Does Valentine's Turn a Woman into a Despotic Venus in Furs?

Excerpt:  on February 12, 2012 3:00 pm from Love & Sex by avflox

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A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail about a new holiday that wants in on our calendars calledManentine's Day, an effort to flip the attention given to women on Valentine's Day onto the men in their lives. Per the press release I received:

Manentine's Day is on March 14th and is like Valentine's Day, but celebrates the man in the relationship. The holiday encourages couples to dine at manly restaurants, buy manly gifts, and do manly activities. Even single men can enjoy Manentine’s Day by celebrating their friendship with their bros.

The holiday provides a platform for significant others to show appreciation for their men and brings an element of equality to the relationship. If a woman enjoys a great Valentine’s Day, she now has the opportunity to reciprocate one month later, by treating her man to his own special day on March 14th.

Manentine's Day is not only a fun holiday to celebrate, but also a great stimulator for the economy. The holiday will drive new business and increase consumer spending during the month of March, which in the past did not benefit from a holiday that encouraged activities, dinners, and gifts.

The e-mail bothered me beyond the suggested gender stereotyping of "manly" things versus the existing pink and glittery atrocities currently overflowing from every department and drugstore in the country (obviously the "girly" things), but I couldn't pinpoint why. I've argued in favor of celebrating Valentine's Day, noting that it isn't a bad thing to have a reminder in our calendars that force us to put everything on hold and give some time to our relationships.

We don't always need a reminder to be mindful of those we love, but life happens. Work happens. Kids happen. It's easy to delegate partners to the backburner. They're supposed to understand and be supportive, after all -- so why not have a holiday that reminds us (in an obnoxious explosion of hearts and glitter) that we need to take a time out and maybe reprioritize?

As a result of reassessing my thoughts about Valentine's Day, I decided that I wanted to celebrate it. When Rodrigo and I started dating and the holiday began approaching, I asked him how he felt about it. His position was simple: Valentine's Day was a mockery of his love, he said, and he flatly refused to participate in it. He much prefers to send me flowers and make elaborate dinners whenever he feels like it, which is fairly often. It works for us: my cues to spoil him -- just in case I ever need them -- are in my day planner. His cues are somewhere else. We both feel cherished.

But it's not really because of the flowers he sends, the meals he makes or the little gifts I get him. It's about the time we spend arranging those flowers in a vase, sharing those meals, playing with those little gifts. Valentine's Day isn't aboutstuff and it shouldn't be. It should be about reminding ourselves that our relationships matter.

"Venus Disarming Cupid" by Alessandro Allori, via Beesnest McClain.

That's why I never thought about it as a holiday where a man prostrates himself at the feet of the woman in his life, who for 24 hours is endowed by Hallmark with the powers of some despotic Venus in Furs.

When I defend Valentine’s Day, this is not what I am defending. Such a resentment-filled, one-sided affair strikes me as the enemy of love, not a celebration of it. This is why the idea of Manentine's -- a March holiday where we flip the script and fall at the feet of men – is so repulsive. Instead of guiding Valentine's away from this miserable template, it reinforces it and doubles it. In February, men shall one-sidedly and resentfully "stimulate the economy," as the press release says, to honor the women in their lives. In March, women shall one-sidedly and resentfully "stimulate the economy" to honor the men in theirs.

How about sitting down and analyzing what we feel about Valentine's Day and then talking with our partners about it? How about making plans together? That's what relationships are all about, you know: two people, caring about each other.

AV Flox is the section editor of Love & Sex and Health on BlogHer. You can connect with her on Twitter @avflox, Google Plus +AV Flox, or e-mail her directly at av.flox AT BlogHer.com

KINSHIP SYSTEM         (pt 1):

The Wanga of ancient day Mumia had a hierarchical form of government ruled by a king with a kinship system, this entailed that if the king died the oldest son – or the kings choice from one of his sons - was to take over as the leader of the community. It was believed that the ruling family was handed power by the Maker. Well, that was their tradition, so was it in other tribes that inhabited Kenya at the time like the maasai in other tribes they had a clan of elders who had numerous functions the meru, embu, kikuyu and many more used this form of leadership. Though in some of these tribes there was a sole leader he/she had to get approval from the elders before the community would fully accept them as leader…

Enter modern day Kenya and the trend hasn’t changed much from the traditional set up. Just take a look at the political elite that the electorate has been voting to power since time in memorial. Oginga-Raila and the brother, nyachae-the son, Kenyatta-Uhuru, kibaki-I hear jimmy is blossoming, out of the bud, Wamalwa-what’s the brothers name, I hear he is running for president; just to mention a few. It’s alarming that the tribe has the ability to make even the brightest and most learned among us behave dumb, blatantly put logic and reason aside and join the bandwagon. That’s why any political aspirant will seek audience with school heads, doctors and professors in the said constituency, and what do we do in turn………. Vote for the leading family to parliament over and over again. We are like sheep following the stream as it dwindles down, though it is shrinking in size, the water volume so shrunk in size rocks with gaping crevices hurting our hoofs, deposited silt slowing our movement, we are still moving down stream! When will we turn back and go upstream, together with our axes and pangas held high, to root out the eucalyptus trees that we planted around the water source and plant new trees around it? Because, I believe it is now apparent that the eucalyptus trees will eventually drive us to destruction because they are using up all the water… what are we without water?

Almost every political “leader” that is in office now had a relative in power before him/her. Mostly it was their fathers in power and when their time was over they proposed to their “people” that their sons or daughter would lead them best. I used “their people” because tribalism seems to be the backbone of the political elite. What’s the guarantee that the son or daughter will perform? I tend to think if the father didn’t perform the son or daughter is most likely to “fuata nyayo” and become worse than the previous family member in power. With new tricks to keep you pauping! There’s a cliché for that ‘same monkeys different forests’. Don’t you think it’s time to change the monkey? Our 2^nd president used the “fuata nyayo” philosophy, I don’t think I really to tell you how it worked out right? The Mount Kenya region has a cartel where unless they ‘cough’ the electorate won’t give you the time of day to air your political aspirations, very similar to the clan of elders aint it? This is so in other regions of the county as well, did anyone of you wonder why Tuju’s crew was stoned, they also did the same to kenyatta back when Oginga was the name, only that back then rotten eggs were flying not bricks and rocks…This begs the question, what’s the essential point of voting, is it to get a tribal leader or to get better representation in parliament, u know, air the problems of the people . . . mind you not the tribe! So why do we keep the kinship mentality alive for this long?

Mr. Muturi, my high school head teacher, constantly urged us to change the trend, he would often say, “their fore fathers led your fore fathers then their fathers led your fathers and just like a jigsaw puzzle piece falling into place their sons will lead you and your sons”. What we have are not political leaders but tribal leaders which means that they will do all they can to keep the kinship system in play; this often entails misappropriation of funds and resources as a get-rich-quick scheme and since the literacy levels in this country are criminal the “the richer the fool, the better the ability to lead” comes into play. Apparently handing out  kshs. 50 will sway the electorates’ vote; right now a loaf of bread is selling at kshs. 45 which would mean that you are at the very bottom of the stupidity list if you think that kshs 50 will feed you for the next five years!!

 Intelligence simply put is the ability to learn and understand to deal with new trying situations, learning may be from experience of books while the modern day defination of stupidity may be defined as lacking intelligence.Voting for the same monkey in parliament to feed him with more bananas over and over again to me is stupid, not learning from our mistakes of voting for the kinship system is no intelligent either, we may as well scrap the education system while we are at it. What’s the point of spending 24 years of your life in school if you can’t apply the very basics of what you learnt, common sense!

Chew on that ……… I remain

Ian Macharia.