Women are the Complimentary Sex (Not the Opposite
Sex)
From President Samora Machel’s
book An African
Revolutionary “The Exploiters’
Power is to Oppress the People, Our Power is the Power of the People”
“At the dawn of mankind, when the change from ape
to man occurred, pre-humans lived in nomadic bands governed by the concern for
survival. The entire productive effort was consumed immediately, and often
failed to satisfy basic needs. These pre-humans lived on roots, wild fruit and
animal corpses.
Mankind’s forebears lived like this for hundreds
of thousands of years. At a certain stage these forebears began to use bones or
sticks to dig up roots, to hunt animals. They began to use tools to produce
their food, production albeit highly primitive began, and the ape gave way to
man. Production distinguishes man from the beast, unleashes his brain, and opens
the way to progress.
With the emergence of production, initially
gathering and hunting, and in a second phase agriculture and animal husbandry,
mankind begins to develop. A division of labor arises and an improvement in
tools for production and production techniques. So man’s productive effort can
now yield more than he himself needs for subsistence. Production generates a
surplus.
The existence of surplus production provides the
material basis, the objective conditions, for forces to emerge in society that
seek to appropriate the surpluses to the detriment of those who have produced
them.
The society divides into opposing classes, with
differing interests: some want to appropriate the fruit of the labor of others,
while the latter object. Human relations which have until now been co-operative
become relations of conflict between exploiters and exploited.
Obviously this whole process took hundreds of
thousands of years: opposing interests had appeared in society, the fundamental
issue in that society was one of ‘power’: who could make decisions, on what
criteria, and in whose favor.
A given group can impose its interests and project
its aims only if it controls the society, or in other words rules that
society.
Ruling a society means organizing the society to
serve the interests of the ruling group, imposing the will of this group on all
other groups whether they agree or not. With passage of time, the ruling group
makes the other groups regard its domination as the best, the fairest and the
wisest, and one that corresponds to the interests of all.
This goes on until the moment when new forces
within the society, realizing that their interests are prejudiced by the ruling
group, unite, struggle, overthrow the former power, and establish their new
power, reorganizing society to satisfy their own appetites.
Until a recent period of mankind’s history it has
been the various exploiting classes—slave-owners, feudalists, bourgeoisie---who
have successively dominated society and organized its politics, economics,
ideology, culture, administration and legal system for their own
benefit.
This was possible because the exploited masses did
not have sufficient class consciousness to unite them, or an ideology able to
give them an overall view of their interests and provide the appropriate
strategy and tactics for the struggle to win and exercise power.”
As men when we get together we discuss many
topics. But one topic that we rarely discuss is women’s emancipation. Are we for
it or are we against it? a
fundamental topic that we do not discuss is
, which side are we on, the oppressors or the oppressed? We may fear this
fundamental question because of how it may affect the relationships within the
group. We must make a decision about our commitment. Are we for the masses of
our people (which include women) or are we dedicated to a convoluted notion of
manhood that comes straight from the oppressors’ education. This is a part of
what we call the class struggle. If a man is anti-woman then he is against the
people. He may be part of the population but he is not of the people.
We are going to quote President Seku Toure from an article “Women in
Society”: ”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…the exploitation of women by men is so
“natural” that to eliminate it, the regime of exploitation itself will have to
be attacked up at its very roots…And if we want to strike at the root of the
evil it is the mode of production that must be aimed at…Any man who exploits
another cannot be truly free, for the injustice, exploitation and oppression he
metes out to others constitute his infirmity, blurring his vision of freedom and
dignity…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…If, the women’s condition as compared to the man’s is the
one of the exploited, it is normal that, representing the most dejected class,
she makes the problems of the revolutionary organization her own problems when
she is aware of them. And when the enemy was saying that our Party was just a
Party for women, it was too narrow-minded to realize that in fact, he was
expressing the fact that our Party was already and still remains authentically
and radically revolutionary…We must first of all commit ourselves to the
building of a society whose mode of production excludes any exploitation of man
by man. Then, the political, economic, social and cultural options must be
clear; finally, the objective attitude in the class struggle must also be
clearly defined. When this is obtained, we can legitimately expect that within a
minimum time, qualitative changes will set off qualitative transformations,
sweeping away old objects and old customs. It is only then that the woman and
the man will fine themselves on an equal footing…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
African cannot be effective if it does not lead, concretely, to the liberation
of the women of Africa.”
We learned from our sisters in the Organization of Angolan Women
that has over a million and a half
women in its organization that women are the complimentary sex, while the
exploiters teach that women are the opposite sex. What is the difference? When
we see women as the complimentary sex it is in a spirit of co-operation. When we
see women as being the opposite sex then it is more in a spirit of competition.
Because most of us were educated by the exploiters we have come to think that
manhood has something to do with the domination of our women. This is the
greatest example of people being against themselves because the only way that
the people will have power is for men and women to be strongly united against
the exploiting ruling class. Men having power struggles with our women aides the
oppressors. It is also very important that women see the necessity of political
power because it is the only way to liberation of the people. It is foolish as
men for us to engage ourselves in a power struggle with our women and then be
cowards when it comes to fighting for the political power that is necessary for
the people to control their destiny. MEN AND WOMEN ARE COMPLIMENTARY SEXES. The
emancipation of the women means the emancipation of the men and the whole
society. This is precisely why we are Men for the Emancipation of
Women.
