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Summary
In recent times, many men have proclaimed themselves as feminists while opting to keep their male privileges. In this article, Dogo Joy examines how their self-proclamation negated the doctrine of feminism.
Ezra Olubi, the co-founder of Paystack, shook the internet when a myriad of his 2010-2012 tweets surfaced. He authored more than 30 posts where he casually talked about dating and raping children, cats, and contacting STIs from his non-consensual relationships with cats and the like.
Even more is the fact that he is indeed a man who strategically surrounded and barricaded himself with many prominent Nigerian feminists as friends, and this includes giving them huge financial favours. He also identified as a feminist, progressive, queer and was in an open relationship with many women, some of whom were progressive-leaning.
In the wake of his unveiling, we found out he had affairs with employees, including many cases of abuse, as detailed by his ex-girlfriend, Max Obae. Above all, he was very rich, so he had the funds to maintain his façade. This very troubling situation raised the issue that has plagued the feminist movement: Can men be feminists?
Arguments against male feminists
Many have argued that men cannot be feminists for many reasons, which include:
1. Systemic privileges and oppression: All men, including male feminists, still benefit from systemic privileges and oppression. For instance, there is a societal belief that men in general are more intelligent than women. This, in turn, translates into men having higher employability prospects, receiving higher pay, promotions, and being cited more in academic journals, with their intellectual contributions being taken more seriously than those of their female counterparts with similar qualifications, even if they were merely repeating what women have been saying.
This stereotype benefits all men alike, regardless of their feminist inclination. Even if the male feminist in question would ordinarily treat job applicants alike, mindless of gender, if he were in the position of a hiring manager, however, other sexist hirers will consider gender when determining employment, pay and promotion, hence giving him (the male feminist) an unfair advantage over female applicants with similar qualifications.
2. Shady motives: Some time back, a news broke out about a self-proclaimed outspoken male feminist who murdered his girlfriend. When this happened, other women began to speak. They said he approached them, but along the line, his behaviour became questionable. Apparently, his activism was merely to sell him off as ‘safe’, and he used that image to lure women, sleep with multiple women, which eventually led to the murder of one.
3. They can choose to drop out at any time: A very popular example of such is Solomon Buchi. He paraded himself as the King of feminism, breaker of chains, destroyer of toxic masculinity and several other self-praises that even women never attributed to themselves. In the wake of his rampage as a self-appointed feminist spokesperson, he received many cash gifts from women.
Some women and people were impressed that such words were coming out of a man’s mouth, and we are talking about things that women have been saying for centuries. Only to wake up one beautiful morning to disavow his feminism. In his words, feminism has no place in his faith.
Subsequently, we saw how he descended into a misogynistic rabbit hole, which included calling his first-class graduate wife ‘not that smart or beautiful.’
In fact, on their first date (based on their recounting), when she told him she studied actuarial science, he said, it was the first time he has heard of that course in his life, nonetheless, instead of using it as an avenue to bond with her by asking her to tell him more about the course, he went to chatgpt and generated questions on that field which he used to test his wife’s intelligence.
Apparently, her first-class bachelor’s degree and two-time membership on the Dean’s Honorary List were not enough; she still needed an expert in the field to test her intelligence, as he had a phallus between his thighs. In his words, when her answers aligned with those of ChatGPT, ‘he knew she was smart.’ It didn’t stop at that. After their marriage, his wife used her foreign visa to grant him entrance into the country as a spouse.
From what I gathered from the bulk of their media timeline, she is the primary financial contributor in the marriage. He had stated that she pays the rent. Nonetheless, he released many tweets that some people interpreted as him taking an indirect shot at his wife by advising ‘all women.’ In another post, he stated that his wife, being very smart, should be content with being a stay-at-home mum and use all that intelligence to raise his children to be smart. In his view, that is a greater achievement than actively pursuing a career.
He also stated that at some point in their marriage, he began to grow resentful of his wife for not being submissive enough. The decline was so acute that it was almost impossible to envisage.
Many men like him have gratuitously fallen back on their male privilege, which has led many feminists to doubt the ingenuity of a man’s confession concerning his feminist inclinations.
4. Image laundering: This issue is highlighted in the trending Ezra’s case. He surrounded himself with so many outspoken feminists that when the news broke out, there was a period of silence from those feminists who were known to be frontiers and amplifying trending cases of GBV in the country.
Until the issue became so hot that silence could no longer avail them, it was at that point that some started putting out disclaimers. Even at that, I notice that they didn’t outrightly name him. They only made a blanket criticism of GBV and distanced themselves from men who do such without outrightly naming him.
The thing with such men is that they are so confident in their abuse because they know no one will believe the victims. They have already established a reputation for themselves and gathered ardent followers.
5. They do not understand women’s lived experience: Another argument against male feminists is that they are not women, so they do not understand our lived experience. They do not know what it means to be a woman in a world designed for men. At best, they can only sympathise.
6. Confusion of terms: Many men believe they are feminists just because they gave birth to their daughter and are now ‘scared’ that the very things they did to other people’s daughters would be done to their daughters. It is not a shocker that many men claim that they learnt how to respect women when they gave birth to their own daughters.
Many men think that just being nice to women is enough to make them feminists. I had an interaction with one of them about three months ago. He lived in the same lodge as me. I was cooking and came out to throw out water. Since I was sweaty, I didn’t want to wear a fresh shirt, so I tied a wrapper around my waist. He saw me and said, “Ordinarily, I do not allow women to tie a wrapper on their chest and come out.”
I asked him if I could ask for his permission. When he noticed I wasn’t joking with him, he decided to tell me a story of how a lady in his previous compound, whose wrapper fell on the floor while she was carrying a bucket on her head so she couldn’t remedy the issue quickly enough he had to be the one to tie it on her chest and it was embarrassing for both parties.
I told him that it is no concern of mine, and it’s not his place to dictate to any woman what to wear. In the course of the discussion, he said, “I am a feminist,” And I instantly cut him short and told him without minding words, “No, you are not.”
For that month, I made it a point of duty to tie a wrapper around my chest and come out even when I didn’t need to. He apologised for being too intrusive and simply turned the other way when he saw me. Many men believe they are feminists because they show a little care and concern for women, even though they do not believe women are their equals. They confuse chivalry, sympathy and patronising for feminism.
Another section consists of men who suffer from confusion of terms, confusing the terms philanthropy and feminism. They think donating to the cause of women’s rights, volunteering or operating an NGO makes them feminists. No, you’re just a philanthropist or a volunteer, not a feminist. We do not want sympathy from men; we want actions. In the words of Farida D, “We do not want men to save us, we want to be safe.”
7. Feminism of convenience: For many male feminists they scathingly criticise GBVs that they do not participate in. For instance, they scathingly criticise rape, FGM, child marriage, and trafficking because they do not participate in it, but the moment you begin to speak of male privileges that they actively benefit from, they begin to falter.
When you begin to talk about unpaid labour, five of them will fall off the race; when you talk about women not needing to change their names to their husbands, 20 of them will fall off the race. At that point, they begin to accuse you of extremism, of doing too much. The reason is that they were comfortable attacking rape and trafficking because they are not participants. Still, when the discussion shifts to male privileges they actively benefit from or wish to benefit from, they accuse you of misandry and extremism.
That is when you begin to hear them say things like:- “Feminists do not even know what ‘real feminism’ is all about. They should focus on the ‘real issues’ like child marriage.”
Now they want to mansplain what issues they consider real so that they never get to challenge the very privileges they enjoy at women’s expense. They say: “If a woman wants to bear her husband’s name, it is her choice and it should not concern you.” “Feminism should not be brought within the house.” “Submission does not mean the woman is less. You do not understand what submission means.” “We are now in the post feminist era. Equality has already been achieved.” “I don’t like modern-day feminism.” “I don’t like the Nigerian version of feminism.”
So which version of feminism do you like? Why is it that you want the version of feminism practised in yonder land but not the one practised in your country? Is there something you’re hiding? Why is it that you like the feminism practised in the 20th century and other bygone eras but not the one practised in your own century? Is it that you don’t want feminism to apply to you in person?
For self-proclaimed male feminists like these, they want to tone police feminists, they want to fine-tune what should be considered ‘serious feminist concerns’, and they want to cherry-pick which women’s rights to support, provided it doesn’t affect some privileges they do not want to let go of. However, you either support women’s rights or you don’t. There is no middle ground!
8. Requiring cushion landing: Once, I saw a “male feminist” share a rape joke. When I called it out, he said it was a joke and I needed to “liven up a little.”
Some years back, a “male feminist” was involved in a scandal and as expected, feminists on Twitter called him out. This man expressed great displeasure at the fact that the women he once defended would be the ones to “turn on him over a minor mistake.” He expected gratitude for defending women; he expected a cushion landing from feminists for a misogyny he knows we would ordinarily not tolerate, just because he had advocated for women’s rights in the past.
I have also seen some “male feminists” express some kind of inconsistency in their messages. Sometimes, they say something that makes you wonder if it is the same person talking, but since they have previously said some things in favour of women, we end up giving them the benefit of the doubt. This unreliability and inconsistency in message has also caused many feminists to decry male participation in feminism.
9. The intellectual discussant: I once had one on my Facebook list when I was a budding feminist. It took me a very long time to actually block and get rid of him. Whenever I discuss women’s rights, he doesn’t come out and outrightly insult or discredit the women blatantly like other misogynists do; instead, he tries to reduce women’s lived experience to intellectual discussion and, by doing so, discredit it.
In fact, he was so calm and respectful in his approach. He carefully hid his misogyny under intellectual discussion, rhetoric and pseudoscience. He was not ready to learn; he didn’t clearly come out to say that victims are lying. Instead, he was constantly ‘creating reasonable doubts’ around their stories, even when he didn’t know those victims and his ‘reasonable doubts’ were merely speculative. Like the way VDM made Mobhad’s death to be all about paternity fraud, he also created doubt out of thin air.
It took a long time for me to realise he was a closeted misogynist masked as the voice of reason. He was on many mutual friends’ posts doing the same. When I saw through his façade and blocked him from my personal page, JD Njeb, he searched for my Facebook NGO page, SheResonance, to ‘air his opinions’. The first day he did, I made it clear to him that his opinions were not welcome on my page. I didn’t block him from that page; I wanted him to read, learn, and remain silent. He never spoke again.
My personal view on the matter
Now that I’ve mentioned the many reasons why feminists look upon male feminists with scepticism, I want to share my own personal view on the matter. I am of the view that men can and should be feminist! Reason being that:
1. Feminism is an ideology, a way of life, and anyone can align or subscribe to an ideology mindless of gender and identity.
2. The issue of systemic privilege: Earlier, I mentioned that sexism is systemic and male feminists cannot simply tap out of it, like when he is favoured for a job or paid more because the employer thinks men are more competent than women. However, other privileges are personal and within his power.
For instance, I saw a tweet where a “male feminist” went against company policy to disclose his earnings with his female colleagues. He found out that they were paid less than their male colleagues of the same rank. He disclosed the information to them and helped them take steps to remedy the situation. The company, knowing that it could lead to a discrimination lawsuit, had to pay them at the same rate as men. I’m not so sure, but I think they also paid them the arrears of the previous salary withheld. While other men in the organisation enjoyed their male privilege, he took steps to rectify it. He might not be in a decision-making position and unable to influence all policies for all women alive; nonetheless, in his own small way, he positively affected the system.
A man can also decide that in my family, domestic labour will be split evenly. He can call out his friends when they make rape jokes and locker room banters, and he can stop a man who is interrupting a woman who is speaking. These are just a few examples of men taking active steps to denounce male privileges that they have control over. So yes, men can, in fact, use and should use their male privilege positively to advance the cause of gender equality.
3. Another argument people make is that tomorrow, he can choose to go back to his male privilege like Solomon Buchi. Although I understand the basis of these critiques, I still have reservations about this issue. The reason is that I will not judge a person based on future possibilities of what they may or may not do.
While it might be more common among the “male feminists” to fall back on their male privilege, I have also seen female feminists roll back and eat their words just to get wifed up. Does that mean I should challenge a feminist’s ingenuity based on future possibilities? No.
4. An effort in futility: This is, in fact, the main reason why I not only believe in, but actively support the idea of men’s participation and identification with feminism. If we wake up every morning to advocate for equality but do not truly believe that the men we preach to can genuinely embrace it, then what is the essence of our activism?
Are women our only target audience?
We live in a world with men. Even if all women alive embrace the 4B movement, we still can’t help but relate with men as colleagues, employees, bosses, pastors, neighbours, fathers, brothers, sons, etc. If we are empowering and enlightening only women, we are shooting ourselves in the foot because we still live in the same world as men.
We can’t wake up every day calling for male accountability and clamouring for an equitable and just world, while actively sidelining men’s beliefs. It only makes a mockery of all our activism. In the words of Chimamanda Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists.
Men are calling them simps while feminists are calling them pretenders. It makes no sense. We must come to the realisation that many men have, in fact, embraced equality, and the pushback should not be from our quarter.
The Crucial Role of Male Allyship
Personally, I have seen and related to many “male feminists” whose message has been consistent for years. I have even learnt tremendously from many of them, especially those who approach issues of feminism from an intellectual perspective by backing it with stats and studies. Male allyship is, in fact, crucial to the feminist movement, the reason being that men are generally more likely to be successful in penetrating the male audience than women can!
Sexism is such that a man is more likely to believe and listen to another man than to a woman. As feminists, we can make thousands of posts talking about the same issue over and over again and still not be heard, but when a man tells his friends, “what you’re doing is not cool,” he immediately backtracks. No stats were quoted, no one told him ‘what if it is your sister,’ no background story given, just the two words ‘not cool.’
And that listening part is important in breaking the ice called patriarchy. “Male feminists” are actually needed to bridge that gap. This is something many of us understand personally. For those of us who are outspoken and actively involved in media activism, I believe we can agree that most of our followers are actually women, not men.
The male allies actually have the opportunity to reach out to the male audience, which is crucial because, despite many women decentering men, we still live in the same world and interactions with them are inevitable. So if men’s mindset is stuck in the 1700s and women are already living in the 21st century, we will still bear the brunt of it, given that men still control policies, legislation, money, businesses, power and families.
A middle way: My recommendation
I do not have an issue with men identifying as feminist; however, for my feminist sisters who do, perhaps a better word would be feminist allies instead of male feminists. This seems better than outrightly saying a man is incapable of understanding and standing by his profession of equality.
A Call to Caution
Notwithstanding my view that men can be feminist, I still find it incredibly incumbent to say that this matter must be navigated with caution, such as:-
1. Actions: We should not rely heavily on a man’s verbal profession. The real questions are- does his actions match his proclamations?
What do the women closest to him (wife, girlfriends, daughters, employees) have to say about him?
Is his message consistent? Does he take full accountability for past actions? Is he learning, unlearning and relearning?
2. Accountability to other men: If a man claims to be a feminist, yet other men are comfortable making rape jokes or objectifying women in his presence, then he is not a feminist! This is not an issue of live and let live. You can’t be a feminist who misogynists are comfortable around you.
Feminism is active. It is in the doing, not the word of mouth. Feminism does not allow you to sit on the fence. You are either in support of women’s rights or you’re not!
Reason being that sexism is not just an individual action but a system that creates an enabling environment for such particular actions to thrive. If your silence creates an enabling environment for your boys, if you’re more loyal to bro code even at the expense of a woman’s safety and comfort, then you’re not different from those men!
3. Allyship or usurping: A man who claims to support women’s rights but makes it all about himself is questionable, just like Solomon Buchi, who dubbed himself the King of feminism and breaker of women’s chains. There was so much showmanship to his feminism, notwithstanding the fact that he wasn’t saying anything new. These are sentiments that feminists have been expressing for centuries in various ways.
This shows that such a man has not yet unlearned the patriarchal idea of male leadership. A “male feminist” should lend his voice, not usurp the movement and make it about him or turn it into a showmanship.
Another popular case is that of Farhan. In 2022, the popular feminist Farida D called him out for stealing so many of her posts without crediting her. In fact, he doesn’t even follow her but goes there to steal nuggets as if it was his. He stole the words of other feminists, too.
When she reached out to him, he apologised and promised to take accountability. Instead, he made his page private, so she never sees it. She publicly called him out. You can’t empower women by stealing from other women.
4. Seek clarification: If you’re in doubt, seek clarification. A safe man would not beat around the bush when you ask questions. A safe man should know that your comfort and safety matter more than his feelings. If he is dodging the question or feels hurt that you’re asking clarifying questions, then he’s not a safe person.
5. Trust your intuition: Even though feminism is capable of deeply influencing your outlook and way of life, it is important to note that feminism is an ideology, not a personality! The point being made is:- Do not hasten to be friends with a man just because he identifies as a feminist. We can agree and just be acquaintances, colleagues, etc. If you choose to be close friends or partner with such a man, it should be based on an all-around evaluation, not only on the grounds that he’s a feminist. Most importantly, let his actions, not his words, speak for him.
Just because he is a feminist doesn’t mean he is a good person or has a great personality. In fact, just because he seems like a good man doesn’t mean he will be good for you. Like I said, there are many things that make up a person. Your safety matters more than his profession. Always trust your intuition.
6. Lastly, take a stand: If, along the line, he shows up to be a chameleon, take a stand against him. Your loyalty should be first to your values, not to a man. Stop trying to see reason, excuse, justify or tone police his victims.
Also note that just because a man treats you right doesn’t mean he treats all women right. So do not use your own personal experience with a man to discredit his victims. A man is not a rapist because he raped all the women he encounters. Raping just one is enough to make him a rapist or abuser!
So you might actually have a good experience with him; he might have donated large sums to women’s rights organisations, but that is not adequate compensation for his abuse.
It is okay to feel hurt or even be in a state of disbelief. However, whenever any of his victims speak out, it is not the time for you to start telling us what a good man he is, and it is definitely not the time to start giving character references for his past good deeds.
And be prepared to lose the monetary benefits or whatever you gain from your relationship with him. You can’t profit off other women’s suffering and call yourself a feminist.
This article was first published on sheresonance blog post.
