Men and feminism I tried my best to live up to the masculine stereotype, more often than not, not entirely successfully, despite it making me painfully unhappy. Society expects us to be tough and strong and we are raised not to cry and not to be as emotional as our female counterparts. Nevertheless, there are so many things we still need to address in the lives of men. Recently there has been an outcry from men and women on social media against the violence committed against women in society. This outcry gave birth to the hash tag #menaretrash, which rubbed a lot of men up the wrong way. Many men felt that feminists are attacking them and that it is wrong to claim that all men are trash. Many of the women on social media argue that the hash tag was used to call men to order regarding some of the social evils that they have been committing in our communities. The hash tag also called for men to look at the way they treat women and for them to also start questioning the way other men treat women and to make sure that they are treating women right. Soon enough the battle lines were drawn on social media: it was the feminists versus the men. In reality the whole issue was not even a feminist thing to say the least.
Feminism is not about women receiving favour or superior rights, it is not about taking away the rights of men, or what is rightfully theirs. Feminism exists purely to challenge and fight disparities and dissimilarities as well as the inequalities that affect both men and women. After speaking to feminists and other men for almost two months now, just to sensitise myself on the issues affecting us, I discovered that the benefits of feminism aren't exclusive to women and by embracing the concept men can shed the negative expectations that come with being a male. I also learnt that men do not hate feminists they just do not understand what they stand for and what it is that they do. I always dismissed and rejected feminism as a radical idea coined by women, perhaps even believing in the perception that its entire existence was to undermine men, but the more I started learning about it, the more I started to realise just how wrong I was.
It is critical for men to be a part of feminist intervention. If feminism is to attain its goal of liberating women, then men must be a part of the struggle. Indeed, men probably bear more of the responsibility for ending the oppression of women, since patriarchal men have been the main perpetrators of that very oppression. But can men do this by becoming feminists or not?
Although I believe that men can be pro-feminist and anti-sexist, I do not believe we can be feminists in the strictest sense of the word in today's society. Men, in this male-controlled system, cannot eliminate themselves from their own influence, power, authority and privilege next to women. In order to be a feminist one should actually be a woman and thus the idea of men being part of a feminist society is already discarded, we can only stand from the side-lines and support these feminist women.
I may well be accused of explaining or taking a women's' issues and making it all about the men, but the reality is that gender equality is impossible without men being brought to the table. But as long as we have the public notion that feminism is anti-men, we will never be able to truly challenge the injustice of out-dated gender roles that are hurting so many.
A lot still needs to be done and men and women need to come to an understanding about what it is that they actually stand for, that way it will never be an us versus them dialogue every time feminist issues are raised in public.
Until next time. Peri nawa
shona@namibiansun.com