I’m a feminist not a sexist… gerrit?

I’ve been thinking of doing an article on Nigerian people (mostly women) who go on and on and on (ad infinitum) about their not being feminists, on the other hand I was thinking I shouldn’t because… ‘hey, it’s alright, your opinions are valid’. And because it’s a pleasure seeing women expressing their opinions, no matter how reprehensible I personally find it, that’s what feminism is about, giving voice to people the society has fought for so long to silence…
… but … there are times that these fingers of mine just can’t keep their thoughts to themselves, they are too opinionated for their own good… and their opinions are as valid as yours.

One of the things I try to do before jumping into any conversation (in my usual half-assed, screeching, bush-Ibadan-woman way) is try to understand the other person’s side of a story. So I’ve read a whole slew of articles (written mostly by Nigerian women) on why they do not like the label – feminist – being used on them. And the one thing I’ve come away with is that most of these women keep confusing feminism with sexism… the summary of their arguments? ‘I believe in equality but I don’t hate men, so I’m not a feminist’, I guess this is as opposed to ‘I believe in equality, I hate men, so I’m a feminist’.
Well I’m a feminist, I believe in equality and I do not hate men.
My men can attest to this. I grew up with a bunch of feisty men. I’ve loved some as friends, I’ve loved some as part of my support network, I’ve loved some at the back of cars, up a wall, on chairs, in trains (no I’ve not joined the Mile High Club or whatever they call themselves…yet). I’ve loved them in the missionary position, doggy style, straddling… don’t let us get side-tracked here but you got it, right?
Now, a feminist is someone who believes that men, women, trans, asexuals, intersex or whatever label you paste on yourself (or whichever one the society has stuck on you) are first and foremost, HUMAN BEINGS, and should be treated as such… equally.
Everybody should be treated equally.
Nobody should be fired because they are pregnant, or don’t look feminine/masculine enough.
Everybody should have rights to justice, should live their lives fully without being afraid that they’ll get raped because of the way they dress or are undressed. They should get equal pay for equal work. Should be able to choose how they want to live their lives, without being judged by the ‘society’.
They should be free enough to choose whether to marry or not, to have children or not, to make career choices based on their abilities not because they have been told to or not, or because they are afraid there won’t be room for promotion for them because they are going into a field dominated by one sex or the other.
A society where equality is a tangible fact, not something someone is paying lip service to by forming ‘Ministry for Women and Youths and Children and the Disadvantaged and fools and idiots’ or distributing stoves to women so that they won’t return to the kitchen (oxymoronic right?).
Feminism goes beyond hashtags and social media banters, it is when women (mostly feminists) spend almost fifteen to twenty years pushing a bill called ‘Violence Against Persons’ into law. When they stepped in to make sure that the IDP’s do not go hungry or naked. When they are presently working on changing the language of our constitution so that someone cannot decide to marry off a 3months old child and there’s nothing you can do about it because the constitution clearly states that anybody who is married is a woman or you can’t bestow your citizenship on your spouse or partner because you are female.
Feminism is about working on inheritance rights, so that women can have access to the lands they work on.
Feminism is beyond Facebook or Twitter ‘rants’.
They are not rants, you moron! It is giving voice to people who have been systemically silenced over the years because you can’t talk too loudly or complain about the way you’re being treated simply because you’re of a certain sex or you will not be considered a ‘lady’.
Feminism is about giving platform to women who have been abused beyond your self-satisfied lower middle class smirk about how YOUR husband pays ALL the bills so what’s the big deal about a slap or two here and there? And how sharing house-hold chores is no big deal because you have a fucking under-aged boy or girl enslaved in your house in guise of a ‘houseboy’ or ‘housegirl’.
We are talking about women whose husbands take iron rods to them at the slightest provocation, break-bottles on their heads, turn them into punching bags. Women who genuinely have nowhere else to go, because they are economically disadvantaged and not staying in abusive relationships because they love the title of ‘Mrs’ so much they’d go through hell and fire and brimstone to keep it.
This as far as I’m concerned is a simple thing, as simple as abc. Unfortunately there is no equality anywhere, there is no justice (just us) but there is such a thing as the patriarchy. A system that has been so institutionalized it has even succeeded in making the oppressed oppress other people. It stands to reason that if you were bullied by your mother-in-law, for example, chances are that you will bully your daughter/son-in-law. If your clitoris was cut off as a child and you never got to feel sexual pleasure, chances are that you will cut off the clitoris of your female child.
There is no such thing as the Matriarchy or whatever ojuju is lying inside your wardrobe at night about to jump out and eat you up because you call yourself a feminist.
Feminism is not a cult, it is a choice… you can actually choose to be one or not. Nobody is trying to ‘recruit’ you or force you to work for the emancipation of women who are not as advantaged as you. It is not a superstardom, in fact you lose a lot when you’re tagged a feminist but you gain yourself freedom from mental slavery. Nobody will knight you or pay you for being a feminist. The fact that you even have a choice is because some people in the past (or presently) have decided they’ve had enough of being oppressed, refused the right to vote, raped in the name of child marriage or any kind of marriage, paid a pittance for what men are getting loads of money for doing.
Feminism is activism not for the faint hearted.
So please keep apologizing for daring to believe in equal rights and emancipation of the sexes, in fact you can continue jeering at women who are feminist, but please, get your fucking facts straight while doing all these, because you just look plain stupid.
Repeat after me … feminism is NOT sexism.

About Feminism, the patriarchy and the pepper seller

I didn’t realize I was a feminist till I hit my late twenties.

Not that I didn’t know the word itself, but I’d never seen anything ‘feminine’ about myself, and I never thought men were trying to oppress me, so why should I want to fight something called the patriarchy?

Up till that point I had no words to describe that frustration I felt whenever I was told I couldn’t do certain things simply because I am a ‘girl’. I couldn’t sit in a certain fashion, talk too loudly, pick my nose in public, scratch that itch eating ay at my legs, wear certain things to certain places simply because it is ‘unladylike’.

My question usually is … who made you the master of ‘lady?’ and what makes you think I want to be a ‘lady’?

In my early teens, I was ‘allowed’ to run wild, by the ‘guardians of our morals’, because it was still okay. I even got an encouraging smile or two, being a flat chested tomboy was soo … cute.

But.

There was no word for a woman in her early twenties, with a propensity for wearing trousers and weird haircuts, who had a string of lovers and more male friends than was permissible … well, except for ‘slut’.

Then I became a single parent, the society I grew up in breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“Maybe her head will settle into one place now that she’s in trouble.”

“Maybe she won’t, look at her lineage, a long line of wild women who live by their own rules, I doubt she ever will.”

But the ‘words of wisdom’ never ceased coming.

The moral guardians of our society were afraid their daughters will somehow sip from my cup and become infected with my psychosis, they watched closely. Theirs are the eyes that saw at midnight, the ones feeding off the blood of innocent ones while I slip out of my home to party hard. They knew I was trouble.

Or maybe I should have started this note from a conversation held with Temitayo Amogunla, (nee Olofinlua) who came visiting with her baby a few months ago. She complained bitterly about the women who practically stampeded her, in a bid to bully her out of strapping her baby to her chest, instead of 'backing' him, the ‘traditional’ way – secured to the back with a wrapper and a smaller scarf called ‘oja’.

A few months later, Jumoke Verissimo experienced the same angry, almost mob-like, reaction from strangers, who felt they had a right to dictate how she should carry her baby, simply because they were … older females.

That was when I told Jumoke something I’d known since the day the word ‘feminism’ crept into my dictionary, that women are the patriarchs.

Yes, the ‘patriarchy’ inherently is a male dominated order, but I put it to you that women are the guardians, the guardians of the rules, the guardians of our morals, the guardians of what to do, what not to do, how to be a lady, why you have to stay married to your abusive husband, why you have to be married at all.

I even dare say women made some, if not all of these rules.

The evidence is there, in the market places, where real, not virtual, affectations are at play. Those women, who plant, reap and sell you the tomatoes, onions and what-nots you use in your meals. The pepper sellers, those whom city dwellers often think of in terms of ‘poor, downtrodden things’. They are not 'poor' or 'downtrodden', they have studied the patriarchal system and they use it.

They use it to bully you into buying their stuff more expensively than you normally would because your skirt is not long enough, your make up is too much, they talk rudely to you when you strap your baby to your chest, because they have the right to shame you on behalf of the men.

Some hair splitters might say women in the north do not go to the market. But who whispers guilt inducing sweet-nothings in the mai-gida’s ears at night? Definitely not his male lovers!

I’ve watched these women operate, on their daughters and other women.

But wait ... it's not only the pepper sellers who go out of their way to make you feel the pain of the patriarchy as you conduct your daily business.

Let's talk about the gadget wielding generation of patriarchs with blood red nails. Go online and check out those horrible pictures of women beaten black and blue, their clothes torn off, with the caption ‘woman caught stealing pepper’ and check out the vituperation, now check the list of names, you’ll notice that more comments will come from the women, the worst comments come from the women.

Our psyche has been assaulted for so long that we’ve become the abusers in our own tales of woe. We perpetuate the abuse, the reign of the dictators.

Our places of religion are filled with women, have you ever wondered why so few of them own private jets?

Who are the people responsible for shaving off the hair of women who have lost their husbands, who are those that force feed them with water taken from the bath of the dead body, who forces them to wail and gnash their teeth and declaim their innocence of the murder of the dead husband?

Who knows the juiciest gossips about the sex life of other women and shares it gleefully?

Who tells you it’s a thing of shame to tell anybody you’ve been raped?

Who teaches their daughters to cook while their sons play out in the sun?

Who tells you that the course you’re about to take is too ‘masculine’ that you should go for a more ‘feminine’ course … like … literature?

Who determines what is ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ in the society?

Who birthed these ‘patriarchs’?

What would it take to end rape in Nigeria? A simple case of teaching our sons that there is no difference between men and women, that women deserve to be treated equally, with respect, that every woman, no matter her sex, deserves to be respected.

Where else in the world would a Chief Judge (male) get invited to an all female event (made up of judges) and pronounce that ‘rape is self-inflicted’ and GET AWAY WITH IT!(check out my blog on rape here )

Where else in the world but in Nigeria, where the women have taken up arms for the patriarchy, a country where an elected, sitting, female, Senator goes into the Upper House and pushes a legislature concerning the length of women’s dresses through. Where a child of ten, as long as she is married, is constitutionally recognized as an adult and when people protested about the fact that a child of ten should NOT be married, some women in the House of Assembly (or is it Reps) ‘refrained’ from voting? Where women are arrested for 'prostituting', simply because they do not have a ‘male’ partner with them when they go out during certain hours of the day.

When will we finally admit to ourselves that we appear to be our own patriarchs? We the prisoners are now guarding the prisons, while the guards are having the time of their lives.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to kick off women from my Face Book wall or blocked them from my twitter account because of the kind of anti-women stance they take.

Women tell other women they are beautiful, well except for the fact that you’re not wearing these Peruvian weaves, or have your hair ‘done’ naturally, or look this thin, or have your stomach this flat or your skin this light, this dark, your yansh … this big!

When will we finally admit to ourselves that the picture of that hardworking woman, with a baby strapped to her back, a pestle in hand and a determined frown on her face is our Mother Africa, our all consuming patriarch? When will we stop treating one another as present or non-existent sexual appendages, look one another in the eye, and admit that we are all simply … human.


Words … fail … me.