Feminism is not about erasing men; that would be gender suicide and anti-human survival. Feminism is not about hating men; misandry is.
IN the unending man-woman gendered disagreements in Nigerian social media spaces, feminism and misandry are now much often interposed as the same. To be a woman, to be a daughter, to be a sister, to be a female classmate/student, to be a female work colleague, to be a partner, to be a wife, to be a mother, and everything that a woman could be, constantly undergoes revisionist modeling per trend and argument. But while these are regular statuses that fit into the feminist conversation, the 'contributions' of many digital natives, the Gen Z, in Nigeria may be at odds with core feminist ideas.
To begin with, there is a radical, intentional commitment to demonize masculinity as primarily toxic, even as non-toxic masculinity remains largely undefined (when not androgynous), un-trended, and dazed. It follows that, for some of the digital natives, hating men ('men' being a loose term for humans aged 0 to an undefined x years who have the phallic features) is a nonnegotiable part of feminism.
Every now and then, there is an out-of-the-blue post rage-baiting social media users on gender/feminism — sometimes because of engagement farming. Some other times, actual events are milked to the remotest fictional levels. It is bad enough that the mad rush after contributor payout has made many degenerate and wanting in propriety. But it is much worse that the blend between what is and what is presumed, between actual events and the imagined, competes for acceptance and truism in an age of information overload and short attention span. It does not only happen in gender/feminist issues; it cuts across the board. However, when it comes to feminism, according to "social media scholars," men, the scum, are a good cash cow. In February 2023, a TikToker by the username @federal_koko admitted this:
I don't give a fxck about the male child. I'll dump them up in the ocean, if it was left to me.
The user's views on the male child, which were extended to the grown men, given what else she said in the video, are obviously rooted in hatred, which might have come from some personal experiences. But, at the risk of invalidating where her outburst came from, that is not feminism. Feminism is not about erasing men; that would be gender suicide and anti-human survival. Feminism is not about hating men; misandry is. At the very core of feminism, it is broadly about two sets of issues: on the one hand, the assertion of the equal humanness of the female, her treatment as just human, not second- or third- or any lower-class human; on the other hand, it is to stand against institutions, practices and people that enable inhumane and unfair treatment of women.
Renowned feminist and Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, said in an interview with The Guardian in 2017 that "feminism's ultimate goal is to make itself redundant." Such redundancy is one of the satisfactory completion of an assignment, the natural after-effect when a tool is no longer in use. For anyone who has listened to her speech, "We Should All Be Feminists," or read Dear Ijeawale, Adichie has always been particular about feminism as an instrument for the attainment of certain gender goals. Such clarity is urgently needed to be popular among Nigerian feminist netizens. This is important because it addresses another difficult issue that Adichie herself has pointed out: the negligence of the male, which only recirculates the problems that feminism confronts.
When you think about the fact that women have had impacts in human history — in scientific studies, in knowledge systems, in discoveries and inventions — it is fatally ridiculous to think it is not an insult to the status of the female, or that it proves the essence of feminism, that a woman brings "herself" to the table.
On the other side of the befuddled nature of feminism of Gen Z in Nigerian social media spaces, there is also the perpetuation of the feminine self as a glorified other. It is the reduction of the female to a "consequence of" anti-men choices, the "despite the toxic masculinity around" body. The female here — and her body — becomes what reacts to a toxic boxing, a deviation, rather than what is of and on its own. This further manifests into the wanton creation of the femme fatale — the near-spiritual, pretentiously extraordinary lady of seduction and enticement, a doorway to destruction and unwilling compromise.
The 2020s social media in Nigeria tends to ask women regularly, "What do you bring to the table?" But while this seems harmless and targeted for accountability, the responses triggered are often subtly raunchy at the very least and outrightly pornographic at the extreme. Of course, somewhere in the conversation, there is the independent woman's admission of needing men less or not at all. The question is essentially targeted at the worth of the female in relationships, asked on the conviction that women only take and never give. This is a feminist concern, and so are many of the ways women respond. The "I bring my feminine features/energy" responses, the "I don't need men" responses, and the "I bring peace" responses.
Quite a great deal of time, the "I bring my feminine features/energy" obviates intellectualism rudely, per posts on social media. A girl needs engagement on a post; she attaches her lewd photo or video, and there comes the engagement. Morality here becomes a crime, even though ethicists reside in comments under such posts. The crux shifts: whether or not a woman is objectified or should be objectified, what a woman should wear, etc. It is a performance of worth when a woman has to show her "curves" to entice men or respond to why she is just as important as a man, why she should be reckoned with, and why her "side hustle" (perfume business, fashion business, etc) should enjoy great patronage.
The obviation of intellectual efforts with such "feminine" moves as you see in some forums online becomes glaringly anti-feminist when compared to the strides that informed such sub-theory as data feminism. When you think about the fact that women have had impacts in human history — in scientific studies, in knowledge systems, in discoveries and inventions — it is fatally ridiculous to think it is not an insult to the status of the female, or that it proves the essence of feminism, that a woman brings "herself" to the table. Such thinking subconsciously infantilises the female and makes her consider it a feminine strength to stop serving her (worthless) man her "juices" and offer them to another man. After all, that's what she brings to the table. Such outright retardation.
Furthermore, the "I don't need men" responses do not particularly stand up to the charge of feminism. It is a self-imposed expulsion from an aspect of the human race. It is an evasion of participation in a degree of human connection. That is not a crime, but it only comes as a pretentious deletion of one's capacity to participate in literal human progress, let alone that it is also possibly a depressing desire to live away from some of the deepest feelings and experiences, granted that humans are beings of emotions, and to have felt is also to have lived.
When the response is that the female brings peace, is it peace at the cost of material objects or because the man lacks the agency to be peaceful on his own?
To have been loved or not been loved by a man or woman is not a gender pattern; to have been cheated on by a man or woman is also not a gender pattern. Either of the cases is a human pattern. Hating a gender for the experience one has with a few of its members is as valid as nuking a country for the crimes of a handful of criminals who are its nationals. It is an instance of the fallacy of hasty generalisation, something that continues to do in many relationship hopefuls. The best of men, they say, are still men. Ditto the best of women.
When the response is that the female brings peace, is it peace at the cost of material objects or because the man lacks the agency to be peaceful on his own? It is nearly a vacuous thing to possess so much ability to amount to more than some fluid, dynamic phenomenon but only ever being just that. But that may also be from the bane of the climate wherein the characters are. Where barest minimum are the bars and lies are date costumes. Where a woman posts herself and the comments section becomes instant textual porn. Where the most polarizing thing is a woke, rewarded effort.
The treatment and the perpetuation of feminism by Nigeria's Gen Z may appear to be inconsequential now, but it is only a matter of time before a generation is overrode with such beliefs as the one that undergirds "if your man does not give you girlfriend allowance, leave him," in an economy that has already erased the working class. To be a feminist is not to hate men; it is also not to become a walking dessert that any moneyed or steezed-up man can readily have. In the pulses of virtual "vibes," caution ought to apply and more education should be sought.
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