Manhood Redefined?

For the longest time men have been considered the stronger gender and they relished that with all they had. Women were constantly reminded of their place and were to be seen but not heard. They were taught their domestic duties wherever they went. There were even finishing schools to turn them into proper ladies! Imagine that! “My daughter just graduated and a proper lady she is!”, mothers would properly swoon.

That brought about women who were good at what they did behind the scenes and when they appeared in public they would still be able to fit right in. Men of course enjoyed this because there was no power struggle. The power was ‘rightfully‘theirs after all.

Someone somewhere got agitated about the fact that women were only ‘allowed’ to become homemakers and housewives yet there was so much more in them that they could take advantage of and achieve. Thus began female empowerment. The girl child was reminded constantly that she could do anything that a man could and even better. Girls started trying to push these limits and as evidenced by the many successful women in the world, they aced it.

So the girl child is now empowered (although there’s still a lot of work to be done on that in the rural areas) and she can go for whatever she wants without any fears (apart from the fear of failure). That can be marked as a success story right there but it has had its own repercussions. The boy child.

I’m so used to hearing ‘girl child’ such that even the phrase ‘boy child’ sounds a little off, don’t you think? We assumed that the boys had it under control and they eased themselves into the position of having and wielding the power without any opposition. They were probably told they should and not ‘they can’. Women were devising their war tactics in the meantime and the men get the shock of their lives when they run into opposition.

These guys were trained to lead physical wars and not this other kind of war that doesn’t even make sense to them. The war was loud and violent at first but became ‘quieter’ over the years. Were these men taught responsibility, love, confidence, how to be a man, how to be a gentleman, how to take care of themselves and those around them and all the social norms that people live by? I’m not sure but maybe they were the power so they didn’t need to. They dictated what was right or not.

Men didn’t change much of their mindset but women had made some very extraordinary steps. They looked at life differently, had the liberty to do what they wanted and went ahead to do it. Does this threaten the man? Maybe but he can’t show it. He’s a man.

#Mydressmychoice has been doing the rounds this week because a woman was stripped in public. That woman was actually wearing trousers but this is how someone said it actually went down.

It wasn’t her dressing but how she spoke to them that angered them. I agree that everyone needs to dress decently and be courteous to people. Another angle here is the men who got so offended that they stripped her. She dared them, yes, but they stripped her. They have the power so no woman is supposed to speak to any man like that, right?

Correct me if I’m wrong but these men had their egos punched. How is it that a slight jab at their confidence got them so riled up that they turned it into a sexist war? Here’s another example but this time not physical.

   

Something went wrong somewhere when we were empowering the girl child. The boy child was left to ‘fend’ for himself and ended up having the wrong idea of manhood, unless you agree that that is the definition of a real man.