Dear women
I write to you to honour the promise I made to men sometime in March. In what was one of my earliest blog post, I wrote a letter to men to commemorate Women's Day. I asked them to choose to challenge the system that keeps haunting us as sisters, as women living in the shadow of patriarchy. I pleaded with them to take bold steps and help us fight for our recognition as being human not just women. I promised them that I will definitely address them as subjects in my letters addressed to women. Now the time for that has come and I write to you ladies, hoping to address the plight of our fellow brothers.
I write this two days after International Men's Day. Sadly, I have also noticed (I'm sure that you have noticed too) that it is not as widely celebrated as Women's Day is celebrated, but we are not about to get into that. On November 19 every year, this day is celebrated for many different reasons that have to do with men, the major one being to celebrate the contributions and achievements of all men in society. It is the day that as society we should come together and honour the positive contributions that men make to society.
Now, I know some of us might be far gone into this feminism thing that it almost borders on the edges of misandry. So you have all these questions, have men ever done anything positive? Are they even worth celebrating? Are they not the ones responsible for creating this monster we call patriarchy? I get it, I really do. As women we have suffered oppression chained to the rotating wheels of patriarchy and naturally, maybe unfortunately, have blamed men for it. Not to exonerate them completely, but society birthed patriarchy, not men. Men and women breathed life into this patriarchy thing, men claiming dominance and women accepting docility, submitting to what was subjugation and oppression dressed in fancy names like respect and honor. All I am saying is that before we entirely put the blame on men, remember patriarchy is society's baby, and you do not need a Harvard certificate to know that it takes a man and a woman to make a baby.
This year's theme for International Men's Day is Better Relations Between Men and Women. You would think that as humans born of men and women getting together, this would come naturally. You would think the mere fact that nature saw it fit to unite a man and a woman in bringing life would make us equals. The sacred ties between brothers and sisters sharing a life together, the love that comes with friendships between males and females and definitely the meeting of souls between a man and a woman vowing to spend eternity together, you would think all these ensure that there are better relations between men and women. We have more than enough avenues to stand together as one, celebrating each other's light and living together in harmony. But unfortunately, as the most advanced society, we are far from that.
Dear women, is there anything more fundamental to our collective well being rather than better relationships between men and women? I do not think so. But a closer look at the state of things, relations between men and women are far from healthy. They are still strained, marked by hypocrisy, unhealthy competitions, mistrust, concealed hatred and an urge to hurt each other to prove either that society is right or society is wrong. The relations between men and women are still under the influence of societal and cultural conditioning, where one sex still believes they are much better than the other resulting in the monster called toxic masculinity and the other sex doing anything to fight that but instead of fighting the toxicity they fight everything associated with it, resulting in the emasculation of men. Masculinity in its true form does not oppress and ought to be celebrated, but well, we fight more than just evils disguising themselves as masculinity, we are fighting masculinity itself rather than cherishing it.
I understand your anger my sisters, even though it seems misplaced. Each day, horrific stories are told of the predation of women at the hands of men and not just any men, men in their lives, from fathers killing their wives, to brothers stabbing their sisters, male bosses forcing themselves on their female colleagues, uncles molesting their own nieces. We heard millions of voices, female voices rise to tell horrific tales of abuse in the """"$%^^&MeToo movement and as such it would seem our anger as women is justified and almost natural and we have no reason to celebrate men at all. These negative feelings thus become almost natural and can even seem to be unavoidable, as women we have been hurt but hating each other is not the solution.
As women, as society, we will not be able to move forward and call out patriarchy for what it is if we are to treat men as adversaries rather than allies. It takes both men and women to slaughter the monster, our femininity and masculinity complementing each other. It takes both men and women to eliminate bias in the workplace. It takes both females and males to tread a path towards real equality and harmony.
As women, we need to embrace unique male strengths and treat men as individuals.
As women, we should always remember there is beauty in being either a man or a woman and men and women are not interchangeable and maybe that is a good thing.
As women, we should fight for change but still get to celebrate progress.
Let us not constantly bludgeon men with examples of what not to do, let us take their hands and show them how to do it better.
Again, without losing the sense of urgency that is needed to address gender disparities, let us not lose sight of good men, hear their stories and continue to celebrate them.
Let not our anger lead to a backlash among men who will withdraw as a defense mechanism rather engage to grow and change.
Dear women, let us value manhood as we value womanhood so as to help make practical improvements for positive relationships between men and women.
Let us keep fighting for a better world.
Happy International Men's Day!
Yours sincerely in the fight for gender equality
Mitchel (a woman).
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