I wrote about the tales of an African woman a while back and while many women agreed with me, some men accused me of just being another bitter feminist.  Such is life!

While I do not agree that bitterness was the tone of that post, but simply me addressing the flawed society, I still understand and accept this judgment and their grievances.  After all men also have issues as a result of the flaws of society and we cannot ignore the other side of the coin. This is not a buffer for the earlier post on the African woman, neither is it as a result of guilt, but I actually do believe that a lot of African men are confused and society is not helping.

I am not familiar with how things are done in other places, save for what their mainstream media and Hollywood feeds us. And considering we know that television is basically make-believe, I will stick to what I am familiar with.

The African man is confused.

How exactly do we want them to behave? We say this, and want something else from them. It is all so confusing and not helping in molding them into the great men that they could be.

He is told all his life not to cry, he is not allowed to.  A ‘real’ man does not cry!  How on earth could we think that they are also humans?

When he listens he is called a jerk and given grief for not getting in touch with his emotions. He is then accused of not being open enough. He decides to cry and he is labelled weak. How dare he defy the gods by allowing them tears to drop?

He is told to be caring and take care of his woman. He listens and tries to be nice to women, but he is then labelled a sissy.  Strong men do not do that, they say. Strong men show women who is in charge. When he decides to stop being nice, he is called a demon that should be avoided.

A real man has more than one woman, they say. A real man has a raging libido. He has testosterone and it is uncontrollable. So anywhere it directs him to, he is allowed to listen to the call of nature. An unfaithful man is a superman they say. His manhood is in commemoration with the number of women he has slept with.

He listens and he is labelled a dog that cannot control himself. While his woman screams about how irresponsible he is. He decides being faithful is the way to go but then told: he is not a real man. ‘You are just weak’, they say. How else would he show how great he is if he is not doing it with everything in a skirt?

At this rate, an African man is confused. What would you want him to do exactly? It is obvious that the African man is not the confused one but society. Our society is not sure what it really wants in it’s men.

Do we want a beast who is incapable of feelings, love or reasoning or a human who has a natural ability to feel, love, reason and be great?

We need to make up our mind and fast too!