Raising our girls to be quiet

Last week, a video trended of a “mummy” walking around the market looking for young girls who weren’t modestly dressed to scold. Who makes it her mission to wander the marketplace like a warden policing girls’ clothing? Seriously, this woman has nothing better to do with her time?

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I suspect she took the cameraperson there because moments before she stops two girls in shorts, the camera shows her looking around in a way my mother would describe as anya vam vam vam. She sights two girls, walks over to them and asks them why they are dressed the way they are. “Where are you coming from?” she queries the poor girls, her voice rising as she speaks. “Don’t you know people’s husbands are here? You want to bring men to lust? What are you advertising? You think you’re so beautiful?”

Let me put this out here: I love that we are a society where family is more than just your nuclear family, where we look out for each other and all that, but some folks really abuse that privilege.  It takes a village to raise a child doesn’t mean that there are no boundaries. Afterall, we don’t enter people’s homes and tell them what to cook. How are you shouting at and humiliating young girls for not dressing the way you like? Children whose school fees you’re not paying? Folks you don’t know at all? Na wah!

Worse, how are people’s husbands needing to be protected from girls young enough to be their daughters? If these “people’s husbands” are “brought to lust” by the sight of prepubescent girls, then these men shouldn’t be let out in public. Lock them up and throw away the key because they are a danger to normal society. Nonsense! How is anyone “bringing” a married man “to lust” in any case? How is it normal not to blame the man who plays away? Abi men have no self will? No agency? They go where they are dragged? The same people who tell us men are the head of the family, men must be obeyed, men are superior to women – and the woman in the video looks like she belongs to that group-   do not see the irony in turning around and acting like men are babies with no self-control when it comes to women.  Haba! This woman looks like the sort of person to accost the “other” woman when her husband cheats on her. In a society where men are more likely than not to do the chasing, why anyone insists on blaming the “other” woman in cases of marital infidelity is beyond me.

I must confess, I found it depressing watching the video and seeing how the girls quietly took the abuse. My initial reaction was to wish that they’d ignored her and walked on, but reading through Twitter posts of folks smarter than me, I was reminded that the girls were in an environment that is naturally hostile to women and girls. Had they ignored the woman  or behaved in any way that could be interpreted as rude, they might have been beaten. They were sheep in the midst of hungry wolves, and trying their best to leave alive. Young girls are conditioned to be polite and silent, to make themselves small in order to survive.  Sad but true. It is not obvious that anyone would have come to their aid had they rebelled. Not those who quietly watched as they were berated, and not the person behind the camera. Anecdotal evidence would also suggest that the woman would have found more supporters than the girls. So, unfortunately, the two girls had no option but to take the insult quietly. My only hope is that their parents see the video, find the woman and give her a serious talking-to about harassing their children (and anyone else’s in the future).  She dey craze?

I really wish that our society valued our girls and women more. I wish we could create an  environment  where it was easy to teach our children, especially our girls, to speak up for themselves. A revolution will not happen if our girls (who will become women) are forced to be silent in the face of unprovoked attacks. Silence enables the status quo, and the status quo is crap.