With the latest thread of non-feminist tweets from Eunice Atuejide, a presidential aspirant, the conversation around feminism has doubled, if not tripled or quadrupled. People everywhere have some sort of opinion on the subject and I even heard someone say clearly that “this one must be Chimamanda’s sister”. This baffles me though, and for good reason.
At the risk of sounding ignorant, I looked up the meaning of feminism. The definition I loved was simple and apt. It read: the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of equality of the sexes. I also saw feminism defined as a range of ideologies, political and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes. This includes seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men. To me, these definitions are as simple as they come. Confused, miseducated and extremist people have turned the narrative into whether the woman’s role is in the kitchen or not and succeeded in building a mountain out of a molehill. Left to me, I only hear GENDER EQUALITY, nothing more! MY opinion, of course.
Our amiable Eunice Atuejide who, for reasons best known to her, has decided to shake the feminism table; going all out to say that SHE’S NOT A FEMINIST, that “the word means too many things she doesn’t like”, yet in the same thread of tweets says that “equal weight should be given to our views as it is neither a man nor a woman’s world”. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I hear GENDER EQUALITY here!
This matter of feminism has been over-flogged and still, people just don’t get it, or choose not to get it. Females should stop making the narrative into the fact that they don’t ‘need’a man but understand that they are not INFERIOR or ‘the weaker sex’at all. Males should also stop feeling entitled and expecting women to be subservient to them. We should generally look out for the interests of all sexes, without placing one over the other, socially, politically, in the workplace, home and everywhere.
My 2cents!
Article by Soomto Ajanma
