Men For the
Emancipation of Women
In a world where it is considered manly to express
the hatred of women, we are calling for a worldwide organization of men who are
for the Emancipation of Women. Men For the Emancipation of Women will be a
serious activist organization and the main work will be organizing collective
kitchens and childcare in order to free women to do other things. Building
collective kitchens and childcare will be a requirement for everyone in the men
for the emancipation of women. The objectives of the organization
are:
1. To emphasize manhood that encourages love of women versus the hatred of
women
2. To organize collective
kitchens and childcare to free women up to do other things.
3. Struggle with other men about the necessity for the emancipation of
women because the emancipation of women = the emancipation of men
4. Respect
women as equal human beings. View
women as complementary sex rather than opposite sex.
5. Encourage women to become involved in political organizations. (We cannot
win without the full participation of women.)
6. To educate men about
the oppression of women and the necessity to fight against it.
7. Respect women as equal human
beings. View women as complementary
sex that emphasizes cooperation rather than opposite sex that emphasizes
competition and educate the youth to cooperate with each
other.
8. To get used to working under
the leadership of women.
9. Always guide and
protect the youth
10. Provide defense for our nation.
11. Build the African Women’s Charity Organization.
What is Manhood? Manhood is an act of
culture. Manhood is to know who you
are and to be responsible to the collective well being of our Nation (Africa),
our people (Africans), our community, our family, and humanity.
Who are we? President Kwame Nkrumah, first president
of Ghana, says, “All people of
African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or
in any other part of the world are Africans and belong to the African
nation.”
A true man has to have land. It is from the land that we get the
necessities of life: food, shelter, clothing, education, healthcare,
transportation, jobs, etc. If a
nation is to be respected, it must provide these necessities of life to its
people. The people must have
control of their land to be independent.
Africa is the richest continent in the world in natural resources, but
African people are among the poorest.
Why this contradiction? It
is because African people are not in control of Africa. This is the reason why African people
all over the world are poor.
The way that we will come to be in power in Africa is through
organization. There is a direct
link between organization and power.
When people are in power, it is because they are organized. The more
organized a nation and people are, the more powerful that nation and
people. We can’t be men without
fighting for control of Africa.
This is our collective responsibility. Expecting other people to solve our
problems of housing, shelter, clothing, transportation, etc. is childlike and
not being responsible, the opposite of manhood. To expect another nation (i.e. France,
U.S., etc.) to solve the problems of Africa is to give up all right to
independence.
How we as men are dealing with our collective
responsibilities can be reflected through our relationships with women. Unfortunately, Africa men aid in our
oppression by oppressing women. Due to our powerlessness within society we base
our manhood on how we can dominate, control, and compete against women. There is an encouragement of
unfaithfulness and non-cooperation in our relations with women. Men are labeled as weak and called names
such as wimps or ___whipped, etc. whenever showing understanding, cooperation,
and support towards women. Other anti-woman ideas that men push to each other is
‘she wears the pants’, ‘you need to get control of your woman’, ‘she got your
nose wide open’, etc. Men are
encouraged to sexually exploit as many women as possible and even taught to
consider this irresponsible behavior as a plus to manhood. Yet this is a reflection of how confused
we are about manhood. President Toure, “We must therefore change mentalities,
fight against old and reactionary ideologies so that the practices derived from
them will disappear from the society. We must cure both the man himself and the
woman, by curing the man.” Acts of injustice can never bring about happiness.
“An unbalanced man is the one who does not respect women. He is an ungrateful
person. He forgets that he must pay his debt to those who brought him forth.
Now, anyone who does not settle his debt to society degrades himself and dies
like an animal…we often say that it is easier to fight against colonialism to
conquer the freedom of the People, than to fight within the ranks of the People
to re-establish social equality. Indeed, in the struggle for social equality we are at once the
fighter and the adversary.”
Men who treat women as equal human beings and
understand that women are the base of society are true men of culture. President Sekou Toure of Guinea states,
“The women, as we have said, constitute the base of society. If today, all the men in Guinea, all the
men in Africa, and all the men in the world, were to disappear, the Guinean and
African society and mankind would however continue to live, because there would
still be women carrying in them germs that would come to replace all the men who
had disappeared. But, let all the
women of Guinea, all the women in Africa and all the women in the world
disappear, and at most, in a century, the whole of mankind would disappear! This is a first reality.” We cannot
exploit the very base of our society without exploiting ourselves.
The African revolution has a high standard of manhood. When we speak of manhood, we speak of
someone who has a high level of consciousness and maturity. President Toure,
“the emancipation of women implies the emancipation of man; it is the
emancipation of the whole people. The struggle it entails is one for all men and
women who are clearly alive to their historical responsibilities…the most
serious ideological blindness, it must be emphasized, lies in reducing the
emancipation of the women solely to the female element; presenting woman’s
emancipation as a problem particular to women is a monumental error.”
“Finally, man and woman are equal by nature: all men need a woman,
whatever the heights they attain; nature requires that man should feel in his
full blossom, in natural and complete unity only in the woman’s company. Even if
all the gold in the world, all the diamonds and all the most beautiful things
were given to men for them to live together, all alone, they would not accept
this. They would prefer to forgo all these riches and stay by their mothers,
sisters and wives…In woman, there is man. It is necessary that through the new
ideology of social progress, founded on social unity, the woman should be in
man.”
“Just as the struggle of African women cannot be waged and pursued
outside the context of the struggle of our Peoples for the liberation and
emancipation of our continent, so the freedom of Africa cannot be effective if
it does not lead, concretely, to the liberation of the women of
Africa.”
We call on all the conscious men who are serious about the liberation and
unification of Africa to join the “Men For the Emancipation of Women”
organization.
