Self-respecting men should be feminists

By Mugambi Nandi

Twitter@MugambiNandi

My friend and teacher Professor Maria Nzomo once introduced me to a group of women as an “honorary woman”. I had signed up as a volunteer for the National Commission on the Status of Women soon after completing my university studies.

The introduction was a clever way of disarming the women, who had just finished singing the Kiswahili liberation song “Bado Mapambano!” (The Struggle Continues!) with gusto, and were probably still emotionally charged and might have skinned any of the male species in the vicinity alive, not as an example to others, but as their representative. It caused laughter all around (even as I blushed, if that were possible, with embarrassment). The women wholeheartedly excused my presence. Charles Montesquieu, who is credited with articulating the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers, was a feminist. Thomas Higginson, also a feminist, wrote the following words, which hold true to this day: “I do not see how any woman can avoid a thrill of indignation when she first opens her eyes to the fact that it is really contempt, not reverence, that has so long kept her sex from an equal share of legal, political, and educational rights. A woman needs equal rights not because she is man’s better half, but because she is his other half. She needs them, not as an angel, but as a fraction of humanity.”

Parker Pillsbury, an abolitionist, helped to draft the constitution of the feminist American Equal Rights Association in 1865, and even served as vice-president of the New Hampshire Woman Suffrage Association. (My grandfather told me about a man in Chuka who was among the founder members of the Woman’s Guild in the Presbyterian Church, at the turn of the last century). And now we have Kenya Women Finance Trust, a micro-finance institution, headed by a man….

The term “feminist” often has a negative connotation, with feminism being equated to hating men. Extremist feminists, patriarchy and misogyny may have something to do with this. Some people object to the idea of men being feminists by arguing that it amounts to hijacking the feminist movement.

Dame Rebecca West once remarked that she had never been able to find out precisely what feminism was, and that people called her a feminist whenever she expressed sentiments that differentiated her from a doormat. Aristotle is said to have stated that the courage of a man lies in commanding, a woman’s in obeying; that a female is an incomplete male or “as it were, a deformity”; that in general “a woman is perhaps an inferior being”; and that female characters in a tragedy would be inappropriate if they were too brave or too clever. On his part, Socrates said that one sign of democracy’s moral failure is the sexual equality it promotes. Feminism seeks to establish equal political, economic and social rights for women, including the right to equal opportunity in education and employment. International Women’s Day, an offshoot of feminism, is observed to honour women’s advancement. The day is also meant to remind us of the continued need for action to ensure women’s equality is gained and maintained in all aspects of life.

Addressing the 58th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru said the government’s agenda for women is premised on genuine conviction that empowering women is key to development of any nation. The words “genuine conviction” caught my attention and got me wondering just how many Kenyans genuinely believe in empowering women. When told that Euripides was a woman-hater, Sophocles said: “He may be, in his tragedies, but in his bed he is very fond of them!”.

Real men support the empowerment of women.