تحرر الرجل

Nihad Fottouh

The Emancipation of Men


Kasim Amin has written in the closure of the nineteenth century about the emancipation of women, Tahrir El-Mara'a (1899). His book was written in particular to free the Egyptian Women from the constraint of the society and the constraint of the veil, a cover the women were forced to use to cover their faces. Egyptian women ever since that book have gone through many changes starting by being educated in the same schools as men, going to work and earning the same income as men, sharing in the political life and being elected just as men. However, by the beginning of the twenty first century there is an amounted need for another book for the emancipation of men.
Due to the challenges and obstacles placed by the society on women in general and women who aspire better positions, in particular; women in current generations became more responsible than men. A girl faces the guilt of her gender and lives her life attempting to make it up. Girls are often given household chores and are often responsible for younger siblings. They confine their behaviors to the societal restrictions, including dress and marriage. They face their educational career seriously. They obey their fathers and follow their brothers. Thus, girls get used to challenges and responsibilities, they get used in their early years to be responsible for their behaviors and decisions, they get used to be the support. Consequently, after many years of the emancipation of women, men's role in the society have receded, and diminished, as women are taking over the deserted responsibility. Women now are seen to be educated, working, with families, are responsible for those families, are responsible for the running of their homes and children, are responsible for their husbands and most of the times are responsible for supporting their houses.
Men on the other hand, are only responsible, due to their set role by the society, to work. They are free from every other responsibility. They are born in families who cherish their existence as men and put no obligation on their existence. They have no house-hold chores, they have no restrictions on their behaviors and outings, they have no worries about their education, and they face no challenges of what so ever. Women are seen to occupy the first places in different educational fields, simply because men don't care about education. Women have better working opportunities, simply because women are more efficient. Women have better incomes, simply because they can take the responsibility, whereas, men are left lagging behind, living the ancient life of Shahrazad.
It is found that every 24 seconds, there is a divorce case. After researching it was found that the main reason behind that are men's inability to take responsibility. Men enter in a relationship, physically attracted to the chosen woman, they seek women physically resembling the famous movie stars and rock stars, fair, blond green eyed and perfect figured. After marriage they ask those same carefully chosen dolls to cook like their moms, clean like the experts, take care of the children mentally, socially, physically, to work and on top of that to look like a Shakira and smell like Coco Chanel. When women fail in any of the assigned responsibilities, men walk out of marriages leaving women with their children to support, and with a scare being 'a divorced woman'. Men, on the other hand are never blamed by the society for any of their faults or flaws because men are always flawless as human beings, as observed by the patriarchal society.
So it is time now to have a book that would emancipate men. Men need to be emancipated from their sense of superiority, men need to be emancipated from their physical dreams of women, and men need to be emancipated from their traditional role set by the society. They need to accept the challenges of modern life, they need to learn to take responsibilities, they need to free themselves from their families, and societies that dictate their outdated classical role. They need to accept to share, secure, support. They need to learn how to be students, husbands, and fathers. They need to learn to be human beings, not gods. Men of Egypt begin your emancipation, because if you won't start, we the women of Egypt will emancipate you, because after all we need men to share us our lives not only scarecrows.