Beware the danger of what I call Feminism Lite. It is the idea of conditional female equality. Please reject this entirely. It is a hollow, appeasing, and bankrupt idea. Being a feminist is like being pregnant. You either are or you are not. You either believe in the full equality of men and women or you do not.
Feminism Lite uses analogies like “he is the head and you are the neck.” Or “he is driving but you are in the front seat.” More troubling is the idea, in Feminism Lite, that men are naturally superior but should be expected to “treat women well.” No. No. No. There must be more than male benevolence as the basis for a woman’s well-being.
Feminism Lite uses the language of “allowing.” Theresa May is the British prime minister and here is how a progressive British newspaper described her husband: “Philip May is known in politics as a man who has taken a back seat and allowed his wife, Theresa, to shine.”
Allowed.
Now let us reverse it. Theresa May has allowed her husband to shine. Does it make sense? If Philip May were prime minister, perhaps we might hear that his wife had “supported” him from the background, or that she was “behind” him, or that she’d “stood by his side,” but we would never hear that she had “allowed” him to shine.
“Allow” is a troubling word. “Allow” is about power. You will often hear members of the Nigerian chapter of the Society of Feminism Lite say, “Leave the woman alone to do what she wants as long as her husband allows.”
A husband is not a headmaster. A wife is not a schoolgirl. Permission and being allowed, when used one-sidedly—and it is nearly only used that way—should never be the language of an equal marriage.
Another egregious example of Feminism Lite: men who say “of course a wife does not always have to do the domestic work; I did domestic work when my wife traveled.”
Do you remember how we laughed and laughed at an atrociously written piece about me some years ago? The writer had accused me of being “angry,” as though “being angry” were something to be ashamed of. Of course I am angry. I am angry about racism. I am angry about sexism. But I recently came to the realization that I am angrier about sexism than I am about racism.
Because in my anger about sexism, I often feel lonely. Because I love, and live among, many people who easily acknowledge race injustice but not gender injustice.
I cannot tell you how often people I care about—men and women—have expected me to make a case for sexism, to “prove” it, as it were, while never having the same expectation for racism. (Obviously, in the wider world, too many people are still expected to “prove” racism, but not in my close circle.) I cannot tell you how often people I care about have dismissed or diminished sexist situations.
Like our friend Ikenga, always quick to deny that anything is caused by misogyny, never interested in listening or engaging, always eager to explain how it is in fact women who are privileged. He once said, “Even though the general idea is that my father is in charge at our home, it’s my mother who is really in charge behind the scenes.” He thought he was refuting sexism, but he was making my case. Why “behind the scenes”? If a woman has power then why do we need to disguise that she has power?
But here is a sad truth: Our world is full of men and women who do not like powerful women. We have been so conditioned to think of power as male that a powerful woman is an aberration. And so she is policed. We ask of powerful women: Is she humble? Does she smile? Is she grateful enough? Does she have a domestic side? Questions we do not ask of powerful men, which shows that our discomfort is not with power itself, but with women. We judge powerful women more harshly than we judge powerful men. And Feminism Lite enables this.
FIFTH SUGGESTION
Teach Chizalum to read. Teach her to love books. The best way is by casual example. If she sees you reading, she will understand that reading is valuable. If she were not to go to school, and merely just read books, she would arguably become more knowledgeable than a conventionally educated child. Books will help her understand and question the world, help her express herself, and help her in whatever she wants to become—a chef, a scientist, a singer, all benefit from the skills that reading brings. I do not mean schoolbooks. I mean books that have nothing to do with school, autobiographies and novels and histories. If all else fails, pay her to read. Reward her. I know this remarkable Nigerian woman, Angela, a single mother who was raising her child in the United States; her child did not take to reading so she decided to pay her five cents per page. An expensive endeavor, she later joked, but a worthy investment.
SIXTH SUGGESTION
Teach her to question language. Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs, our assumptions. But to teach her that, you will have to question your own language. A friend of mine says she will never call her daughter “princess.” People mean well when they say this, but “princess” is loaded with assumptions, of a girl’s delicacy, of the prince who will come to save her, etc. This friend prefers “angel” and “star.”
So decide for yourself the things you will not say to your child. Because what you say to your child matters. It teaches her what she should value. You know that Igbo joke, used to tease girls who are being childish—“What are you doing? Don’t you know you are old enough to find a husband?” I used to say that often. But now I choose not to. I say “You are old enough to find a job.” Because I do not believe that marriage is something we should teach young girls to aspire to.
Try not to use words like “misogyny” and “patriarchy” too often with Chizalum. We feminists can sometimes be too jargony, and jargon can sometimes feel too abstract. Don’t just label something misogynistic; tell her why it is, and tell her what would make it not be.
Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women. For X please insert words like “anger,” “ambition,” “loudness,” “stubbornness,” “coldness,” “ruthlessness.”
Teach her to ask questions like What are the things that women cannot do because they are women? Do these things have cultural prestige? If so, why are only men allowed to do the things that have cultural prestige?
It is helpful, I think, to use everyday examples.
Remember that television commercial we watched in Lagos, where a man cooks and his wife claps for him? True progress is when she doesn’t clap for him but just reacts to the food itself—she can either praise the food or not praise the food, just as he can praise hers or not praise hers, but what is sexist is that she is praising the fact that he has undertaken the act of cooking, praise that implies that cooking is an inherently female act.
Remember the mechanic in Lagos who was described as a “lady mechanic” in a newspaper profile? Teach Chizalum that the woman is a mechanic, not a “lady mechanic.”
Point out to her how wrong it is that a man who hits your car in Lagos traffic gets out and tells you to go and bring your husband because he “can’t deal with a woman.”
Instead of merely telling her, show her with examples that misogyny can be overt and misogyny can be subtle and that both are abhorrent.
Teach her to question men who can have empathy for women only if they see them as relational rather than as individual equal humans. Men who, when discussing rape, will always say something like “if it were my daughter or wife or sister.” Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy. Teach her, too, to question the idea of women as a special species. I once heard an American politician, in his bid to show his support for women, speak of how women should be “revered” and “championed”—a sentiment that is all too common.
Tell Chizalum that women actually don’t need to be championed and revered; they just need to be treated as equal human beings. There is a patronizing undertone to the idea of women needing to be “championed” and “revered” because they are women. It makes me think of chivalry, and the premise of chivalry is female weakness.
SEVENTH SUGGESTION
Never speak of marriage as an achievement. Find ways to make clear to her that marriage is not an achievement, nor is it what she should aspire to. A marriage can be happy or unhappy, but it is not an achievement.