In France, the feminists here have fought for the right of women to not be judged or known by their marital status.
The argument is that a man is always MR (Monsieur), and you don’t have to know whether they’re married or not.
Why should women have to make their marital status known then?
And so presently, if you’re filling documents, it’s just Monsieur and Madame.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a married woman or not, it’s always “madame.”
Now this is what I call a systemic solution against a systemic problem.
It’s not just about screaming that women can marry and still be feminists forgetting that it’s a systemic issue and women who get married and those who don’t marry all still get caged and punished accordingly. Gbogbo wa la n jẹ breakfast.
Women who don’t want to get married and how they’re affected are entirely left out of the conversation…
In all the conversations against patriarchy in the Nigerian space, a consistent recurring theme is proffering individualistic solutions to systemic problems, and most times, these proffered solutions reduce women’s humanity and make women become just like or even worse than that very thing they’re fighting.
Men are users? Use them too!
Men hate women? Hate them too!
The marriage institution is inherently patriarchal? Just marry right!
The question is who intentionally marries “wrong” in the first place?
There’s so much individualism and selfishness in the feminist movement, otherwise these individualistic solutions wouldn’t thrive.
“Marry right” but how many women and young girls in the Northern parts of Nigeria can “marry right?” Or even know their rights?
Are there systemic structures in place to back up you marrying “right?”
Instead of proffering and encouraging systemic solutions that benefit everybody, you just want to watch out for your own head and claim everybody else isn’t just being smart?
There’s a need to emphasize that men and women actually do love one another very much.
We can’t all get enough of one another, we date, we marry, we fuck, and we obsessively rant about one another every fucking day!
In fact, if you look at a lot of feminists’ advocacy against patriarchy, it IS centred around men.
How to bag premium MEN.
How to cheat back on cheating MEN.
How to get sugar DADDIES.
MEN this MEN that.
Women are so enamoured with men and vice versa that they get married and still find a way to sell getting married to these men they claim to hate so much as some form of women empowerment and platform for equality.
This reminds me of a phenomenon about feminist platforms. They don’t want men in feminist groups or spaces because they think the men’s presence is the problem when it’s not.
I’ve had quite the experience myself.
All would be well among the feminist women until there’s a man in sight.
Immediately there’s a man involved, the competition would start. The jealousy would start. The race to be noticed would start. I cannot begin to can about my experiences of being targeted by other women on those groups when they think I was the one being either defended or given attention. Let me quickly slot it in here that without dismantling the construct of romance, the fight against patriarchy would be useless.
It’s so scary how the presence of a man disrupts even feminist spaces, and a lot of feminists erroneously believe that it’s those men that are the problems when in truth, they’re not.
Sometimes, these feminist women are not even interested in the said man but they compulsively complete for his attention all the same.
It’s the patriarchal social romantic conditioning even in women; seek male gaze, if another woman gets the man then she’s better than you, your worth is attached to a man’s attention.
With just the presence of a man, all feminist ideas fly out the window.
There’s a temporary solution to excluding men from feminist spaces truly, but outside of those spaces, is the real problem still being addressed? Will women never interact with other women in the presence of men outside of those spaces?
You will never find these feminists talking about systemic issues, it is ALWAYS about how men are this and that.
And it’s the exact same thing incels do; it’s women women women everyday.
Shouldn’t we, then, be asking the questions that matter?
What exactly is wrong if men and women are actually obsessed with one another this much and still, our interactions mostly go sour?
The problem isn’t inherently about men and women hating one another, it’s about the various divisive ideas being fanned day in day out so much so that our society is so fragmented we don’t even know how to express the love we have for one another anymore.
And there’s really nobody to fight here otherwise, we could just carry placards to the person’s house right now or even unalive the people making this happen.
The problem here is the IDEA.
It’s these ideas that turn your boys into incels, even if you’re a rad feminist.
Those ideas are lying in wait to shape them into men who think that even you, their mothers, are beneath them.
So who do you want to go and fight about THAT?
And what individualistic solutions can overcome these systemic problems?
Will “marrying right” or “raising your kids right” or “I’m a feminist and I’ll be okay” protect you from something that’s way bigger than you?
While I believe we’re all just trying our best to resist the status quo and live better quality of life, these solutions should go hand in hand.
While you’re trying to protect yourself on the personal level, remember that you’re infinitesimal and you must always link your struggles to the collective, otherwise you’ll get crushed in no time and you’ll also end up trying to convince everyone you’ve “married right” when you know deep down that you are systematically fucked.
Individual solutions alone are not enough, our fights must be collective.
Always think of others in your struggles, because you are not really free until everybody is free.
Written by Sisí Afrika (Paris, France).
