Queria poder ter o texto inteiro, mas escrevi as melhores citações desse discurso. Essa mulher é incrível. A man who would be intimidated by me is exacly the kind of men I would have no interest in. Im female, Im expected to aspire to marriage; Im expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. [...] But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we dont teach boys the same? I know an unmarried woman in Nigeria who, when she goes to conferences, wears a wedding ring because according to her, she wants the otger participants in the conference to give her respect. A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep, personal failure. And a man at a certain age who is unmarried we just think he hasnt come around to making his pick. The language of marriage is often the language of ownership rather than the language of partnership. We use the word respect to mean something a woman shows a man, but often not something a man shows a woman. Both men and women in Nigeria will say - this is an expression Im very amused by - I did it for peace in my marriage. Now when men say it, it is usually about something that they should not be doing anyway. Sometimes they say it to their friends, its something to say to their friends in a kind of fondly exasperated way, you know, something that ultimately proves how masculine they are, how needed, how loved oh , my wife said I cant go to club every night, so for peace in my marriage, I do it only on weekends. Now a when a woman says, I did it for peace in my marriage, shes usually talking about having giving up a job, a dream, a career. The problem with gender, is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Now imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didnt have the weight of gender expectations. Gender and class are different forms of oppression. I actually learned quite a bit about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking to a black man about gender and he said to me, why do you have to say my experience as a woman? Why cant it be my experience as a human being? Now this was the same man who would often talk about his experience as a black man. Some people will say that a woman being subordinate to a man is our culture. But culture is constancly changing. I have beautiful twin nieces who are fiftneen and love in Lagos, if they had been born a hundred years ago they would have been taken away and killed. Because it was our culture, it was our culture to kill twins. So what is the point of culture? I mean theres the decorative, the dancing, but also, culture really is about preservation and continuity of a people. In my family, I am the child who is most interested in the story of who we are, in our tradition, in the knowledge about ancestral lands. My brothers are not as interested as I am. But I cannot participate, I cannot go to their meetings, I cannot have a say. Because Im a female. Culture does not make people, people make culture. https://youtube/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 23:39:13 +0000
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