Should patriarchy be accused of gender inequality and inequity?

By ELSIE EYAKUZE

Every year some random guy out on the street will loudly declare that because it is International Women’s Day (IWD), women should buy them drinks and treat them for a change. And every year I end up lecturing some poor stranger on how that’s not what feminism or Women’s Day is about.

IWD is not some kind of Lewis Carol rabbit hole topsy-turvy day, and if we could swap out some gender disadvantages for advantages I am pretty sure many of us would hand over menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth for economic privilege, general safety in public and a world that is literally crafted around our every little need.

We rarely shine the light on the dangers of patriarchy for men that contribute to society’s overall dysfunction when it comes to gender issues, especially at the individual level. One can’t do selective human rights work, that’s not how it goes.

A hard truth is that feminism cannot complete its mission of defeating patriarchy without addressing what patriarchy does to boys and men too.

You know that Male Idiocy Theory I wrote about last week? The theory that tried to explain the gender disparity in winners of the Darwin Award, where it is believed that men, left to their own devices, will get up to no good?

Well, I think it is the most brilliant bull poop excuse I have ever heard in my life to avoid personal responsibility and integrity. And the more I think about it, the more I find how pervasive it is.

We live and die by generalisations that are empty when it comes to how specific life really is. “Oh, you know how men are” or “haha, typical woman” allows us to laugh away the damage of not even trying to see the individual beneath the stereotypes we substitute for perception and nuance.

My ‘aha!’ moment came through listening to multiple parenting discussions on Tanzanian social media. I witnessed testament after testament of experiences that are gendered growing up, and an anxiety about the plight of the boy child that I had no idea was so serious or so widespread.

You know what struck me? How do boys and men have so much leisure time to get up to nothing? This covers everything from unemployment to unemployability because of failure to mature into a functioning member of society, to the acceptance that boys will be mischievous and it is normal for them to cost you a pretty penny in hospital bills. Where do they find this time, and the daring too?

I don’t want to pretend to have any concrete answers to tackling the patriarchy’s negative effect on boys and men, nor do I even think it is okay to have something called Male Idiocy Theory but I have a suggestion.

What if the counterpart to Male Idiocy Theory is as simple as the saying that “the devil makes work for idle hands?” Bored children of any age will get up to mischief, bored teenagers and young adults even more so.

Why don’t we just reduce the amount of leisure time that boys and men are currently entitled to and send that surplus to girls and women who may need it?

This would also serve the purposes of gender equity somewhat, and I did say I would explain the difference between equality and equity.

Equality demands that everyone be treated exactly the same way and be expected to do exactly the same way, so if feminism were actually demanding gender equality, for example, men would be required to find a way to carry pregnancies to term, we could try and punish minors as adults if they broke the law, we would do away with disability accessibility features like ramps in buildings, special education, sign language during broadcast events.

These extreme examples are used to show that equity, by contrast, is exactly what brings about all of the things most of us consider decent because they cater to people as they are and try to give everyone a chance at a decent life: accessibility services for people with disabilities, child-sensitive legal systems, no ludicrous physical demands outside of the capacity of the phenotype your genotype assigns an individual, women’s products that aren’t leveraged for extra profit by companies just because they are “Pink and meant for women,” equal pay for equal work in the home and outside of it.

That last one is nuanced, true, but still a valid argument to be made. If we as parents and as society in general looked at the balance of work, labour (paid work) and leisure time between the genders and reformulated that equation, I am of the strong opinion that we would see a cascade of positive outcomes.

Boys who have housework to do once they get to school, equal to the amount their sisters do, will find less time to be bored and jump off balconies with an umbrella as a parachute.

Feminism has schools of thought, and mine is a fairly contemporary one: focused on gender equity, concerned with patriarchy’s effects on all genders, open to and allied with the LGBTQI+ movement because people are people, and interested in innovative and creative solutions.

I am by no means representative of all feminists out there, but at the very least I am invested in restoring the humanity of all of us by challenging the Male Idiocy Theory for the poor excuse that it is.

Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report: E-mail: [email protected]