THE BACKROAD OF FEMINISM by Ngozi Janet Akalonu

Dear Feminists,

You come to the cities to preach equality, the same cities that have female doctors, pilots,Naval Officers, Army Officers, engineers, teachers, lawyers, managing directors, business magnates,writers, entrepreneurs, etc. You come on social media to preach equality, a place that has a teeming population of girl graduates and successfully independent working class ladies.

Yet you ignore the north, the remote villages scattered across the continent. Places where girls are still seized into marriages as payments for debts, places where a 60 year old man marries a 12 year old girl as his 18th wife, places where teenage girls are denied basic education and right to social freedom. Places where girls do not even know what social media and phone means.

You conveniently ignore those places and come to big cities like Abuja, Port Harcourt, Lagos and Calabar to preach equality?

You have happily given the fish in the water some water to drink and totally walked past the thirsty camel in the north. Weldone.

You frown at manly jobs like welding and plumbing and scream inequality when a man occupies the managerial position in a multi-million naira company. Your feminism only flares when a comfortable job that ticks your fancy is being taken over by a man but any job that threatens your inherent feminity, your make up, your eyelashes, your coke bottle shape. You shy away from it?

You want equality in part but not in it's entirety. Weldone.

What do you have against brideprice, Name retention and house chores and why do you claim women who do these things love being subjugated? really?

Do you feel owned when your brideprice is being paid?

Do you feel used when you do the dishes?

Do you feel incomplete when you bear your husband's surname?

If those cultures were scraped, do you feel you would have achieved some of the objectives of the movement, Feminism?

On the contrary, NO. The hate for those cultures were actively promoted by misandrist elements to shake the very foundation of unity in the home, none of those cultures were listed as a threat to Feminism, their eradication were never among the goals, objectives and visions of the original feminist movement.

When you attack the family, you attack the basic unit of socialization and if the family is broken, the society is broken too.

You hate on other women for bearing the title "Wife" you advise them to walk into their married homes without a sense of honour or servitude, without a brideprice or a new name. Isnt this just the same as dating? if you were going into a marriage without some landmark procedures, aren't you just in another form of sexual relationship?

You want equality but you detest acquiring the knowledge of car repairs, road maintanance, active warfare, drilling, plumbing, masonry, carpentry and mining. Yet men do these and even go ahead to be hair dressers, make up artists and beauty models. No, you only want colourful occupations like the seat of the president or governor, the head of a lucrative company or the dictator in your home and any man that sits in these position, you bare your fangs and scream inequality.

We as women, have a long way to go.

We as feminists have an even longer way to go.

I have said this before. If a woman uses a 21st century phone and is on social media, she does not need your warped, subjective, selfish notions of Feminism. The women who really need it are those who cannot and do not have access to basic social amenities and definitely do not have access to phones and Facebook.

Those women that are forced to bear children at the young ages of 13 and 14

Those women that walk 170 miles in dusty harmattan to fetch water for a teeming home population.

Those women that do not know what a simple education is. And may never know, because they are holed up in some remote, rural village in distant Kwaperimpe, in the state of Jigawa.

And please, nowhere was it stated that one of the characteristics of being a true Feminist was uncouth, abusive, aggressive nature. I do not even know who promoted that idea.

You aren't the first "Freedom" Fighter. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Lucky Dube, W.E.B Dubois, Richard Wright and a host of others didn't see the need to lash out in violent verbal attacks, yet they were successful in their campaigns against racial injustices and national sovereignty.

I am a woman and i do not identify with the kind of feminists i see today, yet i do not wish to get married, i do not think men are terrible ad i do not think women are seriously disadvantaged in today's society. Take a look around you, the evidence is all glaring. We got here not because of Feminism but because of evolution, education and mental growth. It is only natural that some things are dropped and new things picked up. My mum worked in a leading company in Lagos most years of her life, she was never married and never heard of Feminism. nobody treated her like an unequal on account of her gender. Atleast, she never told me or complained of a single incident to me.

I am proudly a liberated women and i did not need any movement to do that for me.

P.S.- It is kind of curious that women like Chimamanda Adichie and Beyonce Knowles who encourage you not to get married are actually happily married.

Are you sure men and women really can survive without each other?

© Ngozi Janet Akalonu