Product: Woman. Sell-by date: Age 22

This post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but can someone tell me why pop culture's cut-off age for women's sexual desirability (ergo value, because everybody knows women's value is intrinsically tied to their usefulness to men, most especially sexually) is the age of 22?

I was listening to a Ray Charles song yesterday that had a line about a party with '50 girls, none over the age of 22'. This morning, it was a Bruno Mars song about a lost opportunity with a 21-year-old Brooklyn girl. Taylor Swift's ode to (White) girlhood was precisely about 'feeling 22'. There's the sweet sixteen, the finally legal eighteen, the YES GOD! 21, and that's it. Even Adele appears to have quit her career with her last album (titled, yes you guessed it, 21). Lol...

People expect (Nigerian) women to be married by 25, and they don't say 'the big three-oh' with dread in their voices for nothing. I remember saying to someone once that I felt like I'd 'wasted' being 21 because I was pregnant at the time. Where did I get the idea that being 21 was somehow the best part of my youthful womanhood?

Think about the existence of the word 'starlet' -- and about the high turnover rate in Hollywood for those women. Apply the same thought to video vixens, at home and abroad. Think about how the only supermodels over 30 still working have the bodies of teenagers. Think about every Linda Ikeji blog post about how unbelievably young-looking a woman and her body are.

Think about how Nigerian (African?) parents switch their tone from 'is that a boy I just saw you talking to?' when their daughters are starting out as young adults to 'when are you going to bring home your future husband?' in their early twenties. Or, our oh-so-popular refrain; "you aren't getting any younger, you know!"

Men are allowed to grow old; they are rewarded for it in fact. Why aren't women?

Instagram, sexual subversion, and booty pics

Anyone who knows me knows I love Instagram a little too much. I'm a very visual person, and great photography (of Black girls, architecture, and fashion, in that order) really gets me going. It's very important to me that my Instagram is an honest representation of my life; the things I enjoy, the things I struggle with -- I share whatever I feel can be accurately captured in small social-media-sized bites because I enjoy doing so.

What this means is that my Instagram posts divulge what many might consider private information to random strangers, family and friends alike, and sometimes what I share is uncomfortable for the people who actually know me.

A little context: I come from a very conservative Christian background, and as recently as early last year I was still very actively giving Christianity a go. That has changed, of course, but my circles have not. Most of my friends and family are still quite born-again, and while many of them do their best to respect my choices (I will always appreciate that), they don't necessarily understand or approve.

My Instagram doesn't have an overt feminist agenda, but from time to time I post photos of my body that are sexy/sexual/easy to interpret as sexual, because an important part of my personal feminist practice is (re)claiming my bodily autonomy. I actively reject the notion that the female body (mine, especially) is by default a sexually charged thing, and I reserve the right to use my body in whatever ways I choose.

Yesterday my sister, who is very sweet and so tries very hard not to interfere with my personal choices, but who can't help feeling the way she does about topless photos of me, mentioned her unhappiness over this post:

#behindthescenes with @victorsozaboy This shoot was such fun, and it reminded me how the body is just a tool to use as you see fit. Tattoos next perhaps?

A photo posted by OluTimehin (@theloulette) on Mar 12, 2015 at 12:37am PDT

It wasn't the first time someone who loves and has known me for a while would express concern over what I posted, and it reminded me that I wanted to write about it.

I think there is something very powerful about any kind of deliberate subversion that a woman performs with her body. Whether it is wearing revealing clothing, being unapologetically sexual, breastfeeding in conservative public spaces, etc., I think such things can be liberating.

Female sexuality (as expressed in the body) is perceived as transgressive in a patriarchal society. That's why little girls and minors can be tagged 'fast' by society, that's why victim-blaming in sexual assault cases sticks, that's why any woman can be called a whore. Whether or not a woman plays by the rules, her body is, by virtue of its femaleness, bad.

It was when I recognised this and the ways in which I had internalised this idea that it became important for me to reclaim my body in any and every way that felt powerful to me.

And @Beyoncé said, "It Is Time." My whole life has just been legitimized. Beyoncé has taken the wheel. Do you understand? DO YOU??? ____________________________ #HBO #OTR #OnTheRun #Beyonce #NewReligion #Countdown #FeministGawd

A photo posted by OluTimehin (@theloulette) on Sep 28, 2014 at 3:42am PDT

This was the first 'sexy' picture that I ever posted to my Instagram, and my family and friends apparently went into apoplectic shock. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but this Beyoncé-inspired photo (which I agonised over before posting, I might add!) was discussed at dinner tables with horror. I felt quite upset when I found out (mostly because a lot of this horrified talk was conducted behind my back) and while I could understand where they were coming from, I didn't agree with them, nor was I apologetic.

This is why:

The body is a blank canvas, and society's interactions with it have less to do with how it is presented than with how society works. The way society works right now is dysfunctional, and I am committed to changing that in whatever way I can.

To be clear, I am as much a sexual being as I am a thinker, a mother, a friend, whatever. But because I am female, it is inappropriate for me to be up-front or open about my sexuality. I'm not supposed to have sexual needs; my sexuality exists to please the one man who will validate me by favouring me with a wedding ring. Any 'untoward' sexual behaviour (which is really any display of bodily or sexual agency) will limit or completely erase my chances of finding such a man, because my worth as a person depends on how neatly I fit into the 'Madonna' end of the Madonna/Whore binary.

It is the rejection of these absurd notions that I find powerful. My body is as much a part of me as my mind, my gifts, or my abilities, and it is just as valuable. If I can challenge popularly held beliefs about what is 'okay' for a woman to do or be by using my body in ways that are deemed transgressive, then I'm all for it. If I can rattle someone's faith in the 'sexual woman, bad/non-sexual woman, good' norm, count me in. If someone can say to me, "women aren't supposed to...", and we can have a conversation about why that is complete and utter bullshit because of something I've posted, yay!

After all, I am a feminist.

This Woman is Becoming

This evening my heart is breaking and swelling, all at once, for myself and for women like me. There is a burden that I can't place or name, but it is so, so real. 

I am thinking about self-love of the radical variety, the kind that allows me to strip myself and accept myself, to break down this person that I have been told I must be to be worthy, and to become the woman I will be proud of dying as.

I am thinking about love for my sisters - African women, single mothers, lonely women, women who have tamed their voices so long they don't remember the sound, women carrying trauma because they don't know how to set it down, motherless women, shamed women, lost women. I am thinking about women like me, who are desperate for better because somehow we know there is more. The knowing is in our bones, in our feet, in our song. We know there is more. 

I am thinking about my daughter and the boldness of her spirit, the way her heart breaks for me when she sees my sadness, the way she loves herself so completely that my own sadness can not take away her joy, the generosity with which she heals me with kisses, the streak of defiance that makes her stand up to me - the streak I know I have somewhere but can't always find. I am thinking of her way in this world and the ways in which her identities will shape her and bend her, and I am worrying about the ways it may break her.

I am thinking about the work that we have ahead. There is so much building to be done; it is exhausting that we have to spend all this time tearing down what is already there, what is trying to kill us. When will it be time for rejoicing? When will the load be lighter? When will the leaves of the trees planted by our mothers and our mothers' mothers be lush and abundant enough for us all to sit under their shade?

I am burdened with a grief I don't understand, and a fury too. There is so much building to be done, and yet the people who shore up the systems that must be destroyed before we can build are too numerous to count, too powerful to ignore, too content with the status quo.

A lot of the time I want to scream.

There is not enough of me to go around. And yet, I must find a way to become enough. I must find a way to become this woman who will water the tree and plant fresh seeds and clear a path for our daughters and sisters and mothers to do the rejoicing we have been denied so long.

There is a calling on my spirit tonight. 'Hasten the time, sister. Hasten the time.'

I am not enough, but I will become so.

Movie Night and New Sight

I've just spent six hours watching movies and doing my hair (mostly watching movies), and I was reminded of something I saw on tumblr: once you wake up to all the injustice, discrimination and general systemic assholery in the world, nothing looks the same anymore. It is a complete loss of innocence. I have to agree, because movie/detangling night went from being just a night of mindless entertainment to 'aw, come on, wtf!' Way to go, Feminism. 

Anyway. Just thought I'd share what my my post-feminist eyes saw.

Riddick: There are three female roles in the whole movie. One is a bed warmer writhing for Riddick's visual pleasure, the next is a hostage who is apparently repeatedly raped and then used for target practice, and the last one is a lesbian who is kind of tough but doesn't have any real dialogue outside of Riddick's and Santana's sexual harassment/come-ons. And at the end she sits on Riddick and talking to him 'sweet-like', apparently becomes quite straight.

The Usual Suspect: When I started thinking about this post, it took me about two minutes of serious brainwork to remember whether or not there were any female characters in this movie. I eventually had a *lightbulb!*: Edie! She was female! She had lines! She even appeared more than once! It's just...her character is so thoroughly forgettable, despite an apparent plot point being the need to eliminate her, that I completely, well, forgot about her. 

Monsters University: The final movie, and the one who redeemed(ish) Hollywood in my eyes tonight. Lots of femme monsters all over the place - the goth announcer with the deadpan voice and leaf hair was my favorite. But Hardscrabble, ah Hardscrabble! Thank you, Pixar, for not being misogynistic/woman-dismissing animators. Disney could learn a thing or two (ahem, Snow White/Sleeping Beauty!)

Now I'm just going to watch The Women, because screw you, Hollywood.

Respectability and the Woman II: Sex

slut

slʌt/

noun

derogatory

1. 1.

   a woman who has many casual sexual partners.

   synonyms:

   promiscuous woman; More

Ever wondered why no pejorative for men who have 'many sexual partners' exists? 

Patriarchy is why. 

Feminine agency of any kind is a threat to The Man, but feminine sexual agency is (almost?) the worst kind there is. In a patriarchal culture, the female body exists solely to please men (and procreate) and this is why female objectification, hyper-sexualisation of children, reproductive rights abuse and rape culture, among other things, proliferate.

When people say feminism is about women wanting to 'become like men', they are very wrong, but also right in a roundabout way. They fumble into being right in the sense that feminism is about agency - the right of the female, as a human being, to choose and define the parameters of her life, and to be able to function within those parameters without fear of reprisal and worse. In the patriarchal system of oppression, no one is allowed to be fully human (not even men), but as far as hierarchy goes, men have a much better go of it than women.

For example, sex.

Consider the moral concepts of chastity and virtue. The white wedding dress, if you please. Virginity as a worthwhile pursuit is marketed solely to women; no one ever tells boys that their virginity is their pride, or that their worthiness as a spouse (as a person, in fact) is directly correlated to their sexual status prior to marriage.

I remember being berated by an aunt once for sleeping with a boyfriend because, according to her:

1) I had cheapened myself and was now worthless

2) he could not possibly have an interest in me beyond sex

3) the only way to make a man stay in a relationship is to make him wait for sex till after the wedding.

#pause

She asked me why I slept with him. I replied, "Because I wanted to." I earned a slap for my honesty, and this is why: purity culture (which is actually rape culture), does not allow a woman to enjoy or control her sex life. It simultaneously reduces a woman to her reproductive organs while dissociating her from said organs so that every woman is literally nothing more than a walking vagina, and her value as a person is entirely dependent on whether or not a penis has 'conquered' this vagina. Ergo she has no real value as a person. Ergo she is not a person.

Why is it impossible to consider that, apart from my sexual prowess, a man can be interested in my mind, my ability to hold a conversation, my amateur comedienne skills, my ambition? Why is it impossible to consider that I might choose to have sex because I am a sexual human being, and I therefore like sex? I've heard women say things like, "I have to make him work for it." Again, #pause. This kind of thinking reduces women to inert creatures, prizes waiting to be won, rewards at the end of the qualifying process, as opposed to people with sexual agency.

Women (and our bodies) are not vehicles for men's sexual expression. We are human beings. Complex, nuanced, sometimes sexual, sometimes not, but human. Not vaginae. Not uteri. Human beings. And human beings all have the right to choose what to do with our bodies, including having sex, because that's what makes us human; our ability to choose. 

Disclaimer: this is not an anti-abstinence campaign. I believe that abstinence/celibacy is important, even crucial to spiritual growth. But it should be approached with the right mindset, because when women are made responsible for being the gatekeepers of sexual purity while simultaneously being marketed as meat to men by mass media and cultural norms (polygamy, permissive infidelity, statutory rape in the name of 'child marriage'), the result is what we have in Nigeria and other patriarchies: a rape culture that completely dehumanises women, glorifies the male gaze, reduces women's bodies to sexual disposables, and propagates all forms of violence against women. 

Respectability and the Woman

Do you remember being little and hating to hear the words "you should not"? Or was that just me? I have always been fairly rebellious, and few things irked me more than the should-not's and supposed-to's of this world, so I learned early on to ask "why not?"

Needless to say, I continue to be surprised by how rarely I get a coherent answer. It used to amuse me no end to watch an older person flounder while trying to come up with a valid explanation for telling me not to do something they honestly believed wasn't acceptable behavior. Now it's just saddening.

I think it speaks to the power of conditioning and socialisation that people will accept - hook, line and sinker - restrictions on their lives and personhood without ever asking why. We live our lives, day to day decisions and behaviours informed by myths, and we don't question these things because someone told us so, and pretty much everyone is acting in accordance, therefore these things must be valid.

It is at this point that I like to cough, "bullshit."

Of course, no respectable woman should curse. Nor should she smoke, wear mini-skirts, twerk, use contraception, or ask a man on a date. She should wear makeup, but not too much. She should marry as early as possible, cook, clean, and never raise her voice. She should be a virgin till she marries but a freak when her man demands it. She should have less than 2000 followers on twitter and no cleavage on Instagram. And she had better know her place on game night!

The more patriarchal a society is, the more prescriptions of proper behaviour women are saddled with, restrictions which are almost always designed to limit women's pleasure in themselves (as in personal fulfilment) and their bodies. On the one hand, there is the status of 'lady' and eventually 'matron' to aspire to; the respectable female who has conformed to the patriarchy's code of conduct, and on the other - the temptress, wanton, slut, bitch, 'independent woman', bitter woman, gold-digger...there are probably as many names as there are patriarchal cultures, and more besides.

The thing that really grinds my gears though, is that most of the things women are not supposed to do, men are not just permitted to, but even lauded for. The average conversation about respectability with regard to, say, monogamy/fidelity, vice, parenting (I acknowledge that one might need to adjust for biology in some cases, but stay with me), money management - pretty much every significant aspect of adult life, will include vilification of non-conforming women and excuses for 'non-conforming men'. ('Non-conforming men' is in quotes because there is almost no such thing; men are 'respectable' by default in a patriarchal system, at least until they deviate from the defined norms of 'masculine' behaviour.)

There are far too many manifestations of this phenomenon for me to be able to address it in one blog post. Hell, in one lifetime! So I'll just end this by leaving you with this thought: next time you see a woman doing something 'unladylike', ask yourself why you think her behaviour is inappropriate. I bet you nine times out of ten it will come down to - you guessed it - patriarchy.

Doesn't that just make you want to punch something?

Feminism, Misogyny and Female Perpetrators

I am (now) a feminist.
In the last couple of months I have been reading a lot about the lived experiences of women, what it means to be female in patriarchal societies, and the injustices, major and minor, that women suffer every day simply because they are women.

I am a woman.
This process of enlightenment that I've been going through has already made me more aware of what that really means, and it is shocking to me how things that I considered normal, things that I would not feel more than a flicker of irritation over, things that I would brush off and move on from, are actually symptoms of a system-wide misogyny that is being perpetrated everyday in our society.

Not only had I internalized this misogyny, in some cases I condoned it, was amused by it, contributed to it. But now I am learning about these things, and it deeply concerns me when I see other women who are still the way I used to be, because I have no idea how to get them to see what they are doing. I never saw it when I did it myself. Even in my blog post about the Walter/Fatoyimbo scandal, I failed to address the issue of abuse of power, because I really didn't think it was as important as the message I wanted to get across.

Now I say that I am a feminist, that it would be impossible for me not to be. I want to fight to eradicate the things that women suffer because we live in a society that tells men it is okay to harass, abuse, dehumanize and sexualize us, for them to feel entitled to our bodies and personhood, and even to kill us.
But what about when it is other women who act and think like all or some of those things are okay?

My older sister is one of those women.
Last night we were talking about one of our cousins who now lives abroad. He was in his fourth year of university when she started at Ife, and we shared fond memories of him. One of the stories that she shared was how he used to drive around campus with his male friends, shouting sexual comments at girls and 'complimenting' their backsides, and how any girl who showed disgust or disinterest was promptly labelled a 'skelewi', the colloquial term for 'slut'.
She was laughing as she told me this story. I didn't even know where to begin, so I didn't say anything.

Oma's mother is one of those women.
Oma's story, written as a ten-part series (start reading here), is heartbreaking. Her mother said to her that she would rather let her die at the hands of her abusive husband than watch her disgrace the family by leaving him.

Mrs. D.O. is one of those women.
A close family member's boss (a woman who is herself a mother of three) is putting her through severe abuse and discrimination in an attempt to force her to quit, just so she won't have to grant her the 12 weeks of paid maternity leave that she is due.

Mrs. P and Omobolanle et al are some of those women.
This blog post about a rape victim's trauma has some surprising comments left by women, some of whom are rape survivors themselves. This post on the same blog has some incredible victim-blaming mental gymnastics going on, with many female commenters saying the victim was going to have sex with her rapist anyway, a 'fact' which therefore nullified the crime of the rape. Never mind that there is no indication whatsoever in this girl's case that she was remotely sexually interested in her rapist; he was someone who offered her a job.

It is a huge, intimidating task, attempting to find solutions and empowering alternatives to the systemic abuse that women suffer in Nigeria at the hands of men. But I have no idea how we will ever get to this utopia of equal, respectful, empowering treatment of women if we ourselves have the misogyny so deeply ingrained in us that we don't even realise it when we are kicking another woman who is down, or when we are putting her down ourselves.

I just became a feminist, and I already feel defeated.

Further reading:
Male entitlement in Nigeria
Are you a feminist?
Rape culture
Everyday Sexism