Calling All Women to the Kitchen!

Calling all New Millennium women! Drop your pens and paychecks—your place is in the kitchen! This is the news that disrupted my lazy Sunday afternoon. The conversation/dispute/debate took place at Pastor Afolabi’s residence, where his loud-mouthed, misogynist nephew had the audacity to look me in the eye and tell me that the word “COOK” had been imprinted on my forehead long before I exited the womb. Then the olodo used that same mouth to say that he was a progressive Nigerian man whose only call in life would be to make sure that his wife was always happy. In the kitchen, that is.

It began innocently enough. We had been watching Ukwa, a Nigerian-made comedy, and laughing heartily at Nkem Owoh’s witty retorts and comical mannerisms. The scene that started all the wahala was when Ukwa’s sister-in-law intercepted him as he was going to wash his clothes, gave him money, and said, “Ukwa, please take this money. Go to the market. Buy me fresh tomatoes and onions.” As she turned away, Ukwa called her back and said, “Susana, take these clothes. Wash them very well. My shirts, concentrate on [getting the dirt out of] the neck.” An argument ensued during which Ukwa insulted Susana thoroughly for trying to send him to buy ingredients from the market when there were other women in the house, despite the fact that these women were already busy doing other things, didn’t know how to drive and he had been hired by his own brother to be the family driver. The loud-mouthed nephew—oversized midget—then said something to the effect of: “How dare she send a man to market when there are women in the house?” Na here katakata come begin bust.

First, he started arguing that she shouldn’t have asked him in that manner if he wanted him to go, i.e. she was too brusque and therefore impolite. Fair enough, the ladies in the house agreed. She could have been a bit more polite. Almost all human beings are deserving of some degree of respect. That wasn’t enough for him, sha. He went on to say something to the tune of:

“She should have been less direct. She should have coated her request with more humility and more sugar because he is a man. She should have said something like, ‘Brother, are you going out? Please on your way, would you mind just branching by the market and picking up one or two small items for us to use in preparing your food?’ After all, it is important for women to cater to a man’s ego and manhood. It is a woman’s duty to go to market.”

Hm, this one pass all that talk of kneeling to feed your husband cake at your wedding reception o! (See Adaure's Spot) To say that I was disgusted would be to make light of the way I felt that afternoon. I talked until I was hoarse; my temperature rose until I got headache. I found myself having to unclench fists that I didn’t know I was making, because the temptation to rearrange this fool’s teeth with the force of my hand overpowered my own senses. The one that even annoyed me the most was when he said that he considered himself a progressive Nigerian man, whose only concern is to make sure that his wife is happy; after all, don’t I know what a happy woman can do to a home? He said, “I will cook for my wife, of course! I don’t see anything wrong in that. The only thing is that she will have to be there with me as I’m cooking, keeping me company. She can’t be watching TV while I’m busy in the kitchen!” I asked him if he would reciprocate. He said, very heartily, “Of course not!” Why? Because it’s not his duty to be in the kitchen; him spending time in the kitchen is as a favor to her. Not so in the reverse. And he couldn’t even see the double standard in that!

I didn’t even know whether to be angry with the young men in that house for having the nerve to feel that way about women, or whether to be disappointed with the women in the room for trying to convince me that it would be better for me to accept my lot in life as a woman than to try and change it. His aunt was in the middle of this whole thing, telling me and my girlfriends that this is the way men in Nigeria are, and unless we decided that we were not going to marry Nigerians (which would be a great travesty and a sin against humanity, of course), then we would be better off creating our own happiness in the midst of all the gloom, otherwise the man will go out and find another woman who will be willing to do all those things for him that we don’t want to do. The important thing would be to pray to God to give us a man that would at least understand our position when we verbalized them in the privacy of our bedrooms.

I can’t help but be angry, but I think the foremost sentiment in my mind is sadness. No, not sadness—despair. These people are the future of Nigeria, and this is the way they think—in the 21st century! They are going to grow up to be leaders, those who will mould the society, and yet they know no better than to recreate the mistakes of our forefathers and, in fact, improve on them so as to ensure that we don’t have to hear about this “woman’s equality” issue ever again. And young women continue to hide behind Jesus and Allah, using religion as an excuse to be inactive in determining the direction of their destiny. They join in the perpetration of their very selves as this society’s doormats and writing slates, where a young man can tell you that you were born with the word “COOK” scribbled on your forehead and you refrain from vocalizing your anger and dissent because you’re afraid that you’ll lose him to some other woman. Tufia!

I cannot help but feel that these misogynist attitudes of our men are directly correlated to rising feelings of insecurity at the onslaught of feminist awareness in the rest of the world. But, some of you will argue, in Africa, culture is what determines the way these men feel about women. Tradition does not allow for women to break free of societal expectations and decrees concerning their duties and behavior. And you would be partially right to argue thusly, but I put forth a different opinion. In the face of a rapid absorption of Western fashion, music, ideology and even culture, why is this the only part of traditional culture that must—and continues to—remain intact, or even regress? In all societies, culture is fluid and ever-changing, yet female progress is being held back. Why? Women play their part, but men also cling even more desperately to these archaic views of what womanhood means because they feel it accentuates their manhood and cements their right to be satisfied with their meager achievements. Grow up, people! That women are becoming more assertive, more powerful, more successful does not mean that they are becoming more masculine and you more feminine. If anything, I expect you to see it as a challenge. Step up to the plate and prove your worth. You’ve spent a lifetime being spoon-fed the fallacy that you were entitled to the good things in life without having to struggle; now, in the face of a group who is willing to fight until they prove that they too deserve what you have never had to work for, you cower in dark corners and call us names: bad mother, inconsiderate wife, dyke, don’t know your place, female equivalent of Jacob. With culture as your spear and societal pressure as your shield, you attack the woman and make her feel that she is nothing without you to validate her: “Do what I say, or you may find that you are no longer the only woman I share my bed with! If you’re going to start working and making as much money as I, those children will be yours to fend for; I will have no part in their upbringing!”

And women, I appeal to you as well: life is hard enough without us stabbing one another in the back. We’re the first ones to point derisive fingers at our sisters making waves in the banking industry, in medicine, in engineering: “Still single at 35? What a loser! No children, and she calls herself a woman?” I’m sick of reading Nigerian newspapers with articles that are supposedly about women who have become successful in their careers, but which choose to pay special attention to the fact that these women are also perfect homemakers who constantly defer to their loving husbands, who have been kind enough to give them the opportunity to pursue their dreams. Give me a break! Whose agenda are you pushing, ladies? Who are you really trying to help? Is the key to the revolution to keep men in this prepubescent stage of development, where a hungry man would rather sit and sulk as he waits for his wife to make him food, than go into the kitchen and boil himself an egg, or grill himself a steak? Or are we trying to help one another realize that maturity means developing the capacity to help one another, realizing that we may look different on the outside, but our needs are still the same? Nobody’s too rich, or too smart, or too male (or too female) to help out another human being where they need it, nor is it anybody’s right to keep another person down for one’s selfish interests. We all lose out at the end of such an egotistical exercise. After all, nobody is going to remember Christiane Amanpour for how early she woke up to cook her husband’s food before she went to work. Oprah’s name will not go down in history in recognition for how well she washed Stedmon’s underwear on Saturday morning. Think about it.

We all need to develop and grow and change. Stopping your wife/girlfriend/sister/daughter from being all she can be does not make you more of a man/friend/mother. I’m still swallowing the bile that rose in my throat from Sunday’s discussion, and while I’m sure I have more years during which I will have to tackle such narrow-mindedness, I still remain optimistic that my only two choices (on the off-chance that I decide I cannot live with a non-Nigerian man) will not be to either remain alone for the rest of my life, or carve out a narrow, meaningless definition of happiness for myself simply because my own people have decided that I don’t rightfully deserve wholesome peace and joy within Nigeria’s borders. Heaven forbid it.

*In unrelated news, I just watched a preview for a Nigerian movie called “Naked Sin”. I’m hoping beyond hope that what I saw was not the whole story, but it seems to be about what happens to a guy when he’s caught “raping a corpse in a mortuary.” If that isn’t the most disgusting premise for a movie that has ever been thought up, I don’t know what is. Is this the future of Nollywood? Have people suddenly grown tired of watching movies a la “If I Had Known You Were A Witch, I Would Never Have Married You, Now You Have Come Into My House To Suck Me Dry and Destroy My Life, But Because of Juju, I Cannot Even See It So I Have Estranged My Entire Family and Only THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST As Presented To Me By A Girl Who Is Younger and More Beautiful Than You Will Save Me From Your Evil Clutches!’?? I mean, if the industry is looking for something to boost sales, shouldn’t they just reconsider this their ban on actors like Genevieve and Ramsey Nouah, rather than take us down this depraved road from whence we may not return? Ugh!