My 'Myopic' View
Please tell me you caught the sarcasm in the post title.
So my previous blog post (see here) was something I put out on social media a few days ago. Different people gave their 2 cents on different social media sites including my friend, Jerry Ossai. His comment struck me for several reasons. Let me explain.
Jerry is right. Feminism is a concept created to advocate the equality of rights for women (I choose not to say 'Fight'). It was coined in the 1890. At a time when women were marginalised, by law, in despicable ways. Jerry is right. The advocacy was for women to be accorded rights based on their competence.
But you see, that leads us to assume that men were (are) accorded rights based on their competence when in fact, a lot of rights were (are) accorded based on gender. Not just rights; responsibilities too. So, in a world were there is balance and equality, should there be an alternate advocacy for men to be accorded rights and responsibilities based on their competence? If there were, what would we call it? Maleism?
Putting the feminist conversation aside for a moment, will we close our eyes to the pressures men face to be 'Men' just because they have responsibilities assigned to them by virtue of their sex? What then happens to a man who is not able to live up to those expectations and responsibilities? Off the top of my head, I would say he would be described as effeminate and then, seeing as it is becoming more and more common place, he would feel the need to be female and go for it.
Stepping back to the feminist conversation, can we establish that the frontline matter in it should be human choice and competence, regardless of sex - women wanted (want) to be allowed to do the same things men did (competence), if they decided they wanted to (choice). Ok then. Can we then establish that if what is good for men should be good for women, then what is good for women should also be good for men? Cool.
When you then put all the men and women on the same pedestal and consider each one based on choice and competence, are we not then considering every human as human first, before gender?
Feminism: the belief in equality of all genders and that we are human before our gender.
Ah...ma favourite social commentator (sounds good, lets add it to ur wiki page)!!!
ReplyDeleteLets not forget that those who accorded men and women their roles as we now see as default, had a premise...and take it or not, that premise was gender!
Human choice and competence cannot be regardless of sex - i am not saying women should not be allowed to vote or drive cars or do certain jobs...but competence is first physical before its intellectual! And choice... female folks really need to know when to draw the line...y'all want pants like men, now want to be able to go topless like men, wanna groove till 40 b4 having kids like (some) men (ain't nothing wrong with these)...but lets truly be human here, biology, nature defines and differentiates us...maybe we need to redefine d word feminism, along with all the T&Cs!