We Should All Be Feminist
Chimamanda Adichie is a Nigerian writer who wrote We Should All Be Feminist on 2014. We Should All Be Feminist is a book-length essay that tackles about feminism and gender discrimination. Below are some issues where gender inequalities manifest and are accompanied by realities and situations that happened and are still happening here in the Philippines.
“And a guard at the entrance stopped me and asked me annoying questions, because their automatic assumption is that a Nigerian female walking into a hotel alone is a sex worker. And by the way, why do these hotels focus on the ostensible supply rather than the demand for sex workers? In Lagos I cannot go alone into many “reputable” bars and clubs. They just don’t let you in if you’re a woman alone, you have to be accompanied by a man. Each time I walk into a Nigerian restaurant with a man, the waiter greets the man and ignores me. Each time they ignore me, I feel invisible. I feel upset. I want to tell them that I am just as human as the man, that I’m just as worthy of acknowledgment. These are little things, but sometimes it’s the little things that sting the most. ” I personally haven’t experienced that exact type of neglect for the reason that I’m a woman, and I haven’t witnessed that kind of situation since I’m still financially dependent so I haven’t been in a hotel or a restaurant alone, but those situations causes my mind to play some similar scenes that keeps happening here. I don’t know if it’s the judgmental minds of the people that are speaking about this matter but I think it’s actually part of sexism. Girls receive pathetic and awkward stares whenever they are walking, shopping, or even sitting in the park alone but boys don’t. It is unfair that when you want to have some time alone and just stroll on the beach, you can’t. You have to find a company or you have to be brave enough to take stares and sometimes even gossip.
“And this is how we start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently. We do a great disservice to boys on how we raise them; we stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way, masculinity becomes this hard, small cage and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian speak, “hard man! What if both boys and girls were raised not to link masculinity with money? What if the attitude was not “ the boy has to pay” but rather “ whoever has more should pay?”
Everything Adichie said in this part is undeniably true and sadly, it’s still very prevalent today. Inequality is happening everywhere without anyone actually noticing it because they think it’s normal. Men would normally be told to pay may it be on romantic dates or family dates. In my family for example, my Mother always asks Father who has just arrived from work what we will eat or what he plans to buy as if he is just the person who is responsible for spending money for us. It is so unjust since she is the one who has the bigger salary yet she’s always demanding my Father to pay. They sometimes split the payment but mostly it’s the man who’s expected to pay. My family is just one of the families who does that and I don’t know if it will change since Filipino elders do not know how to listen to the youth.
“Because I’m female, I’m expected to aspire to marriage; I’m expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. A marriage can be a good thing; it can be a source of joy and love and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? I know young women who are under pressure from family, from friends, even from work to get married, and they’re pushed to make terrible choices. A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep, personal failure. And a man at a certain age who is unmarried, we just think he hasn’t come around to make his pick.” This part is the most relatable part in the essay since Filipino women are expected not just by their families but also by the whole community to marry at the right age. Men on the other hand are pressured by some people but most of them just let it go. My female cousin for example is twenty years old and she has been pressured since she graduated to find a boyfriend. The first question people would ask her whenever there is a gathering is --”You don’t have a boyfriend? Why?” and then give a compliment which doesn’t sound like one. “ You are so pretty! You should get a boyfriend soon or else you will become an old maiden or “dalagang gulang” as they call it. It is extremely devastating watching the frustration in her face when she shares to us how she feels about all that. Even her parents pressure her which makes it irritating because they know their own child. Our cousin says in a powerful tone to us-- her cousins-- “I am happy! I am single but I’m happy. I don’t need a man to satisfy my needs and wants. I have a job and I am not in a hurry because I know He has a plan for me”, I just sat there staring at her sadly, wishing she could tell that to her parents.
“If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about our son’s girlfriends. But our daughters’ boyfriends? God forbid. But of course when the time is right, we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husbands. We police girls, we praise girls for virginity, but we don’t praise boys for virginity. We teach girls shame. “Close your legs.” “Cover yourself.” We make them feel as though by being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think, and they grow up-- and this is the worst thing we did to girls-- they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.” As a girl who is raised in a very conservative environment, I can relate to this part big time. And I know I’m not alone. I think every girl in the Philippines can relate to this-- except to those who have not-so-strict parents or those who are stubborn. We are forbidden to be or to get too close to guys because we might be judged by society as a slut or somewhat similar to that. We were raised to behave and act properly when we’re around guys. Even when we're just around our guy friends or classmates, we can’t act normal (maybe not all girls do the same, but I do). I act like I’m allergic to them because that’s what has been taught to me since I was young. I am also told to be single until I graduate. It’s not just I, also every girl in my family and all my friends (who are all girls) experience the same. We are not allowed to have a boyfriend until we graduate, yet when we have a job and decide that we don’t need men, they pressure us to get married soon. It is so unjust and heartbreaking how people prohibit and control girls and let boys do what they want. Boys can go out even at night, boys can have girlfriends without getting told that they won’t have any house to get back to, and they aren’t the ones being gossiped in the whole campus and community when they lose their virginity.
“I know a woman who hates domestic work, she just hates it, but she pretends that she likes it, because she’s been taught that to be “good wife material” she has to be -- to use that Nigerian word-- very “ homely”. Today women in general are more likely to do the housework than men, the cooking and cleaning. What if in raising children we focus on ability instead of gender? What if in raising children we focus on interest instead of gender?” This issue is ubiquitous in the Philippines; female teenagers are trained and told to practice doing all the household chores so that their future husband won’t neglect and replace them with someone else. It is told to them as if it is their duty to serve men when they become women. It is disappointing how parents tell their kids to do all that when they know it didn’t serve them good and they know deep down, it’s unfair. Fortunately, some parents nowadays (here in the Philippines) as I’ve noticed are raising their kids, both girls and boys to do the chores regardless if some people think it’s a girl’s job.