When I first read the news that the Senate had –again– rejected a bill aimed at protecting widows and young girls given out in marriage at age 12, my reaction was, here we go again; a coalition of religious bigots, macho men and polygamists oppressing poor women. All headlines were similar, and the (few) articles I read were unanimous.
Some days later I heard of the almost hysterical opposition to the bill by a friend: a radical activist, who often hits some nails on the head.
I started asking people: what does the bill actually say? Nobody knew. Another friend, a real intellectual, said he was studying the issue. Like most, I believe I am chronically short of time, so I waited for the results of the study.
A week passed and curiosity got the upper hand: I went searching for the bill in Internet.
Surprisingly, I found many articles and blogs condemning the rejection of the bill, and a few applauding it, but none gave a link to its actual text, or even quoted passages from it. Even the site of the Ministry or Women Affairs gave only a very short summary.
My curiosity was piqued. Eventually I got to a blog by a lady in Abuja who is generally in favour of the bill, though she mentions “a few sticking points, such as abortion and affirmative action”; most importantly, she did give a link to the “secret” text!
I downloaded and quickly read through it while waiting at the Landmark for a huge Yoruba wedding reception to start. Between loud music, huge screens and quasi-psychedelic lights, my impressions were: it’s very long, I generally agree with the Abuja lady, and fixing 18 as minimum age for marriage is OK in cities, but perhaps a bit on the high side in villages. I said so in a message to a few friends, sending them also the text I had found.
My radical friend replied sending me an article on the issue: after reading it, I re-read the proposed law with more calm, and asked myself a few questions.
Why the term “gender” is used throughout, if we are trying to defend the dignity of women and girls? My intellectual friend said it’s a Standard English term. True, but what is its meaning?
Let’s look first at another term. My 1981 Longman dictionary gives 4 definitions of “gay”:
1- “Cheerful”; 2- “attractive, so that one feels happy to see it”; 3- “not serious”;
4- “Homosexual” (but ‘informal’).
Does it look odd? You are quite right! My Longman 2005 gives the same 4 definitions, but no. 4 (“homosexual”) is now No. 1, and the other 3 are said to be ‘old fashioned’: they are there just in case you happen to read a book or watch a movie more than 30 years old.
Something similar has happened with “gender”. In our country it still has mostly to do with grammar (gender of a noun) or biology (same meaning as sex); in North America and Europe instead when you fill a form you may be asked not what your “sex” is (male or female), but what “gender” best describes your “identity”, and you have ample choice. A few years ago I read a list of 21 genders; now, Facebook offers you more than 50 different genders to choose from, and keeps adding more.
What does it mean? Suppose you are biologically a male: if you feel you are a man, that’s alright. But perhaps you feel more like something in between a man and a woman: that’s also OK, pick your choice: genders on offer include gay, lesbian, queer, transsexual (of various flavours), two-spirits, cisgender. And if you are not sure, or think you are neither man nor woman nor anything in-between? That’s also there in the list. That’s the “beauty” of gender identity: you are not limited by your biological sex, you are free! (For a list of genders with explanation, see: https://genderben.com/2015/03/07/facebook-gender-categories-explained/)
But is this the meaning of gender in our “Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill”? Well, we don’t really know, because its text defines many of the terms it uses, but does not define “gender”. However it defines that “Discrimination against any person” shall mean any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of his or her sex or gender or other condition… so it seems that gender is something else than sex.
Why is all this important?
Right now, the Governor of North Carolina is being attacked by the New York Times and threatened of boycott by the CEOs of 100 top Companies (including Apple, Facebook, etc.), while a famous singer has cancelled a planned tour of that State in protest.
What did the wicked governor do to deserve all this? He has issued a nasty decree saying that men should use the gents, and ladies the ladies… that is, according to his/her biological sex, not to the gender! So, what if a man feels he is a woman in a man’s body (‘transgender man’) and wants to go to the ladies? He cannot, says the wicked governor: he is introducing “exclusions and restrictions made on the basis of his or her sex or gender”, in other words, “Discriminations” precisely as defined by our bill.
Is this too farfetched?
Those who are as old as I am and have travelled a bit know about the campaigns to legalize abortion and sodomy in the USA and in Europe. They started declaring praiseworthy aims (save the poor girls who have been raped and forced to abort in a back alley; don’t insult the poor guys/girls who feel attracted by someone of their same sex), proceeded to twist the meaning of words (killing an unborn baby –conveniently called foetus– became an interruption of pregnancy; legalized sodomy became gay marriage), and all the time kept hiding their true intentions from the public.
I am all for equal dignity of women, and especially for protecting widows and young girls. I am saddened when a bill that purports to do something for them is rejected out of hand. But I don’t want to get anywhere near the murky waters in which the West is drowning and wants to drown us as well. I am proud to live in Nigeria, one of the few countries in the world that still has clear ideas about the roles of the two sexes in a family, but not proud of how our women, especially girls and widows, are treated in some parts of Nigeria.
Did Senator Olujimi know the up-to-date meaning of the word “gender” when she sponsored the bill? Did our members of parliament know when they began deliberating it? I want to believe they did not, and were as blinkered as I was at my first reading of it.
If we really want to defend women, here are some layman’s suggestions:
1- Introduce a new bill, shorter and to the point, so that people of goodwill may read and understand it, agree about it, and then work at implementing it.
2- Don’t use words the meaning of which has been twisted and which are used as crow bars to break in and destroy traditional values, like “gender”, “reproductive health”, and even “equality”. Call a spade a spade, talk of “women”, “widows”, “girls”, “equal dignity of sexes”. The more specific the definitions are the better. A good title could be “Protecting the dignity of women”.
3- Leave out controversial issues, like the right to kill an unborn baby if it “endangers the mental … health of the mother” (from article 12c) of the bill, which seeks to introduce free abortion without limits as part of the “reproductive rights of women”)
4- Leave out impractical and unrealistic proposals, like reserving for women 35% of all offices, facilities, positions or appointments, in the public or private sphere (article 6b).
God bless Nigeria!
Morris Fatai
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