When Oppression Is Cloaked As Culture

Part of evolving as humans should be examining current practices and asking ourselves “does this still make sense?”. There are many events that occurred in the past that were thankfully stopped because some people had the brave idea to ask that very question. Let’s have a look shall we:

• When people used to kill twins because they thought they were abominations.
• When they said women should not drive cars.
• When they said women should not go to school.
• When they did not allow women own bank accounts.

You get the drift.

At some point in life, we as a society must be willing to evaluate our so-called traditions and “culture” and be ready to update what needs updating. With that said, I am now ready to ask my African brothers and sisters, my Nigerian brethren, my Yoruba cousins to be exact – AT WHAT POINT DO WE ADMIT THAT WE NEED TO START ERADICATING THE OPPRESSIVE AND HEAVILY SEXIST PARTS OF OUR CULTURE?

Just look at this:

Here you have a clearly unstable, mannerless, rude, man-centered senior citizen bullying and denigrating the supposed love of her son’s life and she is cloaking all of this under the guise of “culture”!? If we removed the fact that she is Nigerian, if we removed the fact that she is elderly, would we not characterize her as an unwell person? Would we not be wondering what institution to send her to?

Why do we continue to take verbal assaults on “potential wives” so lightly? So because she loves your son, she is supposed to become a sponge for insults? Because of this our “golden” culture, that means that you as an adult cannot be called out for doing something that is rude?

To make matters worse, that man told his fiancée to kneel down and beg his clearly unstable mother… because of CULTURE? Is it culture or is it oppression? The answer is that it is both.

To my girlies, there comes a time where we must be bold and honest with ourselves and say “we are not doing culture with you again”. As I get older, I realize that while I absolutely love my Yoruba heritage, the music, the food, the fashion, the language, the effizy, I know we are an extremely misogynistic and sexist people. These days, I tell people that I am ethnically Yoruba but I am certainly not Yoruba socially and intellectually. If anybody’s mother decided to forget her commonsense and speak to me that way, she will certainly learn how verbose I can be.

In the comment section, there were many people excusing her behavior by validating her anger at being challenged for not carrying her own dish. What is wrong with carrying your own dish to the kitchen? So because in past traditions young wives were treated as servants and forced to “prove” to the mothers that they are worthy of being wives, we must keep it going? Are we robots? Additionally, why is the Nigerian culture the only culture being centered? What about the woman’s American culture? It is interesting how we so easily use the excuse of culture when we want to mistreat women.

Lastly, I posit: if this our culture was so sweet, why is our country the way it is?

The delulu of it all. Ladies, keep being bad. Don’t wash anyone’s plate. If anyone in their family talks to you crazy, feel free to discover the crazy in you and show them. Personally, I support giving a gbas for every single gbos.

Thanks for reading.

Renny