WAGA: Who is kidding whom? Women are far much stronger, sharper than men

A READER took task with my suggestion for co-education throughout schooling because it would “feminise” men (End gender apartheid in schools, November 23, 2014). I thought the whole point of my piece was to call for feminisation of men for the betterment of society!

Most people mistakenly associate feminisation of men with weakness. Biologically, we know this isn’t the case. From conception onwards, the male is at a disadvantage compared to the female.

For one, the male foetus is more likely to be miscarried or born prematurely. The chances of a boy surviving to the age of five are lower than a girl’s across all socio-economic classes.

Men cope worse with stress than women. They drink more than women and suffer because of it. And men in all countries commit suicide more than women.

They have weaker immune systems than women and are confoundingly less likely to go to hospitals seeking treatment as compared to women.

I have read of cases of men who woke up to find that they had Stage Four cancer because they ignored the changes to their bodies until they keeled over and were rushed to hospital.

It behooves me to point out that there is no stage five in cancer.

Men, also, are at a greater risk of developing mental diseases while growing up. They are more likely to die in car crashes, use drugs and commit crimes.

They are also more likely to die from violence despite, until recently, being the minority in the planet. In all countries on earth, women have higher life expectancies, even in the ones with horrid maternal health care.

Who are we kidding? The female of the species is better adapted to life on this planet than the male. Educationally, in countries where women are given an equal footing with men, they are better in every single subject.

The same is repeated in high school and university. The Kenyan socio-economic atlas shows that, in primary schools, girls have almost achieved parity with boys in school attendance. I expect to have nearly-all-girl top 10 lists for KCPE results by the time I am 30.

Years of prejudice on my part about women’s ability to manage money were upended when I read Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money. Women, it turns out, are less of a credit risk than men.

Most importantly, I get great support in my argument on why we must feminise men from the violence inherent in masculinity. Left on their own, men unleash hell on earth.

Honour and its defense are a uniquely male preoccupation, and it is a fact that more patriarchal societies are more violent ones. We are now fighting fewer wars per capita because we are more empathetic — a quality which is not usually associated with men.

You will note that when the south went to war with the north in the American civil war, the north won. Part of the reason is that the south, being more bound by honour, made the commanders feel duty-bound to lead their men into battles themselves (because they were men, duh!).

And they paid for it. To this day, southern areas of the US tend to be more violent than the northerns because the communities that settled in the south are more bound by honour than those north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The values prized by hairy chested masculinity are not only obsolete, but also lethal. Societies governed by men alone tend to be more bound by honour and more likely to resort to an eye for an eye.

You will note that Sana’a is a worse place for both men and women than Stockholm.

Part of the reason that the world is less violent is that men have become feminised. Steve Pinker wrote a whole book — called Better Angels of Our Nature — on the subject.

The more men are taught to be considerate of women’s interests, the better and safer the world becomes.

To feminise men means that boys would take care of their bodies better and seek alternative methods of dispute resolution that do not use violence. Too much blood has been shed being man, perhaps we should be more like women.

There are values, interests and pursuits associated with women that boys must pick up while growing up, and that is why we must insist on co-educational schooling.

Besides, if I remember my biology correctly, we all start off as girls when we are in our mothers’ wombs. Some of us are just lucky enough to remain women.