While some activist committed to gender equality are somewhat wary of the term because it comes from ‘the west’ (as if the term “socialism” emerged among the Khoi-San in the Kalahari) others, like myself have embraced it. It’s quite simply a socio-political movement aimed at gender equality for the various genders which was initially rooted in the 20th century struggles for women’s political rights. These struggles were later influenced by Marxist critiques which viewed capitalism as underpinning both sexism and patriarchy.

In some ways feminism has arrived, but for a few. A few of this few have succeeded in incorporating it as principles in their lives and as the basis of the social activism, a larger amount for whom it has become the language of their social activism but absent from their private lives and the majority for whom it is something that must be publicly tolerated because to oppose it is to invoke a lot of noise from these women. “Anyway, after the meeting it’s going to be business as normal; so let’s just sit and listen.”

For the vast majority of ordinary men and women both in our country and in the world the word ‘feminism’ has not even arrived, let alone the idea or the product. There are parts of our country where women feel unloved if they do not get beaten up by their drunken partners over the weekend because that’s viewed as an expression of the guy’s masculinity. The guy must be having an affair and therefore has someone else who’s getting battered. (A bit like sex, “if you have a headache for two weeks in a row then you must be getting it somewhere else).

Feminism runs a risk akin to that facing non-racialism; people arguing that it has gone too far in terror of it ever arriving. (Eugene Terreblance must have muttered many a time about how non-racialism has “gone too far”. A week ago when it arrived for the first time, he sought asylum in the prison hospital after just one day of tasting it)

Want to see where power lies in this country? Study the demographics of Business class on the plane. Last Friday, coming from Johannesburg I counted five blacks among 36 passengers in business class on the plane. How many women in total ? One.

Has feminism emasculated men? No, because it hasn’t arrived yet. The idea, though, has destabilized many men, in the same way that ideas of non-racialism and equality destabilizes many whites who are trapped in a fossilized understanding of race and culture. While the idea of feminism destabilizes, the practice will liberate men from oppressive notions of masculinity. Feminism will take men into a world where we can feel and can cry unashamedly, say that we want to be held, where we can derive joy from bonding with our kids by growing with them in affection and respect rather than being tied to them by the chains of awe and fear.

Feminism brings the freedom that comes from lifting our feet from the neck of the gendered other. Remember how we partially liberated the blikkieskos (canned food) brigade on the day of our first democratic elections? Even as they thought that it would enslave them. So feminism will liberate men, even as they dread it will make their watchu-call-its dissappear.