By Charles Ogbu
In Nigeria today, the term "feminism" is one of the most widely used term but sadly enough, it is equally one of the most widely misunderstood.
As I type this, the kind of online war this topic is currently generating on Facebook can best be compared to the June 25, 1950 Korean war. No! I just lied. The Korean war was a child's play compared to this.
What I am yet to understand is why a very simple and noble cause such as Feminism should be turned into such a complex matter that is now ruining online friendship.
I've always thought "Feminism" is a course every reasonable being should champion. I do not see it as a complex topic. It is self-explanatory enough. Regrettably, many of those championing the cause seem to have a very confused and lopsided understanding of what it stands for. It is one noble course that has been bastardized greatly.
Feminism simply seek to abolish all forms of discrimination against women solely on account of their gender. In a nutshell, if you, as a man, has two children; a boy and a girl, feminism is saying it's wrong for you to send the boy to school while you send the girl to go learn how to fix hair in the near-by saloon. Feminism says you should not send Obi, Musa or Olabode to school and send Ada, Amina or Folake to go help grandma with the kitchen work because according to some archaic terribly bigoted mindset you grew up with, a woman's place is in the kitchen.
Feminism is a fight against all forms of discrimination women and girl children are subjected to simply because they have a vagina while the men got a penis. This is basically what feminism is all about.
Feminism HAS NOTHING to do with how a man and a wife carry out their matrimonial affairs within the confines of their marriage or who stays ontop during lovemaking. It is not about who brings feeding money between the husband and wife, either.
Marriage has no universal code. Marriage is not mathematics with a well spelt out formula. It is a union between two or more people who believe they love themselves. In such unions, no written code is required. All that is needed is genuine love and understanding. If you have these two ingredients (love and understanding) your marriage will last longer than my uncle Methuselah and you both will most certainly be happy all through.
If a man loves and respect his wife, the woman will be so eager....too eager, even....to go to hell and come back with the tail of uncle Lucifer just to please the man. You don't need to demand respect from your wife. Just treat her well to the best of your abilities and you will have earned her unalloyed respect. If it's submission you want from her, just shower her with love and care and believe me, na you go see submission sotey you go run come dash some to Charles. With genuine love and understanding, your wife will not even wait for you to treat her like a queen before treating you like a king. Both of you will be dragging who will outdo the other person in your quest to please one another. If there is true love between a couple, once one of them says "co" to the other person, he/she will come even without hearing the other "me" that will complete it "come".
Marriage is like success. It has no known formula that works for everyone. Forget what those so called motivational speakers tell you. Try your own style, if it works for you, stick with it. If it doesn't, jettison it. What made Jennifer's marriage last a million years might be the exact thing that crashed Charles' marriage. In some homes, the women are the breadwinner and they still treat their partners like kings. In some, it is the men who provides while the women take care of things down home and still get treated like Queens. I've read some feminist-wanna-be argue that husband and wife should take turn to wash each other's cloths. This is nonsense! Arrant nonsense! Who are you to tell two adults how to run their marriage??
To reduce feminism to how a man and a wife manage their home is to subject the beautiful term called feminism to ridicule.
We miss the point when we trivialize feminism to how couple run their affairs. If the man is okay preparing the children to school, cooking dinner and washing plates and pots while the woman (his wife) is busy with office work, who are you to chop panadol ontop another person headache? Ees eet ya business?
If the wife is okay with just staying at home to look after the kids and do all the house chores while the man is busy at the office, why should this bother you? It is their marriage, not yours.
In Nigeria today, there are places where the girl child is still being treated like the family's ATM: no education. No nothing. She is just there, waiting for one rich man to come marry her off at a very young age of between 9-10 just so the family could be given some cash and other gifts ontop the small girl pikin head. This is the area we should lay more emphasis on.
There are still places where you hear such idiocy as: "this woman, will you shatap your mouth, don't you know you are a woman!" This is the kind of nonsense feminism is out to address.
So please, can we try to de-escalate the tension that has already been generated by our wrong interpretation of the feminism concept so we can all join hands together in championing this worthy cause.
But wait ooo, do we really need to tell a man who has any shread of common sense in him that it is wrong....very wrong...to discriminate against a woman or stop her from doing certain things which she is qualified to do, simply because she is a woman??
I've always thought that the concept of feminism is an indictment on us as a people because if ours wasn't such a broken society presided over by broken men who seem to derive their life-saving oxygen from treating women like lesser mortals, we wouldn't be talking feminism today. So, I'd say I do not understand feminists who tend to take this course to an unacceptable level except I'd have lied. But in my humble view, trivializing this noble concept by reducing it to how husband and wife run their homes is tantamount to mocking feminism and all it stands for.
Feminism is a campaign to put an end to all forms of discrimination against women and girl children just because they have a vagina while the men have the penis. No man should have to see it as a threat. People who are trivializing this to who washes plates and cooks the dinner between the man and the wife, are doing this cause a great harm.
In Nigeria today, the term "feminism" is one of the most widely used term but sadly enough, it is equally one of the most widely misunderstood.
As I type this, the kind of online war this topic is currently generating on Facebook can best be compared to the June 25, 1950 Korean war. No! I just lied. The Korean war was a child's play compared to this.
What I am yet to understand is why a very simple and noble cause such as Feminism should be turned into such a complex matter that is now ruining online friendship.
I've always thought "Feminism" is a course every reasonable being should champion. I do not see it as a complex topic. It is self-explanatory enough. Regrettably, many of those championing the cause seem to have a very confused and lopsided understanding of what it stands for. It is one noble course that has been bastardized greatly.
Feminism simply seek to abolish all forms of discrimination against women solely on account of their gender. In a nutshell, if you, as a man, has two children; a boy and a girl, feminism is saying it's wrong for you to send the boy to school while you send the girl to go learn how to fix hair in the near-by saloon. Feminism says you should not send Obi, Musa or Olabode to school and send Ada, Amina or Folake to go help grandma with the kitchen work because according to some archaic terribly bigoted mindset you grew up with, a woman's place is in the kitchen.
Feminism is a fight against all forms of discrimination women and girl children are subjected to simply because they have a vagina while the men got a penis. This is basically what feminism is all about.
Feminism HAS NOTHING to do with how a man and a wife carry out their matrimonial affairs within the confines of their marriage or who stays ontop during lovemaking. It is not about who brings feeding money between the husband and wife, either.
Marriage has no universal code. Marriage is not mathematics with a well spelt out formula. It is a union between two or more people who believe they love themselves. In such unions, no written code is required. All that is needed is genuine love and understanding. If you have these two ingredients (love and understanding) your marriage will last longer than my uncle Methuselah and you both will most certainly be happy all through.
If a man loves and respect his wife, the woman will be so eager....too eager, even....to go to hell and come back with the tail of uncle Lucifer just to please the man. You don't need to demand respect from your wife. Just treat her well to the best of your abilities and you will have earned her unalloyed respect. If it's submission you want from her, just shower her with love and care and believe me, na you go see submission sotey you go run come dash some to Charles. With genuine love and understanding, your wife will not even wait for you to treat her like a queen before treating you like a king. Both of you will be dragging who will outdo the other person in your quest to please one another. If there is true love between a couple, once one of them says "co" to the other person, he/she will come even without hearing the other "me" that will complete it "come".
Marriage is like success. It has no known formula that works for everyone. Forget what those so called motivational speakers tell you. Try your own style, if it works for you, stick with it. If it doesn't, jettison it. What made Jennifer's marriage last a million years might be the exact thing that crashed Charles' marriage. In some homes, the women are the breadwinner and they still treat their partners like kings. In some, it is the men who provides while the women take care of things down home and still get treated like Queens. I've read some feminist-wanna-be argue that husband and wife should take turn to wash each other's cloths. This is nonsense! Arrant nonsense! Who are you to tell two adults how to run their marriage??
To reduce feminism to how a man and a wife manage their home is to subject the beautiful term called feminism to ridicule.
We miss the point when we trivialize feminism to how couple run their affairs. If the man is okay preparing the children to school, cooking dinner and washing plates and pots while the woman (his wife) is busy with office work, who are you to chop panadol ontop another person headache? Ees eet ya business?
If the wife is okay with just staying at home to look after the kids and do all the house chores while the man is busy at the office, why should this bother you? It is their marriage, not yours.
In Nigeria today, there are places where the girl child is still being treated like the family's ATM: no education. No nothing. She is just there, waiting for one rich man to come marry her off at a very young age of between 9-10 just so the family could be given some cash and other gifts ontop the small girl pikin head. This is the area we should lay more emphasis on.
There are still places where you hear such idiocy as: "this woman, will you shatap your mouth, don't you know you are a woman!" This is the kind of nonsense feminism is out to address.
So please, can we try to de-escalate the tension that has already been generated by our wrong interpretation of the feminism concept so we can all join hands together in championing this worthy cause.
But wait ooo, do we really need to tell a man who has any shread of common sense in him that it is wrong....very wrong...to discriminate against a woman or stop her from doing certain things which she is qualified to do, simply because she is a woman??
I've always thought that the concept of feminism is an indictment on us as a people because if ours wasn't such a broken society presided over by broken men who seem to derive their life-saving oxygen from treating women like lesser mortals, we wouldn't be talking feminism today. So, I'd say I do not understand feminists who tend to take this course to an unacceptable level except I'd have lied. But in my humble view, trivializing this noble concept by reducing it to how husband and wife run their homes is tantamount to mocking feminism and all it stands for.
Feminism is a campaign to put an end to all forms of discrimination against women and girl children just because they have a vagina while the men have the penis. No man should have to see it as a threat. People who are trivializing this to who washes plates and cooks the dinner between the man and the wife, are doing this cause a great harm.
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