop’s Fiddlesticks

Bishop Duncan William’s statement that marriage is a privilege for women has courted some degree of controversy in the Ghanaian general public. This is quite surprising since many Ghanaians claim to believe in the Bible as the word of God, and what the good bishop was preaching is indeed the posture of the Bible, and probably the view of many religious scriptures too. In these scriptures, a woman is firmly subordinated to man, and her place in the overall scheme of things is to be a mere appendage to the orgiastic and capricious pleasures of men. In the Bible for example, man is presumed to have attained the biological impossibility of begetting woman through his rib. Ironically, woman is blamed for goading man on to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Then the genealogy of humankind is traceable through man, not woman. Obnoxious laws also govern the biological functioning of women: they may be quarantined during menstruation, pregnancy or childbirth. In all religious scriptures, women are put firmly under the feet of men, no matter how stupid the men are, and so it was that Abigail was under the full authority of Nabal…… Up to today, there are some countries where women are prevented from acquiring education, let alone property, and here, the obscure vagaries of man’s honor is a vicarious extension of that of a woman’s. In Pakistan, this vicarious honor thing is so serious that men think that the best way to teach a lesson to a woman who violates their honor code is to pour acid on her face. Just in close-by Nigeria, Boko Haram members capture and kill women for simply trying to get education. The Taliban also put a bullet in a young woman’s head for promoting girls’ education. These terrible things are all done to women in the name of a man-made god. So those people who question the bishop for following the religious edict to subjugate our womenfolk have got the wrong end of the religious stick and might as well be courting the wrath of this man-made god. The bishop is just doing his job as a typical religious leader. His job is to promote irrationality as a path to the concept of faith, not to advance any discourse in logical reasoning. Besides, I take personal issues with anybody who questions the wisdom of the Christ when he imputed that in the last days, seven women will be holding one man’s apparel and shouting and begging the man to confer the honor of his name on them so that he will take away their reproach. Of this latter prophesy of the Christ, I must confess that it gave me extreme happiness when I first read it at the age of twelve, and I suspect my twelve-year old son, Kwame Adjei Sarfo entertains the same idea. When I was a boy, my face was compared to all the ugliest creatures on earth and I knew that no woman with the right set of eyes was going to hold a candle up to me. Long before I grew up and got married, I was certain that any woman who would agree to marry me must necessarily be half blind, and I still don’t have any reason to convince myself otherwise. So I sought great comfort in the prophecy of the Christ that in the coming future, seven women would be vying for my attention and begging me to marry them; and I waited patiently for that glorious day when God’s will would be done in my life. Thus, you could say that the seven to one ratio was something that I heartily welcomed, and I believe many other ugly men, including some bishops, still yearn for that day to come. Be it as it may, most of our women are at the forefront of promoting hollow institutions and archaic traditions that hold them firmly in the talons of men. How is a woman’s intellectual growth and economic prosperity ever advanced by religion, marriage and childbirth? And yet with their Cyclopian eyes open, women are flocking to churches and mosques in droves in order to satiate the pressing demands of religion, marriage and childbirth, and the charlatans are having a field day with them. Bishop Obimpeh’s wife once said that women were throwing themselves at the feet of her husband; and she knew exactly what she was talking about. Meanwhile, many religious bodies proscribe women from leadership positions within the community, following Paul’s edict that like lobotomized idiots, women should remain silent in the church. To this day, it is an offense within many Islamic communities for women to show their faces or wear dresses that expose any part of their bodies. But still women flock to these religious bodies and are at the forefront of enforcing anachronistic laws and lore against their fellow women. It appears that women have some atavistic propensity to accept all abuse from religious leaders as a sign of their holiness and devoutness to god. And so men are entrenched in their continuing assault on women’s rights and dignity with the full connivance of women themselves. Without women’s condonation, there would never be any of these ridiculous insults and assaults against their dignity. Therefore, the audacity of Duncan Williams to insult womanhood is just because no woman in his church dares to raise any hackles about his immature utterances. After all, women are the first to insult their childless sisters after they finish breeding ten brats bound to a life of perpetual misery. And the overriding question that has bogged my mind to date is exactly what is so special about having a child? There ought to be a pragmatic reason why it should become a symbol of honor for women to breed children. And yet I am aware that most women suffer to raise their children only for these children to grow up and neglect them. Many of these children have branded their mothers witches and sworn an oath never to have anything to do with them. Many even beat up their mothers and insult them at will. Even some successful children fabricate unspeakable lies against their mothers and are prone to be mean to them in their time of greatest need. Even majority of these children who may have good intentions are struggling to survive, and may still depend on their parents to help them, let alone supporting them. So it is a valid question to ask, “What is so special about having children?” When I posed this question to my cousin Abena Asantewah, she asked me if I would be alive if my mother had decided not to birth me….... Then again, “What is so special about being married?” Somebody should ask Duncan Williams to list ten cogent privileges any intelligent woman in her right mind would earn by simply getting married. At least I can list ten reasons why a woman should not marry if she can help it. Why on earth should any woman of substance marry and cook and clean and bow and scrape and birth and be fleeced and beaten and battered and bashed and betrayed…...and finally abandoned? After all, isn’t it the case that, after a woman has struggled with a man for him to prosper in life, she is left in the lurch while the man goes for a trophy wife. This is what Nana Ama’s song “Me Dofo Adaadaa Me” is all about. And yet our society keeps on glorifying all these customary myths as a basis to validate the honor of a woman. That is why up to now, millennia old laws and lore are invoked from the dark catacombs of ignorance to keep women in perpetual bondage.

The time for women to stand up on their own is now. Women are no appendages of men and should stand up on equal level with them without forming any queue to seek men’s attention. After all, when the patriarchs wrote their fiction about the beginning of all knowledge, they could not help but to plant woman at the center of it all: it is a woman who is alleged to confer on humanity the knowledge of good and evil by eating the apple in the Garden of Eden. All women track their deep wisdom from this illustrious mother. And if I may ask, “What other specie of living being has this extraordinary record as the originator of all knowledge!” And why should women then be subordinated to the whims and caprices of mere men just because some ugly man of god has the temerity, impudence and bravado to say so? Tweaa kai!!!

Samuel Adjei Sarfo, Doctor of Jurisprudence, is a general legal practitioner resident in Austin, Texas, USA. This article first appeared in his New Statesman column “Thoughts of a Native Son”. You can email him at [email protected]