Junk

 

We should all be Feminists - Chimamanda ngozi adichie

I was about fourteen. we were in his house, arguing, both of us bristling with half baked knowledge from the books we had read. I don't remember what this particular argumetn was about. But I remember that as I argued and argued, Okoloma looked at me and said you know , you are feminist.

It was not a compliment. I could tell from his tone - the same tone with which a person would say " you are a supporter of terrorism"

I did not know exactly what this word feminist meant. And i did not want Okoloma to know that I didn't know. So I bushed it aside and continued to argue. The first thing i planned to do when I got home was look up the work in the dictionary.

Now fast-forward to some years later

In 2003, I wrote a novel called Purple Hibiscus, about a man who, among other things, beats his wife and whose story doesn't end too well. while I was promoting the noel in Nigeria, a journalist, a nice well meaning man, told me he wanted to advise me ( Nigerians, as you might know are very quick to give unsolicited advice )

He told me that people were saying my novel was feminist, and his advice to me - he was shaking his head sadly as he spoke - was that i should never call myself a feminist, since feminist are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands.

So I decide to call myself a Happy Feminist.

Then an academic, a Nigerian woman, told me that feminism was not our cluture, that feminism was un-African, and I was only calling myself a feminist because I had been influenced by western books. ( which amused me, because much of my early reading was decidedly unfeminist: i must have read every singel Mills & Boon romance published before I was sixteen. And each time I try to read those books called classic feminist texts I got bored, and I struggle to finish them)

Anyways, since feminism was un-african i decide. i would not call myself a Happy African Feminist. Then a dear friend told me that calling myself a feminist meant that I hated men. So I decide I would not be a Happy African Feminist WHo does not hate Men. At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who doesnot Hate men and who like to wear Lip Gloass and Hight Heels fro herself and not for men.

Of course much of his was tongue-in-chieek, but what is shows is how that word feminist is so heavy with baggage, negative baggage you hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture, you thing women should always be in charge, you don't wear make-p, ou don't shave, youre always angry, you don't have a sense of humour, you don't use deodorant.

Now here a story from my childhoold.

when I was in primary shcool in Nsukka, a university town in south eastern Nigeria, my teacher said at the beginning of the term that she would give the class a test and whoever go tht highest score would be athe class monitor. Class monitor was a big deal. If you were class monitor, you would wrie down the names of noise-makes each day, which was heady enough power on its own, but my tacher would also give you a cane to hold in your hand while you walked around and patrolled the class for noise-makers. Of course, you were not allowed to acutally use the cane. but it was exciting prospect for the nine-year-old me. I wvery much wanted to be class monitor. And I got the highest scroe on the test.

Then, to my surprise, my teacher said the monitor had to be a boy . She had forgotten to make that clear earlier; she assumed it was obvious. A boy had the second-highest score on th test . And he would be monitor.

what was even more interestin is that this boy was a sweet, gnetle sould who had no interest in patrolling the class with a stick. While I was full of ambition to do so.

But i was female and he was male and he became class monitor. If we do somethign over and over again, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over again, it become snormal. If only boys are made class monitor, then at some point we will all think, evenif unconsciously, that the class moniotr has to be a boy. If we keep seeing only men as heads of corporation, it start to seem natural that only men should be heads of corporations.