The Extinction of The “Strong African Woman”
Overview
For weeks now, reports of women being brutalized in the USA and Nigeria have been circulating through the internet. In the United States, several women have gone missing and were later found dead. In Nigeria, females including toddlers and babies have been brutally raped and killed.
Like the mammoth, the African woman is being pushed so much that we might very well be at the brink of extinction. By extinction, I do not mean we will all die out like those animals I previously mentioned. I mean we will grow tired of fighting and give up. The strong black woman who is the star of so many tales will very soon die out like flame from a candle that has burned out.
If you read this and say “What about African men?!” Then you are just as bad as someone screaming “All lives matter!” during a black lives matter protest. Our situation has become so critical that we are coming out to solicit for help. The points I will be putting across are not meant to cause a gender war but rather gear our male counterparts (African men) to join us in the fight against those things and people who trample on our dignity daily.
The African Woman is seen globally to be the backbone of her family/community. Have you ever considered that putting that kind of responsibility on someone could be crippling in its intensity?
The African girl grows up carrying a heavy load of all the blame heaped on her by her family members and society. She carries this burden into her matrimonial home where she gets pushed down even more with additional burdens. She is held accountable for anything that goes wrong around her. Do you wonder why she has become an angry black woman?
There is a reason why she is withdrawn, a reason why she seems testy all the time, why you can hardly get her to calm down, or speak up as the case may be. The family, the Society, and the Social media are guilty of these occurrences. I will be talking about the Black woman’s plight, using these three as subheadings. Let’s go👇
Image Source: giphy.com
The Family
A crippling minority of African men respect their women. It is important to note that this trait is not genetic but learned. It is like one of those habits that are harder to break because you think it benefits you. An African man is a sucker for respect of all kinds and in all sizes but finds it very difficult to show that same respect to the Black women in his life.
Many of these men grew up watching their fathers shout their mothers down, shut them up, or even beat them up. It is not enough to say “I love your mommy” when the children can clearly see that you don’t. I saw a post somewhere recently where the poster(an African man) said “men don’t want respect, they need respect. What women need is love”.
Hold up. Whoever told African men that you can love someone without respecting them? Respect is reciprocal, if you’re currently disrespecting your wife and you think what she shows to you, all the kneeling and averting of eyes means respect, then you’ve got it all wrong.
That woman is afraid of you, just as she would be scared of a threatening male stranger. Violence against a woman begins when you shout her down in an effort to show your dominance. You don’t have to raise your fist to make life oppressive for someone else.
No one pays attention to how the African woman is feeling. She is supposed to be a pillar, a solid rock. No one cares to know when she is breaking apart. Contrary to what the world might think, an African woman needs love too. We crave romance, we go out in search of it and come back home with our hearts broken.
We go out again and the hurt never ends. Repeated injuries become scar tissue and our backs become ramrod straight. Then the same men who betrayed our trust and our love turn around and call us unromantic.
Show me an African woman getting enough love and affection from her partner and I will show you how she glows. Respect has no gender, everyone deserves your respect. Marriage, relationships, family, they are all partnerships and should be treated as such.
Image Source: giphy.com
The Society
Our society has failed women. We have all failed to protect women and to give them justice. Breanna Taylor was shot dead while she slept, Vera Uwalia was raped and killed in a church. The only offense both women committed was simply existing. Instead of support, society judges women and places unrealistic expectations on them.
This same society does little or nothing when women get hurt time and time again. Thousands of women came out recently to call out their rapists, how many of them got the justice they deserved? Let us not deceive ourselves in this matter, the idea that women are held in “high” esteem in our society is nothing but that – an idea.
Women are treated like trash in their homes, on the streets, and in their place of work. We are seen as second class citizens who are only important when we are strapped to men, many of whom delight in abusing us. What do you say to a society that sees a woman who is about to collapse from stress and misery as the “real African woman”?.
I saw an image (a drawing if I remember correctly) that almost made me cry with how it described the reality of many women in our society today. The woman was depicted, carrying one basket each on her head and her left hand, a baby on her shoulder, and her husband at her back. I will leave you to picture it and think what you will.
Image Source: giphy.com
Social Media
Social media has been a great vehicle for change recently, we can also not deny that the lockdown has helped us see things from a clearer perspective. Social media has also been used to push ideologies like feminism to a larger audience. However, as the growing camp of feminists enlarges to greater proportions, we find that there are a lot of bad eggs.
We should all be feminists but there are people who claim to be feminists just to push their own agenda. These bad eggs are often handpicked by the numerous anti-feminists online and trashed. These people are now popularly known as “woke feminists” they are usually the butt of jokes as many people (especially men) see them as keyboard warriors, tigers online, and cats at home with their husbands.
A lot of people who support patriarchy and revel in its ills take pleasure in grouping all feminists into the “woke feminist” group. This situation has deteriorated to the extent that “feminist” could be an insult if said with the right amount of venom. These men claim that women shouldn’t fight for equality because
- Men and women are not equal
- Women are getting the sweet end of the deal anyway.
They immediately attack any young lady that identifies as a feminist and label her “unfit for marriage. The struggles and abuse of women are often invalidated little surprises. After all, those on the internet are those in society.
Even as social media is used to promote great ideologies like feminism, some people also use it to promote chauvinism. I read a long thread last week where an African man said something like:
“Women were not engineered to have multiple partners because she absorbs the energy of men and when she has sex with more than one man, those energies fight for dominance within her”
This is the year 2020, yet some men still see women as vessels for their every whims and pleasure. Comedians and social media influencers make comedy skits in which women are objectified and treated as properties. This is the standard way to project a woman, it is the image that sells. Women themselves parade as objects of sexual pleasure just to get likes and follows.
Whenever a woman speaks up about her pain and the abuse she suffered, no one believes. Suddenly, you discover that everyone around you is a rape apologist. How quickly we forget. A dead girl is a hashtag today and tomorrow? She is nothing. The world moves on to the next trend and everything is alright.
No one sees that behind the smile of that gorgeous lady is a need to be seen as a human being. A desire to be respected and honored. No one cares to look. There is a fear inside every woman, there is a shadow that follows someone that knows she is not safe anywhere. Even in our blindness, let us pause to see what is happening before our eyes. Soon, there will be no more Strong Black Woman anywhere in the world, we will all be broken.
Show some love to a Black woman out there. Hug your wife. Get your mom a gift. They go through a lot, please do the little you can to make their burden lighter. Women are humans and not superheroes. Do not stand and watch while we burn out completely.
Thank you for reading,
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Much love from this side!
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