Women’s Safety from Masculinity
It is impossible for a man to claim he loves a woman if he does not actively create safe space for both her individual and structural growth. A woman shouldn’t only feel safe out of her relations to a man. A woman should feel safe because she’s a human being.
And it’s in the small things. Like being emotionally present, unlearning gender prejudices against women, stop cat calling, administering physical space, offering support during her menses, promoting the collective freedom of women. Because when your partner isn’t with you, some man wants to bring her down. She’s not entirely safe just because she’s with you.
The bigger picture is we have to create a world where women don’t have to be protected by men, other women nor gender nonconforming persons.
What many men translate as their love for women they date/marry is a form of labour women perform for them. It does not make sense that love by social expectations is perceived to flourish in marriages yet women globally continue to be marginalized in all proportions of existence.
Love and justice must co-exist as breathing in and out, to complete the whole; to sustain life. If this is the case it means we have been lying to women that we love them if we do not ensure their rights are met. It further means then that we’ve been using them.
The world is not developing if half its inhabitants who produce more food, are paid less, their bodies abused, their voices stifled, their realities misrepresented, and forced into communal nurturing, continue to be sidelined for the sustenance of male privilege.
Patriarchal bureaucracy and treachery conceal the brutal violence of men’s love for women by socializing men to toil for their survival in order to keep women dependent on them as opposed to advocating for gender equity so that everyone can evenly have it better.
