By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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Uganda's constitutional court just struck a controversial anti-pornography law whose provisions included a ban on wearing miniskirts in public.

The law criminalised activities deemed pornographic, ranging from wearing short skirts, sexually explicit songs, raunchy music videos, and related sinful material.

In 2015, musician Jemimah Kansiime became the first person to be prosecuted under the law. She rubbed the moral guardian many wrong ways. To begin with, the petite Kansiime’s musical name was Panadol Wa'basajja (Medicine for men). The offensive video was titled Ensolo Yange (My animal), in Luganda an ambiguity that’s too hot to handle. It shows her in a shower in her underwear, being soaped down by some dude.

The petitioners believe people like Kansiime, who faces 10 years in jail, will get respite. They said the anti-pornography law “encouraged the harassment and mistreatment of women in public and denied them control over their bodies as well as access to public spaces.”

That control over women’s bodies has become one of the biggest battles of our times; expressed in abortion rights, dress, whether or not to bear children, the list is endless.

Women and other rights defenders have upped the battle for women to do with their bodies as they choose, and socially conservative men and women have also dramatically intensified their campaigns and hostility to that freedom. Ironically, in East Africa, at least on social media, the most extreme attacks come from younger people.

Rarely examined extensively is why some men today are probably even more terrified of women doing as they wish with what their mamas gave them than their parents and grandparents were. It is about power, yes, but perhaps not in the way many imagine it.

Recently, sections of the Kenyan media reported a protest by women in the central part of the country, over what they claimed was the shortage of “real” men. Like in many parts of rural Africa, they alleged alcohol had rendered their men useless. The reports claimed they demanded that men be imported from Uganda.

The problem with that is that not too long ago a report indicated that Ugandan women upcountry had the same complaint. That the men had become useless, ruined by alcohol. They suggested that the government bring back the hated poll tax, which was abolished in 2005.

They argued, according to the report, that the tax was a symbol of pride for some men, and encouraged ‘‘productivity. ”

Women — particularly in rural areas — feel that its abolition reduced the productivity of men.

The changes in our economies; the shrinkage and collapse of the big government industrial projects, the growth of small businesses, and the rise of services have played to the strengths of women, handing them domination in these sectors.

Expanded education, a more open world, and urbanisation, increasingly are freeing more and more women from the ideological domination of men.

In Kenya, hundreds of young women covered in religious wear will enter a mall, and within minutes will emerge from the ladies room in high heels, miniskirts, and bright lipstick.

The battle over women’s bodies is furious because, outside making war, it is one of the last bits of power most men still hold.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3