By James Amuta
Two drunken jokesters on the infamous internet show, Two angry men once alleged that most Nigerian men now in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s had their first sexual experience as teenagers in the 70s, 80s, and 90s with their house girls, and all hell broke lose. Battabox, the site that provides these two social media misfits with the platform to spew garbage came under immense fire from aggrieved housewives in Nigeria and the Diaspora.
The comment section of the infamous video became a forum for a very heated debate. Some men, nah, some shameless men were bold enough to agree with their drunken counterparts. Some of them even went as far as almost confessing to having been the uncanny perpetrators of this heinous crime against women. A crime committed as teenage boys against adult women. Even men who were just boys of less than 10 years old had to plead guilty. But the question should be: Who took advantage of whom?
However, that’s not the reason the men were put on trial. They’re not on trial for being taken advantage of sexually – or for taking advantage of the house girls sexually. That’s a separate argument. They’re on trial for alleging that based on the childhood experience with house girls, that men – grown, adult men are intrinsically inclined to commit adultery with their house girls.
The two drunken men were crucified for having the audacity to suggest that there was nothing wrong with men generally being prone to giving in to their primal attraction to house girls, domestic assistants, maids, nannies etc. How dare they? The two silly, drunken men on Battabox Two angry men, even went as far as suggesting that the unofficial titles of house girls should be Assistant Wives, Official Concubines and all sorts of stupid stuff. Those men need to be pelted with rotten tomatoes. Those silly drunks on Two angry men.
Who cares if these house girls were the ones who have taken care of these men from childhood to adulthood? Who cares if a teenage boy grew up eating the meals prepared by house girls; became adult, got married, and only get to eat the meals prepared by house girls and comforted by the house girls just because madam is too busy at work. Who cares?
You see, women, you’re right. And those men were wrong. How dare they say that sleeping with the house girl isn’t cheating? Imagine the effrontery? Well, the women fired back with one simple question: Would it also not be considered cheating or adultery if women slept with the male help, the driver or the security guard?
Well, not to be a rabble rouser, but women have been doing just that long before men even discovered house girls.
For crying out loud, the tale of women sleeping with house helps even found its way into the Great Book – remember Potiphar’s wife and Joseph? Women even took a step further in glorifying and glamourizing the deed in a Hollywood blockbuster – The Body Guard. Women have always found the male help, especially the muscular, virile-looking variety, very attractive. Oh, did I forget to mention the housewife’s attraction to the gardener, as unrepentantly depicted in the hit US TV series, Desperate Housewives?
What women have failed to understand in this debate is that what men are saying in essence is that we were molested as children – as teenagers – but just because we’re boys, everyone believes we instigated and even enjoyed the act, maybe we did, but it still does not rule out that fact that we were molested. Women, before you became our adversaries on this issue, you were once our mothers, our protectors, our shields – it was your maternal duty to keep us from being devoured by predators or becoming passive predators ourselves.
So, this makes me wonder where women got off on calling men names, and accusing those two drunken jokesters of being the spawn of the devil for stating a disturbing but irrefutable fact. Maybe our confessions came 20, 30, or 40 years too late, but that’s not our problem. We were too ashamed to admit what they did to us (with our underage consent, and pleasure). But our confession should be a pointer to mothers who currently have teenage boys at home, under the care or supervision of nannies, house maids, care givers, domestic assistants, or house girls as we all used to call them in the amazing 20th century.
Women, please how in hell would you let a beautifully molded adult lady bathe your 13-year-old son, just because she’s your house girl, and expect him not to feel a certain arousal? That boy is not a kid anymore, in fact these boys grow a lot faster than we did back in the 80s and 90s. Now, they have the Internet where they can find porn with no hassle. Back then, we only had to rely on carelessly discarded, crumpled, Playboy magazine cutouts, while the bolder ones amongst us were able to steal, borrow, rent, buy porn on video cassettes – but watching those required more stealth and preparation than US soldiers preparing to go kidnap the North Korean president.
Seriously, these boys aren’t clueless anymore, just a quick Google search, and they’d know exactly how to take advantage of sexually-charged situations that had confounded us about 20-30 years ago. Lucky bastards.
For the innocent ones like me, we had to rely on our imagination, as the closest we could ever come to pornographic materials was on the cover of a James Hadley Chase novel. Now, imagine these boys with unrestricted, unsupervised access to thousands of hours of all sorts of depraved pornographic content available for free on the Internet, right inside their pockets – no thanks to smart phones.
Ask very sincere men, and they would tell you in confidence that the relationship between a teenage boy’s sexuality and the attraction to house girl dates back to the colonial era. It’s like a tradition – a rite of passage if you may say – for boys to become men with the help of the house girl. It’s perhaps one of the lost, loosely guarded secrets of boyhood.
However, some men never get over the taste of their first encounter. And they scour through scores of house girls, trying in vain to recreate that boyhood memory that soon becomes a disturbing fantasy. Now, women, that’s where you have a legitimate problem on your hands, when your spouse is stuck in the fantasy of a 13-year-old boy, and I’m afraid I can’t help you there.
But women, it behooves you to remember, that long before we became your husbands, boyfriends, partners, or significant others; we were first and foremost your sons. And long before we’ll become your husbands, we’re at this moment your sons. So, if you’re interested in making your son a more faithful husband for your fellow women, please pay attention to your son’s sexual development and place a firewall on his relationship with the house girl, as soon as he hits puberty.
James is the co-host of Two Angry Men on Battabox.com.
