#13: 3 Stories About Being A Woman in Uganda

1. Priced and Pursued | 2. Trapped within the System | 3. The Shape of Equality Across Cultural Divides

[Trigger warning: I will be retelling the case of a 15-year-old rape patient we had at our hospital.]

It kills me to tell these stories. It kills me to not tell these stories. If I lose either way, I might as well write them down, lest they be lost to my memory, lost to time, and lost to history.

I have been avoiding writing in my blog about feminism for weeks. Who should listen to me? What could I possibly contribute to the great conversation? And how could I ever hope to speak about, or generalize from, the experience of women when I only have a singular experience, and moreover less than six years of being an adult woman in society? Do I really have anything valuable to add? I cannot say for sure. But I need to share the following three stories, if only to selfishly get them out of my head. If they keep reverberating and weighing me down every day, they will continue to hold an unhealthy level of power over me. I have almost found myself frozen by them and I cannot stay like this. I’ve been really struggling to write an adequately strong and concise summary for this topic – my recounting becomes a rant and my argument becomes a brainstorming session. So, in the meantime, you can just try to process the stories beside me.

Below are three stories told as best as I remember them. To give you a one sentence preview of each one, I’ve named them and will tell you a little about what is within. 

• Priced & Pursued: A man at our hospital tried to buy me and then grabbed me in the middle of the reception area, to the laughter of everyone in the room. 

• Trapped Within the System: A 15-year-old girl patient was raped, attempted a dangerous at-home abortion with bootleg misoprostol, and was then told by doctors at my facility that the rape was her fault.

• The Shape of Equality Across Cultural Divides: I had a long debate with one of our doctors who insisted that women are inferior scientifically, religiously, and culturally. (I won, sorta). 

I’ll try to come up with something more profound to say when I’ve figured out the words.

1. Priced & Pursued

Anyone interested in being the 2nd or 3rd wife of a man 20 years older than you who believes you are nothing but an object? If you’re a Ugandan woman, it may not always be your choice.

Back in February, the husband of a young female patient harassed me all day. He had been asking for my number for hours.

The first time, I said no politely. The second time, I said no. The third time, I said no. By the tenth time, I was uncomfortable, and by the twentieth, I was in disbelief that this was still happening. It wasn’t just annoying, it was unsettling. He was not hearing me. He was not listening. He was not respecting that I had the freedom to say NO. I tried to move around the reception area, to stay busy and avoid him, but he kept finding me, asking again and again as if the answer might eventually change.

Then he walked up to the counter, reached into his pocket, and threw down 200,000 Ugandan shillings (just under 60 U.S. dollars) and said he wanted to “take me,” his way of saying he wanted to marry me. And the entire room erupted in laughter; men, women, staff, patients. No one stepped in. No one seemed concerned. It was just…funny. I stood there, completely stunned, trying to process how someone could attempt to put a price on me while everyone around me treated it like entertainment.

At that moment, I tried to redirect it. I told him I would consider giving him my number if he donated the money to the hospital (While, of course, knowing I could block him later). He refused. I do not think that he called my bluff, but that may have been the most devastating part. We lose patients every week to illnesses that could be treated for $50. He was willing to spend money in an attempt to “take” a second or third woman, but not to save lives.

Then, a little later, I had to walk past him, and as I did, he reached out, grabbed my arm, and tried to pull me to the side. That was the moment I lost it. I yelled—loudly. I told him it was disgusting that he was treating me like an object, that I am not something that can be bought, and that he should never touch me again. He just looked at me. I could see it in his eyes; no gears were turning. He could not understand. I watched them glaze over in a way that made it clear that nothing I was saying was landing, as if the idea that I was an equal human being was not even available to him. 

Then, as if nothing had happened, he asked, “Why can I not make you happy? What can make you happy?” I just said, “Be quiet.” He told me he would come back every day to keep asking. Then he left, disappointed that he couldn’t add a mzungu to his collection.

After he left, I also heard that the hospital had “had a few problems with him in the past,” which is how I learned that he had previously assaulted one of our nurses. 

When I asked others why they laughed, it became clear that no one found the objectification disturbing—they only found it funny because he could not afford me. One doctor dismissed it as a joke, calling the man his friend and insisting that he knew I would refuse. Others, both men and women, said the humor lay in his audacity—he was acting beyond his means, trying to “take” a woman far outside his socioeconomic reach. The laughter was not a rejection of what he did, but a reaction to how little money he offered. The practice of purchasing a woman is normal here, and what he offered was, in fact, an insultingly low sum. Even in rural Western Uganda, bride-prices typically range from three to six cows, which, depending on the quality of the cow, ranges from $540 to $5,400 USD. In a place where patients die because they cannot afford $50 to $100 treatments, that is an enormous amount of money.

And yet, standing there, listening to the laughter, none of that was what shocked me most. It was realizing that the commodification of women is not just accepted—it is so deeply ingrained that it is reinforced, normalized, and even laughed at, even among women.

Later, I spoke with the nurse he had assaulted. She told me she was proud of how I stood up for myself in a way she never could. She explained that responding as I did could cost her job, invite accusations of disrespect or even curses, and that submission was simply how she had been raised; it did not trouble her in the same way. If her father had told her that she was to marry him, she would have no choice. In fact, she told me that almost all women are expected to be purchased by 18 if they are not educated or by 25 if they are educated. If you are unmarried later than 25, villages will start saying you are a witch, that you are cursed, or unlovable. Additionally, she told me that this man was Banyonkole by tribe, which according to tribal lore, was among the most sexist and dangerous tribes for women in Uganda. Even if a girl’s father denies the man's request for marriage, there have been cases of Banyonkole men breaking into the family’s house and stealing the child for themselves. We have a Banyonkole doctor on our staff, so I asked him, and he reluctantly confirmed that this does happen. It is not common, but it is known among his tribe. I could not help thinking of my childhood, when I was 15 years old. I was worried about my upcoming cross-country race, my upcoming swim meet, and my AP biology homework. How different my life would have been if I was born in Africa – if I was never educated, forced to marry at 15, and then forced to have children before I was legally an adult. 

My nurse friend continued: women are taught and accept that they must always respect the will of men. She told me, “Saylor, I am willing to submit. It is okay. That is all I know.” I asked her what she meant, and she told me that women are taught from birth to always bow down to any man in their lives: their father, their husband, adult men in the community, and even their grown male children. This put some puzzle pieces of Ugandan culture into place for me—it made more sense why Dr. Hillary’s wife commonly ate dinner on the floor, why she spoke to him while kneeling, and why some of our female patients prostrate themselves in front of our male doctors and nurses. If you are socialized to lower yourself to the ground from birth and cower in the presence of men, then how could you even process that you are something of equal value? Are Ugandan women truly comfortable being limited by the sexist culture into which they were born? If you have a price on your head, and you are exchanged for that price to become property, how is that different from slavery?

I informed her that in 21st-century American culture, it is often the parents who provide money to the young couple for their wedding and early marriage. I told her that I have never felt limited in what career I could pursue or how much school I could attend. I told her that I have never bowed down to a man, much less a man who expects it simply because he is male. I told her that nearly all women in America feel comfortable wearing shorts, tank tops, and bathing suits, and that this does not give men license to treat us as objects. She laughed at me. I could almost see her eyes glaze over too, just like the enculé from earlier in the story. 

But in her glazed eyes, I realized that the culture into which we are born will always shape a significant part of our identity. She is Ugandan, Runyoro by tribe, and Runyoro women bow down to the superior sex. No questions asked. It did not seem like she could see it any other way. It was as if the malleability of youth had passed, her worldview set in stone, with no space left to imagine herself as equal.

I lay in my bed that night asking myself: why was she born here, and I was born in America? Would I bow down with no reservations if I had been taught to do so from birth? Is there any way to convince women here that they are equal in human value and capability to men? Should I give her some De Beauvoir, Woolf, Angelou, or Steinem to read? Would someone from Ugandan culture be even remotely convinced by De Beauvoir, given how different 20th-century French culture and 21st-century African culture are?

She did say that I was lucky—I was lucky to be born in a place where this was not the case. I tried to tell her that this shouldn’t be a question of luck. This is how things are supposed to be, and I felt so sad for women like her who are made to feel subjugated by men on the basis of their sex. But even as I said it, I knew she was right. I certainly do not love everything America is doing right now, but I am incredibly lucky to be born into a culture where I am equal with those around me.

The U.S. news today will likely make most people mad, but at least you are not being sold for the price of a few cows like thousands of women are every day. 

2. Trapped Within the System

Okay Saylor, yeah, that doesn’t sound too fun, but what is really so bad about a gender hierarchy? What’s the worst that could happen?

Answer: a 15-year-old rape victim who came to our hospital after failing a dangerous at-home abortion, only to leave more objectified, more ashamed, more stigmatized, and more sexualized than when she arrived.

It goes deeper than that. I think I may have been responsible for making her situation worse.

This case happened within my first or second week at the hospital. A 15-year-old girl came in with lower abdominal pain and intermittent bleeding, requesting a scan, as many of our female patients do. We performed the ultrasound and saw retained fetal parts, but no live fetus. It was immediately clear that she had taken abortion medication outside of the hospital and had come to us when complications arose.

She told us that she had taken misoprostol about a week prior from a pharmacy in town. You never really know what you are getting from those pharmacies—you don’t know the dose, the quality, or even if the medication is legitimate. Many are diluted or counterfeit. She said she initially felt better after some bleeding, then the bleeding stopped, but returned with pain, which is why she came to Albertine.

She needed a mechanical evacuation. An uncomfortable, invasive, and painful removal of the remaining fetal tissue. I assisted with the procedure. I watched her cry in pain. And the entire time, I was thinking: She’s 15. She’s pregnant. She’s unmarried….She’s 15!…Has anyone asked the most important question?

I was screaming internally, waiting for someone – anyone – to ask if she had been raped. No one did.

So I went around to the staff. I spoke to the nurses. I spoke to doctors. I walked them through the case and asked how we had not even considered rape. Most of the nurses said it was possible. Most of the doctors said no. The responses were things like, “She would have told us,” or “We are sure that didn’t happen.”

I couldn’t accept that.

She was about to be discharged without anyone asking her what had actually happened to her. I kept bugging everyone, and I got a doctor convinced to ask a few more questions.

At first, the doctors had asked her sister if it was possible she had been raped. The sister said she had no idea and seemed frustrated that the girl had not told her anything, including who the father was. Then we brought the patient into a room.

When we asked her, she hesitated. She looked around. She was clearly scared. Her eyes then filled with tears. I knew the answer was yes before she said it. I think I had known when I first laid eyes on her at the hospital.

She said that the cow herder is usually the only person around her home when she is there for school holidays. She attends boarding school, so she is only home in December and January. At the start of January, when her parents were away, he came into her house, took her into her room, and raped her. The doctor did not ask her to tell the full story. There was no, “tell us what happened,” no reassurance, no sense that we were there to support her. Instead, he asked specific questions: was she tied up, was she choked, was she held down, was there any bruising. She said she had been held down, but not tied or choked.

That was it. End of the conversation. I didn’t understand what he was trying to determine. The assault had happened over a month prior. There would be no physical evidence. But it felt like he was trying to decide whether her experience “counted” as a rape. This became clearer after we left the room. But right before I left, I pulled out the one possible Runyoro phrase I had learnt that I thought might help. I looked her in the eyes, and I said very slowly: “I’m sorry this has happened to you.” That’s all I could say. I hope my eyes said more. 

Once we left, I was ready to make a game plan — let’s call the police, let’s call the parents, let’s take action, let’s go sit with her, get her full statement, and take complete care of our patient. The doctors, on the other hand, were having a far more disturbing conversation. 

They were saying one of three things: (1) That she was making it up. They postulated that she talked with her friends at boarding school about sex, became curious, and then engaged in consensual sex when she returned home. And when things went wrong and she became pregnant, she claimed it was rape. They pointed to the lack of physical marks as evidence. I’ll reiterate that the rape happened over a month prior. Even if there were physical marks, they would not still be there. (2) Another said that if she wasn’t lying, then she was “spoiled,” so they did not have any intention of telling anyone that did not need to know. This meant no police. This meant no parents. The sister told us specifically to not tell her father because her father would murder the cowherder and she did not want her father to go to prison. We did not tell anyone. (3) They suggested a third, more sinister crime at play — that the sister knew more than she was saying, that maybe the “cowherder” was her brother, meaning the rape was incestuous and so everyone was trying to protect their brother from being imprisoned and/or killed. 

I was appalled by all three conclusions. The first two I found sexist and the last was too dark to even fathom. 

I wish I could tell you the story gets better from here. Later, she was brought into another room with a second doctor to confirm via ultrasound that the evacuation was complete. During that interaction, the doctor told her that her rape was her fault, that the way she dressed in knee-high dresses (oh great heavens, the temptation of women’s calves and shoulders!!) was provocative, that she needed to be more careful.

I gave her a look of empathy and incredulity when the doctor was not looking. She smiled and laughed. I could tell she appreciated my presence, even though we spoke different languages. I could not say much, but that was okay, because I was there to listen. The doctor, on the other hand, decided to lecture about purity. I could only pick up about 40% of what he was saying, but I got the main idea. We are a Christian hospital, so the doctor was using the Bible to educate her on the value of having one woman and one man together in matrimony, that sex is an act of love and something to be reserved for marriage, etc. It is not that I disagreed with every single thing he said—but the way it was delivered, in that moment, felt deeply wrong. Having individual values about Christian purity is one thing. Having a hypocritical adult man instruct a young girl on keeping her body untouched is quite another. I say hypocritical because this doctor has an 11 year-old daughter from a relationship in his teens/early 20s that was out of marriage. Impressing the importance of purity culture at this moment was doing nothing. She did not need a lecture. She needed to be heard.

By the end, when we prescribed her some painkillers and sent her home, the doctors had decided they didn’t believe her. That she was hiding things, that it was fully consensual sex, and she was just a young attention-seeking girl.

And then she left. And that is the last I ever saw her. 

She left having been told that involving the police would likely hurt her more, because the abortion was a crime and the man could deny everything. She left having been told that it was her fault for attracting attention with her clothing, that she had brought this on herself, that she would likely drop out of school, that her purity was gone, and that now that she had “tasted it,” she would not be able to resist, she would drop out of school and become pregnant again.

What was never asked was what she wanted. No one asked her to tell her story from start to finish. I wish she had been able to share in a comforting environment. When you unpack something terrible that has happened to you and let someone else into the pain you’ve experience, the pain you feel starts to lessen. It is through this vulnerability that the pain can be shared, carried by a team of confidants, and it’s weight becomes lighter for the victim.

She was a pawn—used by the man who raped her, by the system that failed her, and even by the people who were supposed to help her. Even me, in the pride of my idealism, made her life worse.

I wanted to advocate for her. I wanted to understand. But I can’t shake the feeling that by asking, by pushing, I may have exposed her to more harm than help.

I texted my close friend who works as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) in Colorado. I wanted to process the case with her and understand how it would have been handled differently. I started writing it out, but I couldn’t finish. It was too heavy. I didn’t know what to do with it.

But what I do know is this: It is absolutely ludicrous that in cases of rape all across the world, we tell the victim to protect herself, to dress differently, to be more careful, but we do not tell the attacker to stop. We do not intervene. We do not hold him accountable. Instead, we told this girl it was her fault and that men cannot control themselves. And if that is true, then what does that say about men? There is no winning in a system like this. 

What is the point of telling this story if it only makes people sad, angry, and less hopeful?

But if I don’t tell it, only a handful of people will ever know what happened to her. If I write it, at least she will be remembered. My words on a page will outlive me. My words in my head will not.

And her story must be told.

And I need to figure out what I will do differently the next time a rape victim walks through the door, and how I can empower the staff to listen and believe the patient first, without a trace of judgement or skepticism.

Still Speaking, Still Fighting

What does it say about the possibility of change when the most highly educated people in a culture are among those propagating gender hierarchy? Is gender equality even possible in Ugandan societies?

February 27th, 2026

I was not expecting to have a multi-hour debate with a medical professional about the equality of men and women. It began with a question about one of our nurses.

One of our doctors informed me that one of our nurses would be leaving in a few days. I was surprised and thought she may have been fired, but the doctor said it was her decision. I let out a knowing sigh – I told the doctor I was not too surprised, given her situation. He was confused…so I told him the difficult conflict she was facing. 

Her husband has left her for another woman. He now lives with that woman, possibly married to her (legally, men can have three wives in Uganda), while their six-year-old daughter remains in Kampala, four hours away. The child stays there because the husband controls the money for her education and has decided she will remain near him. So this nurse is left with an impossible choice: stay here and keep her job, or move to be near her child and lose her income. She also wants to return to school, but she has no financial independence and a child to support.

That’s where it started.

From there, the conversation shifted – slowly at first, then all at once – into gender roles. Into Uganda. Into America. Into what men and women are, and what they are supposed to be.

We were eating dinner, and the doctor seemed troubled by the story. I, too, was troubled, so at first I thought he must be empathizing with her. But then he started complaining about the nursing staff: “you see, this is the problem with these nurses. They cannot commit to the hospital because they have already married, already have children, and their minds are elsewhere. This is the problem with women.”

I said, “Well, yes, this is a problem. But you can understand why their minds would be elsewhere, right? And you can understand that it was not necessarily this nurse’s fault for her situation, that it was more so the society she was born into that pushed her into marriage as a teenager and makes it incredibly difficult in her 20s to manage any sort of work when she is also responsible for her children.”

He looked dumbfounded that I was questioning the entire bedrock of the culture. He responded, “But that is the way it should be. Women need to do what men say. Women are inferior and they must submit.”

I was shocked. Not because I haven’t heard that before, but because I didn’t expect to hear it from a doctor—someone trained to evaluate evidence, to understand biological and social complexity, to see human beings as fundamentally equal in dignity.

So, instead of submitting to what he was telling me, I said “I think you are very wrong. What is your evidence?”

And we were off to the races. If this race was a 1600 m race, my least favorite in high school, the first lap was the Bible, the second was the human body, the third was gender roles in relationships, and the fourth was family hierarchy.

He first wanted to talk about Genesis. So we started there.

He brought up the creation story – Adam first, then Eve, created as a ______. He paused, expecting me to finish his sentence: “Saylor, Eve was made as a…”

I just looked at him and said, “As a human?”

He said, “No, as a ‘helper.’” (Genesis 2:18).

It was at this moment I was really grateful to have a bachelor’s degree in religious studies. I’ve fought against this argument before, I could do it again. 

I should have first broken down the word itself. I should have asked if he was 100% sure that the original Hebrew word also held an implication of subservience. I am not going to bore you with the details here, but the word in Hebrew, “ezer kenegdo” does not have a connotation of inferiority. You can look it up if you are interested.

Instead, I argued against this single word with my biblical interpretation practices. It is not only that this single word, “ezer kenegdo,” written 3,000 years ago does not provide adequate evidence for the inferiority of women, but the entire Genesis story cannot be used in this way. I told him that I do not always interpret the Bible literalistically. I asked him if he believed every single word of the Genesis story. 

“Do you believe that it really took only 7 days to create the earth?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Do you believe that every single creature in existence lined up in front of Adam and he named every single animal, one by one, that has ever walked the earth (Genesis 2:20)?”

“No, that doesn’t make sense.”

Here was my opening. I am rewording what I said below, but this was my argument: 

With reference to the Genesis story, I can only reconcile my faith if I understand this story as legend, written 3,000 years ago by a patriarchal community that was trying to understand the start of the world. I don’t read Genesis as a literal blueprint for hierarchy. I read it as a story situated in a world that already understood power in certain ways. That does not mean that the scripture is not the word of God. Scripture is God-breathed, as used in 2 Timothy, theopneustos in Greek, the great breath of God that is somehow beautifully imbued in the text. It is still holy and contains Truth, but requires interpretation given our 21st century context. I plan on using the brain given to me to read the Bible, not to let the words written 3,000 years ago and translated from language to language dictate a hierarchy.

Today, it has been scientifically shown that women’s intellectual capabilities are the same as men's, that the earth scientifically cannot have been created in 7 days, that the sky above us is not a dome holding back water, and that the solar system is heliocentric. Does this mean I can toss out the Genesis story as entirely irrelevant? No, otherwise I would denounce Christianity altogether. Where I find value in this story is by pulling out the main theme, repeated at least 7 times, after every day: that there is goodness imbued in creation. That humankind has a proclivity for good and a proclivity for evil; that it is in our choices that we follow the path of light or the path of darkness; that we will be tempted in our lives by lesser goods that weaken our spirits, crush our innocence, and convince us that life is meaningless, but the inherent goodness of the universe is always there, waiting for us to find it in those small, instantaneous moments of pure joy that we all experience from time to time. I tried to talk to him about Buber and Thou-Thou moments between two people, but explaining the difference between You and Thou in Old English is too much for most English speakers, so I digressed. [Side Note: I & Thou by Martin Buber is still one of the best books ever written.]

I don’t believe God is limited to the Bible, and neither did this doctor, so I quoted from one of the best series ever written: “we’ve all got both light and dark inside us, what matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are” (Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix). That is what the Genesis narrative teaches me. I told this doctor that he cannot say the Genesis story is about defining gender roles. What I find most enlightening in the Bible are its beautiful teachings imbued within, not its word-for-word analysis which can change greatly by culture, language, and history. 

He agreed. 

But I could tell he was not thrilled that he just lost one of his pieces of evidence. So then he tried the New Testament, and surprisingly, the Feeding of the 5,000. He said: “If you look at that story, there were actually so many more people than the 5,000 because the women were not even counted. Only men were counted because women are considered as belonging to the man.”

I felt like he had just set me up for a home run. I went against this argument with the exact same one as before. I asked: “So do you believe that every word of the New Testament is literal truth, that it needs to be followed word-for-word, and that there are not any remnants of the imperfect culture in which it was written?” 

He said, “No, sometimes the Bible needs to be understood as allegory or parable.” 

I responded, “Yes, so looking at this story, is the key takeaway is that men are superior to women, or are you supposed to pull out that Jesus Christ performed an impressive and impossible miracle in front of a large crowd? What does this story teach us?”

He smiled and he knew he was caught. It felt almost too easy. 

I continued: “If we are going to use Scripture to argue for or against female equality, then we must use all of it—not just the lines/words that seem to justify dominance.”

I brought up the comparison of men and women around Jesus, especially in the Gospel of Luke, but in all four Gospels. Excluding the Gospel of John, the only non-Synoptic gospel for reasons I did not elaborate on, the men around Jesus consistently and perpetually fail in their faith and in their actions. The Synoptic Gospels are highly negative towards the disciples. Additionally, we have Mary’s immediate yes to the call of the angel contrasted with Joseph’s hesitation and initial denial. While Peter was denying Jesus three separate times, and other disciples fell alseep in the Garden of Gethsemane, multiple unnamed women in the gospels were worshiping Jesus at his feet and were healed from their maladies. We have the incredulous Thomas directly juxtaposed against Mary Magdalene who saw the Risen Christ first, tried to tell the male disciples what she had seen, and they refused to believe. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount stressed that the poor, the weak, the sick, and the meek are blessed. If Jesus came to solidify a gender hierarchy, why would he not have said that those in power, namely men, are blessed? To that effect, why would he not have just men are superior?

I continued past the Gospels, sensing where the doctor wanted to go. All those claiming Biblical sexism eventually get to the “wives submit to your husbands" (Ephesians 5:22) quotation. In John’s letters, we do find scriptures to both support and question the equality of women. But once again, looking beyond line-by-line direct decrees at the general messages beyond the letters, I asked him what the main messages are from John’s letters. If you view a single sexist line within the context of the entire letter, does John want to establish clear hierarchy of gender, of sex, or of race? No, as he says explicitly in Galations 3: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” But I did not want to use a single verse to denounce his argument, so I followed up that, “generally speaking, Paul’s letters stress interdependence, respect, love, community, and fellowship.” You can cherry-pick whatever Bible verse you want to support pretty much any belief out there, but what does not change is the overarching message of the Bible. That God is Love. 

He knew I had ousted him from a biblical criticism standpoint. He moved away from the Bible completely and I knew I had won the first part of this debate. Lap 1 complete. The second section of the debate focused on physical differences between sexes.

He said, “Ok, but you cannot deny that men are physically stronger. Plus, the female brain is weaker. I learned about this in medical school. Therefore, they contribute more in the world.”

I told him. “I agree with your first sentence that men, generally speaking, have more muscle mass. I disagree with the rest. Mass and strength does not imply superiority. Furthermore, I would like to see a single peer-reviewed study from a top-tier journal that shows the weakness of the female brain.”

Next came a 15 minute search on our respective phones as we looked for these studies he had been taught in medical school that the female brain was weaker than the male brain. Safe to say, we did not find them. However, we did enter into a conversation about the differences in the female and male brain. This was actually new to me, but I’ll attach an infographic from Northwestern Medicine and give you a link to a Stanford Medicine magazine article I found quite helpful. All in all, these results showed that there were differences in brain connectivity between men and women, but these differences did not show any superiority or inferiority. There were both pros and cons to each neural network, as seen in the infographic. 

In this case, I did not need to convince him that I was right. It became clear that there was no peer-reviewed and widely accepted study that emphasized the inferiority of women. He proved himself wrong, which was a relief for me. Lap 2 complete. This was a draining conversation to have to advocate for my own equality, despite it being fun to win.

But he still could not get past the physical. He said that where we live, men being strong DOES mean that they contribute more. It was clear that we were not just disagreeing—we were speaking from entirely different worlds. In my world, physical strength has almost nothing to do with success, influence, or impact. But in his, strength still matters. Survival is more immediate. Life is more physically demanding, more precarious, more brutal. Higher mortality. More disease. More violence. More instability.

While we were sort of having fun in this debate, it was clear that we weren’t just debating gender. We were debating two cultures that, in many ways, are incomparable. However, we were having a good time. So we continued on to the 3rd leg of the race – gender roles in both human and animal relationships.

My goal and standpoint from the beginning was that in an ideal world, there is no justification for women being beneath men.

We had previously discussed a New York Times article about decreasing birth rates and rising divorce rates in America. He interpreted those statistics as proof that female equality is breaking the family—that women, becoming “enlightened,” are destabilizing what nature designed. I said it was much more complicated. It is true that women have more freedom to choose if they want kids, and if so, how many they would like, and there is much more hesitation among women to start families for a plethora of reasons in America and Europe. I said it really was not his place to blame women for these decreasing birth rates and rising divorce rates. Nor did I find them all that troubling. At least you do not have to prove abuse, incest, or neglect in order to get divorced in America, as women must in Uganda. 

We talked about animals—mostly mammals, because he insisted on them. When I brought up male seahorses carrying pregnancies, he dismissed it. “That’s not a mammal.” His claim about apes was that when the female collects bananas for her family, she gives all of them immediately to the male. Then, the male divies up the bananas for the family, giving the most to the mother, then an adequate portion to the children, and then thinks of himself last. I could neither confirm nor deny this. 

Once again, our two different cultures and socieites made this hard. He tried to use apes and marabou storks as evidence, and I knew nothing about them. I tried to use evidence of seahorses and orcas in the oceans, but I completely understood that he could not talk about marine life when he has only seen the ocean once or twice in his life. 

And yet, somehow, we made progress. He mentioned bees and elephants, trying to talk about their patriarchal characteristics. Fortunately for me, I knew that these were both matriarchal societies. Once I squashed this argument, we moved onto human relationships and child rearing. 

Hillary argued that it is okay to keep women submissive: “It does not hurt them that they are inferior to me and that they submit to me. They do not know any different, so it is not as though they are in pain.” 

I disagreed, flat out. I said that he cannot know if they are in pain. “Have you ever asked a woman if they feel minimized by you, if they feel like you objectify them, or treat them poorly?” He said he had not. I said, “If you are never taught that you have equal value, you may never realize that you are a victim in your society, but that does not mean that you are not still a victim.” I also brought up our rape case, saying that this case exemplifies the horrors that can arise in a society where women are taught to stay submissive, listen to men, and know their place.

I gave him more examples – bride-prices and kneeling practices. He felt strongly about kneeling practices. He said: “I would have never married a woman that does not kneel to me when she asks for something, kneeling is a sign of respect to the husband. It is crucial for the success of the marriage.”

I said, “You need to be kneeled to in order to have a successful marriage?”

He said, “Yes. I do. That is my culture. Women kneel. And they do not mind doing it.” 

I held my tongue, but I wanted to ask: “You cannot be successful in a marriage and treat your wife as your equal? Does that not make you look weak that you need to make your wife submissive in order to keep your marriage together?” 

Instead, I told him that was cultural—not natural, not inevitable, not ideal. He agreed… partially. He also felt it was the right thing to do. He makes his family’s money and when he comes home, he expects to be treated with respect. He equalified that it works both ways, that I need to also respect and love my wife, and he was sad that many men in Uganda do not, but he said that similarly, many women do not respect their husbands, so its a two-way street. Lap 3 was completed, I was getting tired, but I did feel like progress was made. 

Finally, we talked about raising children. Lap 4, the home stretch. I told him I believed that raising children was a team effort. That different partners must work from a position of equality to divy up the necessary work – it may not always be 50% / 50% all the time, but there should be a consistent and explicit commitment to equally contribute to their children’s lives and upbringings. 

He said he disagreed. He believed that it was the mother’s duty to raise, care, and comfort children. Her body is designed for it. The man is designed for breadwinning and the mothers must be in the home to raise the children. He claimed that even his 6 year-old boy already knows that he goes to his mother for compassion and to his father for discipline. Gender roles are ever-present and natural, according to him.

This is when I brought up my sister. This will likely be a surprise to my sister reading this post, but yes, I used her as one of my points of evidence to argue for female equality. I really respect the way that her and her husband have differentiated roles and shared the work of raising children. I explained that both my sister and her husband work full-time jobs. With the money they earn, they are able to afford a daycare for their daughter during the work day. They have just had another baby in December 2025 and they have decided to take their maternity and paternity leave at different times to maximize their incomes and time with their new baby boy. I told him that the jobs of a parent – cooking, cleaning, feeding, putting to bed, waking up, etc. etc. (I am not a parent, thank goodness, so I do not know all that it entails) – seem to be equally allotted. One may do more cooking, one may do more cleaning, but there is no differentiation of roles based on gender. Both can work. Both can clean. Both can cook. Both can feed their baby. 

Here is where Hillary disagreed – breastfeeding. He said that is not possible for a man to breastfeed a baby. I said yes, you are right, but my sister has an entire freezer full of breast milk that she accumulated from a pumping machine. Whenever she is at work and Matthew happens to be the parent-on-duty, he just prepares the breastmilk and gives it to the baby. 

Here is the wall. 

“That’s only possible in a developed country,” he said. “Saylor, most people don’t even know what a freezer is.”

I did not have an argument for that. He is right. This is where I feel like I lost the argument in a way. And I hated that it happened at the end. Returning to my 1600 m analogy, it is like I got a leg cramp on the last straightaway at 1550 m. 

We called it a night. I appreciated that we held a 3 hour debate amicably, respectfully, and calmly. I really appreciated that he took the time to listen. I tried to do the same.

By the end, I had gotten him to say something pretty profound: 

Men and women are equal in value. Marriage should be a partnership. Child-rearing should be a team effort.

This result mattered. I am proud and honestly surprised at how far I got.

The problem remains that he still didn’t believe it could exist here.

Not without technology, education, a complete restructuring of society.

And that’s where I lost steam.

I desperately wanted to come up with the reason for why equality is not only possible here, but absolutely necessary. But the words did not come. 

I felt it. I believed it.  I’ve seen the suffering that inequality causes. But I couldn’t translate conviction into something he could see as real.

I got tired. It was probably after midnight.

And the conversation ended not with resolution, but with a kind of quiet stalemate—progress, but incomplete.

So now I’m left wondering:

What would I say if I had another chance? How do you argue for equality in a system where inequality is functional? How do you imagine change in a place where survival still shapes structure? And what does it mean if even those with the most education struggle to see a different way forward? And what can I do to help?

To be continued…..