FEMINISM: BEYOND THE SEXIST CHAUVINISM

Women the world over are earnestly trying to stamp their authority so as to prove the equality between the two genders. They have succeeded in rewriting the lexicon with the introduction of such words as Chairperson and Humankind (in direct rebellion to gender-specific words Chairman and Mankind).
In Nigeria there is today a proliferation of female-oriented societies. A roll-call of such associations gives a harvest of sexist channels like the National Council of Women Societies (NCWS), Women in Nigeria (WIN), Association of Professional Women Engineers (APWEN), National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Medical Women Association of Nigeria (MWAN), Association of Lady Pharmacists (ALPS), Nigerian Army Wives’ Association (NAOWA), Police Officers Wives Association (POWA), Naval Officers Wives Association (NOWA), National Association of Media Women (NAMW), Federation of Muslim Women Association of Nigeria (FOMWAN), to mention but a few. Perhaps in some years to come we will begin to witness the birth of some female-oriented societies in the university campuses: Women Mass Communication Students Association (WMCOSA), Women Law Students Association (WLAWSA), etc, are most likely in the pipeline.

The rather pixelated trend is undoubtedly likely to prove intellectual fertile because it suggests new insights and new lines of inquiry into the phenomenon of feminism. The feminist mission has obviously created awareness in women to their domination by men, but this has gone beyond the pages of books and fringes of pulling down pristine values.
From stereotype to outright preaching of matriarchy it is also evident that both parties and the government are fanatically identifying with the cause of women. Hence we have people advocating with great enthusiasm that women should be given a chance.
The Federal Government on its own had not bothered to examine its profligate sponsorship of the Better Life for Rural Women and the National Commission for Women. An avalanche of questions arises here: What is the reason for these sexist channels? Why is it an all-female phenomenon? Why, in spite of the female rampage, is nobody talking of female chauvinism? What explanation has the society that bandied our values for being pro-patriarchy, for being not only placid, but gratified at feral gusto with which women are becoming irresponsible?

If the reason for the women’s guilds is to furnish women with a forum to address things from the women point of view, then either we do not have issues to be addressed from men’s point of view or the parent bodies of some of these societies are male chauvinists. Otherwise, they are not suited to address feminine issues. The essay is a question that has implicitly been assumed to be settled, when in fact, it has not been addressed at all. The question is: Are men and women equal?

In response to the question, we must remember that by equality we mean the same (in size, amount, number, degree, value, etc). Sameness here means identical, not different. It follows then that the question of equality need not to be raised at all, when we talk of men and women.
Biologically, each sex offers particular and unique mode of human personality. The attributes and feelings of a man as a human being cannot be the attributes and feelings of women as human beings and vice-versa. Their mode of human ‘beingness’ is not the same; as such they are not identical.

The question of equality is therefore ill-framed and ill-informed. No one of the mode exhausts the possibilities or the qualities of human beings. This means that each mode serves a criterion of identification of human personality.

Each sex is different and an independent and unique dimension of the human personality. It is therefore a misunderstanding of the principle of equality between men and women. Men cannot be equal to women. Equality is entirely beyond the tomboy attitude in the name of liberation or feminism. The sexist rampage does not only betray the sedulous penchant for equality, but also is informed by a defective understanding of equality.

The role and place of women would rather prove fertile by new insights and new line of inquiry into their individual potentials and endowments. This cannot be achieved by megalomaniac formation of sexist societies, for their roles in a refined and changing society are superfluous.
There is always a parallel between the role and the dimension of human personality which a sex represents. The difference in a way which men participate in the human personality and a way women do try to stamp their authority shows that the niceties of equality is beyond the sexist rampage.

The culture, society and tradition that prescribed certain roles for men and others for women were guided not by masculinist fiat, but by the dimension of human personality which each sex represents. It recognises that equality has anthological attachment; that equality is not merely a matter of linguistic style. The paradox of the present day is thus at best an advertisement of society’s anthological properties of sexes difference.
Our intellectual bewitchment, euphoria or excitement does not becloud our knowledge that equality is not a function of mass; it is unique in the physio-neurological properties of being. It is also not without qualification.

It is worthy of notice that there is nothing good about a woman until she is dignified by being put under the control of a man. Going by almost all religions, God present each sex as a different dimension of the human personality and went a step further to implore women to submit to men in the same way they submit to God.

God’s stance on this question makes it such that to be a feminist, sincerely committed to the goals of feminism, one must either be an atheist or an apostate. Otherwise the Almighty is a creation of men or a misogynist whose purpose of creation is only comparable to Sigmund Freud’s analysis at the finite level. Only an agnostic will hold this sacrilegious view.

-NB: This article was written on 6th December 1991 for a Univesity of Maiduguri campus magazine, Flame for which I was an editor.