‘Wings on a Woman Don’t Mean Horns on a Man’

EDITOR: The title of my letter is taken from Peggy Carr’s poem ‘Back Talk’, and in the context of International Women’s Day (IWD), I will use this quotation to discuss briefly the following two concepts suggested by the multi-layered imagery packed into ‘..wings on a woman/don’t mean horns on a man’: 1. The binary fallacy in the angel versus devil, woman versus man relationship; 2. A woman’s flight (‘wings’) does not necessarily mean infidelity (“horns”) to a man.

1. Women are not angels, neither are men devils. However, patriarchal constructs drawn from Judeo-Christianity delight in portraying women as angels, and to some extent women have embraced this portrayal as complimentary. Yet, if we look closely enough, we would realize that the image of an angelic woman results in paternalistic victimology which is a double-edged sword.

An angelic woman is very gentle, softly benevolent and in need of the protection of a man. An angelic woman enables and requires male strength, because an angelic woman is not strong in and of herself. Indeed, an angelic woman is weak.

“The weaker vessel” is the “fairer sex” : the Christian Bible is replete with these images in which women have clothed themselves.

But no one respects weakness. Weakness is used and abused and when men respond to perceptions of weakness and act upon their misguided notions of their ‘strength’, they are seen as devils and they see their strengths as devilish.

Our societies tend to resist the notion of gender fluidity, where the concepts of womanhood and manhood exist on a continuum which allows the behaviours of both genders to flow and collide without the binary rigidity of male versus female. Both sexes exhibit behaviours which have been stereotyped as feminine and masculine, but this does not mean that these behaviours are automatically positive or negative, angelic or devilish, because this is the binary fallacy that pits one sex against the other and results in unnecessary conflicts. Conflicts have winners and losers; victors and victims. Once women are portrayed as celestial beings, they would remain fair/fear game for devilish fiends with horns and phalluses. Let’s get down to earth and invest in relationships that are not counterproductive.

2. A woman’s flight (wings) does not necessarily mean infidelity on her part. Women decide to leave their relationships with men for a number of reasons, but the dominant perception is that she is leaving because “the man getting butt/horn”, and we have been told by men that “man can’t tek butt”. Yet we wonder: is it not that female infidelity is seen as diminishing of manhood? And does manhood seem to be predicated on a woman’s fidelity?

Does this not make the manhood fragile? How is it that women are able to “tek butt”? I suggest that notions of ownership, where men and women see themselves as being the property of one another, distort their perceptions of their own boundaries and of what actually constitutes their beings, their selves. The concept of ‘to have and to hold’, enshrined in the Christian marriage, when taken literally (as is so much in the Bible) contributes greatly to this misappropriation of identity. One needs to be freed of these notions in order to first find oneself and then to be able to recognize the parameters of another person.

Such a recognition should engender mutual respect which should go towards preventing the hacking down of women by men for perceived injustices.

The celebration of IWD reminds us of the different paths that have been trodden by women and men. The women’s march thus far has to some extent resulted in equal pay for equal work. The march for equity has to continue in order to redress the age-old inequities in legal, social and political constructs. A woman’s achievement/success (wings) is not detrimental to a man’s stance. So here is where gender equity is required in order to rework distribution and concepts of entitlement. Established systems have to be overhauled, revisioned and reconstructed. We cannot be satisfied with a pseudo-equality which is devoid of practical equity.

Andrea Bowman