Patriarchy and the Limits of Feminism’s Transformative Power

In the wake of these protests, conversations both online and offline have revealed that far too many Nigerian men understand rape as the inevitable consequence of proximity to women. A striking number of men also believe that women possess a natural tendency to provoke lewdness, and to weaken men’s ability to control their ‘sexual urges’. The problems with this framing are obvious. Primarily, such framing is rooted in the hyper-sexualization of women both as unwitting temptresses and as objects purposed exclusively for male desire. It reinforces the notion of the female body as a site for male intent and presents assault as the spillover effect of male libidinal supremacy. In this thinking, male libidinal supremacy is an essential element of maleness; a construct mediated and validated by the constant self-caricature of those it directly benefits. Acts of dehumanization must, by necessity, disfigure the dehumanizer; and what we see in the urgency and resolve of the feminist movement in Nigeria—where women in increasing numbers organize, write and speak in the long tradition of the gadfly, pricking the nation out of our numbness, our casual acceptance of status quo—is fewer avenues for men to hide from or ignore their reflections. Many men are being forced, perhaps for the first time, to reckon with what they have made of themselves.