Ifechidere. U
Nov 1 · 3 min read

KEEP YOUR HAND TO YOURSELF

I would grow up in a mental cage built by a society either ill-informed, insensitive or just intentionally untoward against the female gender and sadly, it influenced me to think it was normal. I quite understand that it would be hard for people to accept a different philosophy, to change, because the force of habit still rears its ugly head. We fail to learn that most times, we are held back by what we think or believe, instead of what actually is.

As a little girl and sometimes I wonder now, if boys my age had such fears. ‘Do not go out alone! Do not pass that secluded path unaccompanied! Wait till there are many people walking around! I became used to these warnings from my parent and seeing what happened to other girls, nobody told me to obey them.

Sundays saw me returning from catechism with an admixture of happiness, that yes, I was going back home after an almost boring class, and fear, because I would pass a particular path popular for its loneliness. Sadly, men hung around those places too. So, I devised a means with a mind that reduces girls/women to a sexually appealing object, to frown, change my walking step to a tomboy’s, deform my face to make me look ugly, so that I don’t appeal to these men, so as not to get raped.

In 2014, I travelled to Nsukka for my Post-UTME and that same evening, coming up the stairs of my brother’s lodge where I was to spend the week, I passed a group of boys I suppose were students, laughing and drinking. Suddenly, one of them grabbed my right buttock, while the others cheered. I’m still enraged by that act. I went wild with anger, but could not utter a word. In my small mind, I did not want to hurt his ego by shouting, after all, some girls were instantly raped, so I counted myself lucky.

We live in a society where virginity is a thing for the girls and not for the boys, where, a man is praised for the number of women he has 'done’. Boys are treated with less rigidity like it was the girls that needed saving the most. But, saving from who/what? Ironically, the society has more ‘safety measures’ for girls, saving them from danger it nurtures and breeds, inherent in the mind of the boys.

I remember, one early morning. In my mother’s usual fashion of praying and advising us before leaving for Ifesinachi bus park. My brother, Ikenna and I were to resume a new year in the University after a long vacation. After the closing sign of the cross, my mother warned me sternly not to have a boyfriend, not to talk of having any sexual contact, but to my brother, she flippantly said 'You better not get any girl pregnant in this house’

Her advice was subconsciously impartial and it was obvious. It seemed like she did not care if my brother had sex, in so far, there was no resulting pregnancy. But, for me, the female, I was expected to be virgin Mary.

I used to think that these issues were not so serious, but they actually are. Sexual harassment is more perpetuated on the premise of superiority or over bearing masculinity than the urge for sex.

While you groom girls to be morally correct, do so because it would be good for the society, not as a present waiting to be unwrapped by a man. Groom boys too! Teach them to understand that the female is an autonomous entity and his happiness should not be served by a woman!

    Ifechidere. U

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    A Natural Progressive! Stories shape the world & endear the world to you.