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Showing posts from October, 2017

My Body: The site of my oppression

The dimensions of patriarchal oppression often you realise has many facets. The pain of oppression is in the consciousness, in being aware that you are oppressed. A clueless fool is a happy fool. This short piece is one of the many chapters of how I document the oppression of women in Northern Nigeria through a combination of personal narratives and interviews. First thing you need to know if you’ve never been to Northern Nigeria is that it’s a deeply gendered society, this often interlays with sex which is governed through religious beliefs. Today I outline a brief encounter that got me thinking about how men negotiate women’s sexuality in subtle indirect ways of policing you. But first of all, I must tell you where this oppression is, my body, as in the female body is the site of oppression. Take this for the context, I was getting dressed up to attend an interview. While the initial outfit I had picked technically had nothing wrong with it from my deciphering of Islamic ...