A4P Guest: “I am an atheist .I stumbled on your page a few weeks ago and the video you made about “welo Adar” was what caught my attention. I don’t think you understand the harsh circumstances women in the country side live through. cooking , cleaning and raising kids are tiring tasks but that’s not all they do. They wake up early ,just before sunrise, to get wood from the nearby forest, they travel for miles and miles carrying a huge bundle of on their backs, apart from the severe back pain , they are beaten and insulted for “violating someone else’s property”, rape is also very common as it is still kinda dark.Maybe you are misinformed ,but countless women work on the farm with their husbands besides doing their chores. They are obligated to wash their ungrateful husbands feet who will return the favor by beating them black and blue. Ethiopian women “sumbit” to their husbands through all of this. 98% of Ethiopians are religious and all the major religions appoint the husband as the head of the house. Men are respected beyond what they deserve . Very rarely will an Ethiopian women tell you ” no” when you tell her to respect men. Thats what she has been taught all her life. Cooking and cleaning may not be that big of a deal to you .in the 21st century women work out of the house as long as their husbands! Not because they are bad mothers who neglect their kids but because they have dreams, careers and plus in most cases the family needs the money! In any case they should equally do all the housework! And advocating for this is not a bad thing.Just because we have women ministers and a woman president( which are receiving a lot of back lash by the way) doesn’t mean these women you are talking about are free. It is such a shame that you would compare them to a “privileged white feminazi”. Men are still the rulers of the world! ….even in America. Radicals exist in every movement , The fanatic women you are talking about are a small part of the worlds population. They don’t represent all feminists. Why are you more concerned about these men when the women are clearly the victims. Most women don’t “play victim” they are victims. Religion has messed up our moral compass. Your God wants you to worry more about weather a girl masturbates and why her cloth are so revealing and less about rape, racism and hunger. You will probably say I am reading it out of context. But , God has clearly displayed his opinion and he spreads his oppressive propaganda through you and other faithful misogynistic followers. Don’t worry about women going shirtless and threatening to kill men here in Ethiopia. That is the least of our concerns. Shift your focus !not all women are as privileged as me and you! Thank you ”
A4P: Thank you my friend for weighing in on my video message titled, “My opinion about Welo Adar EBC show.”
I wish I could discuss with you about each of your statements but distance and time limit me. It is okay. For now, I will just focus on two major things that I deemed might benefit you in a long run:
- You said you are an atheist. “Atheist” means “a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.”
When I started to read your message, I was expecting to read a message from an atheist, not from a believer in a Transcendent Being. I said that because you seem to label something as “wrong” and other things as “right.” You said, it is not good or right for men (or, husbands) to abuse women (their wives).
In light of you being “an atheist,” my question for you is, “Who defined right and wrong things for you?”
Whomever that person is, that is your god. If that is the case, you cannot say, “I am an atheist” since you are not. If you were to say, “I don’t believe in the same Transcendent Being that you believe in,” I would have totally understood you. But since you haven’t, I am a bit confused.
You see, as long as some “moral fabrics” woven through your statements that put things into “right” and “wrong” categories, you cannot say that you are an atheist. If you say, “Well, nobody tells me what is right and what is wrong. I can decide for myself,” then, I can say the same thing and both of us, you and I, can be equally right and justified standing in opposing sides. That means, “right or wrong” things will be a matter of subjectivity and relativism; means, whatever is right for you is not necessarily right for me and vice versa. And from there, we move to pluralistic way of seeing the whole thing. In that sense, there is no “one” to ask or refer to or no one to address our questions to because there is no order, only chaos.
So, my friend, make sure you know what you mean when you say, “I am an atheist.”
Here in the US, people are labeled as “cool sophomores” in campus when they update their social media status like, “I am an atheist.” I mean, the peer pressure is hard to resist. The good thing is, when those young people get to their senior years, they realize that they were saying something that they didn’t believe in and they change their minds and say, “I am a New-Age Movement follower” or, “I am my own god” and they drop the word “atheist” from their vocabulary. Not that I am suggesting to you to do the same thing but just to show you one simple example that may help you better understand what I am trying to say here.
- I think it is good and wise to have a specific and a valuable goal in mind when you drop your comments to others.
Otherwise, as Zig Ziglar used to say, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” When I ask myself, “So, what is the goal of her message?” I couldn’t find any.
I mean, reading through your email, it seems like you’re only interested to attack my thinking, religion or system of belief, God and more but my question for you is, for what purpose?
I wish you had questions for me so I would have read some books and find answers, answers that may help you widen your scope of thinking and views about society. But you haven’t ask me any question.
If you were to tell me your disagreements, I would have been willing to show where I agree or disagree with you too. But that wasn’t the case either.
So, I can’t help but entertain many questions in my mind, questions such as: Is this woman in pain? Did somebody hurt her when she was a child? Is she in war against “the Transcendent Being” her parents have wrongly presented to her when they raised her? Does she have any healthy relationship with men, like fathers and brothers, neighbors or just men friends? Does she have a father who is emotionally involved in her life? and more.
Why all these questions? Because I couldn’t find the purpose or aim of your email. Did you write your email with the attitude of, “There! You have it” thinking that you message would let me have it? I am not really sure.
But either case, let me summarize your email in the way I understood it. By the way, no pan intended:
“We Ethiopians are poor. We think, learn, cook, clean and travel today in 2019 as we used to in 1012. And there is no way for us to come out of this sad condition unless the men of our society took the blame. They are the ones on the throne of our lives. So, we need to dethrone all the men and enthrone all the women not only on us but on them too so that women will rule and lead our country and Ethiopia grows and becomes just like America.”
You see, I try my best never to engage myself in the issue that dissect a society into different groups and classes but I always strive and work hard to learn and show to others from what I learned the ways and methods that bring joy and peace to all. That means, you don’t find me fighting for women, nor men, but you always find fighting for the well-being of a society, the core of it is called a family, father, mother and children.
That being said, I don’t just throw a rock at someone thinking that I can wipe out the problem from the face of this earth by destroying them; rather, I strive and labor day and night to be one of those people who bring solutions to societal problems which are mainly and primarily found in the structure of a home, a family.
So, with this note in mind, listen to my message again. But here is the disclaimer: Whatever I do or say (or write), my point of reference is the Bible, the Word of God. Outside the Word of God, I am nothing, know nothing and have nothing good to give to others.
Hey, nice reading from you. Blessings! ///
P. S. With the request of the guest, her message is not edited. It was copied and pasted here as it came.