Foolish Men: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695)

Adichie: Race, Identity, and Feminism

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Identity, Feminism and Honest Conversations

The Economist

Of Marriage and Freedom to Choose a Surname

(By Motunrayo Agusto) - A few days ago, I had an amazing conversation with a 60-year-old man about why I’m married but not changing my surname. It was just the beginning of a broader and longer conversation about women in our society. I haven’t met many people, across any generation, who seek to understand views that are different from theirs and particularly, who open their minds to understanding a woman’s right to choose. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to this lovely man who I’d refer to as Mr. F going forward.

Mr. F started by asking me “Why?”

I explained, “changing my name is not a natural inclination of mine. It’s not something I have ever really considered doing or aspired to do. It’s just not my truth.”

What I didn’t tell him is that, at age 16, I didn’t even want to get married. I wanted to be President and my good friend Mr. A, who is from the Niger Delta region, was going to be my running mate because that would reflect Federal Character. Clearly, I didn’t fully understand how it works LOL! Plus, let’s not get into the ironic course of my young adulthood. Anyway, that was the future I envisioned. That was my truth.

           There are probably women everywhere who have looked forward to getting married since they were 16, and fantasised about being called Mrs. XYZ. They might value the cohesion of their families sharing one surname or maybe just don’t think of this as a necessary topic of discussion because the norm is the norm. Whatever their reasons, this is their right and it is their truth. Women do and should always have the right to choose. That’s why I define feminism as a woman’s right to choose.

Of Women: Giving a Lot and Receiving so Little

   

"'Muta ... Muta. Wake up! he called.' ...
     'Please get up and find me something to eat.'
     'Can't you get yourself something to eat? Is that why you wake me up at this time of the night--to find you something to eat?' ...
     'If only you had taken the trouble to look ... you would have found some food in the pot on the cooker. But you wouldn't, would you? You have a willing slave who would do that and had always done...'
     'Am I your wife or your slave in this house?' ...
     Life is so unfair to women, she thought bitterly. They give so much and receive so little. And whatever they give is taken for granted and more is demanded of them. Women are forever confronted with their duties as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. These roles are in themselves noble, valuable and thoroughly natural. But they have come to be interpreted as forms of slavery in most places, and women have over the years accepted this interpretation. And so, women have to slave from girlhood to old age--giving, serving, rearing, nurturing and slaving--with hardly any help from the opposite sex. What about men? They are forever taking, grabbing, mauling, swallowing. ...
     The relationship between a man and a women, she rationalized, must be one of symbiosis--woman giving and receiving, man receiving and giving. The giving must be reciprocal as well as the taking. Awa ought to learn to give."

Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, 1996, 20-24

"The Departure," in Rituals and Departures

Nigerian Feminism: An Alternative Voice

(By Esther Chioma Uwandu) - In discussing the issues of women in relation to various factors, what comes to mind is the term “feminism”. And feminism is the belief that men and women deserve equal rights and opportunities in all spheres of life. It aims at defining, establishing and defending equal opportunities for women. It also denotes the activities of women and male “sympathizers”, and its aim is to combat all forms of discrimination -social, personal, economic, legal, health, literary, which women suffer simply because of their sex.
          Essentially, feminism is two things. First, it is a theoretical paradigm in social theory that seeks to advocate and enhance women’s emancipation and equality with regard to gender; hence, feminism encompasses many varied activities and contexts. According to Elizabeth Ogini in Feminism and Black Women’s Creative Writing (1996), feminism has two main ‘axes’. As a belief, it emphasizes equality for men and women in all areas among which are legal, economic, political and social affairs. As a social movement, it advocates gender equality and is widely known as woman’s liberation or women’s rights movement.

On Marriage and Feminism

(By Temi Dayo) - On Marriage and Feminism: 

You cannot be married to a Nigeriàn and be an honest feminist. Truth is, to be married under any customary provisos in Nigeria, and perhaps in nearly all of Africa, is to become an enabler of Patriarchy by default.

It starts from the point where one party (by custom) waits for the other to propose, and the other by same custom expects to propose. Then it progresses to the observance of native traditional norms - bride price, dowry payment, and perhaps religious matrimonial rites which of course are the supreme establishments and reiteration of profound symbolisms of Misogyny.

Next would come the rituals of living and all observance of the quotidian. Who cements the ultimate identity of the offspring of the marriage? From whom do they derive their last name - the name which differentiates one Susan, that John and this Amarachi from all others of same name?

There you have it. The Nigeriàn feminist, whether male or female can not cross out all of the above boxes of official acquiescence to Patriarchy.

The Symbolism of the Goddess

(By Starhawk) - "The symbolism of the Goddess is not a parallel structure to the symbolism of God the Father. The Goddess does not rule the world; she is the world. Manifest in each of us, She can be known internally by every individual, in all her magnificent diversity. ...

The importance of the Goddess symbol for women cannot be overstressed. The Image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary, as the very force that sustains all life. Through the goddess, we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions. We can move beyond narrow, constricting roles and become whole.

The Goddess is also important for men. The oppression of men in Father God-ruled patriarchy is perhaps less obvious but no less tragic than that of women. Men are encouraged to identify with a model no human being can successfully emulate: to be minirulers of narrow universes. They are internally split, into a 'spiritual' self that is supposed to conquer their baser animal and emotional natures. They are at war with themselves: in the West, to 'conquer' sin; in the East, to 'conquer' desire and ego. Few escape from these wars undamaged.

Nigerian Patriarchy, American Patriarchy

(By Temidayo Ahanmisi) - 

America (read: The US) is a patriarchy.

Nigeria is a patriarchy.

America strongly discourages polygamy, domestic violence, spousal rape and other acts which denigrate the self-worth of the female person.

Beyond a sociological aversion for all these, America creates and maintains institutional agencies to push her cultural preferences, so that even though she remains a patriarchy, the birth of a female child is not as tantamount to a mild tragedy which must be endured and borne stoically at best, as most in Nigeria have been forced over time to see it as in our enclave.

America is a patriarchy.

Nigeria is a patriarchy.

The American legal system won't let anyone on their soil withdraw their underaged daughter and go marry her off to a man because she is a girl.

In patriarchal America.

No cultural paradigm can be foolproof as they are results and by-processes of conscious evolution of a developing species.

"Dear Ijeawele": Adichie's Feminist Manifesto

Photo Source: Dreamstime.com

(By Chimamanda Adichie)--“DEAR IJEAWELE, OR A FEMINIST MANIFESTO IN FIFTEEN SUGGESTIONS”

Dear Ijeawele,

What joy. And what lovely names: Chizalum Adaora. She is so beautiful. Only a day old and she already looks curious about the world. Your note made me cry. You know how I get foolishly emotional sometimes. Please know that I take your charge – how to raise her feminist – very seriously. And I understand what you mean by not always knowing what the feminist response to situations should be. For me, feminism is always contextual. I don’t have a set-in-stone rule; the closest I have to a formula are my two ‘Feminist Tools’ and I want to share them with you as a starting point.

The first is your premise, the solid unbending belief that you start off with. What is your premise? Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘if only.’ Not ‘as long as.’ I matter equally. Full stop.

The second tool is a question: can you reverse X and get the same results?

Nigeria and the "Facebook Feminist"

(Temidayo Ahanmisi)--You are all being manipulated, but you are either too clueless or too pompous to realise this.

This is why you lend your energy to being agents in turn of the grand delusion.

It is social media. It doesn't take a genius to control the minds of anyone in this matrix. The subjects lend themselves for use and control.

Once you realise this, everything falls into place and you see your own silliness for what it is.

So I saw one of those "submission matters" post by a dear friend this morning, and gave in to the urge to say this much, because this friend largely "gets it" when it comes to the matter of Feminism vis a vis Matrimony.

This much I submitted:

Feminism and Submission are contrived battles on the social media. Those who argue on either side are caught in a spiral of delusion and manipulation of their reasoning as well as the thoughts of the other.

The Feminine Mistake

Artwork by Lorna Simpson; source: more.com

(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)--I first knew there was such a thing as blue mascara because of Aunty Chinwe. She came to visit my mother one Saturday, her braids held sleekly at her neck, her caftan’s silver embroidery gleaming and her lashes the bright color of a crayon. Against her dark skin, they were striking.

“Aunty, your lashes are blue!” I said.

I was 11.

“Yes, my dear. It’s blue mascara,” she told me with a smile. She was always smiling, eyes crinkled, teeth very white.

I liked most of my mother’s friends—funny women, kind women, brilliant women, and there was the one soft-spoken man—but only to Aunty Chinwe would I say something like that. Aunty, your lashes are blue!

She had an air of endless tolerance, of magnanimous grace; she turned every room she entered into a soft space free of the thorny possibility of consequences. With children, her manner was that of an adult just about to hand out lavishly wrapped gifts, not for a birthday or Christmas but simply because children deserved gifts.

I sneaked into the parlor whenever she visited, and sat in a corner, and eavesdropped on her conversations with my mother. Because she drank Fanta elegantly from a glass, I eschewed bottles and began to drink my Coke from a glass. I loved simply to look at her: petite, graciously fleshy, with a dark-dark complexion that made people think she was from Ghana or Gambia or somewhere not Nigeria where beautiful women had indigo skin. At her clinic she gave injections with the gentlest touch.

Adichie, Feminism, and "Flawless"

If anyone has the skills to make a speech about feminism go viral, it’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Lagos-based writer whose ideas are as complex as her language is straightforward. Previously best known for her fiction, Adichie delivered a TEDx Talk in 2013 so nuanced and rousing, Beyoncé sampled it in her empowerment anthem “Flawless.” Titled “We Should All Be Feminists,” Adichie’s oration weaved together human stories from her youth in Nigeria with a complicated discourse about gender roles in the modern world and a literal textbook definition of “feminism,” which she read aloud about halfway through. Today, the speech comes out in eBook form, which you can purchase here. Reached by phone in Lagos, Adichie spoke to Vogue.com about the overwhelming success of her speech and what it means to talk politics with the whole world.

What was it like to have your ideas about feminism go so viral?

It felt strange and surprising. I had done one TED Talk and I felt that I had already said what I could, in fact, say, and I didn’t think I had anything else worth talking about. But then I also realized the one thing I cared about is gender, feminism. So I said, "Okay, I’ll do it." But I thought, This is not going to be popular, because it’s obvious that feminism for many people is a bad word, even if you believe in it, the word is off-putting. I thought seven people would care. I was surprised, but pleasantly so.

Is it always the goal of a writer to reach as many people as possible?

I don’t think in those terms. For this speech, it was an audience of mostly Africans, an audience I wanted to reach. I remember when I started off, just having a sense of push back, I knew that it was a subject that wasn’t popular, so when people stood up and clapped, that was success. My expectations had been low, so I was just surprised.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Redefines "Feminist"

In this amazing +TEDxEuston talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie draws brilliantly from her "happy," "African," and "female" background to redefine "feminist" as "a man or a woman who says, yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it; we must do better."