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Grace Mutandwa
On Tuesday I attended a meeting for journalists and members of the women’s movement, before joining the annual Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza)’s Valentine’s Day march.
While stimulating, the meeting just served to reinforce my belief that we are increasingly becoming a hugely intolerant nation.
I have always found it patronising for feminists to expect female journalists to write as gender activists just because they are women.
I also find it arrogant that some feminists can pick and choose their causes at the expense of other people’s rights.
I have a lot of respect for female journalists like Coleen Law-Morna of Gender-Links South Africa who did not just sit back, twiddle her thumbs and whine that women’s voices are inaudible.
She is a journalist who is also a feminist and that is her right. She is innovative. She looked at the state of the media and realised that while encouraging, the mainstream media to feature women in more stories in a gender sensitive manner is a battle that will take forever. She therefore had to do something to offer an alternative and that is the reason why Gender-Links is the phenomenal service it is today.
On the other hand we have female journalists who simply want to do their professional work in the manner expected of them by their newspapers or broadcasting stations. In an ideal world we could all have beautiful stories written about us but sadly that is not always considered sexy. It does not sell papers and papers need to make money to continue publishing.
I find it arrogant that some women feel slighted by the fact that we now have a saucy paper, H-Metro that exposes more than what some people deem fit.
When people threaten to march against H-Metro and have it banned will they stop there? If NewsDay or The Standard or any other paper for that matter publishes something the feminists are against are they going to get them banned too?
How far are they willing to go to silence those they do not agree with? Tolerance is a sign of maturity. There are women working on H-Metro. If it is banned they will lose their jobs and that should make the feminists happy!
In solidalirity with WOZA
I would feel more sympathetic towards some of our feminists if they showed the same zeal and courage in support of Woza when its members get beaten up by the police for spreading the message of love and tolerance!
When these courageous women get arrested for standing up to tyranny, why are the feminist voices suddenly deadly silent?
When Zimbabwe Peace Project director, Jestina Mukoko, was abducted the silence was deafening. When female members of the opposition were arrested and beaten black and blue we never heard a whimper.
If we are going to label ourselves feminists, let us not cherry-pick our causes because all causes are important.
Where are the real feminists?
An important fact these women might be unaware of is that most of the sources of those sultry stories in H-Metro are women.
The feminists should go out on outreach programmes and educate the women they claim to be fighting to defend so that they do not give their stories to newspapers.
But the feminists must also accept that it is any woman’s right to get her story published as long as they can live with the consequences.
The feminists also do not want newspapers to publish adverts of women (models) in skimpy clothing flogging cars or other commodities.
Again I believe it is the right of any young woman with the consent of her parents to enter the world of modelling. It is a profession.
What some feminists seem unable to accept is the fact that they are not the only people gifted with the power of making choices. In a free world people should be allowed to make their choices. If someone wants to advertise sexy lingerie it is her right.
Most of these young women are aware of how nasty the world can be but they have the right to make choices, make mistakes and hopefully learn from them.
It is good to have a cause. It makes our lives whole but we need to temper our enthusiasm at times so that we do not end up taking away other people’s rights as well.
Newspapers expose the evils of the world, the nasty bits that we do not want to shine light upon and that is their work.
Fight the root cause of the problems that end up in newspapers but do not attack the messenger because you hate the message. Readers also have a choice to buy the newspaper they want.
Journalists should be taken to task only if their stories are not truthful, fair and balanced. The Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) was set up so that those with sincere grievances can lodge complaints and they can be dealt with in a civilised manner.
We already have a state that tramples on all forms of our rights; we do not need to turn against each other. Respecting how we all operate is important to building bridges and strategic alliances.
We all have different value and belief systems and we need to respect and appreciate our diversity.
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