Sex… And How Our Parents Lied To Us
Black Couple at the beach. Image: Pinterest Do you remember that conversation you had with your parents about sex? It was probably on that day when you had your very first menstruation. Or maybe, that day when your neighbor’s daughter came home pregnant and the entire street got a free show. Either way, something must have triggered the talk. Now, it didn’t matter if you were as close to your parents as peas in a pod or had a run-away-to-my-room-as-soon-as-daddy-shows-up attitude. What mattered was that, if you had a conversation about sex with your parents, it most definitely must have been AWKWARD! Thing is, as awkward as it must have been for you, it must have been ten times worse for your parents (okay…a little exaggeration. Maybe, two times more). Imagine the horror they must have felt trying to explain sex to you; a child they brought into the world. Multiply that horror by two if you were a very inquisitive child. If it wasn’t so serious, it could actually be very funny. In retrospect, you knew you couldn’t dare laugh. What was worse, parents knew that too. They also knew they could not laugh either. With that much pressure, it is no wonder that they sometimes resort to flat out lies in order to keep us in check. Done out of love as they would say, these lies have shaped how we view sex today. Here is a list of some of the lies our parents told us about sex. Lie #1: Your virginity is your most valuable asset and the best gift you can give a man. Image: Discover ideas about African American Tattoos Some might be nodding their heads in remembrance of this one. Is this statement even sensible? How can virginity be ranked as a woman’s most precious asset?! What happened to her brain? What happened to the influence with which she was created with? When you take a look at this statement, you see the hand of some very misogynistic group of people who do not think that there is more to a woman than her ‘honey pot’. These ideas formed the core of society’s norms and were further translated to kids from their parents. So, the question that begs to be asked is: when the virginity goes, does her value go with it too? Is her virginity supposed to help her husband be the man he ought to be? Is her virginity going to help her manage a home, and if she works, still keep a balance between home and career and all other things she does? How come the one thing that is taken in a jiffy is deemed the most important asset she could bring to the table? What is worse, there are men who have married virgins and who are totally disgusted with their character flaws, personal hygiene or general persona. He will not care if she was a virgin if she falls short in other areas that are necessary for the partnership. It then goes to show that the hymen CANNOT possibly the most valuable thing that you can give a man. Lie #2: If you do not have sex before your wedding night, your husband will love and value you more. You all know that couple who start the day with a brawl, a loud shout or the sound of the wife used as a punching bag. The presence or absence of the hymen doesn’t make a wife beater hang his gloves, nor does it make an emotionally empty man show love and affection to his wife. There are men who have married virgins yet have gone on to disrespect them in public. Some have gone as far as withdrawing their affection and cheating on them, even to the tune of dating their very best friends, and in some cases, their sisters. Virginity is no guarantee that a man will treat a woman right when she becomes his wife. Also, the fact that your husband was your first doesn’t mean he will be so enamored of your vagina that he won’t stray to some other woman. If you are in doubt, go ask all the virgins-before-marriage who are dealing with straying husbands. Lie #3: If you have sex before marriage, your husband will lose his savor for you. Truth is, whether you have sex before or after marriage, your husband will eventually lose his savor for you…as you will lose yours for him. Keeping desire afire in a marriage is a full time responsibility required by both husband and wife. That is why you might start your marriage hitting it five times a day and then slow down to once a day, once a week, once in three months and in some instances, never at all. It is a natural phenomenon. Laws of diminishing return always sets in and sex is no exception. Your precious ‘virginity gift’ wouldn’t make your husband bury himself in you for the rest of his life. He will get up; even it is just to pee. Lie #4: Sex is disgusting. Image: Discover ideas about Black Couple Art This line is usually towed by religious fanatics. They hammer on how disgusting the sexual act is, going as far as saying it is sin, even in the confines of marriage. There are stories of people who get up from having sex with their spouse to bent-knees in prayer to ‘cleanse themselves’. You begin to wonder how they can take that stand when God created coitus, not just for procreation but for communion and fun. Well…if that is your belief anyway. There is absolutely nothing disgusting about sex. Lie #5: A woman who wants to know about sex is a ‘whore’. Many women get engaged to men and the issue of sex never comes up. When they eventually get married, they suffer through their husbands sexual overtures without saying anything. Many of these women don’t even know that sex can (and should) be pleasurable for them. They lie
Wedding Fever
Image: Fashion of Philly The constant chirping of the phone wakes her up. She tries to get her befuddled mind to block the annoying sound. She reaches for her phone with slow, sleep-dazed movements until she finally finds it. ‘Why wouldn’t it just shut up?’ She thinks to herself. ‘Maybe if I just ignore them, they will go away’. She tucks the phone beneath her pillow to muffle the sound. Silence! Now she can return to her blissful sleep! Just as she snuggles into her very comfortable bed and begins to feel the tentative grip of sleep… ‘Chirrrrrpppppppppp…’ She flails her arms in exasperation and flings her pillow to the far end of the room. ‘WHAT?!’ She shouts as soon as she picks up the phone, looking at her glow-in-the-dark wall clock and realizing that it was three’ O clock.‘Ore mi! Wake up jare! I’ve got the most exciting news!’ Gbemi. She sighs. Gbemi is an overly dramatic lady and it is no wonder that she is calling Mara at 3am. Mara: ‘You do realize it is the middle of the effing night right, yeah?’ Any other person would have quietly dropped the phone and called back. But no…not Gbemi! Gbemi was never phased by Mara.Gbemi: ‘See you! Lazy bones! Wake up and listen jare…’If any one is a lazy bone, it is Queen Gbemisola Aransiola herself! She has never worked a day in her life. Don’t be lolled into thinking she is a spoiled daughter of a wealthy family. Far from it! In fact, Gbemi is from a poor home; well…not piss poor but definitely not middle class comfortable either. Some days, they can afford to eat a little piece of meat and some other days, Garri and Kuli-Kuli (without sugar, milk or even cold water). Mara, lost in thought, doesn’t hear what Gbemi says.Gbemi: ‘…to me and I screamed!’ ‘Gbemi…Sleep still dey my head. Wetin you dey talk?’ Mara asked while muffling a yawn. Gbemi: ‘Mtcheeewwww! Stop forming sleep jare and listen! I said Jafar came over yesterday…’She goes on and on, not realizing that Mara is drifting in and out of sleep. But Mara jolts out of her sleep at one word. ‘…proposed to me! I couldn’t breathe! OMG!…’So that was it! Gbemi was engaged! No surprise there since that had always been her life long dream.Like many girls, Gbemi looked forward to her wedding day. She planned carefully how she’d look, what kind of dress she’d wear, her shoes and accessories and even the reception venue.Like a good number of girls too, every time she went for a wedding, or glanced at a wedding magazine or even watched any of the big society weddings, she always changed her own wedding plans. She lived for that day when she would say the golden words: I DO. Gbemi is a school dropout. She had come to the conclusion that educating a woman was pointless since she would end up as a wife, a mother, a lover, cook, cleaner and home maker. After dropping out, she proceeded to make herself as attractive as was humanly possible so she could catch the ‘highest bidder’ and live the fab life.It was no surprise then that Jafar, son of the wealthy Abdullahi Wasa found her irresistible at a party he attended. What was a surprise was that he remained enamored of her when he discovered her family earned as much as one of his cleaners. Jafar refused to let her go and somehow got his parents to accept her as his girlfriend.Gbemi’s friends, including Mara, thought that he just wanted her for fun. So Mara’s reaction was not from jealousy but shock. Mara: ‘Did you say Jafar proposed to you?’ Gbemi: ‘Duh! Are you suddenly deaf?! He not only proposed, he wants us to be married in three months!’ Mara shot out of her bed. ‘THREE MONTHS?! Are you pregnant or something?!’ Gbemi: ‘Abegi! No jare! I’m not. He just can’t wait to have me all to himself. I’m getting married baby!’When the conversation was over, Mara couldn’t go back to sleep. Gbemi is her best friend and though Mara had begged her to stay in school, she blatantly refused. Gbemi believed that a man was supposed to provide all a woman needs while she takes care of the home front. Mara tried to tell her that she needs to make herself relevant as marriage isn’t the essence of existence. All her pleas fell on deaf ears; Gbemi was bent on getting married to a rich dude who would take care of her for life.When Mara started to sleep off, she realized that Gbemi didn’t know what she was getting into. As she finally fell into that world of unconsciousness, her alarm clock buzzed. She had to get up and prepare for work. She shouted like a banshee, expressed her frustration at her innocent pillow and finally got up. Over the coming weeks, Gbemi became a thorn in Mara’s side. She would call at all hours to talk wedding plans. Her every conversation was laced with her upcoming wedding. What was worse was that she could turn ANY conversation into something about her wedding.For instance, last month when they were in the market buying things for dinner, a truck sped and caused many Okada riders to swerve off its path. This caused a minor accident. When Mara complained about the truck driver speeding in a crowded market, Gbemi replied by saying, ‘My wedding convoy will proceed so slowly, people will think a queen is making a procession’. If Mara could have removed her eyes to roll them, she sure would have done so.When they watched Transformers, Gbemi said, ‘On my wedding day, my transformation will be so epic, people might not know it is same old me oh’.What was worse was that two weeks to her wedding, her mum told her that one of their distant uncles had died and she replied, ‘Eyah…he is going to miss my wedding oh!’Gbemi was so obsessed with her wedding plans that she wasn’t even planning for the marriage itself. She was not asking major questions about what was expected of
The North Is Not Hausa
Image: Home Town Nigeria is at a very bad place now, with hatred sown deep into the very core of society. No one can tell just how long that hatred has been going on, but one thing most are sure of is that, any attempt at forcibly removing it will further widen the gaping wound which is Nigeria today; and probably destroy the last vestiges which we are holding on to. This hatred is beyond religious: in fact, religious issues are not as deeply seated as those related to ethnicity and tribalism. The Northern part of the country seems to bear the brunt of this hatred, with the Southern, Eastern and Western parts showing their distaste of the ‘Hausa-North’. Is this too broad (and maybe too bold) a statement? Well…it gets worse.When I was in the university, just a few months before graduation, my sister came to me and asked that I hang out with her and some friends. They were both from one of the South-Southern states of Nigeria; though one of them had lived in Kaduna State until he gained admission to the university. The other was visiting the North for the very first time.We primped and went out to hang out with the guys. While talking, I noticed that the new guy was staring at my sister and I in a very unsettling manner. After enduring the Xray-like stare for a while, I shot him a glare. He became unnerved and apologized. He said he had always had the view that the North was a wild land, inhabited by uneducated cattle shepherds who had an unusual thirst for power. He said he had actually told his friend that he hoped he was not bringing Hausa ‘fura da nono’ sellers to come hang with them. Even in that assessment, you can’t help but see how wrong he was about his knowledge of the Hausa tribe. We laughed about it and in the end, he said, ‘I have changed my views about the Hausa man and the North’. When I asked if he had met any Hausa man, he snorted and said, ‘You, now!’ (For crying out loud, I’m a mix of Idoma and Ebira. But let me continue.)A little while back, a friend told me of his experience with some people when he went to serve in the Eastern part of the country. They were welcoming until they found out he was from Borno State. Easy camaraderie turned into glacier coldness. They watched him with suspicion and accused him of being among the Hausas who had killed their fellow Igbo brothers. At one point, he was scared for his life. He actually thought they were going to kill him. This only changed when they saw him in church one day. After the service, they accosted him. When they ascertained that he wasn’t a member of Boko Haram sent to bomb their church, they asked him how a Hausa man could be a Christian. He explained to them that he wasn’t Hausa. One of them quipped, ‘Are you not from Borno?’. At his affirmation, they asked again, ‘Is Borno not in the North?’ Nodding his head, they said, ‘Then you are Hausa jare!’. Despite his explanations, they still wouldn’t believe that the North wasn’t solely a Hausa region. My friend had to resign to their strongly held ideas, even accepting the nickname, ‘Hausa boy’. He just couldn’t get it into their heads that Hausa is not even an indigent tribe in Borno State. Kanuri yes, but definitely not Hausa! A friend on Facebook also told me of his brother who had gone to one of the Western States for an interview. Having scored the job, he set about looking for a house. He asked a security man to help him get a place. When the security guy was free, he took my friend around and they met many landlords. One would expect that he would easily get a house. But he was rejected by all of them! As soon as they realized he was from the North, they clammed up and refused to give him their houses for rent. One landlord went as far as saying that he didn’t want a Hausa man in his house and that he sure didn’t want a “Boko haram” in his house. This man had to resort to living with the only nice person he had met in that town; the security man. His money was not good enough to get him a place as long as he was perceived as Hausa. The worst part is that there are only five states in the North that are predominantly Hausa. They are Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina and Jigawa. That is to say that of the nineteen Northern States, there are only five States with Hausa people making up the majority indigenous population. Why then are we all regarded as Hausa people? Adamawa State has about 58 indigenous languages, Kaduna has about 57 and Benue has close to 14. I can talk about these States because I have some attachment and affiliation to them. Add that to the Hausa States and that is just eight out of nineteen. What about the other States? Are their individual tribes not recognized? Must we all be swept in the same boat? Now, I have no problems with the Hausa people. They are very nice people. I’ve lived with many of them and I understand them to a certain point. My worry is that people, especially those from other regions of the country, feel that the North is made up of just Hausa people. What is worse, they attach illiteracy and underdevelopment to the Hausa people, and in essence, the North. Clearly the North cannot claim to possess the same exposure or average level of education with Lagos, but we are not a cluster of huts or open spaces as other regions think. When I was in camp for the mandatory orientation exercise of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), we had
The Unfairness Of Marriage
Culled from: MADAMNOIRE A time comes when women begin to feel the flutters of loneliness, where the desire to have a person they can call their own sets in. Marriage ideas begin to grow, and she starts to screen possible suitors according to her preformed ideology of what marriage entails. Soon enough, she settles on one man who satisfies at least 70% of her desires, if not all of it. That seems all good and diddly until the day after the wedding. Things change so drastically after she says ‘I do’ that she wonders whether she is on a roller-coaster ride. She wakes up to the reality that marriage may not be the fairy tale she had envisioned it to be. First of all, she loses her identity. She is no longer called ‘Martha’, ‘Janelle’, ‘Iniobong’ or ‘Safiya’, but ‘Mrs. (insert husband’s name)’. No one cares anymore that she was a person in her own right before she joined herself to her man. Many people conveniently forget her name because she is (huffs) now married. In the typical Nigerian context, she might be called Amariya, Iyawo, Nwunyem or our wife. Secondly, society expects her to stop dressing beautifully because she now no longer has any reason to. Society thinks she was dressing in an attractive manner to catch a man and having done so, should stop being attractive. No one cares that she probably dressed well because she wants to or loves to. On the other hand, no one expects the man to stop rocking his jeans and polo shirts. No one expects the man to look shabby on purpose. They expect him to always look dapper or the wife gets blamed; one of her many chores it seems. But the woman has to start wearing big(ger) clothes, wrappers and Abayas. If she is found wearing sexy clothes, or even normal clothes (such as jeans and a simple top or tee), she will not be able to live down the side-eye she is sure to get from other women…and men too. Also, if push comes to shove, the woman is expected to give up her career and job to play house and raise the kids (if there are any). This comes from the notion that husbands and children are the essence of the woman’s life. No one cares that raising kids is a two-parent affair; at least. A woman might have to give up on her life for her kids, because society dictates that kids are the center of her life. Does that, in essence, mean the kids are of no importance to the man or not as important to him as they are to the woman? When a woman considers marriage, let her realize that religion (if she practices any) places a huge role on women. In Christianity, it is expected that the woman submits to her husband (Ephesians 5:22-24) as the church would submit to God himself. The flip side is that, a man has to love the woman as Christ himself loved the church; willing to put up life to restore the world. Marriage in Islam is viewed as an important and sacred union between a man and woman that fulfills half of one’s religious obligations. Let women also consider that in Africa, the dictates of society on married women is condescending, patriarchal and in some cases, absolutely misogynistic. The unfairness of marriage is such that until you are willing submit to that man whom you profess to love, you are not expected to be talking about marriage. Submission of this sort, if not properly considered and digested, can lead to bitterness and immeasurable sorrow. If however, you are of the opinion that marriage is a partnership – as it should be – you would still need to contend with family members who refuse to accept your postulations. Men can get away with being opinionated about the things they want; women, not so much. We are changing the narrative, but it really is at a sloth’s pace. So really consider if you want to get married. Can you handle the pressure? Can you hold your own? Does your partner know who you are…and supports it? Because if you are marrying for the feelings of it, you may be headed for a place of such utter sorrow. Think about it…and prepare for that marriage if you choose to walk down that road.
Rape Cases… And The Apologists Who Make It Worse
Mateus Souza for Pexels I am overly sensitive about the plight of women and children: women because they are at the mercy of society’s dictates and children because they are quite helpless and need protection. I am also known to easily get into a rant about issues that touch me, be they direct or otherwise. As a result, I can be totally jaded when issues surrounding women are brought to fore. Having said that, I want to say I’m totally normal and clear-eyed as I type this piece. Also, I hold responsibility for every word that appears here. On twitter a few months ago, a guy said women who got raped had themselves to blame. The sky turned red for me at that point and I couldn’t see past the bloody curtain. I asked how women could cause something of such life-altering magnitude to happen to themselves. He said provocative dressing was a reason why women were raped. I asked him to explain how women who wore niqab were then raped; how they used their ‘provocative dressing’ to seduce their rapists. (PS: A niqab is a piece of cloth worn by some Muslim women to cover the whole face except the eyes.) He said that women who wore niqab were never raped. At that point, I knew I was talking to a dunce! Rape has never been about the victim. It has (and will always be) about the power the rapist wields or want to wield. That power doesn’t care about the victim. It chooses anyone and proceeds to mete out untold pain to them. Women who have been raped…in fact, everyone who has been raped, has had to coil up in shame and hide. They cringe from the sheer effects of it. Most rape victims are so scarred after that they totally clam up and shut off sexual relations. It seems that the more violent the rape, the less likely the victim is to talk about it. Society has also effectively found a way of putting the blame at the survivor’s feet, thereby increasing instances of shame-laden silence. So, when a woman in a niqab doesn’t come out to say she has been raped, that doesn’t change the fact that she has been! Back to the deliberately dense dude. Seeing that he was unwilling to get off his obviously dead horse, I asked him to tell me how a three-month old baby could have dressed provocatively enough to make a man rape her. I also asked him to explain how a 4-year old could have provocatively lured a man to dip his finger in her vagina and fondle her until she bled; how a 13-year old who kept screaming, ‘Uncle stop! Please!’could have been the wanton seductress. He said in such cases, the rapist was sick and needed psychological help. I gave him a good tongue lashing, insisting that a man who raped kids was no ‘sicker’ than a man who raped grown women! I’ve heard of totally good girls who got raped on their way from school, church, the office etc. I’ve talked to girls who got raped by that close ‘friend’, brother, cousin, uncle and even father! I’ve seen pictures of girls who boarded buses in India, who got gang-raped by as many as seven men, leading to an eventual death. How did these girls ‘seduce’ their attackers?! How did they provocatively lure them?! Now, if rumors are to be believed, the Chibok Girls who were kidnapped by the Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād insurgent sect – or Boko Haram as they are widely called – are being constantly raped and married off to their captors. Can one of those rape-apologists tell me how those girls wantonly sought their abductors/rapists?! It is bad that society makes it hard for women and children who have been raped, but that you attribute the rape to the actions of the survivor is pure wickedness! Can you imagine the pain that comes with forced entry into a vagina or anus? Can you imagine how dreadful the act is to the survivor, not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically too? Do you know how many victims have had to commit suicide, or led totally lack-lustre sex lives because of that one incidence of rape? Do you know the trauma rape victims suffer…and keep suffering for life?! The time has come for people to stand up for those 2-year olds whose ‘uncles’ forced their penises into their vaginas. We need to fight for the 8-year olds carrying babies of their own; babies whose gene pool is the same with their granddad. We cannot continue to shut up while 13-year-olds are married off to 65-year-old ‘grandbands’ and most especially, we need to bring to justice all the sons-of-a-gun who force themselves upon women and children! Rape is a crime against the humanity of the victim. Sometimes, these victims become survivors. Other times, they never heal from the trauma. However, at no time is a rape the fault of the survivor. It begs to be repeated. At no time is a rape the fault of the survivor…no matter what they wear, say or do. As for all rapists and rape apologists, I feel castration is a fitting punishment but not necessarily enough. I hope the justice systems gets you and punishes you appropriately. #EndRape
Lazy Youth
Photo by Retha Ferguson from Pexels I always hear stuff like, ‘There are no jobs in the country.’ In the past, I would have agreed to this. Now, not so much. I think there are jobs in this country…they just might not be the ones you want or are worth. You see, I used to be surrounded by many people who are above 25 who did not think they should apply themselves and work. They would sit all day at home doing nothing. They did not work, study, or keep themselves abreast of news and development stories from across the world. They spent almost all their time watching movies, goofing around or basically, wasting away. I remember one family that I used to know. They had all been through various levels of education, but they stayed at home rather than worked. The first daughter was different though. She would wake up, cook, clean, cook, do laundry and whatever else she needed to do. Then she would plait the hair of women and girls who came to visit her parents. She worked, but it was mostly free labor. It meant all that energy was for almost nothing. She was still dependent on her family for all her needs. Her siblings on the other hand? Pheww! They defined the term, ‘lazy’. They only seemed to watch television, eat, and sleep. When I lived with them in the same compound, I used to wake up early, head off to work and sometimes, return to the house very late. On one of my days off work, they were surprised to see me at home at that time. We got chatting and they chastised me for being a workaholic, saying they hoped I was paid lots of money. I laughed; I definitely wasn’t. They then said, ‘Don’t stress yourself oh’. For some reason, I remember being so mad at the statement. Don’t stress myself?! Really?! I wanted to retort that maybe they should stress themselves, apply themselves to something more productive than sitting around all day. But I stayed silent. As if to force me into talking, they went further to say they would only work hard when they expected to collect allowances of not less than a hundred thousand Naira. At that point, I got up and left. They had almost no value to add to any organization. They didn’t care that they were older and should be planning out their futures. They were content letting their parents fend for them; parents who were themselves old and barely surviving on retirement checks. I was, to say the least, quite disappointed with their entire outlook on life. I remember my first job after I graduated from school. The pay wasn’t even enough to cover transport expenses, so my dad had to take me halfway to work so that I could always have a little money. I didn’t need the job; my needs were pretty simple at that point. But I needed the independence! I didn’t want to ask my dad for things like sanitary pads or new underwear. I didn’t want my parents buying me clothes when I was a full-grown university graduate. And though the job was way beneath my pay grade, I took it and gave my best to it. I particularly want to address religious leaders, as their parents were Pastors and Preachers. Many of you use your ‘office’ as an excuse not to work. You ‘are doing full time ministry’ as you say. In my opinion, your everyday life should be your full-time ministry…whatever the faith you profess. That being said, get up and work! Write a book. Own a business. Work in a company. Do something other than live off the tithes, gifts and offerings of members who have decided to work. It is yours, no one argues that, but your congregation will respect you more if you were as industrious as they are. In fact, because leaders always lead by example, any religious leader who doesn’t work will have more unemployed people in the congregation than employed ones. I know first-hand that any religious leader that works has over 90% of his flock being hardworking. It really is a simple formula. We all need to work! It is not compulsory that it be a white-collar job in that plush office and with that fat bank account. Only a small percentage of the population will get those jobs anyway. Sometimes, taking a lower paying job can present an opportunity for greater improvement. Plus, it beats not having money and being dependent on people; especially if you are an adult. Done ranting! PS: This post is not to negate the economic factors that make living (and working) in Nigeria really tasking; because they are there. It is to address some of the entitlement of many young people who are not willing to put in the work to improve their lives.
Women Are So Much More!!!
Image: Pexels. I have, for months now, been staying in my lane and avoiding some issues that could easily rile me up. I have been learning to bridle my tongue to avoid dishing out words I can’t take back. But today, that will take a back seat! I’m literally going to war! I am a feminist and I am ever ready to jump on all issues relating to women. I could go on and on about women’s rights and what we deserve. So it is fitting that I go on this rant. I was in a bus heading to town when this lady in front of us tried to reverse. She reversed smoothly, albeit slowly, and went on her way. As we watched disappear into the distance, another passenger started ranting about why women shouldn’t drive. I wondered what he was about. He sounded so angry that people began to complain. The conversation in the bus was crazy! The aggrieved passenger was hell bent on proving why women shouldn’t drive. All through, I was saying, ‘Lord JESUS, help me get down ‘jejely’ without insulting anybody’. I did! When I got home, I wanted to put the incident behind me. I almost succeeded until I read a Facebook post where a guy said he hated seeing women act like bosses when, in the end, they would all end in the kitchen. He thought he was funny when he typed the hash-tag, #KitchenBoss. I went at it a bit with him and he kept going on about women picking up western cultures and not respecting men. I told him respect was earned in ALL cultures and a woman shouldn’t have to respect a man just because of his penis! At this point, I was still trying to be good and reign in my tongue. I went on to do my midday show and asked the listeners to describe a woman who was accomplished educationally, in her work and career but who couldn’t cook. Out of the over 150 respondents, more than 120 said a woman who couldn’t cook was a totally useless person and an incomplete woman, backing it up with statements like ‘It is the destiny of a woman to end up in the kitchen’. By this time, I wasn’t pretending anymore! I was pissed the fuck up! I was angry and just about ready to spew venom! I tried to put it out of my mind until my colleague, while discussing an issue, said a married woman was her husband’s ‘property’. I asked, ‘Property?!’ and he reiterated his statement. At that point, I knew I had reached my tether’s end. I just couldn’t stand it anymore! This is 2019 for crying out loud and people still have the ideology that women are the inferior members of the human species. With all the campaign about equality, with all the manifestations that women can be and do so much more, men (and some women) still think we are nothing but beautiful bodies with little brain capacities! Women are cracking codes in genetics, flying to space, becoming engineers, soldiers, doctors, prime ministers, presidents, bloggers, artists, I.C.T experts, pilots and men still think it is okay to call us properties?! We are taking charge and working in just about any field and yet, we still manage to balance family life. In spite of all these, silly arguments about what women should and shouldn’t do still abound?! I’m most disappointed that we are held to impossibly archaic standards in today’s fast changing world! There are still things women can do on a general note that men CANNOT do and yet we still get to be discriminated against?! This is appalling! Well, like I told the ‘Facebooker’, I will say this to all chauvinistic, patriarchal and misogynistic men out there. ‘There are women who will be far more important in this world than you could ever be or hope to attain. You can either join the fast moving wagon of progressives or remain in your circle of ignorance’. Either way, you WILL NOT deter us.’ And to women, don’t let NO ONE tell you that you cannot aspire for more than the kitchen. Your multi-billion-celled brain was not created to just shuffle meal timetables for the month. Women are so much more than that!
