Nigerian women are trapped in a dance of culture and Femicide

During an interview, the interviewer, a middle-aged man asked me a rhetorical question, “Do you wish to identify with the sex you were born with or do you wish to identify with another sex?”

I retorted, “…the marginalised sex of course …” He looked up, confused, couldn’t write nor concentrate for some seconds and then I feigned a cough. He stared straight into my eyes as if searching for answers but when he couldn’t find one, he repeated the question.

Well, I maintained my stance to identify with the marginalised sex. This birthed a rhetoric filled with jaw-dropping sentences and semantics – I was not prepared for it and never would. It is like the handwriting on the wall, it is always there.

We wouldn’t be marginalised if we were allowed to be girls in the womb as our extended families and the local communities keep haunting our mothers with, “…hope it’s a boy this time…?”

We wouldn’t be marginalised if, at birth, our extended families and our communities frowned at us for been girls, wished we were male children cum ‘assets’ to continue the family lineage as against ‘liabilities’ of no value, to be sold and or married off in due time. We are the ‘legit’ targets of infanticide, femicide, sex-selective abortions, and early weaning in the fervent hope that our mothers get pregnant again and have a male child.

We are then subjected to the excruciating pains of Female Genital Mutilation, where we are forced to dance at infamous festivals to remove a part of us that could bring ‘shame’ to our families and communities. Hence, preventing us from enticing the boys, erasing our sexual prowess, just like an abomination which spews whoredom where a woman wants or enjoys sexual intercourse.

We are the ones who have to endure the agony of breast ironing where our breasts are pounded and flattened at the inception of puberty with spatulas, hot stones, and hammers to prevent it from developing – with the ‘ancient wisdom’ of protecting us from unwanted male attention, sexual harassment and rape. We are subjected to all manner of painful virginity tests before marriage and sometimes disvirgined in the process and still held in contempt.

We are the only ‘assets’ of forced child marriages, bride kidnapping, forced sexual intercourse and early pregnancy but immediately condemned as witches and occasionally get slain when complications like VVF and all other malignant arsenals attendant to early pregnancy occurs. We are still trafficked and or sold off as sexual and domestic slaves, where we may endure all manner of hardship and sometimes killed for ritual purposes.

And then we are the targets of Honor Killings, which according to Human Rights Watch, are acts of vengeance, usually death committed by male family members against female family members who are perceived to have brought dishonor upon the family. We could get killed just by minor suspicion, of having sexual intercourse or adultery, of dressing inappropriately, for seeking divorce from abusive marriages, for being victims of rape. To me, this is ‘patriarchal-misogyny’ which places a heavy burden on women to remedy the wrongs of men, while making it pertinent that we be and seen to be embodiments of honor, morality, and righteousness and must hold this ‘honor’ for our male-dominated families and patriarchy entrenching communities.

Aren’t we the vulnerable victims of rape, forced impregnation and all manner of sexual abuse?

While we felt we are championing the war against rape and all forms of violence and sexual abuse on women and the girl child, the recent case of Asifa Bano, an eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped, tortured and killed in order to scare and terrorize her community because of religious differences, has left us perplexed and in imminent fear of danger lurking in muddy waters. It is still saddening to note and remember the ‘celebrated’ case Mukhtar Mai, the 28 year old Pakistani woman who was gang-raped by the order of a Village Council because her brother who is 12 years old was accused of having an affair with an older woman and then again the revenge-rape of a 16-year-old girl whose brother raped another girl in Pakistan – still by an order of a ‘testosterone wielding’ Village Council.

Why must it be a woman that should carry all burdens of vengeance in all its ramifications?

Aren’t we the ‘paramount’ targets of acid attacks, stove burning and other vagaries in that nomenclature? For flimsy excuses like refusing a man’s date or sexual advances, to not preparing meals early enough for our husbands, to a mere suspicion of adultery or speaking to another man, to reporting to family members of  the ordeals we are facing in marriage. Other times we are impugned to commit suicide, regarded as bitter women. More times, we are killed in crimes of passion and our ‘exterminator’ is absolved of guilt and probably given light sentence.

We are vulnerable and disproportionately suspected as witches and could be burnt, beheaded or buried alive where there is inexplicable illness or deaths even where such are vagaries of an epidemic, water or airborne diseases. This particular practice has graduated to the length that when a sick woman falls or faints on the road, people gather around her not to assist in getting her medical care, but to accuse her of returning from a coven or a haunting mission. She would ‘shoulder’ any bad omen that has happened within that vicinity from antiquity, therefore, she deserves jungle justice ranging from stoning, burning to being buried alive. How nice?

We are the ones who bear the society’s puckered brows when our husbands behave badly. We are the ones judged when he drinks, commits adultery, impregnates another woman, marries another woman and still blamed even when he commits a crime. Can we speak of a plethora of jeopardy women face in marriages! A friend of mine informed me about a new theme of abuse and violence against women; she allied to “dowry/bride price related violence”. I ignored it at first, but then I remembered that some wife beaters glorify themselves as ‘messiahs’ who rescued their wives from the ‘shame’ of spinsterhood and therefore these wives must be handy to bow to their whims and caprices. It goes on to the notion that women are depreciating properties acquired with some ‘non-refundable’ hard currencies and has now come to serve and service the egos of her Masters- her husband and in-laws. We noticed dowry/bride price related violence is more prevalent in countries like India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh where it behooves on women to pay a dowry to their husband’s family; over there, it is called ‘Dowry death’.

We are sole femme when it comes to issues of infertility. The men are absolved because it is the women’s responsibility to make babies, which is why when a man is medically and sexually impotent; a woman is still pestered and harassed. It’s witchcraft when we don’t conceive even while the man is at fault; more terrible when we deliver a stillborn.

The camel’s back would never be mended if our husbands are snatched by the cold hands of death! We are the prime suspects of their murder and made to sleep in same room with decomposing corpses, made to drink the water used to clean same, beaten and ostracized. Where we are still considered young, we are forced into levirate marriages with an old in-law or the father; it becomes a fairy tale when we reject this sodden arrangement.

It is rather inexplicable to use words to express what it means and feels to identify with the marginalized sex; only divinity can comprehend this strength. One issue remains constant; the war on eradication of abuse and violence against women cannot be won by a few women at the battlefront. I am a fervent believer that women are enshrined with all it takes to liberate themselves and to eradicate vulnerability. The embattled should be at the battlefront- after all, we have never been safe.

More Laws, more campaigns, more seminars and awareness programs centred on women rights education and empowerment are needed, especially in the semi-urban and rural areas.

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