Men Need Liberation Too -By Segun Ogunlade

“Men have no inherent value. Women and children are valued simply for existing. This is why boyhood to manhood is an especially rough transmission for males because they are no longer loved simply for existing. Their worthiness must be proved, or they’re nothing. And no one cares.” – Niggalation 3:5
Every culture and every religion preaches that men are stronger than women. Men are the head and the women are to support them in whatever they do. It seems that men are in an advantaged position because the society readily favours them above women. But the truth is, being a man sometimes is more difficult than it appears. We are made to do some things not because you really want to do them but because we are males. And the sad thing is nobody cares how you prove your manliness. Just prove it and show yourself a person that is worthy of being called a man.

The need for us to prove our manliness at times affects our total wellbeing sometimes put too much pressure on us. From time immemorial, the life of a man has always been measured in terms of success, freedom, and everything that comes with them. As men, we are taught to be stronger than we are and that it is unmanly for us to cry. We are taught to repress our emotions and never to express them like women do. The most difficult activities are reserved for us and they taught us that masculinity comes with being positive, courageous, tough and competitive. Our entire existence has been viewed through the lens of what we do instead of who we are. The expectations that come with being men often drain us mentally, physically, socially and even spiritually.
In the race to meet up with the societal expectations of us, we often lose track of time that sometimes we did not think about developing our mental strength. We are always out to prove that we are independent, strong and felt the need to have material wealth that many of us don’t have time to read books or engage in activities that could strengthen us mentally. We are often distracted by the definition of the society about what we are that we don’t have time to explore who we are. The definition of success by the society that is based on numbers has left many of us mean, distraught and miserable. We are often disturbed when we are unable to reach our own standards. And when Elbert Hubbard said, “Some men succeed by what they know; some by what they do; and a few by what they are,” he was very correct. Many of us succeed not by who we are but by what we do. But there is a clear difference between who we are and what we do. I hope to write on that in the coming days.

By the time we go all out to meet the societal definition of success, it leads us to being drifted away from the people we love and care about. Oftentimes, we are the ones that miss important family time, forget anniversary because we have so much going on in our heads, too busy to watch our children perform in their first play at school, and unable to pick the kids from school. All these could happen to us because we want to make money and live up to the expectations of being the man of the house. Being the man of the house does not stop at simply being a male. You must be in charge of numbers and figures too if you want to be respected. No wonder, it is common to see most married men die before their wives. The load that the society puts on our shoulders outweighed us many times that it crushed us to the ground in every form.

It is the need to be successful that drives men to do despicable things such as money rituals and advanced internet fraud. Those activities are not justifiable morally, religiously or otherwise and I am not giving excuses for people that do them. Men do those things because they couldn’t live with the feeling that they are failing when they could do something about their lives. If the society will slow down in drumming the need to be materially successful in every man’s ears, I believe the number of men doing despicable things in order to prove their manliness would reduce. We are not as bad as some of the things we do for money and success. Our lives are lived under pressure because of the need to prove a point where in fact there is nothing to prove.

This need to be successful isn’t always forced on the female child because they are trained to be dependent on us. They are not encouraged to make too much money or be ambitious so they could attract the right men when it is time for marriage. But for us, they want us to make too much money and be ambitious even if it means going from one part of the world to another every week, leaving family and friends behind. We are the ones that need to be successful so that we could get a wife. Women are not taught to make their own money so that we could also marry them because of their money.

The culture that made the man the dominant gender has not done us many good. We have used the need to be the dominant gender to maltreat woman, explore it for personal gains and develop less of ourselves. We chase money more than we chase happiness and fulfilment. That isn’t who we are. The fearlessness that we were born with has fizzled out of the struggle to be who we are not. Many of us now live for the money that we are stranger to our families because we are gone before everyone wakes up and returns when everyone has gone to bed. Our fear of failure has prevented many of us from being our true self because of what the society would say. But the truth is that the society would make us live in stark opposition to our true self and laugh at us when we failed at being that someone else they wanted us to be.

As men, we need liberation from the society’s definition of us the same way women need liberation from men’s domination. The pressure that the society and everybody living in it place on men has made us lose the true definition of true success. The society doesn’t care if we are happy so far we meet its standard of measuring success. That unsolicited pressure isn’t good for any of us. We need the society to let us be who we are instead of what it wants us to be. We need to be allowed to find our inner peace and define success as each of us deems it fit and not necessarily in terms of numbers and figures. For according to Dan Benson, “Real success should be a value in life signifies that we are living and growing to a maximum potential as persons. It should call each of us to a fulfilling interplay of our mental, physical, spiritual, and social dimensions to ‘be all we can be.” We are men and we deserve to be happy. We don’t die, deserve to die under the pressure of doing things that doesn’t bring us happiness. We are strong, but sometimes we also need a little pampering and cuddling with the people we love.

Segun Ogunlade writes from Ibadan. He is a final year student of the department of Religious Studies, University of Ibadan, Ibadan. He could be reached via ogunlade02@gmail.com or +2348085851773.