In my defense, in those days, feminism didn’t exactly have a good rep. All I knew about feminism was the constant twitter banters about how cooking for men was oppressive. I also knew that these women were always called bitter and lesbians and any mention of women’s rights in public would earn you a disdainful look, by males and females, followed by an “are you a feminist” question. In 2015/16, the worse thing to be was a bitter woman and a lesbian, it promised a husbandless future filled with self loathing and jealousy towards women who could actually keep men. Nobody wanted to live like that or at least be seen as someone with that future, so there were very few public feminists. Honestly, I did not understand why cooking was such a big deal to these women, “it is just cooking”, I told myself, “do they expect the men to do it themselves”, “and there are more problems these women need to address in feminism like rape and domestic abuse”. So, I remained in denial for a while, until I read “we should all be feminists” by Chimmanda Adiche, but that is a story for another day.
My baby feminist days were categorized by anger. Eeei God, I was very angry. I was angry with everything, with everyone, I kept wondering how they were so blind, I had long arguments that ended some of my friendships. I kept wondering how Chimmanada just had quiet eloquent conversations instead of removing her shoe, flinging it at people's heads and calling them idiots, because God knows it cannot be me. Maybe it can be me now o, but not then, I don’t even want to check if it can be me or not. I am still angry sometimes, but mostly I decide to choose peace. The peace started when I left twitter, I almost pulled my hair out because of that place but thank God I left; that is also another story for another day.
During this time, I had never even heard of the term misogyny or patriarchy. All I knew was that, some things could not be the way they were because it was oppressive. I am glad I got properly schooled on the subject, it made me realize what the big deal about cooking is; you don’t have to understand too o, but I understand now. The more you learn, you realize how complex and intertwined this whole thing is. If you think you are feminist and you are reading this post, you will be angry o, very angry many times but if you can, try to tell yourself that your anger will not change anyone’s mind. Neither will quiet attempted intellectual debates with misogynistic Nigerian men, you have been warned
For my definition of a Naija feminist, I will attempt to quote random tweets and statements I have seen over the years. “a Naija feminist is a confused woman who does not want to give anything but wants to receive, a bitter woman, a lesbian, a woman who wants to become the head of the house under the guise of equality, a woman who will still get married after all her ranting” and the most important title of all “an Ashawo”.
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