Modern day feminists are lazy bums

Prof Micere Mugo is one of the brightest, most provocative female thinkers ever to emerge from Kenya. She is agelessly beautiful, graceful, and humble despite fate separating her from motherland for more than 30-years.

Her poetic prose is engaging, stimulating and peppered with inventive intellectual candour, borne of pain and experience from her chequered academic career spanning three continents. I love listening to her since I like intelligent people pumping sense into me.

I attended her biographical talk at Riara University. She told us about our inescapable connection to the African-American, contextualising the slave trade and why it should matter nearly two centuries since it was formally abolished. It takes people like Prof Mugo for us to understand the atrocities slavery, the unending damage and scar it has caused and why we must confront the past to face the future. Prof Mugo is a rare breed of the country’s founding feminists. Back then, feminists fought real wars against patriarchy. Not petty wars on Twitter.

And it is their efforts that ensured that many women acquired education and accorded some form of equity and fairness in a boorishly patriarchal society. It reminds me of Prof Wangari Maathai who was derided by men, labeled insane by the establishment, but in the end saved us a few forests and parks, in an era when itchy fingered grabbers were lusting after every single space to erect concrete jungles.

I miss this brand of female thinkers and doers who risked their necks to give us the country we enjoy today. Modern day feminists are a lazy lot. What they do best is don vitenges and turbans or dreadlocks, talk loudly and abuse newspaper columnists on Twitter. They listen to Chimamanda Adichie on YouTube, read her books and think they are qualified to lecture us on feminism and patriarchy.

They are lazy, unthinking and have never written even a single book of original thought, much less a newspaper column. All they do is ask for the creation of more elective and appointive positions for women. Then they hardly go for those seats which end up with mistresses of big shots, while more deserving women are contented to sit, and do nothing.

Kenyan women need to wake up their feminist back burner slumber and do more. Stop blaming men for every ill without pointing a finger at themselves. When former Nairobi County Governor Dr Evans Kidero slapped the then Nairobi County Woman Rep Rachel Shebesh, you would have expected dyed in the wool feminists to rally behind her and ensure that Kidero never enjoyed a wink of sleep. They were mum.

When former Deputy CJ Nancy Baraza got bundled out of office, they were missing in action.  These modern day feminists will wait until there is a non-issue such as the length of miniskirts to pour in the streets screaming hoarse about their rights. Give me a break. Real feminists across the world challenge patriarchy armed with knowledge, facts and insights. Not tears. So how about our feminists doing something tangible.

They can start by ensuring that no girl misses school in Northern Kenya and Rift Valley when menses come calling. Better still, they can fight to ensure the government provides these things to the marginalised. Feminists can fight for better laws that ensure widows are not disinherited in Western Kenya a week after burial.

They can encourage women to be more proactive in national and global affairs. It sucks meeting a seemingly intelligent woman in the boardroom who cannot pinpoint Ukraine in a map. Or they would ensure women in political power raise their voices more in parliament where male MPs behave like we are still in the Agrarian revolution. Otherwise, it is meaningless abusing bloggers and columnist on Twitter. Step out of your comfort zones. Do something.

@nyanchwani
snyanchwani@standardmedia.co.ke