FEMINISM IN THEORY OR IN PRACTICE: A VIEWER-RESPONSE CRITICISM, DECOLONISING THE FEMINISTS - Prince Wekpa
You know, I see feminism simply as ‘one of the many components of postmodernist views of cultural life that has been used to interpret literary texts and theorize literature,’ therefore adding more to the theses of literature (Olushola, Ayodeji Akanmode).
Rest assured that this is worth your reading and time. However, this essay, in its scary length but packed with knowledge, I had better advise, is scarcely the type you may want to jungle over simply because you are about to enter the bathroom or about to start work in the office. No. It is an essay you sit down comfortably for and chew bit by bit for days especially for the slow readers. You may save it to your archive and go back to where you stopped.
STORY BEHIND THE SCENE
Ladies nearly always reiterate this, especially in moments of depression and heartbreak, ‘He left me . . . he abandoned me . . . even after I gave him my all . . . I lost my virginity to him . . . .’
I have kept wondering whether the men involved gave stone. The moment we stop feeling that the other gender contributed nothing to us is, and should be, the beginning of personal reassessment of what we should willingly give and what we should not. For, none forced us to give what we gave!
A GENERAL OVERVIEW: THE READERS AND READING
Let me start by establishing some hard facts about religion which offer a build-up to this essay. It is not to influence the readers' judgements about their own perspectives of the world but to highlight and at the same time foreground and crystallise the aspects of the world's realities —stark and sordid realities!— which this essay selects and on which it is built.
This world, we are told as we learnt, is a build-up of —and was built by— religion. Whatever the philosophical, theological or scientific criticism postulates for or against this, the common sane person out there cannot rule out the fact that there was and still is the first cause and mover, the very one who caused all things to exist.
This essay, like most feminists, operates within that principle. The word 'sane' used here is chiefly intended to lack the presupposition that anyone who does not subscribe to the theory of first cause rejoices in insanity, but the presupposition that the theory of first cause is the most reasonable, tenable, attainable, acceptable and viable theory every human needs and 'should' need. That is what we want: no one wants to be fathered by apes! For, the question of 'Who —apes? monkeys? chimpanzees?— are your fathers?' is the very position where, for example, the rhetoric of Darwinism has remained silent.
That fact established, central to religion is, as we know, the existence of two variables: God and man. These two variables are unequal. They form a binary opposition where, in the logocentrism of affairs, society privileges the former over the latter as the ultimate reality, the transcendental signified.
This inequality is not only both consciously and perhaps unconsciously made to exist so that the two variables do not converge in power but also naturally created because one is the creator of the other. The former (God) thus becomes the transcendental truth, the logocentric object, the centre of existence whom the latter (man) worships— in awe. The working dialectics between these two variables is the whole idea of religion.
That said, at the very heart of inequality is capitalism. In every binary opposition, the superior is always seen to oppress the inferior, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly. The superior creates principles by which the inferior is circumscribed. In Camara Laye's THE AFRICAN CHILD, the rite of passage, for instance, is celebrated, the principles of which are prescribed by the supernatural which is dialectical to man.
This capitalist sapping by the very 'transcendental superior' is much clearer in Wole Soyinka's THE STRONG BREED, where the gods grasp man with cannibalistic tendencies for failure to abide by principles. Even though Femi Osofisan came up with his theatrical antithesis to this capitalist theatre in his NO MORE THE WASTED BREED to reject the capitalist supernatural traditions posited by the former, his still has its own continuity of this rule by the gods who have offered the very environmental justice which serves as the foil to Soyinka's.
So, even if every one of us tries to be a socialist, capitalist tendencies are still fundamental elements of our natural inheritance. It keeps dividing, and dividing, and dividing. It is genetic. It has genes which divide and replicate themselves. Remember, for those in the know, this is the thrust of post-post-colonialism.
In Freudian, psychoanalytic discourse, for example, we are made to understand that sometimes and sometime in our childhood, we have this feeling that while growing up we shall be the best, the wisest, the richest and the most educated of all our siblings, whether or not we are the firstborns. This is one of the things that inform our childhood psyches.
This natural feeling alone towards our brothers and sisters has undertones of capitalism, this time, held in the mind. It introduces a mental binary opposition —the haves versus the have-nots— only existent in our thought. It is oppressive in nature as it passes the message that while we become the best in the realm of affairs, the rest of our siblings should be subjected to us. After all, the linguistic parsing of the superlative word 'best' reveals the presupposition of —and dialectic struggle between— superiority and its other end of the cline, inferiority.
Every one of us in one way or the other in life thought so, and perhaps still does. It transcends this level to the friendships we keep. We desire that we become the best of our friends. While walking with them we desire we become more admired, cherished and favoured by others than they. Even when our friends are clearly doing better, we are resolute with such thought and that only leads us to the feelings of jealousy. We hear of one tolerant friend and the other a tolerated friend. Intrapersonal violence and protest begin. This manifests in the form of hidden, unvoiced competition with our friends, even when in some major cases this competition is absolutely unnecessary.
In the face of all this we would not admit our lone acts of jealousy and their attendant competitiveness to our friends. But, innately, that is the truth. And the rigidity or flexibility as well as fluidity of this emotion varies according to individuals. I was privileged to edit and write the foreword of a book about friendship. The major issues the author was suffering to thrash, I saw then, were issues arising from this imagery I have so far presented.
It is fairly certain now that humans are built with inherent capitalism or, I rephrase, with inherent capitalist thought. In Freudian tripartite psyche —id, ego and superego— the id, which embarks all three, is chiefly where all these competitive, capitalist desires reside. Since it is the embarkation of them and being the repository of libido (the source and bedroom of psychic energy and psychosexual desires), the id is therefore forcefully made to repress these desires (or capitalist tendencies) by the later-acting ego and superego as the mind grows reformed and refined by sociocultural norms and tenets and taboos.
When these desires (this time, capitalist desires) are buried and, so, rest in the residual, repressed and suppressed unconscious (their burial ground), they each time tend to pop out and manifest in our adulthood in the form of dreams, language slips, or both, in theoretical and indeed practical terms. Even Sigmund Freud himself explains and recognises that only small portions of the ego and superego are conscious.
Thus, all three are, for the most part, strictly unconscious, meaning that whatever and however someone’s actions are, those actions whether or not tamed by the ego/superego are purely exhibited unconsciously; it is who they are. (Of a truth, what defines one is not one’s conscious but unconscious behaviours.)
These desires pop out more so when they are ignited in adulthood, especially according as the environment determines. At this stage they become our metaphysical fears. So, capitalism is a continuum. I might not be too wrong to state here loosely that the three witches in Shakespeare's MACBETH ignite Macbeth's repressed capitalist unconscious. This makes him eliminate his friend in a competitive fashion and sends him to his doom.
So, when society arbitrarily displeases itself and subjects itself to 'oppressive' capitalism by consciously and unconsciously privileging the supernatural over itself, where it allows God to direct its paths, then it is easy to discern that this world is a construct of capitalism as its activities are restrained and constrained by it. Then, it is very easily discernible to know that the observable capitalism (or subordination) was not merely the construct of society itself or whoever and whatever make up society but a pure construct of Who made society. This finds —and has found— expression in the Holy Book.
The anonymity of authorship of patriarchy is here nullified, for its authorship seems divine. So, men, capitalism is not your making; women, it is not yours either. Capitalism seems to be a societal justice, a justice divinely organised to organise the chains of rule in the world’s politics to have a holistic living. If every man and supernatural is equal, the world may not be a better place or may not be habitable or may not have a purpose. Even in the promised heaven (or paradise) to come, there is still an organogram. Or are we not political animals again?
In principle, it is not just that men in pre-societal era deliberately rose to build a society with the sole aim of making and driving capitalism to be at the top to create a pyramidal side effect where men sit on the top and women at the base. No. Rather, as pristine as it sounds, it is merely a production and reproduction of hierarchies by the supernatural who is solely behind the construction of society in this way since it, the supernatural, is responsible for the formation on the one hand of both men and women themselves and on the other hand of society.
THE DIALECTICS OF FEMINISM
Feminism is intractable in the face of definition and proper description. It is now like a chameleon. As days roll by, it assumes different shapes and colours, sometimes unequal shapes.
It has claimed to be defined contextually, giving rise to what I call sub-feminist ideology which is African feminism (Black feminism) which has further given birth to Alice Walker’s womanism, Catherine Obianuju Achelonu’s motherism (the Afro-centric alternative), Molara Ogundipe-Leslie’s Social Transformation in Africa Including Women (stiwanism), Akachi Ezeigbo’s snail-sense feminism, the present-day ‘Me Too’ age by Chimamanda Adichie, etc.
But in the main, this idea of context, or the indices of it, has been severally and at several times abused. What is now left seems to be individuated definitions: each person now has his own modification of the definition of feminism. In fact, at present, each person seems to be a walking definition so that feminism is only easily understood immediately you understand and can interpret the personal attitude, character and behaviour —whether good or bad— of that person defining it.
Thus, feminism is rarely united in itself. Since in principle human behaviour disagrees, contrasts, clashes and contradicts, especially when it comes to the women (a hard truth!), feminism is therefore a house divided against itself.
This is evidenced when you hear people (especially the females) make all or any of the following viral statements:
1. 'I'm a feminist, but my own feminism includes this and these but excludes that and those. For example, I can never slap my husband, unlike some other feminists would do.'
2. ‘Chimamanda Adichie’s kind of feminism is too strong. She has gone to extremes. I cannot be her type of feminism. It’s gonna be embarrassing the extremes she’ll go to if she gets married. Oh, she is married? I thought she was not. How does she stay with her husband?’ (Probably picks up her phone and begins to browse. To this one, confusion abounds.)
3. 'I'm a feminist with the exclusion of lesbianism.'
4. 'Who tells you that feminism includes lesbianism?' (To this one, she never knows or understands anything feminist; probably a newbie in the game, an innocently new initiate.)
5. 'Give us our right for same-sex marriage! I'm a feminist!'
6. ‘I’m a feminist with a small ‘f’, not a capital 'F.’ (I then begin to wonder who then is with a capital F.)
Etc.
By these statements, personal sentiments have crawled in and taken the day. The women or feminists disagree among one another. The concept, or theory, no longer has any scientific basis —no observable, general description— but rests to suffer in the hands of just anybody, including those who know little of what it is.
We see this shattered agreement through such mediums as what feminists say and write —in their novels. Such mediums also include cyber literature or e-literature (what I could call 'netriture'), comprising Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and so on. Most of these feminists pose a stance in their literature or in whatever mediums they employ but act very, very differently in their internal and external disposition. What should we now believe and believe in? What now is feminism or the true essence of feminism? What is its common core? Does the common core seem to have disappeared?
Over the years, there have been recurrent single stories, touchy and catchy ones at that, which feminists use to adopt and conscript the gullible students and youth, especially of course the girls, into the feminist ideology as these stories attack people's emotions. The currency of these stories seems to concretise their self-serving ideological conscriptions and crystallise seeming particles of truth into a long-standing, life-changing ideology into these ‘children’. Some such stories are:
i. the issue of boys raping girls;
ii. women not allowed to rule;
iii. in Igbo, women not allowed to break kola nuts;
iv. husbands beating their wives mercilessly (domestic violence);
v. men not helping in the kitchen and women being over-ladened;
vi. in certain tribes, women not allowed to discuss and negotiate bride prices;
vii. women neither seen nor heard;
viii. women not given the opportunity to go to school;
ix. women not allowed to rule and be voted for; etc.
These narratives are emotional and as such captivating. Any ear would want to dance to their music. But the ear will be blind to the fact that there is more to feminism than meets the eye of emotions and hidden persuasion.
Students hear these stories passively or from classrooms or inaugural lectures of acclaimed feminists and then, ipso facto, become inaugurated in themselves into the abyss of feminism, an abyss about which they simply know nothing. And then you see feminism being preached by the underaged and by people who are neither married nor acquainted with any heartfelt marital experience.
Some hear them through social media by reading others' timelines or handles or by joining similar groups; these ones propagate the issue even more than were told and than the feminists themselves know it. Yet, they are innocently bereft of the full details of feminism. These people rarely know that most of these feminists live happily with their husbands and do not practise –one bit— what they preach. All of such people I personally categorise as immature students of feminism.
CAPITALISM PLURALISM OCCASIONED BY FEMINISM
In my undergraduate days at the university, precisely when I was a sophomore, we were introduced to this course about feminism entitled GENDER STUDIES. Immediately, we lost our girls in our class. I mean, we completely lost them in control. They became intolerable towards us, the boys, particularly about anything that contested their strength, that tried to pose a comparison between both genders, or that ignited such acts of 'equality versus inequality'.
Our girls as yet had walked freely with us, obeyed in discourse, demanded help as when needed, tolerated our own weaknesses (which we did have!), shifted for us to sit at the edges of the chairs for their own benefit and not for our own strength, allowed us to prepare the ground not even on their behalf but in their behalf, and so on.
However, the table was overturned when as usual they heard those aforementioned narratives during the introduction of the course. It disrupted the joy, cooperation and unity we (both sexes) shared. I concluded then that feminism comes for nothing but to steal, to kill and to destroy. That was my thought.
Almost all the graduates in those days produced their projects on feminism until it got to a point where the department grew so angry that they had no other choice than ban the theory awhile from undergraduates’ research theses.
The course became 'gendered studies', instead of 'gender studies', as ALL the studies were one-sided: only about the exoneration of women and the denigration of men. I concluded again that feminism is a production and reproduction of another capitalism. Capitalism pluralism. It is a case of same old story I have been narrating here –the inherent enactment of capitalism and the multiplicity of it depending on who is on board.
Now, just as I began stating some hard facts about religion and its continuous duplicity of capitalism, the same way human relationship is. In every unequal relationship, capitalism duplicates, and this duplication is nearly always done by the privileged in any binary.
On the one hand, a few feminists could challenge the validity of the previous paragraph by stating that they agitate for equality in the stead of inequality. Yes. As I did state earlier about the feelings which pop out from us in handling matters concerning our siblings and friends (we would always want to be the best), I can boldly state that no relationship is really equal. Let us tell ourselves the truth. Physically, it might seem so; but from what goes on inside us, which is the emotional and psychological aspect, it is not.
So, equality is just a matter of the thin line between the surface and deep structures. It only exists in the former, not the latter, and of course the latter controls the former. If women became privileged, at the other end of the spectrum, they would do same (what they think men are doing) and then men would want to rewrite their story as women are currently doing. Matriarchy would as well be the norm, the default, the unmarked item. It is just a question of capitalism divides (just as we have meiosis in biological studies) and of who is chiefly in the picture, the logocentric.
Capitalism exists everywhere, for failure to have it is utopian. Mentalism first inhabits and captures it, that is, it starts first from the mind. Animals in the forest have capitalism –why do we have Niyi Osundare write his ‘The Leader and the Led’ where he uses animal characters to paint pictures of hierarchy of animals in the form of the great, greater, greatest in the arena of politics? To help that fact, why do we have preys versus predators, upon which the theory of Darwinism is based. Plants themselves have it as there are trees which do not allow others to grow around them. The spirits, the world of the supernatural, have it. In fact, it is the nature of Nature!
This does not oversimplify the ideals of capitalism in its entailing negative inscriptions. But then, in every rule, as seen here, there is capitalism.
On the other hand, other feminists, in challenging the validity of that same paragraph above, could do so by claiming that they go for no equality but complementarity. This is even the worse. It expands —and further massages— master-servant oppositions, hence more plurality of capitalism. In my grammar knowledge, for instance, a complement is a 'completer', an 'attachee', which HELPS the main item to get completed.
Now, in the context of capitalist and Marxist discourse, this is exactly and better explained in the pyramid of socioeconomic and political relationship, where the elite (or the bourgeisie) stays at the very small top of the pyramid and the masses (say, the proletariat) at the very large base of the pyramid. Now, what do the masses do or what is the relationship between them?
Here is the answer which you and I know: The masses complement the elite and they have to be there for the elite to keep standing and existing. They are a necessary part of the elite. The elite needs them as it is propagated by them, and they are the majority.
This pyramidal account accounts for the difference between men (the top) and women (the complements, the base) in such a complementary-role philosophy and ideology assumed and agitated for by those complementarity-preaching feminists. Who knows why the women now are in the majority in the globe? Could it be that religiously, the heavens have answered their prayer? Their prayer of being the complements, the base?
This is not intended to jettison women's existence; neither is it an indictment to womanhood nor is it intended to jeopardise them simply because I am a man. No. I would still write this were I a woman. Rather, it chiefly describes the pure but obviously hidden reality of the politics of complementarity assumed and advocated by some feminists who have chosen not to be radical.
Even if they seek to overturn or fight against this reality, the fight itself is another entrenchment of capitalism: it is just a matter of who becomes the privileged, who is at the forefront, for no relationship could be utopianly equal. If there is, it is only utopian. We cannot have two masters or two presidents leading a country.
But again, let us re-examine it further. Is this not the normal position that naturally, or religiously, women were pronounced to be? A complementary role? A helper? A completer of some lost rib? Have they forgotten? Need they struggle for an ideology to remind us of the already known? Are they not begging the question by so doing?
Yet, it was this same idea of this complementarity which was earlier pronounced for them they had once rejected reason for which they went for an ideology (feminism). Do I sense a confusion round about them in reasoning here or is it a case of misunderstanding of a very simple concept?
There is a fact that has always been marvelling me. Nur Syuhada Mohd Radzi and Mahfuza Musa wrote a research paper entitled ‘Beauty Ideals, Myths and Sexisms: A Feminist Stylistic Analysis of Female Representations in Cosmetic Names’. Here is the link:
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10656/1/11607-47845-2-PB.pdf
The duo studied female-cosmetics names, given by advertisers and copywriters, to examine how the names reveal more genderlectal meaning than merely provide advertising information about the functions or ingredients of the products. The findings were that a majority of the cosmetics names (such as ‘Orgasm’, China Doll’, ‘Sexy Lips’, ‘Boyfriend Cheater’, Wicked Attraction’, ‘Striptease’, ‘The Sexpot Series Eye shadow’, etc) portray women mostly as sex objects, thereby promoting more patriarchy. Instilled in those names are sexisms, beauty ideals, myths, dreams, fantasies and stereotypical beliefs of feminity.
The puzzling nature of this is that a good many of, if not all, feminists (both males and females) use these beauty products and cosmetics and enjoy them. Some of them so powerfully patronise these cosmetics that they become makeup artists.
Similarly, a certain doctor presented a paper in the University Conference of Language and Literature (UCOLL) held by the Department of English, University of Uyo. He studied the language of Nigerian circular musicians to examine the words they use to describe women. He found out that the following words are used: tomato jos, yori-yori, sugar, sweet potato, apple, pepper, etc. He analysed the fact that a majority of these names are condiments, edibles, which portray women as only consumables, ready to be ‘eaten’ by men. Yet, many of these feminists dance to the tune of these songs; some are even dancers!
Last year here on Facebook, a particular girl won the face of an organisation. When asked to give her valedictory speech, she said among others that she would use her office to advocate gender equality and eradicate women’s marginalisation. And I asked myself, how would she advocate gender equality and subvert marginalisation when as a model, she was almost naked on stage? Is it not one of the aspects feminism stands against? So, is her resolution in her valedictory speech not contradictory with her new position? This is indicative of the fact that feminism is now based on how an individual perceives it, how she wants it, and thus it has lost its common core! Technically, it is practised nowhere.
My female friend and classmate then who has heard, known and read books of feminism with us, when asked the kind of man she wants to get married to, says she needs a lion-hearted man and not the lily-livered. Any man who cannot slap her, challenge and confront her would have been too weak for her liking. I am sure feminists have not heard this. My friends here on Facebook (Titi Mathias, for example) who were my classmates then should know the girl I am talking about. This shows us that the convention of privileging the logocentric, here the man, in any binary opposition is naturally (and religiously) innate. But the stark truth is that she passed the course meant for this. Feminism in theory or in practice?
This story is corroborated by those stories which flooded the media, about which I hope almost everyone here must have heard and read, about friends desiring each other’s husband and wishing they—switched! Why? Because the one says, ‘My husband is too cool and too caring for my liking. I wish I had yours who is harsh, iron-and-fire-hearted and beats you;’ and the other says, ‘I wish I had yours who doesn’t beat and is very caring. . . .’ These mismatched couples and clauses tell us that what works for one might not work for another; so do not prescribe!
Another female friend and classmate of mine (Chiamaka-Adaobi Anwaegbu) in my undergraduate days also reported to me that during their gender-equality sensitisation programme which was part of their Gender CDS group’s programmes in NYSC, the female corps member who was the spokesperson later misbehaved: after telling the secondary schoolchildren about gender equality and feminism, the spokesperson started looking for who to help turn some weight needed to carry out a cosmetic-making project or so.
A female student offered to help. Immediately, she refused this student who offered to help saying, ‘You can’t. You are a woman. This is meant for boys.’ Is this not ridiculous? Someone who has just finished preaching feminism? She never realised it until my friend, Adaobi, called her to order and whispered to her ears, ‘I thought you had just finished teaching them about gender equality and feminism.’
This tells us that capitalism or the idea of privileging in a binary is innate and resides in us. Even though we (feminists or not) pretend to repress and suppress it, it sometimes pops out in us as we grow and go.
Finally in this part of stories, girls nearly always reiterate this, especially in moments of depression and heartbreak, ‘He left me . . . he abandoned me . . . even after I gave him my all . . . I lost my virginity to him . . . .’ I have kept wondering whether the men involved gave stone. The moment we stop feeling that the other gender contributed nothing to us is the beginning of personal reassessment of what we should willingly give and what we should not. For, none forced us to give what we gave!
To this effect, feminism as a counterbalance of whatever is referred to as an existent patriarchy has little direction since patriarchy is not installed by men but conventionally is. I mean, patriarchy with its seemingly attendant capitalism is an innate, unconscious agreement of both parties (men and women). This agreement was deposited on them and not by them or either of them. Neither of them knows how it all started. It is first a religious thing (divine), then a biological thing before its physical manifestations. Fighting it means fighting the source, which as explained earlier on here is drawn from divinity, from religion.
When Chinweizu in his book ANATOMY OF FEMALE POWER describes how men need their own salvation and liberation from the tenacious grip and shackles of women’s continuous childhood-to-adulthood oppression (mother power, bride power and wife power), it therefore means that capitalism is inborn; everyone has it –both men and women. In every relationship it is showcased.
Implied by Chinweizu is the fact that since capitalism is inborn in every man and woman, man needs liberation from matriarchy as much as women do from patriarchy. Thus, patriarchy and matriarchy exist in every home! Why then form feminism? Should men not form ‘masculinism’? What can men do that women cannot? Rape? Domestic violence? Homosexuality? Mention!
The situation is even more pitiable for men. Chimamanda Adichie, in her speech in INBOUND 2018,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qq27Ha07RHw
reveals that men are not duly trained relatively, because society does not train them. Metaphorically, this is one of the many cases where society privileges the other and decentres the centre. She says that why women are always cautioned by mothers and parents to sit like women and avoid being raped, men do not receive such cautions. How many times are men cautioned against raping women?
This view is also reflected in a friend of mine’s post (Edunoh Victor) here on Facebook, a post he entitles 'I'LL TRAIN MY BOY(S), AND LET SOCIETY TRAIN MY GIRL(S)...’
https://www.facebook.com/100002953064445/posts/1534929379948816/
Men, the duo says, are allowed to roam the streets secure in the knowledge that they can take care of themselves –even when they cannot!— but women are guided and guarded with caution in every street they enter. They are told the dos and don’ts, the pros and cons. They are regulated. Men are not.
In another post of Edunoh’s,
https://www.facebook.com/100002953064445/posts/1755709504537468/
this is what he has to say:
‘Of all the men in your life, you were asked to be submissive to one and you won't let us rest. Just one o! Some of you practically worship your male bosses, even outside professional terms, but find it difficult to be submissive to the only man the Bible instructs you to be loyal to. The single among you are already planning on how they will make their home a field for the test of equality in marriage. Sadly, in your various work places and schools, you've not been a competition to your male colleagues. These are the right settings for the test of equality. You consciously and unconsciously submit to your male colleagues at work and school, who are in some competition with you, but refuse to submit to your husband who really is not in any competition other than helping you grow in all possible ways. I have no words.’
To crown it all, the narrative of feminism need not be. It is just redundant, an unnecessary duplication of a norm since each party has been fighting for liberation. If it must exist, then masculinism should also exist since both parties are at one point or another oppressed. Most feminists ideally lead others to not submit to their husbands as the Holy Book demands, but in their own families, they do submit. In reality, feminism is only theorised and not practised.
The extension of feministic view has led to bastardised and clumsy use of language. The repetition of ‘he or she’, the epicene ‘s/he’ that relatively lacks pronunciation, the-worst-that-in-writing-should-never-be-encouraged ‘he/she’, and the rule-invading ‘they’ has all lumped up in the people’s mindsets to produce such sarcastic (religious) references as those captured in the images below. Instead of, for example, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,’ you will likely hear feminists who would want to vehemently break stereotypes say, ‘In the name of the mother, the daughter and the Holy Spirit.’
Some ladies are rather confused in themselves. When they hear about feminism, they are feminists. Next, they hear about womanism; they are womanists, no longer feminists. Next, they hear about stiwanism, they are stiwanists. And it continues in that manner. The real point of all this is the fact that the mainstream of feminism, if at all it ever existed, has disappeared. And again, the division into multiple ideologies hangs yet again around capitalism divide I have talked about. Everyone who claims to be a feminist has their own way of making finer distinctions of their own so that what you hear about the core knowledge of feminism in this mouth is different from what you hear in another mouth.
Rather than descend to a fight, rather than develop a mindset (which a lot of other ‘beneficiaries do not in totality agree to), why not save your strength from it –as it hardly works— and focus attention on studying and understanding the individual differences of your spouses since family is a microcosm of society? Are you aware that there are some women who chase this illusive, very sentimental ideology of feminism to the point that they refuse to get married or resort to divorce at the slightest mistake of their husbands? These ones become dried up in their looks —of course they need men, they need husbands. You now realise that feminism is only meant to reset and offset the proper lines of nature.
I rest my case here: know that feminist ideas have divided homes!
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