Carol’s Column

Yes, mom, God should have been a woman

You might have noticed during the past few weeks a fair amount of correspondence in the newspapers, and heard various utterings and protestations from males who felt they were being genderdisadvantaged by the fact that they, too, do not have a National Men's Day.

This, of course, all in response to Monday's National Women's Day.

You may, too, have read or heard the debate about whether or not there should be a National Women's Day, the implication being by female purists that having such a day, instead of focusing on women to their advantage, denigrated them.

Having a National Women's Day, they said, implied that women were lesser beings than men and only came into their own on one day of the year.

Rather like Save the Whale Day, or HIV Day. Every day of the year, they felt, should be a National Women's Day.

Ag, ja, well, no, fine.

There is validity in both schools of thought but the reality is that a national day for women creates an awareness, even if only temporary, of women's very real needs and aspirations.

Meanwhile, to get back to the original objections by men, my husband among them, who felt they were being discriminated against because they too did not have their day.

"If women, whales and a disease can have a day, why can't we?" he said from the comfort of the braai where, on this National Women's Day, he was enjoying a beer with two friends and discussing why the Springboks had not won the Test match.

My mother has never, in 85 years, let a good opportunity pass. Like a rocket launcher she blasted off: "You and every other man in this country," she said, speaking generally but glowering at her son-in-law, "celebrate National Men's Day every day of the year."

As the wors sizzled my mother launched forth. "Men have been having their day for centuries," she said firmly, "and look where it's got us.

"Starting, with God," she continued. "Only a male God would find merit in people spending all their time in strange buildings singing ridiculous songs and calling that worship. A female God would be far more pragmatic."

"I say," said my husband's friend, Cyril "That's blasphemous."

"Nonsense, it's your mind that's blasphemous," retorted my mother now in full spate.

At which stage, calling a truce, I dished up lunch.

"Ho, ho, I didn't know you were a hairy armpit," said Cyril to my mother, attempting to make light of the previous conversation.

It was an unfortunate analogy, being the pejorative description coined by patronising males of activist women in the '60s.

"My armpits were and are as hairy as my legs," replied my mother, "but, unlike you, there is no hair on my brain."

Cyril, who at best resembled a kingklip, at worst a less than firm hake, choked on his wors and giggled nervously. "Such a sense of humour your mother-in-law has," he muttered to my husband.

I said nothing.

This was not the time to talk of my mother's past.

To tell of her courage, how during World War 2, she left the country of her birth when her family members were murdered and lived for many years as a refugee.

How in South Africa, the country of the man she married, and the country of her adoption, she made her own stand against what she considered immoral and in her own way fought what she considered yet another evil system.

Later, when I kissed her goodbye, she whispered in my ear. "God should have been a woman."

And I knew she wasn't joking.

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