The global research data indicates that more men are born than women. Women in various societies also face serious life threatening challenges men do not face in those systems, these factors creating an imbalance in many populations - Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju.
I say global research data my foot because the data is not supported by any physical fact. When bubonic plague struck Europe in the 1300's, 33% or one-third of the European population perished, which led to surplus of women in relation to men. Barely two centuries later and onwards, surviving European men had access to many women who were sexually turned into baby factories, that accelerated, not only into population recovery but, into overpopulation. The gigantic European overpopulations were exported to settle in Australia, New Zealand, North and South America where the aborigins were annihilated to almost extinction in various wars of conquest. Faced with population decimation after the World War II that consumed mostly Russian men, and which resulted in surplus women, the Russian state permitted men to divorce their pregnant wives and allowed serial monogamy for the purpose of speeding up population increase. The Russian State supported divorced wives economically during pregnancy and after the birth of children as single mothers. Most European countries adopted and refined the method of Russian population growth by recognising single mothers who were supported with state financed children allowances. Where the labour market generates serious unemployment affecting both males and female, either proportionally or disproportionally, men turn to crimes for survival while women turn to prostitution. Globally, 99% of prostitutes are women who hire out their private parts to tenants who are hundred per cent men and of whom many are married. The 1% male prostitutes, especially in the Western world, hire themselves to Sodomites. Even in Nigeria where, traditionally and culturally, a man can marry to many women, there are female prostitutes who hire out their private part to male tenants, an indication that there are more women than men.
Let us for the sake of convenience agree that there are societies where polyandry was practised, because of disproportion in the birth of more boys than girls, children arising from such family patern could not biologically or physiologically be said to have multiple fathers. A child's offspring or paternity can only belong genetically to a man. It is pseudo science to claim that a child has multiple fathers or more than one man can partake in the conception of a child. However, in polyandrous family set up, the real father of a child would never be the central issue because the main focus in sexual communism, polyandry, is to guarantee every available man sexual intercourse with a woman because of disproportionate large number of men than women. In a polygyny or monogamous marriage, the purpose of sexual intercourse is to procreate and not just for the sexual lust of the partners. Thus, who is the real father of a child is a central issue in polygyny and monogamous marriages.
Vincent amused us with the fables of Female Husbands and Male daughters in Igboland. He then asserted, "Various societies have developed different forms of gender constructions and gender relations." If Vincent's postulations about Female Husbands and Male Daughters are accepted, then there should be Male Wives and Female Sons. Would the change of epithets affect the biological and physiological features and functions of man- and womankind to the effect that a female husband will be able to sexually penetrate a male wife? Are we now to accept that the sexual organ is no longer a major determinant of who is a female and who is a male? Due to accidents, some at birth some people are born deformed or born with serious defects but deformity and defects should not be conflated with normality. Who is a male or female is not a social construction but an established science based on biology, physiology and anatomy.
Vincent clamoured that power in Africa is screwed in favour of men who are empowered to marry more than a wife while women cannot marry more than a husband. The fact is that purpose of marriage in Africa is to procreate. Since a woman can only procreate with a man at a period, she is naturally limited by nature not to marry with more than a husband at a fertile period. And unless there is a sperm's defect, a man can procreate at anytime with any woman in her fertile period which varies from woman to woman. The ability of a man to procreate with as many women at their fertile period, as he desires, has nothing to do with empowerment or power sharing. A man cannot be pregnant but a woman can be and there is no way a man can share the power of carrying a baby in the womb with a woman on four-and-a-half months basis each. Oluwatoyin would want men to menstruate and be pregnant in the name of gender equality and empowerment but nature has no room for such artificial gender equality. Each gender has been empowered differently by nature and the two genders are actually interdependent.
Since Toyin's baptismal name is Vincent he should care to read his Bible, where he will discover that polygyny (polygamy) is not peculiar to Africa. Exodus 21: 10 states that multiple marriages are not to diminish the status of the first wife; while Deuteronomy 21 : 15-17 states that a man must award the inheritance due to a first-born-son even if he hates that son's mother and likes another wife more; although Deuteronomy 17: 17 states that the King shall not have too many wives, Solomon in his wisdom according to 1 King 11 : 3 had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. In Isaiah 4:1 we Christians are told, "And in that day, seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel, only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach." If the Christian Western World are no longer oppressive against their females' gender because of their industrial and economic development, I hope that when we in Africa attain the same standard of economic development as Europe and America gender equality as it is presumed to work in their societies will be a by-product to our achievements.
Vincent had problem with my choice of word in referring to males who engage in sexual intercourse with fellow males as Sodomites. Surprisingly, the gender equality warrior did not object to my use of the word Tribade in referring to the lesbian. I reject your partial objection in its entirety.
I am not a politician as insinuated by you even though I am never neutral whenever discussions about the political and economic situations in Africa, and Nigeria in particular, are taking place. Buhari ate the meat and threw the bone at you because of his regard to you as a dog and acting as expected, you grabbed the bone, gnawing it with joy and barking. Buhari's lockar rum talk of his wife belonging to the kitchen is more important to you to discuss than the refusal of Buhari to address any of the criticisms levelled against his government by the wife. You are free to choose what to criticize in politics but you cannot force me to leave leprosy and chase ringworm with you. I have passed that stage, a long time ago, where officials in Nigeria are judged according to their ethno/religious origins and practices. Rather, I judge them on how competent and effective they are in discharging their duties to the Nigerian people. It is on this allegation of incompetent and ineffective officials which Aisha accused her husband of appointing that I demand that Buhari should comment upon or react to and not that lockar rum kitchen talk. However, if the image of Nigeria in the world had ever been dented, Buhari's lockar rum kitchen talk in Germany did not cause it because if the world had been told that Nigeria's Professors of electricity would produce mega watts of darkness for Nigerians and our petro-chemical engineers would become fuel importers while exporting our crude oil, the world would have said in the words of Esra to the king of Syria, "Are Nigerians pigs that they would allow all these to happen. This is my last submission on this subject.
S. Kadiri
Skickat: den 22 oktober 2016 03:03
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
The character of husbandhood and fatherhood differs across societies, a striking example being that of partible paternity, or multiple fatherhood, as evident in South America. Another is the Igbo institution of the female husband, addressed with diffferent assements as to its significance, by, among others, Kenneth Chukwuemeka Nwoko in "Female Husbands in Igboland : South-Eastern Nigeria" and Ifi Amadiume's Male Daughters, Female Husbands : Gender and Sex in an African Society.
Various societies have developed diffferent forms of gender constructions and gender relations.Others can be developed, with imagination being the only limit to such arrangements.
'male sodomites also demand that their rights to adopt children be legitimatized'- Salimonu
Salimonu is invoking the horrible explanation of this dismissal of his wife, in front of the female leaders of the German nation and military, as a joke, thereby creating a situation described in Yoruba as 'otu boro je', which may be translated as 'he further mangles an already bad case'.
I have limited my definition of polygamy to the belief of Oluwatoyin Adepoju that there are laws granting men rights to marry more than one wife in Africa but not for women to marry more than one husband, which he termed Gender Inequality (Oppression). While polyandry is unknown in Nigeria, polygyny is well established. Polyandry, a process where a female animal in the forest mates with many male animals of the same type, may not easily be applicable to human beings, whose sense of moral, demand that a child born by a woman must have a specific father. In Yoruba, if the birth of a child by a woman cannot be attached or associated with a specific man (husband), such a child is referred to as OMÓ AJÁ (because a female dog used to mate with many male dogs) or OMÓ ÀLÈ meaning a bastard. Animals in the forest do not practise only polyandry but, also incest which morally is forbidden in law in most human societies. A human society in which polyandry is a norm risks self-extinction. Naturally, only women can be pregnant and in a human society where a woman can marry to more than one man, a polyandry's child would have, at least, two fathers. In most societies, men are demographical less in number than women. Consequently, there would be surplus of women with no man to pair with in polyandrous relation. And as more girls are born in polyandrous families than boys, eventual extinction of the society would be imminent. As long as procreation is the ultimate intention of mating, if more boys are produced than girls in polyandrous families, a woman will have access to many men simultaneously but she can only give birth to a child and, at best, give birth to triplets or twins, which will eventually lead to decimation of the population and total extinction of the society. I am not aware of any country in Africa where polyandry is practised but polygyny, your preferred name for polygamy, is very common. But family paterns are changing rapidly especially in Europe and America in what is called same sex marriages. While associations of tribades in Europe and America are demanding that men should be compelled to deposit their sperms at fertility clinics, male sodomites also demand that their rights to adopt children be legitimatized.
How did we arrive at discussing polygamy, polyandry and polygyny just because Aisha Buhari, the wife of the President of Nigeria granted an interview to BBC? It is because discussants fell flatly for the diversionary tactic of Buhari, who instead of answering the question from the journalist about what he thought of the criticism his wife expressed on the competence and effectiveness of his appointed officials, began to talk about his wife belonging to the kitchen. In the BBC interview, Aisha Buhari did not talk about preparing TUWO, SUYA or KULINKULI for her husband as meal. She said in a plain language that her husband's government has been hijacked by people who are alien to the political ideology of the APC and that many of Buhari's appointed officials did not vote for him because they did not have voters' card. She expressed fear that the 15 million people that voted for Buhari might revolt against her husband if he does not change course. Finally, she threatened not to go out and campaign for votes for the husband if he decided to contest in 2019 if his present administration persists. Journalists and discussants should have insisted on Buhari responding to his wife's criticism of his officials and not succumb to his kitchen gaffe and locker room joke, in front of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the German Defence Minister, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, both of them women. Instead of Angela Merkel and Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, Buhari ought to have demanded to talk with their husbands or shift their meeting to their husbands kitchen where, according to Buhari, they belong. For me, it is unpleasant to view a kitchen as a place of punishment when no one wishes to starve to death. Don't we all eat?
S.Kadiri
Från: 'profoyekanmi@yahoo.com' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Skickat: den 20 oktober 2016 08:52
Till: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuotePlease note that polygamy encompasses two concepts; namely: polygyny and polyandry. Polygyny equals one man and more than one wife (two or more wives). Polyandry equals one woman and more than one husband (two or more husbands). You have to investigate the societies in which these marriage types occur rather than stating that the latter never happens
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----- Reply message -----
From: "Salimonu Kadiri" <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com " <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Date: Wed, Oct 19, 2016 10:43 PM
--Polygamous societies, which most classical African societies were, where men could marry more than one wife, but women could not marry more than one husband, are not demonstrations of gender equality. What Salimonu is mistaking for gender equality is better described as division of labour, no more - Oluwatoyin Adepoju; Who made the laws dictating that men may marry more than one wife but women cannot? - Oluwatoyin Adepoju.
To begin with, my example of men climbing the palm-tree to harvest palm nuts and the ability of women to extract palm oil from the palm fruits clearly indicated that the labour of men was not valued higher than that of women since the labour of the palm tree climber would have been in vain but for the efforts of women which made the extraction of oil and other useful derivatives possible.
For reasons best known to Oluwatoyin, he brought in the practice of polygamy in Africa to typify gender inequality there. Traditions and cultures are functions of social and economic developments. The misfortune of Africans is that slavery stopped our socio-economic development so that we are prevented from transforming to something else and remnants of our archaic dictum and praxis have been bastardised from their original forms. Historically, our African ancestors believed that the purpose of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman was to procreate and not for pleasure. That was why a husband would abstain from sex with a wife nursing a child for three years. Since numbers of females, demographically were more than males, women in particular chose to share a man with another women so as not to be excluded from the chance of becoming a mother or to procreate. It is remarkable that where a man was married to a single woman and the wife had attained menopause, the wife in recognition of the limit of nature for her to be pregnant, would take the initiative to find a wife still capable of reproduction for the husband. She considered the husband having sex with her as wasting of his sperm which could have been used to procreate. The menopause-wife becomes mother of the house (the Yoruba called her ÌYÁLÉ). She decided on most of the domestic affairs in the house and participated actively in the nursing of the children of the junior wife. There were no laws compelling men to marry more than one wife and women not to marry more than one husband. Oluwatoyin's question arose out of his exposure to western influence that propagates sexual intercourse as a leisure hour engagements for men. Polygamy in its original form was never oppressive or dominating or for man's pleasurable enjoyment. Rather, it was a device by which all females of reproductive age were enhanced to be a mother in those days when children were reared as insurance towards old age. And where one had the misfortune of being barren, at old age, children of sisters and brothers would serve as the old age insurance.
When Christianity entered Europe, the Church forced the idea of man and wife as a family pattern on the society which until then was non-existing. Prior to that, sexual relation between a man and a woman was based on the superior strength of a man to conquer a woman. Where there was a competition between two men over a woman, men challenged one another to a duell at which the one that killed the other would have sex with the woman concerned. Pregnancy resulting out men's sexual intercourse was the entire problem of the woman in the pre-Christian Europe. In England, men considered their lives marred by the Church that imposed the institution of marriage on them. In many European countries the word, marry, is synonymous with poison and in England the word, marry was derived from the word, mar. In the Tudor Dynasty of England, King Henry VIII applied to the Roman Catholic Church in Rome for divorce with his wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, because she was unable to produce a male child, the crown prince. When the Church rejected his request he severed relation with the Catholic Church to create the Church of England. Before the marriage was finally dissolved by the new Church of England headed by King Henry himself, it was revealed that the King infected Queen Catherine of Aragon with syphilis, resulting in their only daughter, Princess Mary, being born blind. King Henry the VIII married six times with different women and supported himself with chains of concubines around the corners of England. In Elizabethan England, the government of Harold Macmillan was forced to resign in 1964 after sex scandals involving the then Defence Minister, John Profumo and Lord Astor. While Profumo was a regular customer to the 18 year old prostitute, Christine Keeler, Lord Astor derived sexual joy from being whipped at bare bottom by the 16 year old prostitute, Mandy Rice-Davies. Then in 1973, England's deputy Minister of Defence, Lord Lambton was photographed naked in bed with a high society prostitute, the 26 year old Norma Levy, who also had parallel sexual affairs with Lord Jellicoe. The two men resigned their appointments. In 1984, 55 year old Cecil Parkinson was expected to succeed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of England. His Secretary, Sara Keay announced publicly that Parkinson, a married man, was the father of the baby she was expecting and that they have had continuous affairs in 12 years. Parkinson's immediate successor, Jeffrey Archer, was a married 47 year old man and a father of two children. His career came to abrupt end when it became a public knowledge that Mr. Archer had sexual affairs with a high society prostitute, Monica Coghan. In 1992, a married 43 year old David Mellor and Secretary of Heritage in John Major's government was publicly exposed to have engaged in abnormal sexual activity with a 30 year old model, Antonia de Sancha.
Crossing over the Atlantic, historical archives reveal that Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the Vice President of the United States who died at the age of 70 in 1979. He died at 13 West, 54th Street in New York, right in the middle of sexual intercourse with his Secretary, a 25 year old Megan Marshack. He was legally married and had many children and grand children. Until his romance with the 37 year old striptease dancer, called Fanne Fox, was publicly disclosed, Wilbur Mills was one of the most respected politician in the United States.The drunk 66 year old Wilbur was unlucky to have been stopped by the Police late in the night in Boston for over-speeding. Fox, who feared being detected and identified where she was hiding at the back seat panicked, ran out of the car and jumped into Charles' River. A while after the drama at Charles' River
Fanne Fox committed abortion having been made pregnant by Wilbur Mills whose political career ended at once. In New York, the American billionaire, Henry Mudd kept six wives simultaneously in six different apartments for the period of 20 years. He attended to each wife constantly in a specific day of the week except Sundays. Mr. Mudd was 57 years old when he divorced his second wife. He had four children from his two divorced wives and nine grand children. When Henry Mudd died in 1992 at the age of 77, he recorded in his will not only the share of heritage to each wife, but also order of his weekly attendance to them in this manner : Mrs. Monday - Loraine, Mrs. Tuesday - Betty Sue Olend, Mrs. Wednesday - Paula Palmer, Mrs.Thursday - Eileen Cavanaugh, Mrs. Friday - Angie Dubel, and Mrs. Saturday - Vanessa Rossok. As we all know, Monica Lewinsky was not the only woman that had sexual taste of President Bil Clinton who was married to Hillary and they are, till date, still married. Oluwatoyin Adepoju, your western monogamy is nothing but serial monogamy better known as latent polygamy practised by Apostles of gender equality.
You wrote about Female Genital Mutilation in Africa, but failed to mention Male Genital Mutilation. Yet, you honestly know that both males and females are circumcised in Africa though not because of the reasons given by you. Europeans might not have been performing circumcision on their females but in their history, there were records of Chastity Gaddles where the two sides of the female labia were perforated and padlocked by European men who retained the key to ensure that other males did not have sexual access to their wives or fiancés.
He (Buhari) is ready to concede that interviewer's wife may work as well as look after home. He is emphatic, however, that his own wife has no place in politics... - Oluwatoyin.
Buhari has succeeded in fooling people like you by distracting attention from his wife's criticism of his appointment of his officials to discussion of his wife belonging to the kitchen. I am just reading that Aisha, the wife of President Buhari, who is supposed to belong to, or be restricted to the kitchen, has delivered today, 19 October 2016, a keynote address at African Women's Forum in Brussel, Belgium, on Women's Role In Global Security. You are a PDP fanatic and ironically, umbrella is the symbol of PDP. Now, you spread umbrella over your head at sun set without rain and you think that you are wise. It is amusing!!
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com > för Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 18 oktober 2016 04:44
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Division of Labour as Different from Gender Equality
'Before the advent of Europeans in Africa, there was gender equality with each gender contributing what he/she is most suitable and competent to produce for the collective wellbeing of the society.'-Salimonu
Polygamous societies, which most classical African societies were, where men could marry more than one wife, but women could not marry more than one husband, are not demonstrations of gender equality.
What Salimonu is mistaking for gender equality is better described as division of labour, no more. The relationship between division of labour and the question of social empowerment is demonstrated in terms of the degree of prestige accorded to the activities performed by a group or person, the impact of that activity as well as the scope of activity allowed to the person or group.
Relative Valorisation of Gender Roles in Gendered Division of Labour
Scope of activity relates to both the range of activities one is permitted to perform within a given society as well as the flexibility one may demonstrate in relation to these activities, the degree to which one is free to adopt or discontinue an activity.
Both prestige and scope of activity may be summed up in terms of the degree of social power possessed by an individual or group.
Along those lines, in classical African society and to a greater or lesser degree in contemporary African societies, women possess a degree of power much lower than that of men. This power differential also relates to the degree to which one is treated as a human being, levels of power being demonstrated in the degree of regard one's humanity is accorded.
Dehumanization of Women in a Society Marked by Gendered Division of Roles : The Example of Benin, Nigeria
Ritual on Death of Husband, Female Genital Mutilation and Female Genital Mutilation
Along those lines, therefore, in Benin ( Nigeria) society, even in this century, I understand it was a practice for a women to be made to drink the water collected from washing the body of her recently departed husband, a spiritual test to ascertain if she had killed him. This was considered vital bcs men were understood to be in danger from their wives who could have a host of reasons for wanting to kill them. Such fears, as different from the factuality of their suppositions, are not surprising, since Benin society is polygamous, a polygamy that is allowed to men only, and a situation in which one is sharing a man with other women, particularly under the same roof, is not likely to be the most harmonious context. Yet, the kinds of division of labour Salimonu is valorising as gender equality are central to Benin culture, with women being in charge of the kitchen and possibly even the care of children, while men were breadwinners.
Who is making the laws that declare that women must be compelled to drink the water collected from the washing of the recently deceased bodies of their husbands?
Who is making the laws that dictate that the woman's clitoris should be cut off, in order to curtail excessive sexual activity by reducing sexual sensation, another practice from Benin, subsisting into this century?
Who made the laws dictating that men may marry more than one wife but women cannot?
Men.
Who constitutes the governing councils where such horrible decisions are taken?
Men.
These examples, which can be replicated in various ways across different African societies, says it all- the allocation of female power to the kitchen, in a limited sense to the bedroom, extending even to the farm, and in today's society to other work places. But within this empowerment, masculinity has succeeded in maintaining an iron grip.
The Struggle for Women's Education in Africa
It was a struggle and it remains a struggle for many African women to get an education bcs the struggle is still on to demonstrate that a woman's life does not have to begin and end with getting married and bearing children. Buhari's Muslim North is again particularly challenged in this regard, with early teenage marrying off of girls creating a cycle of uneducation and poverty which only a determined cultural and ideological push can break, another reason why Buhari's comments on his wife, particularly in the light of the education she is stated as having, suggesting that her education makes her fit at best for the kitchen and 'the other room', is particularly dangerous. Those who insisted on a NEPA bill/toilet paper certificate character, as your leader, take heed.
There was once a Nigerian governor whose name was Idongesit. One view holds that the proper pronunciation of the name should be E- don-ge-sit, meaning the person has at last arrived at the stability symbolized by having a seat, most likely a name given by his mother or someone close to her when at last she was able to either have a child or give birth to a male child.
The Challenges of Childless Women and of Women Without Male Children
From earliest known times to the present, a married Nigerian woman who does not have a child faces a problem that goes beyond the fulfillment of motherhood. Most women in that situation are likely to either be in in danger of losing that marriage or of sharing that husband with another woman, a major reason for the choice of her being the purpose of giving birth to a child. The same situation may emerge if a married woman does not give birth to any male child. In fact, one Southern Nigeria perspective describes such a situation of giving birth to only females as giving birth constantly to 'birds', the bird motif being the widespread Southern Nigerian image for the malevolent image of the witch, an identity understood to inhere particularly in women.
Within this spectrum of dehumanizations and restrictions, women's division of labour between genders reinforces rather than bridges the ridiculous mentality these injustices dramatise.
I have not written here anything not known to anyone who has either lived in Africa for at least one year or has studied gender relations in African societies. I am of the view this debate is taking place only because of efforts to excuse the utterances of a person who is out of his depth in a job he has no business doing.
Buhari's Reinforcing of Misogynistic Attitudes
From Buhari's Phil Gayle interview
'Recently your wife criticized your choices for top jobs, and you responded by saying "I don't know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room." What did you mean by that, sir?
I am sure you have a house. ... You know where your kitchen is, you know where your living room is, and I believe your wife looks after all of that, even if she is working.
That is your wife's function?
Yes, to look after me.
And she should stay out of politics?
I think so.'
That is the full picture.
He demonstrates, most glaringly, the relegation of women's scope of influence to the domestic sphere and women as a group as people whose range of activity should not extend to the public sphere represented by politics. Buhari lives in that home. He eats the food from that kitchen. He shares 'the other room' with Aisha. But only he can venture out of those spaces to engage in trying to direct the affairs of societies represented by engaging politics.
He is ready to concede that the interviewer's wife may work as well as look after the home. He is emphatic, however, this hos own wife has no place in politics, amplifying a comment he made in front of Angela Merkel, the married female prime minster of Germany.
God help us.
Only God knows how others see us due to the efforts of this ambassador.
Spiritual Conceptions as a Primary Means of Dehumanizing Women
To the more complex subject of female centred spirituality in various African societies, particularly Yorubaland.
Why is this subject important in relation to the subject of female empowerment?
It is important bcs conceptions of spirituality constitute one of the most devastating instruments of dehumanization of women in Africa.
Relationships between the feminine and spirituality in Yoruba culture demonstrate the complexity of the subject, its destructive and creative potential.
This aspect of gender conceptions demonstrates with particular vividness how women suffer gender specific dehumanization even within the context of whatever empowerment they may have in their societies.
At the heart of spirituality centred dehumanization of women in some African societies is the conception of evil, biologically centred forms of spirituality primarily in terms of female biology. Within this context, women in some African societies have had to flee into communities of fellow women so accused in their societies. A Google search for "female witches communities in Ghana" gives you 4,160,000 hits with such links as "The Women of Ghana's Witch Camps" ( "For decades, Ghanaian women have been banished to live in ... cast out by their families and communities after being accused of witchcraft". ) and "Ghana witch camps: Widows' lives in exile - BBC News"( "Women in Ghana suspected of being witches are banished from their communities and forced to live together in witch camps".)Like the child witches phenomenon in Nigeria, this may be seen as an example of the demonisation of vulnerable members of society by a superstitious and selfish society.
The Yoruba conception of spiritual power centred in female biology takes the subject further, describing the subject in positive, but largely negative terms and institutionalizing the conception. Yoruba spirituality is significantly an embodied spirituality. The only gender centred spirituality in this body of ideas, demonstrating distinctive characteristics in relation to gender, however, to the best of my knowledge, is female centred and is described as capable of being positive but is often understood as negative. Babatunde Lawal dedicates Gelede : Gender and Social Harmony in an African Culture to the study of the theatrical art run by men to honour those women known as aje as well as Awon Iya Wa, which may be translated as Our Mothers, but not motherhood in the conventional sense but in an arcane sense . Teresa Washington struggles in Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts : Manifestations of Aje in Africana Literature to rationalize the bloody images of aje in Yoruba oral literature as represented by the pictures of aje attacking the internal organs of human beings. Various ese ifa, Ifa literature, the most prestigious and comprehensive form of Yoruba literature, portray the aje as inexorably evil, a constant foe of humanity.
There is nothing in Yoruba culture in relation to men akin to the demonisation of women in relation to evil, biologically centred spiritual power in that culture, represented by the integration of evil overweing the positive, in my view, in the aje motif. Ifa, to give an example of a central Yoruba cosmological institution and textual tradition, does not so depict any male centred group in the negative terms it does the aje. in fact, Ifa may even be said to suppress in its literature, the female centred entity, Odu, wife of Orunmila, whose power is central to Ifa, with the male figure, Orunmila, prominent in Ifa literature but Odu being hardly visible, at least in the various ese ifa publications I have encountered, and in one of the most best known of her appearances, she bans Orunmila's wives from looking at her, that being a story used to justify banning women from 'seeing Odu', a climatic point in Ifa initiation, vital for becoming a babalawo in a spirituality in which the feminine is central. Various Diaspora Ifa thinkers struggle to rationalize this ban but its not convincing.
Comparing the West and Africa on Women's Empowerment
How does this spectrum of social empowerment vs empowerment, valorisation vs dehumanization, from domestic to public power and spirituality compare with the Western example Salimonu wants to see as a negative contrast to Africa in terms of practices continuous from the classical, pre-colonial period to the present, post-colonial period, as represented the examples I have given above?
The Vote and Witchcraft Beliefs
The West was in a similar situation not too long ago. Women could not vote till the Suffragettes won that right in England, at times by giving their lives. The US came later. The demonisation of women as embodying some form of evil spirituality, a variant of the negative aspect of the Yoruba aje, led to the killing of huge numbers of women in various witch trials. The infamous Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches, a textbook describing how to identify a witch,written in 1486, the influence of which lasted into its contribution "to the increasingly brutal prosecution of witchcraft during the 16th and 17th centuries":
"argues that witches were usually female[ bcs they ] are more susceptible to demonic temptations through the manifold weaknesses of their gender... that they were weaker in faith and more lustful than men[ they] are "prone to believing and because the demon basically seeks to corrupt the faith, he assails them in particular.". They also have a "temperament towards flux" and "loose tongues". They "are defective in all the powers of both soul and body". The major reason is that at the foundation of sorcery is denial of faith and "woman, therefore, is evil as a result of nature because she doubts more quickly in the faith." Men could be witches, but were considered rarer, and the reasons were also different".
The situation is very different today. The West has gone far beyond Africa in women's empowerment in relation to any point in African history
The demonisation of women on account of conceptions of female nature, in branding them witches, has been transmuted into the valorisation of female biology in modern Western witchcraft, since the founding of this religion by Gerald Gardner, which is the way the aje/Iyami concept is being developed in the African Diaspora as evident from the work of Iyalaje Mercedes Morgana Bonilla and the Egbe Aje Iyami Temple of America who are very active on Facebook.
On Wizardry
A wizard is simply a man believed to be in control of occult powers. This applies to all dealers in spirituality in the traditional Yoruba context, from the babalawo to the herbalist because their activities are centred in claims of dealing with powers beyond the conventionally perceptible, this apples even in herbalogy since this is believed to be related to spiritual power in the animistic universe of Yoruba cosmology. Pierre Verger's Ewe: The Uses of Plants in Yoruba Society is most instructive on this.
thanks
toyin
--
On 17 October 2016 at 22:35, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
Before the advent of Europeans in Africa, there was gender equality with each gender contributing what he/she is most suitable and competent to produce for the collective wellbeing of the society. Take, for instance, the climbing of the palm-tree to harvest the palm fruits. Long before the grandparents of Isaac Newton, who propounded the law of gravitation, were born Nigerian men calculated the strength of material of woven raffia twines with which they climbed the palm-tree, not only to harvest the palm fruits but, to suck palm wine into gourds. Climbing the Palm tree to harvest palm fruits was a technique mastered by men but their labour would have been in vain if women, that could not climb the palm tree, did not develop the technique of extracting oil from palm fruits at that time when the word bio-chemistry was yet to be coined. It was age of reciprocity of respect between the genders as women thanked men for climbing the palm tree to harvest palm fruits and men reciprocated in thanking women for masterminding not only the production of palm oil but also other derivatives like the grease called ÒRÎ and the Black Candle called ÒGÙSÒ, respectively, in Yoruba language. Another example was while hunting was an exclusive preoccupation of men in those days, women were experts in converting the animals killed into delicious soup without which the animal would have be eaten raw or consumed after being roasted in open fire. In fact men and women appreciated the interdependency of one another and there was no combat about who was superior to the other between the genders. With the enslavement of Africans, political and economic apartheid became order of the day. In a situation where some men/women dominate other men/women economically (even when they belong to the same gender and race) it will be futile to canvass for equality between genders without first dealing with the political and economic apartheid in operation not only in Africa but elsewhere in the world.
You averred that it is not completely true that a wife belonging to the kitchen in Nigeria connotes power because, according to you, the kitchen and the bedroom may be deployed for oppression. Of course, no system is completely perfect that it cannot be counterfeited or used for unintended purpose. For instance, a court of law is a place of dispensing justice but a judge can in exchange for pecuniary reward dispense injustice. Thinking beyond kitchen, a wife (a mother) is the commander of the house. As children, we were culturally taught that a wife (mother) is a precious metal and a husband (father) is a mirror. As we grew up, we were made to understand that a wife (a mother) is the driver that transported a child (male or female) to this world and that a husband (a father) only filled fuel into the tank. In a culturally unpolluted home in Nigeria, a wife/mother/woman is the commander and controller of the house. It is in this light we have to understand Buhari's sarcastic response to a provocative question which you are now twisting to mean that he intends to restrict his wife, Aisha, to the kitchen. Let us read his response to the specific question together. Buhari: I am sure you have a house. You know where your kitchen is, you know where your living room is, and I believe your wife looks after all of that, even if she is working. In a nutshell what Buhari is saying above is that the wife of the interviewer takes care of the house even if she is working. If Buhari had wanted to restrict the wife of the journalist to the kitchen, he would not have added even if she is working. But the journalist compressed together, the kitchen, the living room and even if she is working into a single question: That is your wife's function? And Buhari replied: Yes to look after me. The question from the journalist was wrongly phrased and should, instead, have been : Those are your wife's function? Buhari's reply : Yes to look after me is the same as saying : Yes to take care of me. Whether Buhari's wife looks after him or takes care of him, can that be taken to imply that Buhari is dominating his wife? Is it not logical to think that a person who takes care of another person is superior to the person being taken care of? If ordinarily Buhari had said in a public place that my wife takes care of me, would he not have been called woman wrapper by some people while others would see him as being romantic?
Mr. Adepoju carried his gender war into Yorubaland by claiming that women are the only gender demonized as witches in Yoruba towns. He wrote, "The wizard in the Western imagination, like the Yoruba, Babalawo and Onisegun, has largely been a benign, if not mysterious figure." There is a mix up of ideas here by Mr. Adepoju. The words Àje and Osó in Yoruba language existed independent of the corresponding words in English, Witch and Wizard. While Àje applies to a female just like the English word Witch, Ôsó applies to a male just like in the English word Wizard. The common denominator for Ôsó and Àje is that both are sorcerers Thus, we can talk of gender equality in this wise. However, a wizard is neither a Babalawo nor Onisegun. In the actual sense of the word, Babalawo is a priest, especially of Ifa; Onisegun is a Doctor or Physician and there is even a third one called Adahunse which is a herbalist or an adept in occult powers. Although only males could be Babalawo both males and females could be Onisegun and Adahunse. The aforementioned phenomenon have no obvious connection with the statement of Buhari on his wife but I am compelled to put the record straight for the sake of others.
S.Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com > för Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 17 oktober 2016 12:43
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuoteThe notion that "while a wife belonging to the Kitchen in Europe and America connotes oppression, in Nigeria, it connotes power", is not completely true, because, in Africa, the kitchen and the bedroom may be places of both empowerment and oppression.
The truth is that in the patriarchal contexts of even contemporary African societies, in being confined to the kitchen and other domestic spaces, iin the context of ncluding 'the other room', women are both empowered and largely disempowered.
They are empowered in the kitchen but the power of the kitchen is a very restricted form of power, a space not associated with high level cognitive functions nor with public influence.
Thus, a woman being told she should stick to the kitchen and the rooms of the house, including 'the other room' means she should remain within the confines of basic biological functions, represented by cooking, eating and procreation.
In performing these functions, her visibility and influence are to be mediated through the man, who eats the food she cooks but who may ensure she interacts with no one else outside the domestic space, shares the bedroom with her but in the understanding that her significant influence stops there. Even in the bedroom, she may be wise not to be too adventurous or seem too informed, lest the man question the source of such drive and skill, after all, her scope of action is defined by his own comfort zone.
Buhari sums up these perspectives in his interview with Phil Gayle in declaring that, like any woman, including that of Phil Gayle, his wife should focus on taking care of him, her husband and stay out of politics.
This culture has led to severe attacks on women in Nigerian politics and even in business. For many years, to be known as a businesswoman was almost synonymous to being suspect as a person of loose virtue, beceause how else could a woman command the resources to operate effectively in the male controlled space of commerce, if not as a mistress or prostitute, that line of thought went?
Such inanitiates are suggested in the recent fact that the best that senator Dino Melaye could think of as a rebuttal to senator Remi Tinubu in a controversy in senate was to refer to her sexuality.
Even in Yorubaland, where women have enjoyed significant public freedom , women's relative independence has suffered by women being stigmatized as harboring the evil spiritual power of aje or witchcraft as inherent to their biological forms, with success in male dominated spheres at times attributed in a negative sense, to witchcraft, seen as a clandestine, evil phenomenon, as Karin Barber describes in I Could Speak Until Tomorrow : Oriki, Women & the Past in a Yoruba Town, with women being the only gender demonized in Yorubaland as containing within their biologies a potentially destructive spiritual force , with the image of the blood drinking, life sucking and malefic coven aje or witchcraft gatherings being essentially female centred images, like the image of the evil witch in pre-modern Europe was essentially a female image. The wizard in the Western imagination, like the Yoruba babalawo and onisegun, by contrast, has largely been a benign, if mysterious figure.
Western fairy tales,in depicting spiritually powerful women, like in much of Ifa literature outside the scope of female divine figures such as Osun and other goddesses, and even in such cases, often demonizes these women, as demonstrated by the perennially evil witches of fairy tales and the often absolutely horrible depiction of aje in Ifa literature.
Various writers on Yoruba spirituality, from Hallen and Sodipo in Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, to Rowland Abiodun on the female figure in Yoruba religious images, to Babatunde Lawal on Gelede and Ogboni, to the recent work represented by Teresa Washington on aje to Mercedes Morgana Bounilla on Facebook, among others, are struggling, directly and indirectly, to present a clearer and at times valoristic picture of the one female centred spirituality in Yorubaland, the aje/ Awon Iyami ( Our [Arcane] Mothers) concept, a struggle often centred in addressing the contradictions demonstrated by the convergence of destructive power and creative potential the concept embodies-the power the aje are depicted in terms of is often evil and irrationally destructive but this is the only humanly centred, female focused concept widely known in Yoruba spirituality. These demonisations of women in spiritual terms recur in various African sociteies, leading to women in some countries being driven to live in ostracized communities having been denounced as witches.
These demonisations are part of the network of disparagement represented by confinement of women to the kitchen ad the bedroom. These spaces are at times described as privileged opportunities for destruction, leading to stories of women depicted as making their business prosper by seasoning the akara-bean cakes-they sell with menstrual blood, thereby creating a flavor that ensures the success of their akara business or of empowering their sexual organs with magical preparations, so they may more readily hold men hostage.
All these are the images of condemnation generated by a patriarchal society that privileges the unjust confinement of a powerful gender to restrictive spaces and manufactures such tales in unconscious fear of the responses of those socially disempowered people.
The situation is much worse in Buhari's Muslim North, where early marriage, even in early teenage years, has devastated the reproductive systems of so many women, whose bodies are too immature to sustain such demands, leading to terrible medical problems such as constant incontinence, generating terrible smells and a repellent appearance, making them outcasts, leading eventually to divorce by those husbands hungry for the flesh of little girls.
The Buhari response to Aisha demonstrates very serious significance and should not be taken lightly beceause it projects a dismal face for the future of women in Nigeria if not vigorously opposed.
Creative change will not emerge in in Nigeria by embracing or being silent about what is negative in the actions of people who claim to represent such change. Such responses will only openly entrench the further deterioration of what is dehumanizing about society.
thanks
toyin
.
.
--
On 17 October 2016 at 10:16, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
Its about time the following book was published :
APC Hermeneutics : Configurations of Confabulating Logic by Lai Muhammed et al. Jibbiti Press : Ojuelegba Under Bridge, 2016
Statement of purpose:
How to give the impression that the sun is shining when it is raining and how to suggest that a bad smell is actually the scent of sweet flowers-all through a peculiar form of logic perfected in Africa's most populous nation.
thanks
toyin
On 17 October 2016 at 00:21, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi.opara@gmail.com> wrote:
Harrow and Adekeye,
You are entitled to your opinions.
CAO.
--
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