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Intersectional Feminism: What Suzzie Wants, Stories of Others

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Intersectional Feminism: What Suzzie Wants, Stories of Others View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by British Columbia's network of post-secondary digital repositories INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM: WHAT SUZZIE WANTS, STORIES OF OTHERS by Adebayo Coker B.A., Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, 2005. MPIA., University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, Nigeria, 2007. THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA August 2018. © Adebayo Coker, 2018 ii Abstract Culture and religion are some of the oppressive tools being used to subjugate the fundamental rights of women in Nigeria. The need is for a nexus amongst the different fragments of feminism to speak against customs of exploitation and subjugation, but not at the expense of the good culture of the land and in a way not to create loss of identity. To get the message across, some real stories must be told. Aligning narrative craft to share the different experiences that I have witnessed firsthand or told me by the victims of these vast injustices is the focus of this thesis, so the world may learn that there are these experiences and fundamental gender oppressions still exist. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iii Acknowledgement iv Introduction 1 Clannish Claw 18 Begging Mercy 42 Papal Entreatment 62 Amiss Nowhere 81 What Suzzie Wants 86 Table D'Hote 89 Fargin 92 Works Cited 100 References 102 iv Acknowledgement My Canada immigration story started in Fall 2016. I almost ran back home to the equator. It was made worse by the stern warning on the lips of every Canadian and some other migrators that I met: “This is no cold, brace up for minus 20.” But as those warnings were coming so were the warmest smiles I have ever seen on the faces of humanity. Lovely people with beautiful smiles made me warm and already I call Prince George home. Rob Budde is wonderful, and he made my stay at UNBC worthwhile. He pushes me when he must, always telling me to make haste while the sun shines. I am a work in progress, changing from the last-minute man to getting things done quite earlier in time. Ose ore mi atata! The contribution by Dr Dee Horne and Dr Si Transken is in no small measure. I appreciate their steadfastness to keep me on my toes. Dr Sola Ogunbayo is a gem. Jeff Underwood and Kate Taylor are great friends sending their warmest love from the USA. My mother raised a man that I have grown to be and proud of. I wrote these stories because of her; God bless her soul. My respect will always remain for my father. And my siblings are the best. I am the luckiest man on earth. I have the kindest woman for a wife and we have the cutest v son together. I love you both. My sincere gratitude to everyone. 1 INTRODUCTION TO WHAT SUZZIE WANTS: DISCOURSE ON PATRIARCHY IN SOME SELECTED TEXTS When I was born, people in our village commiserated with my mother and nobody congratulated my father. I arrived at dawn as the last star blinked out. We Pashtuns see this as an auspicious sign. My father didn’t have any money for the hospital or for a midwife, so a neighbour helped at my birth. My parents’ first child was stillborn, but I popped out kicking and screaming. I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children. - Malala Yousofzai, I Am Malala. I grew up with a woman that was submissive to the whims of her husband; whatever he said was law, even to the point of accepting his untold excesses as cultural. Her husband has three wives. I never liked the woman being abused, most times she got beaten in public spaces; many times, she was accused of extra-marital affairs which were totally unfounded, but her husband never missed a chance to humiliate her. Each time I tried to challenge her tormentor, she would admonish me never to stand up to him because ‘he is her lord’. She passed few years ago after suffering a stroke, a result of the many beatings she had received from her husband. Then she became the woman I used to know. I see several other women suffering the same or even greater injustice, nothing else, but because they are women and the society somewhat permits this oppression through religion, culture, tradition and economy. 2 I boldly wear pink and I am conscious of gender in my language as much as I can be. I work against patriarchal standards in my everyday activities. I joyfully take on any household chores (regardless of what the society I grew up in regards as sex roles) and many more. But, according to the rules of my culture, I am the only one allowed to have a lovechild. My wife would be a ‘goddamn cheat’ if she goes outside of our matrimonial home for any form of sexual gratification. It would be a ‘sin’ that will be unforgivable. If overlooked (by myself) the community will see it as an aberration that may elicit a public ululation. This is how I am part of a gendered ideology specific to my culture: …the gender order is a patterned system of ideological and material practices, Performed by individuals in a society, through which power relations between women and men are made, and remade, as meaningful. It is through the gender order of a society that forms, or codes of masculinities and femininities are created and recreated, and relations between them are organised. (Pilcher & Whelehan 64) The binaries of masculine and feminine inherent in any community, but especially Nigeria, always accord greater privileges to the ‘alpha male’ and may not see the need to uphold the rights of a woman as it is believed that, because of perceived ‘competencies’, a woman will eventually end up in a man’s kitchen, regardless. Hence, she is considered inferior not worth great investment: The binaries are used as an “analytical category to draw a line of demarcation between biological sex differences and the way these are used to draw inform behaviours and competencies… (Pilcher and Whelman 56). The common perception of a Nigerian is that a boy is worth more than gold and dozens of women are cheap wares and not worth good job earnings. Adichie expresses some of the oppressive directions for women: 3 We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likable. We spend too much time telling girls that they cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons. All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women. I have been asked many times how much of feminism I have in my blood, especially when my background reeks of high-level Nigerian patriarchy, and my answer has always been flat: “In as much as I have a sister, a friend, a daughter and a wife that I wouldn’t want to go through the hell my mother went through I will always stand up and work to break these shackles.” To me, this feminism is personal. The power dynamics I see personally are theorized by many: The nature and forms of violence against women arise from patriarchy broadly defined here: as a system of male dominance, legitimated within the family and society through superior rights, privileges, authority and power. The degree to which this happens and the forms in which such power is exercised vary between cultures and societies. The process of subordination is generally achieved by devaluing women's contribution, while at the same time extracting significant contribution from them. (Brown ii) The rising awareness the feminist movement is gaining is a positive wheel of change to challenge the patriarchal order in the world. But there is a common saying in my tribe: “Ai rin po omo ejo lo mu iya je omo ejo”- “lack of camaraderie amongst the Ophidia (Serpents) makes them easy preys”: 4 The need for intersectionality in feminism, especially as more women of different cultures, races, religions, genders, and sexual orientations are getting more and more enlightened thereby complaining of being alienated by the [sometimes] ‘homogeneity’ stance of First-wave feminism is a phenomenon worthy of study, especially when the fallout of this elitist stance has led to different groupings in what should have been a formidable front to fighting sexist oppression…. (Collins 42) The foremost proponent of Intersectional Feminism, Kimberlé Crenshaw, about three decades ago during a presentation at the University of Chicago Legal Forum described the concept as “something greater than the sum of racism and sexism” (Huffpost). In a recent interview, Crenshaw clearly defines this important term again: “Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there[…].” (law.columbia); it is interlayers of subjugation that women are placed under, not just because of their sex but on ethnicity, sexuality, economic background and a number of other indices that could be attached to women.
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