“The revolution and women’s liberation go together. We do not talk of women’s emancipation as an act of charity or out of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the revolution to triumph. Women hold up the other half of the sky.” – Thomas Sankara

I am not the epitome of gentleness or manhood and neither am I the best representation of the ideal man (Whatever that looks like). However, I will not wait to attain such before I start acting and working towards being a real man. Being a male is a biological state, while ‘man-ing’ up is a choice that every male ought to consciously make and act accordingly. You know what they say; ‘You are a man among man’ while that is honorable, I think it is more honorable to be a true man among all mankind (Both men and women). Being a man comes with a chunk load of responsibilities and one of those responsibilities involves being a defender and protector of the beautiful, delicate and awesome female species.

When I first coined this term ‘Heminist’ in a public gathering it made the macho feel uncomfortable and the feminine surprised and almost perplexed. ‘Heminism’ is what I refer to as the advocacy of women rights by all mankind and men in particular on the grounds of acknowledging the quality and importance of the female gender to humanity.It’s easy to become a heminist in all its nobility or perhaps in its mere humanity when one considers a woman as a WOMAN and not some piece of meat to be devoured or humanity’s second class.To fight for her is to fight for humanity. To fight for her is to fight for our future. Unless of course if humanity has become an asexual species but even then it can never be a reason enough to segregate, abuse or ill-treat women.

Not investing in the girl child is very expensive and will cost us dearly tomorrow.Before you take me for another activist on a rant, allow me to say that the boy child matters and the girl child matters too. The boy child is very important and the girl child is very important too. The boy child deserves the best and the girl child deserves the best too. The boy child has a bright future worth nurturing and protecting and likewise the girl child. I am certain that many of the cries from the girl child are not for special treatment but for justice, love, and treatment deserving of the daughter. No egos ought to be bruised when the girl child asks for recognition but real men’s ears will be quick to listen and act. In the presence of heminism, the extremes of feminism would be non-existent. I also acknowledge that there are many men who are abused and segregated too but let’s discuss that equally important issue tomorrow once am done with this one.

Domestic violence and abuse of women has become an epidemic and surely becoming an inherent immoral behavior which should never be allowed to exist in any social construct regardless of culture or religion. Statistics on domestic violence, rape, and violation of women are horrendous, to say the least. Alanna Vagianos in 2014 published an article (Updated in December 2017) in the HuffPost titled “30 Shocking Domestic Violence Statistics That Remind Us It’s An Epidemic”. Among these shocking statistics are; (1) 38,028,000 women have experienced physical intimate partner violence in their lifetimes, (2) 8,000,000 days is the number of paid work women lose every year because of the abuse perpetrated against them by current or former male partners. This loss is equivalent to over 32,000 full-time jobs. While this is in America, imagine the statistics in Africa and those cases which go unrecorded or rubbished by the authorities?

How then can we uproot this disease of barbarism, injustice and domestic violence? I don’t quite have the answers and strategies to this yet, but I have the quest to see gender quality improved and not just activism of equality. Let’s start by acknowledging that we have a problem. Men ought to acknowledge that some of us behave in a manner that is unbecoming of a man. We must all acknowledged that the girl child is often sidelined and confined to kitchen duties (particularly in Africa) and how this disadvantages her and robes her of a bright future. We must acknowledge the imbalances in our society before we can address them. We must then have an open discussion………….To be continued

By Lazarus Takawira