The danger of feminist literature

Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong’o are undoubtedly the fathers of African literature.

While their books have been widely popular, one thing they never quite escaped is the incursion by feminists who thought the female character had been suppressed and her presentation made through the biased masculine view of male authors.

Arguably, these fathers had no authorial obligation to narrate the story giving due consideration to gender representation. Such would most certainly have been overridden by the African story during the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Africa.

Thankfully, Achebe did charge the women to write their stories and that spurred many writers such as Flora Nwapa, Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta, Grace Ogot, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye among others to tell the story of the woman in Africa, not necessarily from a feminist point of view. Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter definitely set the pace.

Inheritance of patriarchy

The books these women wrote were extensively read and helped empower the modern woman since they tackled some of the worst inheritances of patriarchy.

They tackled widowhood, the problem of balancing maternity, family, career and education and really challenged the male author who had the misfortune of being branded chauvinist whenever he wrote anything sexist about women.

For long, literature coming from women was never deservedly criticised since they had been given catch-up room.

While the women liberally manipulated the male character to show how they had been degraded, both in fiction and really life, it was intellectually fashionable to agree, even if grudgingly, that they had the right to write bad things about men as much as possible.

The fact that men had all the prime positions in employment and politics and women had to work extra harder to break the glass ceiling helped much to change their narrative.

But barely a half a century later and the tables have turned.

By endlessly empowering women, men have been “disempowered” and if we don’t correct this early enough, we are creating a “mess”.

In urban places, you can hear loud murmurs that there are no men any more. The current generation of men being raised have been accused of being less of men.

Devoid of interaction skills and at home with video games, football and social media. They even lack skills of interacting with women.

Sociologist Agnes Zani of the University of Nairobi in a past that “women stepped up and men have not done anything. Most men have grown without a father figure and have no clue of handling the modern empowered woman.”

The empowered woman has a tendency of picking up all the known negative masculine traits. She smokes, drinks, supports a football team, drives badly and is overly aggressive.

In the long run, we have a woman who has all the attributes of a man – and mostly by merit.

But, where do we leave the boy? The TV, the numerous magazines and the education system has paid too much attention to women. It is now skewed towards women and it is at this point that male authors and everyone concerned should begin empowering the boys.

Misguided masculinity

And this does not mean inculcating chauvinistic and misguided masculinity. It means correcting the perception that all problems of women have been caused by men.

We cannot shoulder the blame of gender inequality as the new generation of men, any more than the present generation of Germans can shoulder the Hitler blame.

They say that we objectify them in music video, yet no one ever assumed that they derive the same erotic pleasure during the dirty dancing that is now official in clubs.

Increasingly, many music videos now have men who just have to show well-toned bodies, the muscles, and looks to boot to women. Yet it is the same objectification of which women have been crying foul.

A time will come that men will have no voice. Unless another creative empowerment begins, the future is not bright.