January 2011 - Blackherbals.com

Continued from page 11 - – Zimbabwe: African Tradition…responsible for promiscuous sexual behaviour, lust,discrimination against women, abuse of women and girlsand the spread of HIV/Aids. They also meant that theZimbabwean male psyche was so different from thepsyches of other societies that it could be identified astypically Zimbabwean.What the authors also implied was that we could selectindigenous African foods such as dovi, muboora,nyemba, madora and grains such as mhunga, mafundeand rukweza for use in fighting HIV/Aids; but the culturewhich created the ingredients forming this healthy dietwas no good, especially in its male form. That culture hadto be suppressed together with the virus itself.Since that time, the defamation of the African inHIV/Aids campaigns and adverts here has followed thathighly questionable theory of African tradition and thepresumed inherent nature of the African male psyche andmale sexuality as responsible for the spread of HIV/Aids.Although it does not require a great scientist to prove thatthe allegedly inherent African male psyche is neithertypically African nor typically male and Zimbabwean,too many African scholars have complained privately andnever dared to challenge this racist re-invention of the400-year-old myth of African sexuality for fear of losingdonor support and fear of being labeled male chauvinistpigs.Yet, one simple way to demonstrate that this thesis of aninherent Zimbabwean African male psyche is a fraudwould be to look at scholarly studies of sex and sexualityin non-African societies in other countries.Re-Making Love: The Feminisation of Sex, is a bookpublished as far back as 1986 by North American whitefemale researchers and dealing primarily with what canbe called the response of the white middle class womanto the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s.Chapter Six of that book is called The Politics ofPromiscuity: The Rise of the Sexual Counter-Revolution;and it documents cases of sexual promiscuity and sexualaggressiveness among white North American women.The promiscuity and aggressiveness are almost identicalto the sexual promiscuity, aggressiveness and casualnesswhich UNFPA and the UZ writers chose to present ascaused by a typical Zimbabwean male psyche.In the North American book, the chapter on The Politicsof Promiscuity opens by introducing Ellen (34), whothinks she has made "a nice little life for herself", becauseshe has earned enough to buy a small house and becauseshe has"what used to be called All-American good looks--straight, gleaming hair, and clear blue eyes" which enableher to attract the lovers she wants. "Her present relationshipis just one more phase in her continuing sexualexploration." She was "randy as a teenager" and it "was arelief to let my sexual needs explode . . . I made a lot ofdemands on men too. I chose them for their sexiness andsensuality."But readers may say that is just one woman; what aboutcollective surveys? Redbook magazine sent out a sexquestionnaire to which 100 000 women happily respondedin 1975. And "a considerable number were having affairswhile happily married to men they loved and nine out of tenof the young women . . . were engaging in intercoursebefore they married".Five years later in 1980, Cosmopolitan magazine also sentout a sex questionnaire to which 106 000 womenresponded, reporting that "on average, they had had ninelovers". One of them was quoted as saying, "I have loversbecause what else is there in life that's so much fun asturning on a new man, interesting him, conquering him?"By 1983, three magazines -- Playboy, Family Circle andLadies Home Journal --- decided to survey married womenwhom they described as "sexually enthusiastic, confident,romantic and satisfied". Whereas in 1958 Alfred C. Kinseyhad reported that 6 to 26 percent of married women wereengaging in extramarital affairs, the 1983 surveys showedthat the percentage had jumped to between 21 and 43percent, depending on the type of magazine doing thesurvey and the type of readers. "Among Playboy's readers,young married wives were 'fooling around' more often thantheir husbands."The attack on the Zimbabwean male by UNFPA and itssponsored authors can be explained by quoting a passagefrom Re-Making Love:"These experts all assumed that women hated casual sexand [were mere victims of male lust and aggression], butthey offered no explanation for why so many women wereengaged in it."One woman tried to correct the misperception about mensaying: "If you [as a woman] go ahead and give in to yourdesires [not his desires] . . . and you do go to bed with him,then lots of times you really will lose the man because they[the men], without even realising it, feel like you've beentoo quick and too easy."It is also implied in the foreign-modelled HIV/Aidscampaigns that the societies whose donors fund ourpseudofeminists here have solved the problems of genderviolence. In fact, they are very sick violent societies. Hereis a description of US society borrowed from a male scholar-12- Traditional African Clinic January 2011Continued on page 13