In a World of Prejudice

Society and culture have found ways to attach tags to every action in our everyday lives, such that some can be considered masculine and others unmasculine, not feminine but unmasculine.

“Simon, I'm going out to meet some people with Uncle Augustine.”

To anyone who heard my mom say that sentence, it simply meant she was leaving the house to meet some people with her brother. It was nothing, meant nothing. But to me it meant a lot. It made me angry, it made me sad.     

Since my Dad died some years ago, my mom had to meet with different people that laid claims to the land plots he bought. This was one of the ways to keep us from selling out. The process is meant to be easy: meet, discuss and agree. But this was not the case because my mom is regrettably a woman.

My mom always came back from the meetings frustrated, tired and angry. The men who laid claim to the plots never took her seriously. It just could not happen that a single woman could win a case against them.  They never listened to her, that was until she invited her brother, my uncle to the case. Within a period of two months, an issue that had been in court from 2013 to mid 2015 ended in a simple negotiation. That was my first experience of prejudice against women.

In Nigeria, a man must never fight for gender equality or become a feminist. The moment you do, you become a laughing stock; you could be accosted on the streets, beaten up and left fatally injured; you could be harassed - emotionally and physically -you could wake up to police men at your doorstep ready to drag you away to a cell. Why? Because your angry male neighbor called the police and told them that you were gay. In Nigeria male feminists, gay or straight, loose a bit of their their 'masculinity' each time they advocate for the rights of the opposite sex because only someone who is not attracted to women can see women as equal human beings not as people to satisfy some depraved desires.

Once in high school, there was an argument in my hostel,or rather' a crucifixion. A group of boys had gathered to talk about or commit slander against a girl who refused to shag her long-time boyfriend and limited him to only a kiss. And when I tried to understand the situation and see things from their side, they said, “You just think like a babe, you won’t get.” In our society, no one cares for the "arrogant" girl who tries to be confident. No one wants the "annoying" girl who tries to be authoritative, the "manipulative" girl who tries to be strategic nor the "aggressive" girl who tries to be assertive and says “I really just want to feel loved, not to be touched.” She becomes an alien the moment she says that. She is ridiculed and backbitten.

My own mother never realizes that she depends so much on men and when I tell her, she says, “That is how it’s meant to be, for men to take care of women and women make them comfortable.” But most women will object to marrying a poor man while spouting the phrase “Love is blind, but not that blind.”

This is because, unconsciously, they feel the need to be cared for by a man or his money and sit back and relax. But why not make your own money, marry whoever, sit back and relax. Till date, to me, one of the greatest characters from fictional movies is Astrid Leong-Teo(Crazy Rich Asians) who married a poor man and took care of him.

“You drive like a woman;” and “You're the man.”

Though driving is a gender neutral activity, people have tagged bad driving as ‘womanly’. Society makes assumptions and treats the statements differently. One is more of an insult while the other is a praise.  Generally, each side has a number of ways to go in their own way if we are ever to attain gender equality. My best friends are female and because I see them as friends, that may make me less than a man to some people but I have learnt some very crucial lessons about society because of them.

                                                                                                By AARON-ONUIGBO KINGSLEY.