When we hear the word feminist in today’s society, we immediately think of a woman challenging manhood. Many have misplace meaning and misinterpreted the whole concept of feminism. There is no way one would make mention of the fact that they are feminist without receiving that despising look from those around them. I remember a 13-year-old girl who told her mum that she (the girl) was a feminist and her mum exclaimed “God forbid!” as though the innocent child had placed a curse on herself. What then is wrong with the word “feminist”? It happens to have been negatively stereotyped by society
A feminist is simply a person who stands for equality between both genders (male and female). Why is it an abomination for a woman to marry as a non-virgin yet no one utters a word when it comes to the men? By the way, that would be a great paradox because the men are expected to marry virgins whereas they go about “misbehaving”. I know of a family were the female children live like complete prisoners. The only places they visit are the church, school and they are back home yet the male children can freely go out to visit their friends and even attend birthday parties. The only reason their parents gave for not granting their female children the same privilege was that “they are women and have to learn how to always be in doors for the world of adventure is meant for the men”. Permit me to say that was the weirdest response I had ever heard.
Gender inequality has gone further than we can possibly imagine. Haven’t you experienced a situation whereby a woman was despised and even humiliated simply because of the fact that she didn’t bear a male child (mind you this is after having four able girls). Had God not created Eve would procreation be possible? No, yet the birth of a girl child is so much despised in the absence of a boy in the family. Some traditions even go as far as measuring the strength of a man with the number of male children he has got. I had a neighbor who was thrown out of her matrimonial home (simply because she bore 3 girls) by her unsatisfied mother-in-law who was in need of a grandson to continue with her late husband’s linage.
To continue, this discrimination has even been forwarded to food (ordinary food). In some regions in Cameroon, the women are not allowed to eat chicken gizzard and would be a taboo if they dared. So, it is common to find the women keep the chicken gizzard aside after cooking for the man of the house or her first son in the absence of the father under the umbrella of him being “a man”. A man you say? He didn’t even participate in the cooking yet the poor girls who had been perfumed with smoke from the burning wood were not to have a taste of the fruit of their own labour. The common argument is that the man paid for the woman’s bride price. What happened then to the Indian women who paid the groom price yet you still find some women treated as slaves (in the case were she doesn’t bear a male child) in that same society.
However, we miss it when we mention only the female gender when talking about feminism. Feminism as earlier stated is advocating equality among both genders. Is it common to find parents tell their sons not to shed tears because he is ‘a man.’ Pain is meant to be expressed, why make a child grow up in pretense. Society has made ladies to have a ‘right’ to spend while the guys settle the bills. If a lady should go out on a date with a guy and she take care of the bills it is interpreted that the guy in question is incompetent. This attitude also moves to matrimonial homes were the women pocket their money and expect their every single need to be met by their husbands. Society would often say “you can’t provide for your family then how do you call yourself a man?” A real woman is a helper not a burden to her husband.
Again, society has made it an abomination for a woman to earn more than her husband. This attitude has caused many men to lose their sense of purpose in society because they have been transformed to an epitome of failure when they find themselves in such a situation. It is obvious the society is after power, authority and position, and as such society has painted a woman’s success to be a threat to a man. This behaviour explains why some men are so frustrated when they lose their jobs for they automatically become a disgrace and a bunch of ill luck.
Many boys are deprived of living for themselves, rather they have to live so as to continue with their father’s legacy so they end up living the lives of another. Their dreams, ambition and purpose end up buried under a life of pretense.
Society permits women minimize their knowledge of everything but a man has to know, I mean it is an obligatory. For instance, if he didn’t know how to operate a phone properly then next statement would be, “and you call yourself a man”
This issue might not look as serious as it is supposed to be but if appropriate care is not taken, our future would never be a better one because old vices destroy the opportunity for change. Enough to this old mentality, enough to our old culture, and enough to stereotypes we have created for ourselves. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie would say “culture does not make people, people make culture, so if it is in fact true, that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we must make it our culture.” Let’s build a feminist society, a society that stands for gender equality.
Lenga Daisy
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