There was a friend I had in secondary school between JSS1 and JSS2.
She was tall and definitely “did not look like a woman.” She looked very strong, sinewy, tough and would have been more muscular if she went to the gym. She was VERY fast on the field where we played during break time and everyone would scramble to have her on their team because she would almost always win. She used to take the last leg of the race. Or sometimes the first leg.
The rest of the girls didn’t really like doing sport with her because she was so strong and if she mistakenly collided with you, you would be in pains. In fact, I was a victim of that myself. She wanted to pass me our makeshift baton, it was awkward and she collided with my outstretched arms. They were in a sling for days.
She was so fast she was nicknamed a horse.
There was also this game where we would link our hands tightly and someone from the other team would try to break the link by running very fast. Almost every time, everybody would run away before she made contact. 😅
And of course, absolutely nobody could beat her up, not even the boys.
She definitely had an “unfair advantage” over everyone else in my class so why the hell would we agree that she’s just a girl with a lot of “male hormone” in her system?
And “to make matters worse”, she wasn’t even attracted to boys like a “normal” girl would!
She’s most likely not a girl! 🙄
Remembering her for this article made me realize I’ve always subconsciously had a thing for unconventional women, either physically or their behaviours.
I like strong women, I’m naturally drawn to them.
Any girl or woman that doesn’t fit into the patriarchal status quo in any way, I like them immediately!
I myself also don’t have the characteristic “feminine” features and behaviours.
As a child, people mistook me for a boy a lot.
I remember we once had a visitor around in our house and the man’s visit coincided with I working on our first fish pond. Everyone could randomly just go start digging and so on a sunny afternoon, I needed to expend my energy and I took a shovel and dug away furiously.
This visitor asked me grandfather: “Is that a boy?”
“No”, my grandfather replied.
“Obirin ni. She is a girl.”
And then the man replied: “Oh wow, she works just like a boy!”
I was just like a boy indeed and all that was missing was a penis. In fact, I remember a short period of my childhood when a penis childishly fascinated me and I wanted to have one, I even dreamt of having one. The phase of I craving a penis was short and I outgrew it but until now as an adult, it manifested as I wishing I could fuck myself and other women with MY penis and I would sublime by trying to always get myself in an FMF situation so I could watch another man do that for me with another woman.
I suppose I wouldn’t have wanted a penis if only the society would let me look anyhow I wanted to look like or let me exhibit whatever behaviours I wanted without constantly accruing it to a made up gender construct. Because what is inherently feminine and what is not? What is inherently masculine and what is not?
People constantly made me feel like I was in the wrong body. There was an unwritten manual I didn’t seem able to follow as a girl child even when that wasn’t my fault.
I was apparently “too tall” for a girl and my feet were like a boy’s. They were big and wide and it was difficult to buy sandals for me because my feet weren’t congruent with girls’ “naturally” small feet.
I have a lot of hair on my head but they manage to show up on my legs, arms and the corners of my lips. They aren’t much but I shave them off the same. Perhaps one day, I’ll get comfortable enough to stop shaving.
My boobs are almost non-existent and I was endlessly teased about them by my grandmother, so much so that I only recently started fiercely loving them.
The society demands that I have big boobs “as a woman.” But here I was as a child having absolutely nothing on my chest. When the other “normal” girls already started to wear bra, I had nothing! I would have loved myself just the way I am but for the society always boxing people up into an unrealistic gender binary system.
If you’re feminine, you must look this way!
If you’re masculine, you must look this way!
And then go right ahead to make people who don’t fit into any box very miserable, even unalive them a lot of the time.
I thought I didn’t like my boobs but it was actually the society that didn’t like them. I recently noticed they were getting a bit fuller than they’ve ever been since I’ve intimately known them and I freaked out! Turns out I’ve always wanted and loved them as small as they’ve always been. I’ve always loved getting away with not wearing a bra. I’ve always loved the pointy nipples that earned me the “Cute Nipuz” nickname when I was streaming. The sams Nipuz that raked in money for me running into millions. There were so many other “feminine” boobs on that site, but I flaunted mine all the same and was very confident with them and I became “Cute Nipuz.” I realized I didn’t have to be in any box. I’m not even going to argue with anyone that I’m a woman! I don’t want to get into any box, or partake in a construct as shallow as the gender construct!
My period didn’t come early, it started at 15. I had a female friend who started as early as 11!
And I was strong!
I could beat up anybody!
None of the boys in my class could beat me.
And then there was this bully in Primary School who looked VERY muscular and scared me at first. He was very fine and looked adorable but he was a bully. I kept avoiding him but he needed to, y’know, break me I guess. He was curious and he needed to assert dominance. I beat the crap out of him and stuffed his mouth with sand.
The only person that could have beaten me up was that my friend in JSS1 but we were best friends so we never had to fight. And even if we ever had to fight, I doubt there would be a winner or loser. Combine the two of us together and we could take on any boy.
The gender construct is so ridiculous that at this point, I’m not sure we were girls or (now women) ourselves 😅🤲🏾
I don’t have dominant feminine features.
I’m not curvy.
My boobs are tiny.
And it’s only recently that my bum “looked feminine” a bit in a “small yansh dey shake o” kinda way, because I work out my glutes a lot. If I was someone with a lot of estrogen in their body, I would definitely have bigger bum than I currently have if the amount of glute work I do is taken into consideration.
I have hair growing on my legs, arms and lips.
I have this slight bounce when I walk and always hold my head up high. I naturally look calm but in a deadly “don’t fkn mess with me” way. In fact, I like to think of my calmness as a camouflage. If you make the mistake of taking my calmness and kindness for granted, you’d tell your grandchildren about me by the time we were done with each other. (Again, I’m becoming a better person at this. I mostly just walk away now).
I try to dominate whoever I came in contact with. A friend I used to have who was a very strong “masculine” character himself said I was the most controlling person he’s ever met in his life. He brought my attention to it and I’m working on it. Being controlling is an inappropriate and personally/societally traumatic response.
I love women’s boobs; small and perky like mine.
I love wearing boots.
I fucking hate skirts.
I don’t know how to make up.
Skincare routine bores me to de-ath.
And I don’t know how to flutter my eyelids or fawn over anybody or gossip about men. I have never fitted in with other women.
I was very violent like an average afamail. Every little thing like this, I’d like to flex muscles and fight!
I wasn’t scared of anybody (well maybe except my mother and even she admitted to being scared of me too and then I got fed up one day and calmly told her one of us had to die if she wouldn’t let me be and stop hitting me).
They were confused at home about my “not so feminine” behaviours and concerned I wouldn’t find someone to marry me. In a way, they’re right as I’m not interested in marriage, but not because there’s nobody who wants to marry me.
In fact, a whole lot of men and women have always been attracted to my body and my personality and would like to monopolise me.
My grandfather’s children were afraid of him but I wasn’t. In fact, he was one of the first bullies I told to shut it!
I’m naturally confident and it borders on narcissism.
I can be quite confrontational.
I don’t have any maternal instinct and babies weird me out. I genuinely don’t even understand the fuss people make over babies or the idea that someone has recently giving birth. I just emptily mimick others and go “heyyyy, congratulations!”
The idea of anybody asserting power over me makes me sick. Imagine how horrified I was when the society started telling me that since I had a vagina, I’d be tagged “weak” and someone with a piniz is automatically placed above me!
Whereas a lot of these men have feminine features and behaviours much more than I do.
I have met MANY feminine men but of course go ahead and put everybody in a physical and behavioural box!
Sometimes when I was in OAU, I was strolling on campus with my then partner and this guy picked on me. I’d never seen him but he kept shouting at me:
“Are you a woman?!”
I think I was on low cut back then and I was very tiny, I had this stick-like figure. And I was wearing a shirt.
My then partner reminded me I already had a case with the school security, I couldn’t afford to fight again.
THAT was the guy’s saving grace because honest to gawd, I was so angry I’d have beaten him up!
Thinking about it, he must have been one of the school management’s dogs that they used to target people they think wouldn’t conform to oppressive rules that turn every student on every university campus to zombies and capitalist idiots.
But I still didn’t let it go.
I walked up to him, faced him squarely and gave him the middle finger. His other two buddies were so fucking embarrassed.
Some weeks later, I would see him coming afar. We were OUTSIDE the campus so my heart jumped for joy. I would treat his fuck up. My then partner wasn’t with me and none of his buddies were with him too so it was just the two of us.
Tell me why this fucker quickly crossed to the other side and walked as fast as he could away from me. 😅
I’m very sure I would have attempted to beat him up that day.
But the society echoes what that guy tried to embarrass me with.
Are you a woman?!
Am I?
With everything I’ve tried to describe mixing past and present tenses, am I actually a woman?
Testosterone and estrogen exist in every body irrespective of the gender. And these hormones don’t inherently affect behaviours; it’s the society that says “uhm, since you look like THIS, you must behave like THIS.”
They erroneously attribute certain physical attributes to having certain behaviours.
It’s all so messed up and confusing and it wouldn’t be so confusing anymore if we’d just let everyone be!
Women in South-South Nigeria definitely have a lot of testosterone than many average men. Some even have goatees.
There was this ex who had an ex (lol) and she came around one evening. A huge fight broke out and you should have seen the way she struggled with the man in the mix. If push came to shove and both of them seriously got physical, I’m fairly sure the woman would have been unscathed. She was a Warri babe and as furious as I was with her, that was the night I fell in love with Warri. 😅
And the man was huuuge! And she could handle him.
If testosterone and oestrogen both naturally exist in every body in uneven measure, how then do we decide who is which gender? And what then is so terrible about people who have a lot of testosterone in their bodies but still get to be in women’s bodies? Both naturally (intersex) and artificially (transgenderism)?
We literally take drugs to alter our body’s functions every day.
If you as much as take paracetamol, that’s literally you trying to control stuff in your body, like certain enzymes that inhibit the production of prostaglandins, chemicals that promote pain.
You take stuff to look younger, to not be sick, to not die. If you can’t afford the procedures to alter your body from the inside, you do it from the outside through makeup.
We all try to control what we want our bodies to do and look like every day, so what then is so horrible about people controlling how their bodies look like? Because they defy your control and go right ahead to change their body mechanisms outside of the gender box you’ve created for everybody? Because you’re so narcissistic you get to tell people how to look like and then get mad when they don’t listen to you?
Are you okay?
Most likely you are not, because it is only narcissistic madness that will only make you think that another person that doesn’t know you exist would go through all the transitioning processes so they could see your vagina in the restrooms or so they could win you in sports when they could easily have done that as men and then turn around to use that as a basis for gender superiority.
You know, you are THAT important.
Transgenderism occurs naturally, as nature itself just distributes these hormones as it deems fit.
If nature gives you headache, you take paracetamol to alter it.
Stop hiding your bigotry behind nature. It has nothing to do with your outrage against trans and intersex people.
And perhaps if you know who you are, you wouldn’t be fighting every second of your life about some useless gender identity that’s as empty as it comes.
You don’t know who you are, that’s why you identify with some made up construct outside of you.
Is that all you are? Really? Just boobs and bums and uterus? My gawd, I can’t imagine how it feels like to be you. I hope I never become that miserable and empty that another person having the same physical features I have start becoming threats to me.
Everybody threatens you; other women, men, men who (want to) look like women.
You’re going to be a scared rat all your life getting mad at other people for being who they want to be, while you’re there, not even having a clue about whatever is going on and just joining the bandwagon and screaming “leave women’s spaces.”
Which useless spaces do you have under patriarchy?
Ironically, you’re upholding patriarchy with your transphobia as patriarchy is literally held up by the idea of the gender binary.
But you just want to scream and shout like an educated illiterate all the damn time.
Read some fucking book and be reasonable!
And get to know who you are.
You’re not just a woman or whatever the hell you want to identify with.
You’re more than that.
And while getting to know who you are, please stfu and let others live.
The gender binary is the reason why it is easy to place one gender above another with clear gender roles. If we blur those lines by accepting everybody for the multiple gender variations they have, gender inequality becomes totally impossible.
Thank you.
Written by Sisí Afrika.
This article is dedicated to Abuja Area Mama, a crossdresser who was a victim of Nigeria’s homophobic culture and whose body was found on the morning of August 8, 2024 with his eyes gouged out if I may add so you could understand the extent of this madness and anger over another person’s body.
This happened just three days after Bobrisky, another popular crossdresser imprisoned for “mutilating the Naira”, was released from jail.
