I believe Dr. Wigwe
Cornelius Hamelberg
been suffering as a hen-pecked husband over a long period of time and
this is not a side issue:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Domsetic+violence+against+men
It's the sort of issue that is surely being addressed by people like
Pastor Adeboye, the Rev. Commander Pastor Ebenezer Obey and perhaps
more importantly, the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social
Development.
Fortunately, Dr. Wigwe is not a Muslim and so is not under a cloud of
suspicion that he was acting under legal cover, to some extent
provided by Sharia and that he had merely exceeded the limits set by
Islamic Law. And by the way here the Islamic law is not being
vilified but explained in a more compassionate light:
http://www.google.com/search?q=OIC+Fatwa+on+Domestic+Violence++in+Islam
So the question that remains is what does Nigerian Law say about
domestic violence?
And Kenyan Law?
To Abdul Bangura: you talk about Italy and and the widely perceived
to be gentle Swedes, but what can you tell us about the African
Diaspora in the United States with regard to violent wife-husband dis-
agreements?
And apart from Islamic education and respect for Sharia etc. what
global remedy do you suggest for the majority of people who are not
Believers?
Cornelius Hamelberg
Here is more compassionate light on how Islam deals with domestic
violence:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Domestic+Violence++in+Islam&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
On Jun 8, 12:33 am, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelb...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Lavonda Staples
La Vonda R. Staples
University of Missouri St. Louis
Psychology and History (Contemporary Europe) Alumna
I have devoured every inch of this issue and I was especially touched by the letter written by Dr. Wigwe's son. A son defending a father against a mother? There seems to be a biological imperative for sons to hold their mothers in highest regard. Even a mother who is no better than a cat can find a lifelong friend in her son (especially the youngest son.
The other peripheral information I examined was the extent of Mrs. Wigwe's injuries (I didn't examine her personally I looked at the photos). Before I attended college, graduate school, and taught in the university and community college systems (five years altogether) my career and occupation was at Lancome. I was a make up artist, cosmetics salesperson, and a skin care consultant. Mrs. Wigwe is an abuser of a chemical called hydroquinone - a skin bleach. The highest concentration that can be bought in the United States is 2% chemical in a cream that is 98 percent of package contents. From a dermatologist the highest concentration is four percent in a 96 percent cream. Walk with me, this has a point, several points.
Women who abuse hydroquinone develop two conditions directly relative to the integumentary system. First, there's the "sunburst" look on their faces. Now that I've told you what it is you'll know what it is immediately. On darker skinned women their skin will appear ashen. The second effect of over-use of this chemical in women who are of the age of Mrs. Wigwe (and me) is crepe-paper thin skin which ages quickly, especially around the eyes. Internally the product causes severe problems in the lymphatic system and I suspect it is at the root of Mrs. Wigwe's yellowing of the whites of her eyes.
Now here's the point. We look at those photos and imagine an hour-long beating. I don't think anyone who knows anything at all about these chemicals would conclude that Dr. Wigwe didn't open a can of whoop-ass on his spouse. But, I'm offering a reason why (other than the beating) that Mrs. Wigwe appeared as if she had been beaten by SEVERAL people! There's also a psychological component. For those of us who use these things (yes, I bleach as well and have done so for several years) there is, at one end, a tacit admission that one doesn't like oneself in order to simply participate in this act of racial self-hatred. Do you think this only played out in her skin-care regimen?
I recently relocated back home from DC. In my entire life (and if God wills, insha'Allah I will be 45 in October) I never KNEW that there are products geared to African women which enable them to apply hydroquinone ALL OVER THEIR BODIES! I went into "African" stores and found products called, "Bleche Blanc" and "Le Klair" and so many, many more products marketed to Francophone Africa. Beautiful women on the bottles and jars and the instructions in English, French and Portuguese. So, the beating Dr. Wigwe gave his wife is more than likely a drop in the bucket compared to how she feels about herself. I'm not in her mind and I can't say how she feels. I'm going by that sad, sad, tremendously sad letter written by her youngest son. "My sister had to use her credit cards to get food." "My daddy has always taken care of our needs." I felt like the worst voyeur reading such a mournful discourse.
Going to another point. I'm also a mother of five sons aged 19 to 26. Ask me how many times they have been assaulted by a girl, told a teacher or principal, and then after handling a situation correctly were informed that somehow, a woman/girl has a right to use physical violence against a man and a man cannot defend or retaliate? Give me a dollar when you ask the question and I'll have enough to return to DC. I'm a mother of very large men (they are five foot eleven to six foot four) and I'm telling you that men have feelings to. Men have rights. Men are not punching bags for out of control females. If we, in the United States, have an actual legal defense which is colloquially known as "fighting words" then why do we want to participate in the fantasy that NOTHING a woman says or visits upon a man can compel him to an immediate act of physical rage? Here's the caveat to that: it is possible to defend and run without beating the hell out of someone (as it appears to have gone with Mrs. Wigwe).
Going to another point. Was it not possible for Mrs. Wigwe to leave Dr. Wigwe without interrupting his income and therefore the income of the family? If they had a row on one particular day why is she showing herself, like an American talk-show participant, to every camera with batteries and a lens? Especially when one thing is true: neither party comes to the court with clean hands. In the words of my 95 year old grandmother, "bof uh dem was actin' a fool." Shake hands and walk away.
Finally, in response to the posts regarding wife-beating in Islam. I would like to gently remind you all, my colleagues, that Shari'a law is Semitic law. It is the law of nomadic peoples. It is also the laws created by a Jewish and later Christian book. It is in the Old Testament in the Book of Leviticus. The same chapter we use to beat up on the Muslims is also in the Holy Book of Christendom, be ye Protestant or Catholic. It is the self-same book which castigates homosexuality and allows for wife-beating and honour-killing. The same book also says that masturbation is an abomination in the sight of God (as a lateral and not a lesser) along with "man lying with man." To come out of religion and to go to the United States Department of Justice. The most dangerous place for a White, Christian woman is in her own home. The person most likely to be shot with a legal handgun is the spouse and/or the children of the owner. Infanticide, in the United States, to a 90 percent degree of efficiency is a crime of a single racial/gender demographic: White females. The same is true of spousal contract killing.
Into this violent western panorama comes the African immigrant and his wife. At the worst possible time to be educated and no experience which can be verified in this country. With massive influence by Western media outlets which give an absurd interpretation of what a wife should or should not have (see any "Real Housewives" television broadcast and you'll think every divorced woman or baby momma is pushing at least one Benz). Put this knowledge in the mind of the struggling immigrant wife. I'm not being condescending. In the 1960's and 1970's Black American women also committed this grievous error of believing the rhetoric of western and White women's movements. Although I have been blessed with two marriages and a possible, my sisters have not fared so well. Most educated Black women will NEVER marry. Three-fourths of all African American children are born illegitimate. That television, those movies, and that music are more powerful than a ball of crack and heroine soaked in a bottle of 100 proof tequila. Our media distorts minds and ruins marriages and brings cultural practices to a standing, fatal, unchanging halt. I put to this forum my hypothesis marital violence in the homes of African immigrants has something to do with economy but also the psychological effects of American media and American individualism and American porcine consumption.
In the end. I can sit back in my chair. With my sons sitting around me in various stages of the itis (the lethargy you get after consuming soul food) and say, "that poor family." No one is going to hit me in my face. I keep my skin bleacher at 2%. I don't ask for things I can't have and I try to make all of the children (my 13 year old wears her hair in braids that I braid with my own two hands) on what we have to spend. I don't participate in fronting or flossing. I learned that lesson and paid for that experience a long time ago. I'm not a "real" American. I'm not like the women on TV. I wouldn't be any fun to watch, kneeling on the floor cleaning the bathroom in my makeshift apron of Igbo cloth), cooking, reading Dr. Falola's books, or re-writing a paper for Dr. Emeagwali. I should delete this post for fear of deportation. I wouldn't let some sorry man use my face for a punching bag without a trip to the hospital for him and a trip to the police station for me (oh didn't I tell you, sympathy for battered women is reserved for the small, old, and White - I'm not any of those things). I also would not have allowed that beating to make that man lose his job. As I said before, it appears that both parties failed to wash before they went to the world court. They should have kept all of that wahala to themselves.
Thank you and I encourage responses and feedback.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
--
joan.Osa Oviawe
As an African woman (Nigerian to be precise), I find it rather disingenuous on your part to be propagating the myth that African immigrant women are so influenced by the "rhetoric of western media" that they are incapable of deciphering the nuances of Western Culture from their own African-ness. You make it look as if they have now elected to discard the wise counsel of their mothers, grandmothers, aunties and elders for the eternal words of wisdom of Oprah. You seem to want to attribute some of the newly found 'enlightenment' of African immigrant women- to watching shows like the "Real Housewives." I am glad you didn't also add that these women now expect their beleaguered African husbands to fete them lavishly on a regular basis, garnished with the kind of rambunctious lovemaking that are the staple of fabled relationships on American Soap Operas.
Are African women incapable of setting their own standards of how they want to be treated by their spouses and by society at large? Must their existence be so condescendingly interpolated with Western Feminist or African American Womanist thoughts? When it was still legal for American husbands to beat their wives, African women already had leadership roles in their pre-colonial societies. Whose values are influencing who here?
Your tale of the marital plight of African American women is incomplete at best. You gloss over the fact that many African American women are unmarried not by choice, but due to the shortage of upwardly mobile African American men. Precipitated by such factors as the dire impact of the Prison Industrial Complex on the African American male population, emasculating effects of racism, as well as the self emasculating pathological behaviors of a sub-section of the African American male population who seem to not want to befriend the responsibilities that come with being a man.
I am not saying that all women are good, neither am I espousing the myth that all men are bad.
Saludos,
joan.Osa Oviawe
abiola akiyode-afolabi
I found Mr. Wigwe’s piece and some of the comments here quite interesting and cannot resist putting in few words. As someone who works daily with battered women in Nigeria, I begin to wonder if gradually men who abuse their wives are not acting same script. Yes, I agree that domestic violence is a global phenomenon and not only in Africa, let alone in Nigeria. The only difference could probably be that in some part of Africa, it is mostly condoned and because most of the men are guilty (without prejudice to the huge majority of men who would not under any circumstance raise a finger against their wives) they will rather leave this issue unaddressed, after all they are the majority in power and decision making positions. So it can only change if women get their support/votes to make it possible. The mothers in Africa over the years have lived with this abuse and are quick to encourage their daughters to keep silent in the face of violations, because it is the norm, ‘it happens to all the women out there and your case is not different’. Thus, the society kills the battered woman by the day with very little option for redress. Recently in Nigeria, Lagos State and two other states in 2007 signed the Law to Prohibit Domestic Violence, for a state with a population of over 15milion people and the highest record of domestic violence in Nigeria, the state needs to be commended, it has also put a home up for battered women. However you will be shocked to know that still yet very few of the cases of domestic violence get to court since the enactment of this law and very few women have found a temporary refuge in the shelter! In Wigwe’s country, attempts to pass the prohibition of Violence Against Persons bill ( formerly Violence Against women Bill, which was changed to ‘Persons’ to suit the male hegemony who argues that it is not only women who get beaten but men do…I agree but for so many reasons including gender and power dynamics, the statistics show that more women suffer this and other forms of violence more for different reasons… because they are ‘a weaker sex’, vulnerable’ powerless’ culturally bound to do so’ the man is the head of the family’ and other reasons we hear by the day). I have read over and over Wigwe’s defense and every time I do, I see a lot of inconsistencies in the epistle, the argument can easily be flawed, the woman like every other women, has been labeled mad woman, prostitute, adulterer, nagging wife, irresponsible mother etc, she has been condemned for being bold enough to speak out. She is a survivor; she should be celebrated and not condemned. I commend the government of Nigeria, for recalling the Ambassador, she is not worthy of being in ‘high places like the high commission’. President GEJ and the National Assembly should therefore see this as a call to duty, we need a national law prohibiting in its entirety gender based violence in Nigeria. The records are abound, women were massively raped and abused during the last crises in Bauchi, Plateau, Kaduna and the abusers are working on the street with victims having no recourse to justice. Just some few months back, a royal father was dethroned for beating his wife in ‘public’, another recent event, a young lady of the National Youth Service Corp, who offered to help a royal father was raped in return for doing community service, the matter is still in court, how many do we want to count in a country that has signed all the International Human Rights Laws that protect women and girls but has refused despite daily pressure by women in Nigeria to domesticate this law for their benefits!
Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi
PHD Candidate,
Gender and Armed Conflcit,
SOAS
University of London
Executive Director, Women Advocates' Research and Documentation Center(WARDC)
|
Olayinka Agbetuyi
Ms Staples has shown by her contribution that she is truly a Mother with a capital M. We are not just talking here of biological motherhood, nor does it merely imply direct familial motherhood. Afterall people do opt to adopt rather than, or in addition to having biological offsprings.
For an idea of this kind of decentred yet wholly earthed and unifying idea of motherhood stay tuned for my forthcoming title The Courage of Motherhood.
Olayinka Agbetuyi
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 20:46:27 -0500
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Oyedeji, Kale
I am a father and with a daughter in her thirties, so I have a taste of feminism, especially when she got to college. I have also seen how some feminist groups helped to wrongly put African men in jail. I have seen how some immigration lawyers, in desperate efforts to save their clients from deportation, have turned some culture on its head to portray African men as the worst human beings God had ever created. So, reading through Ms. Staples’ write-up, I didn’t see anything disingenuous in what she had to say. She never gave any percentage to characterise the number of people she referred to. I admire her sincerity and candour in presenting her case. Ms. Joan.Osa Oviawe could make her case for some percentage of African women that fit her description. True, there are a lot of African women capable of setting their own standards, but there are those also that are incapable of doing the same; especially the younger generation that come to the US at tender ages. Ms. Oviawe can not deny the fact that some African immigrants, not just women alone, are influenced by the rhetoric western media. This is not only true in the US but in some African countries where western culture is most preferred. Ms. Oviawe, people that still have respect for their culture fit into your description “… they have now elected to discard the wise counsel of their mothers, grandmothers, aunties and elders for the eternal words of wisdom of Oprah.” Most are even ashamed of their culture.
I doff my hat for Ms. Staples.
'Kale Oyedeji
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of joan.Osa Oviawe
Sent: 08 June 2011 02:53
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com; NaijaPolitics Forum
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Dear Ms. Staples,
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
there was something wrong with equality for women. There she goes again.
Lavonda, male patriarchy and male chauvinism constitute a scourge on humanity
and must be put to rest. The abuse of women, physical and mental, has been perpetuated
disproportionately. Most of the culprits are men. Most of the victims are women, statistically,
and the march for freedom from abuse must continue.
Lavonda has mastered the art of writing with candour and I like to read her
commentaries but her propensity to defend male chauvinism continues to baffle me.
Dr. Gloria Emeagwali
www.esnips.com/web/GloriaEmeagwali<http://www.esnips.com/web/GloriaEmeagwali>
emea...@ccsu.edu<mailto:emea...@ccsu.edu>
________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Oyedeji, Kale [koye...@morehouse.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 8:12 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
I am a father and with a daughter in her thirties, so I have a taste of feminism, especially when she got to college. I have also seen how some feminist groups helped to wrongly put African men in jail. I have seen how some immigration lawyers, in desperate efforts to save their clients from deportation, have turned some culture on its head to portray African men as the worst human beings God had ever created. So, reading through Ms. Staples’ write-up, I didn’t see anything disingenuous in what she had to say. She never gave any percentage to characterise the number of people she referred to. I admire her sincerity and candour in presenting her case. Ms. Joan.Osa Oviawe could make her case for some percentage of African women that fit her description. True, there are a lot of African women capable of setting their own standards, but there are those also that are incapable of doing the same; especially the younger generation that come to the US at tender ages. Ms. Oviawe can not deny the fact that some African immigrants, not just women alone, are influenced by the rhetoric western media. This is not only true in the US but in some African countries where western culture is most preferred. Ms. Oviawe, people that still have respect for their culture fit into your description “… they have now elected to discard the wise counsel of their mothers, grandmothers, aunties and elders for the eternal words of wisdom of Oprah.” Most are even ashamed of their culture.
I doff my hat for Ms. Staples.
'Kale Oyedeji
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of joan.Osa Oviawe
Sent: 08 June 2011 02:53
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com; NaijaPolitics Forum
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Dear Ms. Staples,
As an African woman (Nigerian to be precise), I find it rather disingenuous on your part to be propagating the myth that African immigrant women are so influenced by the "rhetoric of western media" that they are incapable of deciphering the nuances of Western Culture from their own African-ness. You make it look as if they have now elected to discard the wise counsel of their mothers, grandmothers, aunties and elders for the eternal words of wisdom of Oprah. You seem to want to attribute some of the newly found 'enlightenment' of African immigrant women- to watching shows like the "Real Housewives." I am glad you didn't also add that these women now expect their beleaguered African husbands to fete them lavishly on a regular basis, garnished with the kind of rambunctious lovemaking that are the staple of fabled relationships on American Soap Operas.
Are African women incapable of setting their own standards of how they want to be treated by their spouses and by society at large? Must their existence be so condescendingly interpolated with Western Feminist or African American Womanist thoughts? When it was still legal for American husbands to beat their wives, African women already had leadership roles in their pre-colonial societies. Whose values are influencing who here?
Your tale of the marital plight of African American women is incomplete at best. You gloss over the fact that many African American women are unmarried not by choice, but due to the shortage of upwardly mobile African American men. Precipitated by such factors as the dire impact of the Prison Industrial Complex on the African American male population, emasculating effects of racism, as well as the self emasculating pathological behaviors of a sub-section of the African American male population who seem to not want to befriend the responsibilities that come with being a man.
I am not saying that all women are good, neither am I espousing the myth that all men are bad.
Saludos,
joan.Osa Oviawe
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Lavonda Staples <lrst...@gmail.com<mailto:lrst...@gmail.com>> wrote:
From St. Louis, Missouri
La Vonda R. Staples
University of Missouri St. Louis
Psychology and History (Contemporary Europe) Alumna
I have devoured every inch of this issue and I was especially touched by the letter written by Dr. Wigwe's son. A son defending a father against a mother? There seems to be a biological imperative for sons to hold their mothers in highest regard. Even a mother who is no better than a cat can find a lifelong friend in her son (especially the youngest son.
The other peripheral information I examined was the extent of Mrs. Wigwe's injuries (I didn't examine her personally I looked at the photos). Before I attended college, graduate school, and taught in the university and community college systems (five years altogether) my career and occupation was at Lancome. I was a make up artist, cosmetics salesperson, and a skin care consultant. Mrs. Wigwe is an abuser of a chemical called hydroquinone - a skin bleach. The highest concentration that can be bought in the United States is 2% chemical in a cream that is 98 percent of package contents. From a dermatologist the highest concentration is four percent in a 96 percent cream. Walk with me, this has a point, several points.
Women who abuse hydroquinone develop two conditions directly relative to the integumentary system. First, there's the "sunburst" look on their faces. Now that I've told you what it is you'll know what it is immediately. On darker skinned women their skin will appear ashen. The second effect of over-use of this chemical in women who are of the age of Mrs. Wigwe (and me) is crepe-paper thin skin which ages quickly, especially around the eyes. Internally the product causes severe problems in the lymphatic system and I suspect it is at the root of Mrs. Wigwe's yellowing of the whites of her eyes.
Now here's the point. We look at those photos and imagine an hour-long beating. I don't think anyone who knows anything at all about these chemicals would conclude that Dr. Wigwe didn't open a can of whoop-ass on his spouse. But, I'm offering a reason why (other than the beating) that Mrs. Wigwe appeared as if she had been beaten by SEVERAL people! There's also a psychological component. For those of us who use these things (yes, I bleach as well and have done so for several years) there is, at one end, a tacit admission that one doesn't like oneself in order to simply participate in this act of racial self-hatred. Do you think this only played out in her skin-care regimen?
I recently relocated back home from DC. In my entire life (and if God wills, insha'Allah I will be 45 in October) I never KNEW that there are products geared to African women which enable them to apply hydroquinone ALL OVER THEIR BODIES! I went into "African" stores and found products called, "Bleche Blanc" and "Le Klair" and so many, many more products marketed to Francophone Africa. Beautiful women on the bottles and jars and the instructions in English, French and Portuguese. So, the beating Dr. Wigwe gave his wife is more than likely a drop in the bucket compared to how she feels about herself. I'm not in her mind and I can't say how she feels. I'm going by that sad, sad, tremendously sad letter written by her youngest son. "My sister had to use her credit cards to get food." "My daddy has always taken care of our needs." I felt like the worst voyeur reading such a mournful discourse.
Going to another point. I'm also a mother of five sons aged 19 to 26. Ask me how many times they have been assaulted by a girl, told a teacher or principal, and then after handling a situation correctly were informed that somehow, a woman/girl has a right to use physical violence against a man and a man cannot defend or retaliate? Give me a dollar when you ask the question and I'll have enough to return to DC. I'm a mother of very large men (they are five foot eleven to six foot four) and I'm telling you that men have feelings to. Men have rights. Men are not punching bags for out of control females. If we, in the United States, have an actual legal defense which is colloquially known as "fighting words" then why do we want to participate in the fantasy that NOTHING a woman says or visits upon a man can compel him to an immediate act of physical rage? Here's the caveat to that: it is possible to defend and run without beating the hell out of someone (as it appears to have gone with Mrs. Wigwe).
Going to another point. Was it not possible for Mrs. Wigwe to leave Dr. Wigwe without interrupting his income and therefore the income of the family? If they had a row on one particular day why is she showing herself, like an American talk-show participant, to every camera with batteries and a lens? Especially when one thing is true: neither party comes to the court with clean hands. In the words of my 95 year old grandmother, "bof uh dem was actin' a fool." Shake hands and walk away.
Finally, in response to the posts regarding wife-beating in Islam. I would like to gently remind you all, my colleagues, that Shari'a law is Semitic law. It is the law of nomadic peoples. It is also the laws created by a Jewish and later Christian book. It is in the Old Testament in the Book of Leviticus. The same chapter we use to beat up on the Muslims is also in the Holy Book of Christendom, be ye Protestant or Catholic. It is the self-same book which castigates homosexuality and allows for wife-beating and honour-killing. The same book also says that masturbation is an abomination in the sight of God (as a lateral and not a lesser) along with "man lying with man." To come out of religion and to go to the United States Department of Justice. The most dangerous place for a White, Christian woman is in her own home. The person most likely to be shot with a legal handgun is the spouse and/or the children of the owner. Infanticide, in the United States, to a 90 percent degree of efficiency is a crime of a single racial/gender demographic: White females. The same is true of spousal contract killing.
Into this violent western panorama comes the African immigrant and his wife. At the worst possible time to be educated and no experience which can be verified in this country. With massive influence by Western media outlets which give an absurd interpretation of what a wife should or should not have (see any "Real Housewives" television broadcast and you'll think every divorced woman or baby momma is pushing at least one Benz). Put this knowledge in the mind of the struggling immigrant wife. I'm not being condescending. In the 1960's and 1970's Black American women also committed this grievous error of believing the rhetoric of western and White women's movements. Although I have been blessed with two marriages and a possible, my sisters have not fared so well. Most educated Black women will NEVER marry. Three-fourths of all African American children are born illegitimate. That television, those movies, and that music are more powerful than a ball of crack and heroine soaked in a bottle of 100 proof tequila. Our media distorts minds and ruins marriages and brings cultural practices to a standing, fatal, unchanging halt. I put to this forum my hypothesis marital violence in the homes of African immigrants has something to do with economy but also the psychological effects of American media and American individualism and American porcine consumption.
In the end. I can sit back in my chair. With my sons sitting around me in various stages of the itis (the lethargy you get after consuming soul food) and say, "that poor family." No one is going to hit me in my face. I keep my skin bleacher at 2%. I don't ask for things I can't have and I try to make all of the children (my 13 year old wears her hair in braids that I braid with my own two hands) on what we have to spend. I don't participate in fronting or flossing. I learned that lesson and paid for that experience a long time ago. I'm not a "real" American. I'm not like the women on TV. I wouldn't be any fun to watch, kneeling on the floor cleaning the bathroom in my makeshift apron of Igbo cloth), cooking, reading Dr. Falola's books, or re-writing a paper for Dr. Emeagwali. I should delete this post for fear of deportation. I wouldn't let some sorry man use my face for a punching bag without a trip to the hospital for him and a trip to the police station for me (oh didn't I tell you, sympathy for battered women is reserved for the small, old, and White - I'm not any of those things). I also would not have allowed that beating to make that man lose his job. As I said before, it appears that both parties failed to wash before they went to the world court. They should have kept all of that wahala to themselves.
Thank you and I encourage responses and feedback.
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com<mailto:cornelius...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Please excuse me. I posted the wrong link.
Here is more compassionate light on how Islam deals with domestic
violence:
On Jun 8, 12:33 am, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelb...@gmail.com<mailto:corneliushamelb...@gmail.com>>
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com<mailto:unsub...@googlegroups.com>
--
La Vonda R. Staples
Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Sciences
Community College of the District of Columbia
314-570-6483<tel:314-570-6483>
"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com<mailto:unsub...@googlegroups.com>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
--
kenneth harrow
there is indeed not just one feminism, but there has long been one consistent discourse in attacking all feminisms from the beginning of the movement. that has been attacking women for speaking out as being too loud and too aggressive.
the language of the criticism betrays the patriarchal phallocentrism, but instead of admitting it, the attack reverts to the charge that this is "western feminism." those two attacks--aggressive and western--are used consistently to silence women.
here it is, the definitive word:
ken
African woman go dance, she go dance the fire dance (2x)
She know him man na master
She go cook for am
She go do anything he say
But lady no be so (4x)
Lady na master (3x)
LADY
If you call a woman
African woman no go 'gree
She go say
She go say "I be lady o"
If you call a woman
African woman no go 'gree
She go say
She go say "I be lady o"
If you call a woman
African woman no go 'gree
She go say
(She go say "I be lady o")
I want tell you about lady (3x)
She go say him equal to man
She go say him get power like man
She go say anything man do
Himself fit do
She go say him equal to man
She go say him get power like man
She go say anything man do
Himself fit do
I never tell you finish (3x)
I never tell you
She go want take cigar before anybody
She go want make you open door for am
She go want make him man wash plate for her for kitchen
She want salute man, she go sit down for chair (2x)
She want sit down for table before anybody (2x)
She want piece of meat before anybody (2x)
Call am for dance, she go dance lady dance (2x)
African woman go dance, she go dance the fire dance (2x)
She know him man na master
She go cook for am
She go do anything he say
But lady no be so (4x)
Lady na master (3x)
Call am for dance, she go dance lady dance (2x)
African woman go dance she go dance the fire dance (2x)
She know him man na master
She go cook for am
She go do anything he say
But lady no be so (4x)
Lady na master (4x)
If you call am woman
African woman no go 'gree
She go say
(She go say "I be lady o")
She go say "I be Lady"
(She go say "I be lady o")
She go say I no be woman
(She go say "I be lady o")
She go say market woman na woman
(She go say "I be lady o")
She go say I be Lady -
(She go say "I be lady o") (3x)
till fade
© Fela Anikulapo Kuti
| Related |
|---|
ken
On 6/8/11 11:46 AM, Olayinka Agbetuyi wrote:
there is not just one feminism,although there is an overly vociferous and aggressive variant)
-- kenneth w. harrow distinguished professor of english michigan state university department of english east lansing, mi 48824-1036 ph. 517 803 8839 har...@msu.edu
Oyedeji, Kale
My apology, Dr. Joan Osa Oviawe. I suppose that goes for Dr. Staples too.
'Kale Oyedeji
From: Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola [mailto:ko...@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 8:42 AM
To: Oyedeji, Kale
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I DO NOT believe Dr. Wigwe
Can you please correct your title sir |
Ikhide
Oyedeji, Kale
Ikhide, there is nothing academic in your response below. You could make your points without those derogatory generalisations. You can ask around, I definitely do not belong in the group of “serial wife abusers”. What you just wrote shows a man that is angry with the rest of the world. It is amazing to me that you are writing as if you knew this family and you were present at every episode of the family dispute. Why must everybody see things your way? Why must you call anybody with opposing view names? You wrote “Every one of you who just found time to respond egging on wife beaters and children abusers should be ashamed of yourselves.” Why should I be ashamed of myself for expressing my view? You are the one that should be ashamed of yourself for your intolerance of opposing view. Some of my children live in Maryland with you, you can ask them what type of father I have been to them. Ofcourse you may not believe them. Ask them also how I treat their mother. You have met me, I am not a savage man, by the standard definition, ofcourse, you have your own definition, so I have nothing to hide.
'Kale Oyedeji
Okey Ndibe
| Ikhide captures my sentiments exactly. I might tame my language a bit, but I absolutely agree that there's profound intellectual dishonesty at work here. Deep down, a lot of African men (and some women, too!) haven't quite cottoned up to the idea that women are not morally and mentally inferior to men--and that there's no circumstance under which women should be knocked around. Some Nigerian men in North America, the UK and Europe can't forgive those cultures for stipulating that you can't use your wife as a punching bag even though, as some of us are wont to say, "I married her with my money." We romanticize our "culture" that gives husbands the prerogative to beat a wife if/when she steps out of line. There's no question that some African women come, say to the US, and get heady with stories that you
can slap a man and get away with it. Yes, I've heard stories of some African women who can't wait to taste of this forbidden pleasure of smacking a man's face. But guess what? The police won't hesitate to take in and charge a woman if the husband reports the assaults and wants to press charges. Beyond that, divorce is an option. Let's even concede, then, that Mrs. Wigwe is an adulterer (with a "tribal" Yoruba man of all people!), that she beat up a female diplomat in Tokyo who went to dinner with her husband, that she'd been stealing money from her husband etc, etc. If I believe all this, the husband, former Ambassador Wilcox Wigwe, looks even worse! Why not divorce a wife who's such a crook and so crude? Why keep her around so that, when she provokes you beyond words, you can deliver a slap or two--and (in the testimony of Son Nelson) inflict small cuts? If the former ambassador doesn't have
the sense of judgment to separate from/divorce a wife accused of all the crimes outlined in Mr. Wigwe's shameful rebuttal, then does the man have what it takes to be a country's ambassador? In the end, that's the crux. I agree with Ikhide: If Mr. Wigwe's lawyer saw his so-called defense and permitted him to publish it, then I'm willing to bet that the lawyer didn't do a semester in law school much less finish. Read the ambassador's statement again: It's more damning of the man than his wife's accusations. |
Iheoma Obibi
--------------------------------------------
Iheoma Obibi
Executive Director & ASHOKA Fellow
Alliances for Africa
Mobile: + 234 803 302 0779
Int' mobile: + 44 7713 401454
Skype: iheomaobibi
http://www.alliancesforafrica.org
Samuel Amadi
Abuja, Nigeria
234-803-329-9879
From: Iheoma Obibi <iheom...@yahoo.com>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, June 8, 2011 5:01:05 PM
Cornelius Hamelberg
“Othello” is a great Opera. Paul Robeson once played the part designed
for that extraordinary emotion which in Swedish is called “
Svartsjuk” - “the black illness” : jealousy, which after all is a
universal emotion ( therefore Sotah) but said to be specially
pronounced/excessive in the darker species, therefore the BLACK
illness. So when Sir Laurence Olivier played the part, he hung out
with Black people ( mostly West Indians) in London, to study and
inculcate (Stanislavski method) some of our emotional attributes. This
accounts for some of the melodrama that we see in his acting – not in
the Burbage delivery of his lines......I've seen the performance
several times....a quite exaggerated you and me. But that's the scene
and the screen for you, to make a person “ bigger than life”
http://www.google.com/search?q=Othello
So today, Bigger Thomas stands in front of Her Majesty's magistrate
at the Old Bailey, charged with assault and battery, and causing “
grievous bodily harm” to a female. Her Majesty's magistrate (male or
female) hallucinates the image of Othello which is now planted deep in
his psyche as the representative image of the Black Man and he is
therefore readily disposed to conclude that ”The lustful Negro must
have done it” ...with extra lust for “ the forbidden fruit” ....
It's the same thing when the innocent Negro is charged with rape –
especially of a white woman. On the day of the trial she turns up
wearing a short skirt covering an ashasha looking like the back side
of Monica Lewinsky, and the male members of the jury, drooling at
the lascivious sight even before any evidence is presented, have
already arrived at the irreversible conclusion that “The Negro must
have done it” because perhaps irresistibly, nobody in sight, from
their own point of view it would look like a good idea, if it were to
be delivered to them, on a platter
And if the Negro is looking humble and grieved ,they think he is now
hanging his head in shame and regret.
If he is looking confident and defiant, they think, “What the cheek
he's not even trying to look meek ! In spite of being guilty, see how
arrogant and unrepentant he looks” - and he will probably get an even
stiffer sentence.
No matter how he looks, he can't win.
I 've seen this happen to various friends from various countries of
Africa, here in Sweden.
Today, we do not want to see the Wigwe family drama as reported, being
reduced to a Nollywood soap opera 4U2Laff. We are talking about an
honourable Nigeria ambassador who has hitherto served his country
well ; throughout his trials and tribulations that he has acquainted
us with there is no mention of wife-beating nor does she accuse him of
such, - until now - and we are to presume his innocence until should
he (Heaven forbid) be found guilty.
A question we must ask is “ Why would the Mrs. Wigwe in question want
to kill the goose that's laying the golden eggs? “
Ambassador Wigwe has given us the answer.
Dr. Wigwe & the whole world is aware of the problem of domestic
violence mostly perpetrated by men on women and also by women on men
( 40%?) and by parents – both women and men - on their children, and
in some parts of the world where it's called “corporal punishment” by
teachers, both male and female, on their students, tiny tot, young or
old.... and in my opinion the latter system of punishment in part,
accounts for the long, post-colonial history of brutality in some
parts of Africa (daily mass rape in Eastern Congo still on-going) and
accounts for some element of brutality being so readily acceptable by
many Africans who were subject to such punishments themselves and
consequently have thought that it's legal fare and a good way of
maintaining discipline, winning an argument, or solving a problem
whether in the Ivory Coast, the Sudan, Libya or Pakistan, it's the
philosophy of “ Spare the rod and spoil the child” and it's said and
sung that with the US as parent, pastor and world Sheriff, it's, “Send
the Marines !”:
http://www.google.se/search?q=Send+the+Marines
We (men) are in solidarity with women ( mothers, lovers,
daughters,wives) who may be on the receiving end – it is not a
coincidence that in our part of Africa, Prince Nico Mbarga's “Sweet
Mother“ is the most popular African music piece of all time: this is
so because it strikes a chord in everyone of us – men and women who
have come into existence through woman – therefore exalt mother-hood.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Sweet+Mother
Therefore it is expected that we respect our wives, womenfolk , as we
respect our mothers.
At the start of the Sabbath - before the Sabbath meal, “ Eshet
Chayil” ( Proverbs 31 that Dr. Etuk mentions) the alphabetically
arranged eulogy that our Patriarch Abraham composed on behalf of our
Matriarch Sarah is recited. Proverbs 31 was incorporated by King
Solomon as part of the closing chapter of Proverbs. “This hymn extols
the way virtues of the Jewish wife and mother who sets the tone of
Shabbos and in the home and family”:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Eshet+Chayil&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
As the saying goes, “He who feels it knows” and as Dr. Emma Etuk -
justifiably angry - has so insightfully pointed out, the new
vociferous and aggressive strain of militant African feminists who
“find solace in using (the power of ) vagina to torture men and expect
them not to fight back”, should know that it is not all men that are
willing to take it, lying down.
So, let's be reasonable here, not merely sentimental, emotional,
romantic, tearful or reeling in pain and being vindictive. Although
the discussion has now moved from the specific to the general, I would
like to return to the case at hand: yes, everyone knows that there's a
general wife-beating, a "temporary insanity" battering & bruising and
perhaps this is what Mrs Wigwe has exploited, in the belief that her
story will be easily believed, because wife-beating is a widespread
phenomenon. But what has she done this time which she has not done a
thousand times before? What excess is it that she is supposed to have
committed that broke the camel's back this time? That too is a
question.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Crime+of+passion
Professor Tunde Zack-Williams raises two pertinent questions which
the church, the Mosque and the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Women
Affairs and Social Development should address.
The questions:
“if the wife was suffering from mental illness, as
he hinted in his rationalisation, why did he not seek psychiatric help
for
her. Furthermore, if the marriage had broken down, is divorce not
available
under traditional African law?”
This is where Family Counselling should help - adjusted to the
cultural context of course.
As Professor Zack-Williams knows, in a country like Sierra Leone,
there is only one psychiatrist in the whole country ( Dr. Nahim) and
some say that because of the strain and stresses of the workload this
poor man has to bear, he himself might be in need of some treatment,
without even being aware of this. And to some extent, the treatment –
for witchcraft or whatever, would have to be culture-dependent.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Family+Counselling
Dr. Etuk also observes that, “She went public instead of following the
African traditional means of conflict resolution. She did not complain
to the parents and family of Dr. Wigwe. She took matters into her own
hands. ” This is an essential difference between European life and
life in Africa: in Sweden divorce can be almost instantaneous once
tempers flare or it has got to the point of “enough is enough” - the
wide range of Swedes that I know do not make personal domestic
problems a bigger family affair with consultations with parents and
their familial extensions sitting on the judgement seat. They take
matters into their own hands.
Another difference is that in Africa , on the whole the woman tends to
be subjugated to the man on whom she is usually economically dependent
to the extent that she is reluctant to bite the hand that feeds her.
Even here in Sweden, African immigrants have been known to marry
African women who upon becoming economically independent have tended
to “ take matters into their own hands” and deserted their African
husbands, to live life in “freedom” & without any husbandly
supervision, taken over his house / apartment since the law seems to
favour women.
This has tended to result in alcohol problems and sometimes suicide
for the poor men.
Over here, when a man commits suicide it's usually about money or
woman.
If there had been no wife beating? No wife beating at all, say in
Nigeria? Then the women would have taken over completely long ago –
and we would have had the first Female president of Nigeria some Lady
Ngozi, type, from day one. Goodluck himself would not have stood a
chance, except perhaps to be the man, the “ boy-child” power behind
the First Lady's throne, with the First Lady as his President, in
control of the purse strings of course, and perhaps her sister Mrs.
Wigwe or Lavonda Staples as her Chancellor of the Exchequer.
And in Ghana the Markola Market Mammy (the usual economic power behind
the throne/ political power) would have also taken over long ago.
Hopefully, we are not societies -in-transition to polyandry of the
sort that (survival of the fittest) masculine man could have to
succumb to as they look back in nostalgia and update the history of
once upon a time, in African Patriarchal societies. This is likely to
happen once the Freedom March of the Militant Feminists and Lesbians
achieve their objectives. As Fela complains
“ Lady nah Master,”Lady na Master.!
“She go say him equal to man
She go say anything man do
I never tell you…
She go want take cigar before anybody
She go want make you open door for am
She want salute man she go sit down for chair (2x)
She want piece of meat before anybody (2x)
And the ideal, “Sweet mother” holy mother, picture:
“She know him man nah Master
http://www.google.com/search?q=Fela+%3A+Lady
Mark my words: it's in the pipe-line: after the Arab Spring, you will
have the Muslim women in that area rearing their heads and women's
Liberation and feminism in Islam will be the next new thing. And the
Muslim men won't be taking it lying down. Some will have to sing and
beg for their supper after the fuse of The Muslims' women Lib is
lit.
May the Almighty help us all : the Dr. Wigwes, you, me.
>
> ________________________________
> From: "Oyedeji, Kale" <koyed...@morehouse.edu>
>
> read more »
Pablo Idahosa
It�s hard not to seem like a voyeur in all of this unseemly bearing of others� laundry in very public stuff. �I especially feel sorry for the children� (Larkin: �They fuck you up, your mum and dad. /They may not mean to, but they do.� They fill you with the faults they had /And add some extra, just for you.�), but this thread has proven that it is too important to leave to purveyors of by any provocation sufficiently. �
We all have, or have had, grandmothers, mothers, wives, lovers, partners, sisters, daughters, (female) cousins, aunts and nieces, many of whom, unfortunately, have borne witness to male assault.� Some people on this list appear to be making arguments under the guise of balance and hearing the other side, and having attacking the straw hyena of western feminism and western culture (whatever that is). As someone here rightly said, every time something is wrong, women, and this case the �West", is to blame. If it were an African womanism or feminism, or by whatever name African women want to call their ways of knowing and analyzing the kinds of gender inequalities they face, what else to blame?� Just women.� I can remember thirty years ago walking down Sidi Bel Abb�s in Oran, Algeria, and a man was beating �his� woman, and men, including a policeman, were saying give her one for us, she has shamed us all. In other words, whatever she had been alleged to have done (for I all knew, she had nothing), she deserved a beating, even from the law.� �It is something when people would equate provocation, real or alleged, as a reason for battering.� We have even witnessed on this forum, in effect, the appalling justification for murder under the guise of sufficient provocation� crime passionel that is our own, no?
�
This is a speculation on my part, but I suspect underneath all of the tacit and explicit understandings of Wigwe�s assault, is the guilt and fear, and even shame of men who only know too well that these things exist too closely in families and amongst kin�that is, in their own immediate and extended families. The asymmetry in violence that exists between men and women cannot be turned around on woman and apportion the same blame to them. When things don�t work, move on or get counseling, rather than using your residence as a village compound for "traditional" trysts; and if things go wrong again, don�t issue apologias trying to blame your fists on a woman.
P.
�
�
�
On 08/06/11 12:01 PM, Iheoma Obibi wrote:
I have read this thread and really stunned by the responses to Dr Wigwe's diatribe and that of his son, who is really stuck between two warring parents. However, we are a people that love the pretence of marriage and apperances rather than happiness and therefore� not surprised by the response of our intellectual elite. It is always the woman's fault.�Let me begin by adding that I am the daughter of the survior of domestic violence and when I read the�Dr's response it took me back to a time that I thought I had forgotten�and if we are all honest, there are others on this list who are too pained to respond. The excuses for why my mother was battered serially from my earliest memories included�being�the devil, she was a bad woman, she had a boyfriend (really, they all say it), she is selfish, greedy, does not behave like a true igbo woman, yada, yada. My mother survived because her father and uncles decided that enough was enough (after several family meetings, discussions, broken agreements you name it)�and took their daughter back with all her kids.�Otherwise, my mother would still be there today, making excuses for a bad marriage and a sorry ass husband.�All am saying is this, some of our men have anger management issues and no amount of family intervention, negotiation, submissiveness, being the good wife can way lay the volcano within. Added to this is the notion of marriage and how it is constructed in our cultural setting and all the baggage that comes with it. Once married we as women�are expected to loose our identity and become one with someone who may or not be on the same emotional and planning page with you. If you raise issues he deems as unsuitable he just might hit you because YOU raised it and not him. It's a complex situation affected by our cultural norms and values.�
Dr Wigwe clearly has beaten his wife before and his diatribe illustrates that he sees no problem with it - even expressed by their son in his response.
�
We all need to know that wife battery in our cultural milieu is two a penny as Igbo women. I see women who have been married for barely three weeks and they are being battered from the onset and their families are telling them, to "manage it, they are not the only ones".
�My two pennies worth, this woman cannot be a she devil as�Dr�Wigwe claims because the story is familiar to those of us�whose mother's have been battered.� The story never changes just the characters.����
--------------------------------------------
Iheoma Obibi
Executive Director & ASHOKA Fellow
Alliances for Africa
Mobile: + 234 803 302 0779
Int' mobile: + 44 7713 401454
Skype: iheomaobibi
http://www.alliancesforafrica.org
From: "Oyedeji, Kale" <koye...@morehouse.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, 8 June, 2011 15:55:48
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Ikhide, there is nothing academic in your response below. You could make your points without those derogatory generalisations. You can ask around, I definitely do not belong in the group of �serial wife abusers�. What you just wrote shows a man that is angry with the rest of the world. It is amazing to me that you are writing as if you knew this family and you were present at every episode of the family dispute. Why must everybody see things your way? Why must you call anybody with opposing view names? You wrote �Every one of you who just found time to respond egging on wife beaters and children abusers should be ashamed of yourselves.� Why should I be ashamed of myself for expressing my view? You are the one that should be ashamed of yourself for your intolerance of opposing view. Some of my children live in Maryland with you, you can ask them what type of father I have been to them. Ofcourse you may not believe them. Ask them also how I treat their mother. You have met me, I am not a savage man, by the standard definition, ofcourse, you have your own definition, so I have nothing to hide.
�
'Kale Oyedeji
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ikhide
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 10:09 AM
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
�
Our people,
�
Why am I not shocked by the savagery displayed in the responses by many on this issue in this forum? Why am I not surprised? Because these are the men and their friends, serial wife abusers like "General" Olusegun Obasanjo who misrule much of Black Africa today. Women and children are their punching bags, every day. Yes, I am expected to say the usual patronizing clap trap about how not every Nigerian man is a wife beater as if we are supposed to thank them and give them medals for not crunching up their wives and children. People are writing and behaving like sabages in suits. Every one of you who just found time to respond egging on wife beaters and children abusers should be ashamed of yourselves. There is nothing African in what is happening all over Nigeria today: Women and children are being abused as they toil under a society that is paternalistic in the worst way.
�
What you have all just witnessed is intellectual dishonesty. They have read that disgrace of a response - that shows up what "Chief" "Dr." Wigwe really is - an abusive sniveling possibly crooked official (all those Rolexes, all those trips ferrying the son's girlfriends back and forth, and whatsup with the bizarre statement about the wife having a boyfriend from the "Yoruba tribe"?) buffoon. They know that no lawyer would have allowed such an incoherent incriminating rant to see the light of day. From she poured ketchup on herself, "the Ketchup Defense" under worldwide outrage, he changed his tune to a tree in our bedroom hit her" and now Ms. Lavonda Staples has come up with bizzarre babblespeak about what I have absolutely no idea. I am not even going to go there today, life is too short jare. The son weighs in, taking a break from playing video games and counting his Rolex watches, he writes nonsense about well, there was not a lot of blood and why, it is not as if she was paralyzed by the incident. What a family. m
�
You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves. When the DSK issue came up, we were all jumping up and down trying to outdo ourselves, yelling racism, etc, our own sister is bludgeoned and there was quiet everywhere, in "Africa" men can do as they please and if a woman is mauled it is her fault, na pms, na witchcraft, etc, etc. Why, the Father of all these Serial Abusers , Aremu Obasanjo is a world "statesman." If Obasanjo was a white man he would be a statesman in prison. We call that reverse racism.
�
So now, we have a new defense: The woman deserved whatever happened to her. Shame on all of you savages who feel this way. I have said it over and over: Africa's continuing demise is as a result of her intellectuals dishonesty. And I repeat it today.
�
I ask you: Is this man fit to be the ambassador of a hut? Is this man and his family fit to be envoys of any nation that takes herself seriously?
�
What is African about marital and child abuse? I have news for all of you: With these cave men attitudes of yours, do not come to America. If you draw blood and the Police is called, you will be arrested and sent straight to jail. And you deserve to be in there. And if you are a public official, you lose your job immediately, as you should.� This has nothing to do with whether she deserves it because she did not serve you water to wash your hands before eating eba, this has to do with the law. The law serves to provide clarity to issues ike this: No hitting, absolutely no hitting. I mean, all we do is mimic parts of laws that we want, we want the pleasures, we don't want the work. And who gives a damn what the bible says; the holy books are great works of fiction designed by men to control women, children and slaves. And they spread bigotry and prejudice to boot.
�
A snake is in the house; we are babbling crap about how not all snakes are poisonous, blah, blah, blah! You people are just too much!
�
- Ikhide
�
�
�
�
�
From: "Oyedeji, Kale" <koye...@morehouse.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 8, 2011 8:12 AM
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
I am a father and with a daughter in her thirties, so I have a taste of feminism, especially when she got to college. �I have also seen how some feminist groups helped to wrongly put African men in jail. I have seen how some immigration lawyers, in desperate efforts to save their clients from deportation, have turned some culture on its head to portray African men as the worst human beings God had ever created. So, reading through Ms. Staples� write-up, I didn�t see anything disingenuous in what she had to say. She never gave any percentage to characterise the number of people she referred to. I admire her sincerity and candour in presenting her case. Ms. Joan.Osa Oviawe could make her case for some percentage of African women that fit her description. True, there are a lot of African women capable of setting their own standards, but there are those also that are incapable of doing the same; especially the younger generation that come to the US at tender ages. Ms. Oviawe can not deny the fact that some African immigrants, not just women alone, are influenced by the rhetoric western media. This is not only true in the US but in some African countries where western culture is most preferred. Ms. Oviawe, people that still have respect for their culture fit into your description� �� they have now elected to discard the wise counsel of their mothers, grandmothers, aunties and elders for the eternal words of wisdom of Oprah.� Most are even ashamed of their culture.
�
I doff my hat for Ms. Staples.
�
'Kale Oyedeji
�
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of joan.Osa Oviawe
Sent: 08 June 2011 02:53
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com; NaijaPolitics Forum
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
�
Dear Ms. Staples,
As an African woman (Nigerian to be precise), I find it rather disingenuous on your part to be propagating the myth that African immigrant women are so influenced by the "rhetoric of western media" that they are incapable of deciphering the nuances of Western Culture from their own African-ness.� You make it look as if they have now elected to discard the wise counsel of their mothers, grandmothers, aunties and elders for the eternal words of wisdom of Oprah.� You seem to want to attribute some of the newly found 'enlightenment' of African immigrant women- to watching shows like the "Real Housewives."� I am glad you didn't also add that these women now expect their beleaguered African husbands to fete them lavishly on a regular basis, garnished with the kind of rambunctious lovemaking that are the staple of fabled relationships on American Soap Operas.
Are African women incapable of setting their own standards of how they want to be treated by their spouses and by society at large? Must their existence be so condescendingly interpolated with Western Feminist or African American Womanist thoughts?� When it was still legal for American husbands to beat their wives, African women already had leadership roles in their pre-colonial societies. Whose values are influencing who here?
Your tale of the marital plight of African American women is incomplete at best. You gloss over the fact that many African American women are unmarried not by choice, but due to the shortage of upwardly mobile African American men.� Precipitated by such factors as the dire impact of the Prison Industrial Complex on the African American male population, emasculating effects of racism, as well as the self emasculating pathological behaviors of a sub-section of the African American male population who seem to not want to befriend the responsibilities that come with being a man.
I am not saying that all women are good, neither am I espousing the myth that all men are bad.
Saludos,
joan.Osa Oviawe
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Lavonda Staples <lrst...@gmail.com> wrote:
From St. Louis, Missouri
La Vonda R. Staples
University of Missouri St. Louis
Psychology and History (Contemporary Europe) Alumna
I have devoured every inch of this issue and I was especially touched by the letter written by Dr. Wigwe's son.� A son defending a father against a mother?� There seems to be a biological imperative for sons to hold their mothers in highest regard.� Even a mother who is no better than a cat can find a lifelong friend in her son (especially the youngest son.�
The other peripheral information I examined was the extent of Mrs. Wigwe's injuries (I didn't examine her personally I looked at the photos).� Before I attended college, graduate school, and taught in the university and community college systems (five years altogether) my career and occupation was at Lancome.� I was a make up artist, cosmetics salesperson, and a skin care consultant.� Mrs. Wigwe is an abuser of a chemical called hydroquinone - a skin bleach.� The highest concentration that can be bought in the United States is 2% chemical in a cream that is 98 percent of package contents.� From a dermatologist the highest concentration is four percent in a 96 percent cream.� Walk with me, this has a point, several points.�
Women who abuse hydroquinone develop two conditions directly relative to the integumentary system.� First, there's the "sunburst" look on their faces.� Now that I've told you what it is you'll know what it is immediately.� On darker skinned women their skin will appear ashen.� The second effect of over-use of this chemical in women who are of the age of Mrs. Wigwe (and me) is crepe-paper thin skin which ages quickly, especially around the eyes.� Internally the product causes severe problems in the lymphatic system and I suspect it is at the root of Mrs. Wigwe's yellowing of the whites of her eyes.�
Now here's the point.� We look at those photos and imagine an hour-long beating.� I don't think anyone who knows anything at all about these chemicals would conclude that Dr. Wigwe didn't open a can of whoop-ass on his spouse.� But, I'm offering a reason why (other than the beating) that Mrs. Wigwe appeared as if she had been beaten by SEVERAL people!� There's also a psychological component.� For those of us who use these things (yes, I bleach as well and have done so for several years) there is, at one end, a tacit admission that one doesn't like oneself in order to simply participate in this act of racial self-hatred.� Do you think this only played out in her skin-care regimen?�
I recently relocated back home from DC.� In my entire life (and if God wills, insha'Allah I will be 45 in October) I never KNEW that there are products geared to African women which enable them to apply hydroquinone ALL OVER THEIR BODIES!� I went into "African" stores and found products called, "Bleche Blanc" and "Le Klair" and so many, many more products marketed to Francophone Africa.� Beautiful women on the bottles and jars and the instructions in English, French and Portuguese.� So, the beating Dr. Wigwe gave his wife is more than likely a drop in the bucket compared to how she feels about herself.� I'm not in her mind and I can't say how she feels.� I'm going by that sad, sad, tremendously sad letter written by her youngest son.� "My sister had to use her credit cards to get food."� "My daddy has always taken care of our needs."� I felt like the worst voyeur reading such a mournful discourse.�
Going to another point.� I'm also a mother of five sons aged 19 to 26.� Ask me how many times they have been assaulted by a girl, told a teacher or principal, and then after handling a situation correctly were informed that somehow, a woman/girl has a right to use physical violence against a man and a man cannot defend or retaliate?� Give me a dollar when you ask the question and I'll have enough to return to DC.� I'm a mother of very large men (they are five foot eleven to six foot four) and I'm telling you that men have feelings to.� Men have rights.� Men are not punching bags for out of control females.� If we, in the United States, have an actual legal defense which is colloquially known as "fighting words" then why do we want to participate in the fantasy that NOTHING a woman says or visits upon a man can compel him to an immediate act of physical rage?� Here's the caveat to that:� it is possible to defend and run without beating the hell out of someone (as it appears to have gone with Mrs. Wigwe).�
Going to another point.� Was it not possible for Mrs. Wigwe to leave Dr. Wigwe without interrupting his income and therefore the income of the family?� If they had a row on one particular day why is she showing herself, like an American talk-show participant, to every camera with batteries and a lens?� Especially when one thing is true:� neither party comes to the court with clean hands.� In the words of my 95 year old grandmother, "bof uh dem was actin' a fool."� Shake hands and walk away.�
Finally, in response to the posts regarding wife-beating in Islam.� I would like to gently remind you all, my colleagues, that Shari'a law is Semitic law.� It is the law of nomadic peoples.� It is also the laws created by a Jewish and later Christian book.� It is in the Old Testament in the Book of Leviticus.� The same chapter we use to beat up on the Muslims is also in the Holy Book of Christendom, be ye Protestant or Catholic.� It is the self-same book which castigates homosexuality and allows for wife-beating and honour-killing.� The same book also says that masturbation is an abomination in the sight of God (as a lateral and not a lesser) along with "man lying with man."� To come out of religion and to go to the United States Department of Justice.� The most dangerous place for a White, Christian woman is in her own home.� The person most likely to be shot with a legal handgun is the spouse and/or the children of the owner.� Infanticide, in the United States, to a 90 percent degree of efficiency is a crime of a single racial/gender demographic:� White females.� The same is true of spousal contract killing.�
Into this violent western panorama comes the African immigrant and his wife.� At the worst possible time to be educated and no experience which can be verified in this country.� With massive influence by Western media outlets which give an absurd interpretation of what a wife should or should not have (see any "Real Housewives" television broadcast and you'll think every divorced woman or baby momma is pushing at least one Benz).� Put this knowledge in the mind of the struggling immigrant wife.� I'm not being condescending.� In the 1960's and 1970's Black American women also committed this grievous error of believing the rhetoric of western and White women's movements.� Although I have been blessed with two marriages and a possible, my sisters have not fared so well.� Most educated Black women will NEVER marry.� Three-fourths of all African American children are born illegitimate.� That television, those movies, and that music are more powerful than a ball of crack and heroine soaked in a bottle of 100 proof tequila.� Our media distorts minds and ruins marriages and brings cultural practices to a standing, fatal, unchanging halt.� I put to this forum my hypothesis marital violence in the homes of African immigrants has something to do with economy but also the psychological effects of American media and American individualism and American porcine consumption.�
In the end.� I can sit back in my chair.� With my sons sitting around me in various stages of the itis (the lethargy you get after consuming soul food) and say, "that poor family."� No one is going to hit me in my face.� I keep my skin bleacher at 2%.� I don't ask for things I can't have and I try to make all of the children (my 13 year old wears her hair in braids that I braid with my own two hands) on what we have to spend.� I don't participate in fronting or flossing.� I learned that lesson and paid for that experience a long time ago.� I'm not a "real" American.� I'm not like the women on TV.� I wouldn't be any fun to watch, kneeling on the floor cleaning the bathroom in my makeshift apron of Igbo cloth), cooking, reading Dr. Falola's books, or re-writing a paper for Dr. Emeagwali.� I should delete this post for fear of deportation.� I wouldn't let some sorry man use my face for a punching bag without a trip to the hospital for him and a trip to the police station for me (oh didn't I tell you, sympathy for battered women is reserved for the small, old, and White - I'm not any of those things).� I also would not have allowed that beating to make that man lose his job.� As I said before, it appears that both parties failed to wash before they went to the world court.� They should have kept all of that wahala to themselves.�
Thank you and I encourage responses and feedback.��
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
�Please excuse me. I posted the wrong link.
Here is more compassionate light on how Islam deals with domestic
violence:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Domestic+Violence++in+Islam&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
On Jun 8, 12:33�am, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelb...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I believe Dr. Wigwe and �according to Dr. Wigwe's testimony �he has
> been suffering as a hen-pecked husband over a long period of time and
> this is not a side issue:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=Domsetic+violence+against+men
>
> It's the sort of issue that is surely being addressed by people like
> Pastor Adeboye, the Rev. Commander Pastor Ebenezer Obey and perhaps
> more importantly, the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social
> Development.
>
> Fortunately, Dr. Wigwe is not a Muslim and so is not under a cloud of
> suspicion that he was acting under legal cover, to some extent
> provided by Sharia and that he had merely exceeded the limits set by
> Islamic Law. �And �by the way here the Islamic law is not being
> vilified but explained in a more compassionate light:http://www.google.com/search?q=OIC+Fatwa+on+Domestic+Violence++in+Islam
>
> So the question that remains is what does Nigerian Law say about
> domestic violence?
> And Kenyan Law?
>
> To Abdul Bangura: you talk about Italy and �and the widely perceived
> to be gentle Swedes, but �what can you tell us about the African
> Diaspora in the United States with regard to violent wife-husband dis-
> agreements?
>
> And apart from �Islamic education and respect for Sharia etc. what
> global remedy do you suggest for the majority of people who are not
> Believers?
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
� For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
� For previous archives, visit �http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
� To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
� To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
� unsub...@googlegroups.com
--
La Vonda R. Staples
Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Sciences
Community College of the District of Columbia
�
"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."�
�
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
�
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
�
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
Ikhide
Lavonda Staples
If a check should come in the mail saying, Mrs. John Smith, do you take it back and angrily announce that it must be re-cut in the name of Dr. Jane Jackson-Smith? No. You don't. You cash it and put it in your pocketbook. Do yourself a favour and agree to this Socratic argument without protest.
"It ain't right but it ain't wrong." Mrs. Reverend P. D. Staples (1916-2001) and also her name is Bessie Wilhelmina (neé Irving) Staples (1916-present)
First and foremost I assert that the business between the Wigwe's should have been kept in the backroom. The specific issue!!! The specific case!!!! Both of those folks were acting a fool in that marriage. I'm not talking about Nigerian, Ghanian, or Senegalese instances of spousal abuse. I've never seen it. But if I DID see it. I'd help my sister get the "ups" on her man and walk away (or run). Not because of gender but because I'm human. I don't want to see any creature brutalizing any other creature. Especially a man vs. a woman! A man is supposed to be a protector and not a pulverizer. And if you wanna get brand-new and play crazy and wash in the river of denial regarding a man's genetic role as a protector please answer the following:
How many times has a rapist crept through a window and "taken" a woman as her man lay next to her in the bed, in the next room on the couch (even the effeminate and now famous Antoine Dodson - hide your kids - successfully defended the virtue of his sleeping cousin) or about to come home? They protect us via their presence or impending presence and they provide for us when our biology determines we must sit on the egg or tend the chicks. This is the contract between united men and women. White feminism denies that each member has specialized roles.
Dr. Emeagwali, I'm sorry if my communication skills led to the belief that I affirm a negativity patriarchy. They do not. What I am affirming is the biological imperative that those whose balance is high in testosterone and those whose balance is high in estrogen are both necessary components of the prime imperative of life: to continue. They do not, as White women's feminism has mis-educated us to believe, perform in a gender neutral vacuum. I have, as have arm-chair psychologists before me, observed that boys are not little girls and from birth have very different manners of socializing, interaction, problem-solving, and personal (hygiene) ways of functioning within a family society, political society, and economic environment. I state the following in no uncertain terms:
1. White women's feminism has incited a pharmacological and academic war on boyhood. The greatest casualty are boys from poor and minority families. In so doing, this movement has empowered elementary school teachers to the level of MEDICAL DOCTORS! Once the first or second grade teacher "refers" your active little boy for ADD/ADHD beware, the next knock on your door will be some form of child protective services if you say "no thanks."
2. White women's feminism has deemed the home an inferior place to work and obtain gratification. "Just a housewife" became a pejorative statement during this movement. Child-birth went from being a potentially life-threatening event and a GIFT to a good husband to something that is managed within four days and return to work in six weeks. At which moment the poor child is dumped in a nursery room full of infants who do not cry because no one will answer. it became a precipice which could be mounted at 35, 40, 45, or 50 after decades of taking birth control. How natural is this? And now we have autism and autism-like conditions abounding. When every one of us knows that we women are born with our eggs and by age 30-35 eighty percent of these eggs are not viable.
3. White women's feminism has deemed those of us who are feminine and enjoy our femininity to be an embarrassment to their movement. This denies that there is a scientific scale of "girlness" and it also flies in the face of evolution. At our nascent point we are animals and in the human animal kingdom/queendom there are those who are more "suited" for production. The girl who has wide hips, healthy breasts, has a larger hormonal "reaction", and who can report having a normal period in her forties and produces healthy offspring can certainly be an example of a creature who is selected for ongoing replication. That cannot be denied. We see it every day in zoos, animal husbandry (who in the world would mate a Arabian stallion, a filly not yet in her prime, to an old tired male), and we are not willing to admit, post White women's feminism that we are INDEED part and parcel of the animal kingdom and we have the same biological raison d'etre? If you say this is BS please tell me if you would want your son or daughter to produce progeny with someone who has a hereditary concern? I don't want my sons to have children with short women but if they do, as a human, I accept it. I admire robustness and good health. I admire the physicality of the human species and I'm not ashamed to admit it. We Black women have ALWAYS celebrated our feminine attributes and now, when we take to the stairs of the Ivory Tower we have forgotten that these degrees won't give us any comfort when we are too old to climb. This is what our children do for us. This is what our husbands do for us (when we have chosen well). This is what biology, nature, and evolution has done for us. It has provided a means for the young and the old to be fed when hunting is not an option. A nanny or a maid is a PAID employee - nothing more and nothing less. I add a little bleach to my dishwater out of caring - not out of an employer's direction.
4. White women's feminism has no place in the conversation or dialogue of Black feminism (we prefer womanism), African feminism, or for that matter Latina feminism. The only possible place it could have is in the compare/contrast model. The recent scholarship proves my point. White women's feminism has noted that it is a recent occurrence of White men to marry women who are as educated or more educated. Black women have laboured under this condition for over two centuries. The first wife of Frederick Douglas was free! he was a slave. White women's feminism has just started to write about the "double-shift" as if it is something new. It is new to them. Black women have been working the double shift since the good ship jesus docked in the colonies. White women's feminism has only recently begun to write about the "sandwich generation (taking care of children as well as an aging parent)" when this has been the obligation of the forced African female immigrant for four centuries!!!
White women's feminism has developed within the realm of THEIR existence. Greater scholars than I EVER will be have expounded on this topic. They are Andrew K. Shipler (two different Americas), Eugene Genovese, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Nickel and Dimed to Death (a title), Audre Lordes, Angela Davis, bell hooks, and on and on and on. Black women and White women are seen through completely different lenses and have completely different points of emergence so HOW IN THE WORLD CAN THE IDEOLOGIES HAVE EQUAL APPLICATION????
Ikhide, you have called my post babble. You did not call Mwalimu Falola's post on skin-bleaching babble. You are very selective. Your comments feel like bullying and cowardice. This skin-bleaching is serious enough to have been investigated by British, Canadian and French legislation. Hydroquinone is in the process of being legislated out of over-the-counter use so how is a discussion of the chemical babble? Women are being brought on charges by medical doctors to child protective agencies for the application of this stuff on their children. Are the doctors babbling too?
Dr. Joan, would you deny that there are serious problems with African immigrant marriages seemingly upon breathing the American air? You mention the Prison Industrial Complex and I have a problem with that offering as an historian (which I am). During the Jim Crow Era your comment would have been valid but in contemporary times? Madame, we have Pell Grants, student loans, scholarship programs who will give money to any Black male youth who sets foot OUTSIDE A COLLEGE! If a Negro wants to walk around with his pants belted at the hips, standing in front of a liquor store, listening to the most vile "music" how then is he "trapped" by this system? He has volunteered himself for legal slavery (our constitution allows for slavery during adjudicated incarceration). I respect your knowledge. I bow to your title and degree since they are greater than mine (I mean this sincerely). But madame, you don't know my house like I know my house. And I, in turn, do not know yours. I didn't say ANYTHING about marriages in Nigeria. I talked around issues which arise once entering the United States. I've seen Nigerian cultural ceremonies (via video) and I've been a primary witness to these same ceremonies on American soil. The wedding, the impending birth, the engagement, the funeral becomes an orgy dedicated to the gods of capitalism and conspicuous consumption.
Dr. Joan, please allow the student to give the teacher some African American lessons in folk wit. Don't get "brand new" and act as if African immigrant marriages do not see an exponential rise in divorce once the participants are no longer in the land of their origination. And also, in my comments I'm not "hatin' the player" I'm "hatin' the game." I'm talking about those things which are now seeds but have the ability to ripen into the fruits of destruction! Black women's adherence to White women's feminism led to our bitter diet eaten in solitary confinement.
Last thing, that glorious women's suffrage movement (early White women's feminism) was also racist. At Syracuse, the founding "mothers" demanded that Ida B. Wells could not ride in the carriages, could not walk beside the carriages, could not walk in front of the horses, but had to WALK BEHIND THE HORSES AND STEP IN SHIT!!!!! Ida B. Wells who was the leader of the Black women's delegation didn't leave with dignity. She, and her party, among which were the who-is-who of African American women academic "firsts," side-stepped and fell into the offal of the animals of the field on behalf of rights (anti-lynching laws) for their men and their "race."
I have taken you into my house and exhibited a few of the rooms. White women's feminism is not our story, it is not our testimony, and it is not our song. Neither is it yours. I submit to you that there is an Igbo women's feminism, there is a Hatian women's feminism, and I can go on and on from there.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese wrote, "Feminism Is Not The Story of My Life" and White women's feminism wouldn't even let that child have a decent obituary in the New York Times! All she said was that she enjoyed being a mother. She found reward in keeping a clean house. She believed that her ability to do so was a gift and an imperative from God. I agree with her. I venerate her for speaking truth to power.
White women's feminism has reduced our love to a job. I'm not doing a job. I am expressing my love. I'm not espousing male supremacy. I'm proclaiming the female as divine.
Auntie Vonda
Lavonda Staples
First and foremost I assert that the business between the Wigwe's should have been kept in the backroom. The specific issue!!! The specific case!!!! Both of those folks were acting a fool in that marriage. I'm not talking about Nigerian, Ghanian, or Senegalese instances of spousal abuse. I've never seen it. But if I DID see it. I'd help my sister get the "ups" on her man and walk away (or run). Not because of gender but because I'm human. I don't want to see any creature brutalizing any other creature. Especially a man vs. a woman! A man is supposed to be a protector and not a pulverizer. And if you wanna get brand-new and play crazy and wash in the river of denial regarding a man's genetic role as a protector please answer the following:
How many times has a rapist crept through a window and "taken" a woman as her man lay next to her in the bed, in the next room on the couch (even the effeminate and now famous Antoine Dodson - hide your kids - successfully defended the virtue of his sleeping cousin) or about to come home? They protect us via their presence or impending presence and they provide for us when our biology determines we must sit on the egg or tend the chicks. This is the contract between united men and women. White feminism denies that each member has specialized roles.
Dr. Emeagwali, I'm sorry if my communication skills led to the belief that I affirm a negativity patriarchy. They do not. What I am affirming is the biological imperative that those whose balance is high in testosterone and those whose balance is high in estrogen are both necessary components of the prime imperative of life: to continue. They do not, as White women's feminism has mis-educated us to believe, perform in a gender neutral vacuum. I have, as have arm-chair psychologists before me, observed that boys are not little girls and from birth have very different manners of socializing, interaction, problem-solving, and personal (hygiene) ways of functioning within a family society, political society, and economic environment. I state the following in no uncertain terms:
1. White women's feminism has incited a pharmacological and academic war on boyhood. The greatest casualty are boys from poor and minority families. In so doing, this movement has empowered elementary school teachers to the level of MEDICAL DOCTORS! Once the first or second grade teacher "refers" your active little boy for ADD/ADHD beware, the next knock on your door will be some form of child protective services if you say "no thanks."
2. White women's feminism has deemed the home an inferior place to work and obtain gratification. "Just a housewife" became a pejorative statement during this movement. Child-birth went from being a potentially life-threatening event and a GIFT to a good husband to something that is managed within four days and return to work in six weeks. At which moment the poor child is dumped in a nursery room full of infants who do not cry because no one will answer. it became a precipice which could be mounted at 35, 40, 45, or 50 after decades of taking birth control. How natural is this? And now we have autism and autism-like conditions abounding. When every one of us knows that we women are born with our eggs and by age 30-35 eighty percent of these eggs are not viable.
3. White women's feminism has deemed those of us who are feminine and enjoy our femininity to be an embarrassment to their movement. This denies that there is a scientific scale of "girlness" and it also flies in the face of evolution. At our nascent point we are animals and in the human animal kingdom/queendom there are those who are more "suited" for production. The girl who has wide hips, healthy breasts, has a larger hormonal "reaction", and who can report having a normal period in her forties and produces healthy offspring can certainly be an example of a creature who is selected for ongoing replication. That cannot be denied. We see it every day in zoos, animal husbandry (who in the world would mate a Arabian stallion, a filly not yet in her prime, to an old tired male), and we are not willing to admit, post White women's feminism that we are INDEED part and parcel of the animal kingdom and we have the same biological raison d'etre? If you say this is BS please tell me if you would want your son or daughter to produce progeny with someone who has a hereditary concern? I don't want my sons to have children with short women but if they do, as a human, I accept it. I admire robustness and good health. I admire the physicality of the human species and I'm not ashamed to admit it. We Black women have ALWAYS celebrated our feminine attributes and now, when we take to the stairs of the Ivory Tower we have forgotten that these degrees won't give us any comfort when we are too old to climb. This is what our children do for us. This is what our husbands do for us (when we have chosen well). This is what biology, nature, and evolution has done for us. It has provided a means for the young and the old to be fed when hunting is not an option. A nanny or a maid is a PAID employee - nothing more and nothing less. I add a little bleach to my dishwater out of caring - not out of an employer's direction.
4. White women's feminism has no place in the conversation or dialogue of Black feminism (we prefer womanism), African feminism, or for that matter Latina feminism. The only possible place it could have is in the compare/contrast model. The recent scholarship proves my point. White women's feminism has noted that it is a recent occurrence of White men to marry women who are as educated or more educated. Black women have laboured under this condition for over two centuries. The first wife of Frederick Douglas was free! he was a slave. White women's feminism has just started to write about the "double-shift" as if it is something new. It is new to them. Black women have been working the double shift since the good ship jesus docked in the colonies. White women's feminism has only recently begun to write about the "sandwich generation (taking care of children as well as an aging parent)" when this has been the obligation of the forced African female immigrant for four centuries!!!
White women's feminism has developed within the realm of THEIR existence. Greater scholars than I EVER will be have expounded on this topic. They are Andrew K. Shipler (two different Americas), Eugene Genovese, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Nickel and Dimed to Death (a title), Audre Lordes, Angela Davis, bell hooks, and on and on and on. Black women and White women are seen through completely different lenses and have completely different points of emergence so HOW IN THE WORLD CAN THE IDEOLOGIES HAVE EQUAL APPLICATION????
Ikhide, you have called my post babble. You did not call Mwalimu Falola's post on skin-bleaching babble. You are very selective. Your comments feel like bullying and cowardice. This skin-bleaching is serious enough to have been investigated by British, Canadian and French legislation. Hydroquinone is in the process of being legislated out of over-the-counter use so how is a discussion of the chemical babble? Women are being brought on charges by medical doctors to child protective agencies for the application of this stuff on their children. Are the doctors babbling too?
Dr. Joan, would you deny that there are serious problems with African immigrant marriages seemingly upon breathing the American air? You mention the Prison Industrial Complex and I have a problem with that offering as an historian (which I am). During the Jim Crow Era your comment would have been valid but in contemporary times? Madame, we have Pell Grants, student loans, scholarship programs who will give money to any Black male youth who sets foot OUTSIDE A COLLEGE! If a Negro wants to walk around with his pants belted at the hips, standing in front of a liquor store, listening to the most vile "music" how then is he "trapped" by this system? He has volunteered himself for legal slavery (our constitution allows for slavery during adjudicated incarceration). I respect your knowledge. I bow to your title and degree since they are greater than mine (I mean this sincerely). But madame, you don't know my house like I know my house. And I, in turn, do not know yours. I didn't say ANYTHING about marriages in Nigeria. I talked around issues which arise once entering the United States. I've seen Nigerian cultural ceremonies (via video) and I've been a primary witness to these same ceremonies on American soil. The wedding, the impending birth, the engagement, the funeral becomes an orgy dedicated to the gods of capitalism and conspicuous consumption.
Dr. Joan, please allow the student to give the teacher some African American lessons in folk wit. Don't get "brand new" and act as if African immigrant marriages do not see an exponential rise in divorce once the participants are no longer in the land of their origination. And also, in my comments I'm not "hatin' the player" I'm "hatin' the game." I'm talking about those things which are now seeds but have the ability to ripen into the fruits of destruction! Black women's adherence to White women's feminism led to our bitter diet eaten in solitary confinement.
Last thing, that glorious women's suffrage movement (early White women's feminism) was also racist. At Syracuse, the founding "mothers" demanded that Ida B. Wells could not ride in the carriages, could not walk beside the carriages, could not walk in front of the horses, but had to WALK BEHIND THE HORSES AND STEP IN SHIT!!!!! Ida B. Wells who was the leader of the Black women's delegation didn't leave with dignity. She, and her party, among which were the who-is-who of African American women academic "firsts," side-stepped and fell into the offal of the animals of the field on behalf of rights (anti-lynching laws) for their men and their "race."
I have taken you into my house and exhibited a few of the rooms. White women's feminism is not our story, it is not our testimony, and it is not our song. Neither is it yours. I submit to you that there is an Igbo women's feminism, there is a Hatian women's feminism, and I can go on and on from there.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese wrote, "Feminism Is Not The Story of My Life" and White women's feminism wouldn't even let that child have a decent obituary in the New York Times! All she said was that she enjoyed being a mother. She found reward in keeping a clean house. She believed that her ability to do so was a gift and an imperative from God. I agree with her. I venerate her for speaking truth to power.
White women's feminism has reduced our love to a job. I'm not doing a job. I am expressing my love. I'm not espousing male supremacy. I'm proclaiming the female as divine.
Auntie Vonda
obio...@yahoo.com
My own contribution is to initiate a discussion away from the dry judgments we too often pass on others and to ask the larger question, of what is Right and not just who is wrong. The ancient wisdom applies aptly here; Let them cast the first stone who honestly are without fault themselves. Whilst not condoning gender based violence and indeed violence of any type, it is necessary to elevate the qiality of discussions beyond name callings, over generalisations. And the better than thou attitude. A time for soul searching for us all on the values that drive our socities at this time.
I am praying for peace and understanding for this family and indeed all families. Rev Prof Obiora Ike
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
Michael Marcuzzi
It’s hard not to seem like a voyeur in all of this unseemly bearing of others’ laundry in very public stuff. I especially feel sorry for the children (Larkin: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. /They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had /And add some extra, just for you.”), but this thread has proven that it is too important to leave to purveyors of by any provocation sufficiently.
We all have, or have had, grandmothers, mothers, wives, lovers, partners, sisters, daughters, (female) cousins, aunts and nieces, many of whom, unfortunately, have borne witness to male assault. Some people on this list appear to be making arguments under the guise of balance and hearing the other side, and having attacking the straw hyena of western feminism and western culture (whatever that is). As someone here rightly said, every time something is wrong, women, and this case the “West", is to blame. If it were an African womanism or feminism, or by whatever name African women want to call their ways of knowing and analyzing the kinds of gender inequalities they face, what else to blame? Just women. I can remember thirty years ago walking down Sidi Bel Abbès in Oran, Algeria, and a man was beating “his” woman, and men, including a policeman, were saying give her one for us, she has shamed us all. In other words, whatever she had been alleged to have done (for I all knew, she had nothing), she deserved a beating, even from the law. It is something when people would equate provocation, real or alleged, as a reason for battering. We have even witnessed on this forum, in effect, the appalling justification for murder under the guise of sufficient provocation— crime passionel that is our own, no?
This is a speculation on my part, but I suspect underneath all of the tacit and explicit understandings of Wigwe’s assault, is the guilt and fear, and even shame of men who only know too well that these things exist too closely in families and amongst kin—that is, in their own immediate and extended families. The asymmetry in violence that exists between men and women cannot be turned around on woman and apportion the same blame to them. When things don’t work, move on or get counseling, rather than using your residence as a village compound for "traditional" trysts; and if things go wrong again, don’t issue apologias trying to blame your fists on a woman.
P.
On 08/06/11 12:01 PM, Iheoma Obibi wrote:
I have read this thread and really stunned by the responses to Dr Wigwe's diatribe and that of his son, who is really stuck between two warring parents. However, we are a people that love the pretence of marriage and apperances rather than happiness and therefore not surprised by the response of our intellectual elite. It is always the woman's fault.Let me begin by adding that I am the daughter of the survior of domestic violence and when I read the Dr's response it took me back to a time that I thought I had forgotten and if we are all honest, there are others on this list who are too pained to respond. The excuses for why my mother was battered serially from my earliest memories included being the devil, she was a bad woman, she had a boyfriend (really, they all say it), she is selfish, greedy, does not behave like a true igbo woman, yada, yada. My mother survived because her father and uncles decided that enough was enough (after several family meetings, discussions, broken agreements you name it) and took their daughter back with all her kids. Otherwise, my mother would still be there today, making excuses for a bad marriage and a sorry ass husband.All am saying is this, some of our men have anger management issues and no amount of family intervention, negotiation, submissiveness, being the good wife can way lay the volcano within. Added to this is the notion of marriage and how it is constructed in our cultural setting and all the baggage that comes with it. Once married we as women are expected to loose our identity and become one with someone who may or not be on the same emotional and planning page with you. If you raise issues he deems as unsuitable he just might hit you because YOU raised it and not him. It's a complex situation affected by our cultural norms and values.
Dr Wigwe clearly has beaten his wife before and his diatribe illustrates that he sees no problem with it - even expressed by their son in his response.
We all need to know that wife battery in our cultural milieu is two a penny as Igbo women. I see women who have been married for barely three weeks and they are being battered from the onset and their families are telling them, to "manage it, they are not the only ones".
My two pennies worth, this woman cannot be a she devil as Dr Wigwe claims because the story is familiar to those of us whose mother's have been battered. The story never changes just the characters.
--------------------------------------------
Iheoma Obibi
Executive Director & ASHOKA Fellow
Alliances for Africa
Mobile: + 234 803 302 0779
Int' mobile: + 44 7713 401454
Skype: iheomaobibi
http://www.alliancesforafrica.org
From: "Oyedeji, Kale" <koye...@morehouse.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, 8 June, 2011 15:55:48
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Ikhide, there is nothing academic in your response below. You could make your points without those derogatory generalisations. You can ask around, I definitely do not belong in the group of “serial wife abusers”. What you just wrote shows a man that is angry with the rest of the world. It is amazing to me that you are writing as if you knew this family and you were present at every episode of the family dispute. Why must everybody see things your way? Why must you call anybody with opposing view names? You wrote “Every one of you who just found time to respond egging on wife beaters and children abusers should be ashamed of yourselves.” Why should I be ashamed of myself for expressing my view? You are the one that should be ashamed of yourself for your intolerance of opposing view. Some of my children live in Maryland with you, you can ask them what type of father I have been to them. Ofcourse you may not believe them. Ask them also how I treat their mother. You have met me, I am not a savage man, by the standard definition, ofcourse, you have your own definition, so I have nothing to hide.
'Kale Oyedeji
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ikhide
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 10:09 AM
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Our people,
Why am I not shocked by the savagery displayed in the responses by many on this issue in this forum? Why am I not surprised? Because these are the men and their friends, serial wife abusers like "General" Olusegun Obasanjo who misrule much of Black Africa today. Women and children are their punching bags, every day. Yes, I am expected to say the usual patronizing clap trap about how not every Nigerian man is a wife beater as if we are supposed to thank them and give them medals for not crunching up their wives and children. People are writing and behaving like sabages in suits. Every one of you who just found time to respond egging on wife beaters and children abusers should be ashamed of yourselves. There is nothing African in what is happening all over Nigeria today: Women and children are being abused as they toil under a society that is paternalistic in the worst way.
What you have all just witnessed is intellectual dishonesty. They have read that disgrace of a response - that shows up what "Chief" "Dr." Wigwe really is - an abusive sniveling possibly crooked official (all those Rolexes, all those trips ferrying the son's girlfriends back and forth, and whatsup with the bizarre statement about the wife having a boyfriend from the "Yoruba tribe"?) buffoon. They know that no lawyer would have allowed such an incoherent incriminating rant to see the light of day. From she poured ketchup on herself, "the Ketchup Defense" under worldwide outrage, he changed his tune to a tree in our bedroom hit her" and now Ms. Lavonda Staples has come up with bizzarre babblespeak about what I have absolutely no idea. I am not even going to go there today, life is too short jare. The son weighs in, taking a break from playing video games and counting his Rolex watches, he writes nonsense about well, there was not a lot of blood and why, it is not as if she was paralyzed by the incident. What a family. m
You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves. When the DSK issue came up, we were all jumping up and down trying to outdo ourselves, yelling racism, etc, our own sister is bludgeoned and there was quiet everywhere, in "Africa" men can do as they please and if a woman is mauled it is her fault, na pms, na witchcraft, etc, etc. Why, the Father of all these Serial Abusers , Aremu Obasanjo is a world "statesman." If Obasanjo was a white man he would be a statesman in prison. We call that reverse racism.
So now, we have a new defense: The woman deserved whatever happened to her. Shame on all of you savages who feel this way. I have said it over and over: Africa's continuing demise is as a result of her intellectuals dishonesty. And I repeat it today.
I ask you: Is this man fit to be the ambassador of a hut? Is this man and his family fit to be envoys of any nation that takes herself seriously?
What is African about marital and child abuse? I have news for all of you: With these cave men attitudes of yours, do not come to America. If you draw blood and the Police is called, you will be arrested and sent straight to jail. And you deserve to be in there. And if you are a public official, you lose your job immediately, as you should. This has nothing to do with whether she deserves it because she did not serve you water to wash your hands before eating eba, this has to do with the law. The law serves to provide clarity to issues ike this: No hitting, absolutely no hitting. I mean, all we do is mimic parts of laws that we want, we want the pleasures, we don't want the work. And who gives a damn what the bible says; the holy books are great works of fiction designed by men to control women, children and slaves. And they spread bigotry and prejudice to boot.
A snake is in the house; we are babbling crap about how not all snakes are poisonous, blah, blah, blah! You people are just too much!
- Ikhide
From: "Oyedeji, Kale" <koye...@morehouse.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 8, 2011 8:12 AM
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
I am a father and with a daughter in her thirties, so I have a taste of feminism, especially when she got to college. I have also seen how some feminist groups helped to wrongly put African men in jail. I have seen how some immigration lawyers, in desperate efforts to save their clients from deportation, have turned some culture on its head to portray African men as the worst human beings God had ever created. So, reading through Ms. Staples’ write-up, I didn’t see anything disingenuous in what she had to say. She never gave any percentage to characterise the number of people she referred to. I admire her sincerity and candour in presenting her case. Ms. Joan.Osa Oviawe could make her case for some percentage of African women that fit her description. True, there are a lot of African women capable of setting their own standards, but there are those also that are incapable of doing the same; especially the younger generation that come to the US at tender ages. Ms. Oviawe can not deny the fact that some African immigrants, not just women alone, are influenced by the rhetoric western media. This is not only true in the US but in some African countries where western culture is most preferred. Ms. Oviawe, people that still have respect for their culture fit into your description “… they have now elected to discard the wise counsel of their mothers, grandmothers, aunties and elders for the eternal words of wisdom of Oprah.” Most are even ashamed of their culture.
I doff my hat for Ms. Staples.
'Kale Oyedeji
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of joan.Osa Oviawe
Sent: 08 June 2011 02:53
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com; NaijaPolitics Forum
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Dear Ms. Staples,
As an African woman (Nigerian to be precise), I find it rather disingenuous on your part to be propagating the myth that African immigrant women are so influenced by the "rhetoric of western media" that they are incapable of deciphering the nuances of Western Culture from their own African-ness. You make it look as if they have now elected to discard the wise counsel of their mothers, grandmothers, aunties and elders for the eternal words of wisdom of Oprah. You seem to want to attribute some of the newly found 'enlightenment' of African immigrant women- to watching shows like the "Real Housewives." I am glad you didn't also add that these women now expect their beleaguered African husbands to fete them lavishly on a regular basis, garnished with the kind of rambunctious lovemaking that are the staple of fabled relationships on American Soap Operas.
Are African women incapable of setting their own standards of how they want to be treated by their spouses and by society at large? Must their existence be so condescendingly interpolated with Western Feminist or African American Womanist thoughts? When it was still legal for American husbands to beat their wives, African women already had leadership roles in their pre-colonial societies. Whose values are influencing who here?
Your tale of the marital plight of African American women is incomplete at best. You gloss over the fact that many African American women are unmarried not by choice, but due to the shortage of upwardly mobile African American men. Precipitated by such factors as the dire impact of the Prison Industrial Complex on the African American male population, emasculating effects of racism, as well as the self emasculating pathological behaviors of a sub-section of the African American male population who seem to not want to befriend the responsibilities that come with being a man.
I am not saying that all women are good, neither am I espousing the myth that all men are bad.
Saludos,
joan.Osa Oviawe
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Lavonda Staples <lrst...@gmail.com> wrote:
From St. Louis, Missouri
La Vonda R. Staples
University of Missouri St. Louis
Psychology and History (Contemporary Europe) Alumna
I have devoured every inch of this issue and I was especially touched by the letter written by Dr. Wigwe's son. A son defending a father against a mother? There seems to be a biological imperative for sons to hold their mothers in highest regard. Even a mother who is no better than a cat can find a lifelong friend in her son (especially the youngest son.
The other peripheral information I examined was the extent of Mrs. Wigwe's injuries (I didn't examine her personally I looked at the photos). Before I attended college, graduate school, and taught in the university and community college systems (five years altogether) my career and occupation was at Lancome. I was a make up artist, cosmetics salesperson, and a skin care consultant. Mrs. Wigwe is an abuser of a chemical called hydroquinone - a skin bleach. The highest concentration that can be bought in the United States is 2% chemical in a cream that is 98 percent of package contents. From a dermatologist the highest concentration is four percent in a 96 percent cream. Walk with me, this has a point, several points.
Women who abuse hydroquinone develop two conditions directly relative to the integumentary system. First, there's the "sunburst" look on their faces. Now that I've told you what it is you'll know what it is immediately. On darker skinned women their skin will appear ashen. The second effect of over-use of this chemical in women who are of the age of Mrs. Wigwe (and me) is crepe-paper thin skin which ages quickly, especially around the eyes. Internally the product causes severe problems in the lymphatic system and I suspect it is at the root of Mrs. Wigwe's yellowing of the whites of her eyes.
Now here's the point. We look at those photos and imagine an hour-long beating. I don't think anyone who knows anything at all about these chemicals would conclude that Dr. Wigwe didn't open a can of whoop-ass on his spouse. But, I'm offering a reason why (other than the beating) that Mrs. Wigwe appeared as if she had been beaten by SEVERAL people! There's also a psychological component. For those of us who use these things (yes, I bleach as well and have done so for several years) there is, at one end, a tacit admission that one doesn't like oneself in order to simply participate in this act of racial self-hatred. Do you think this only played out in her skin-care regimen?
I recently relocated back home from DC. In my entire life (and if God wills, insha'Allah I will be 45 in October) I never KNEW that there are products geared to African women which enable them to apply hydroquinone ALL OVER THEIR BODIES! I went into "African" stores and found products called, "Bleche Blanc" and "Le Klair" and so many, many more products marketed to Francophone Africa. Beautiful women on the bottles and jars and the instructions in English, French and Portuguese. So, the beating Dr. Wigwe gave his wife is more than likely a drop in the bucket compared to how she feels about herself. I'm not in her mind and I can't say how she feels. I'm going by that sad, sad, tremendously sad letter written by her youngest son. "My sister had to use her credit cards to get food." "My daddy has always taken care of our needs." I felt like the worst voyeur reading such a mournful discourse.
Going to another point. I'm also a mother of five sons aged 19 to 26. Ask me how many times they have been assaulted by a girl, told a teacher or principal, and then after handling a situation correctly were informed that somehow, a woman/girl has a right to use physical violence against a man and a man cannot defend or retaliate? Give me a dollar when you ask the question and I'll have enough to return to DC. I'm a mother of very large men (they are five foot eleven to six foot four) and I'm telling you that men have feelings to. Men have rights. Men are not punching bags for out of control females. If we, in the United States, have an actual legal defense which is colloquially known as "fighting words" then why do we want to participate in the fantasy that NOTHING a woman says or visits upon a man can compel him to an immediate act of physical rage? Here's the caveat to that: it is possible to defend and run without beating the hell out of someone (as it appears to have gone with Mrs. Wigwe).
Going to another point. Was it not possible for Mrs. Wigwe to leave Dr. Wigwe without interrupting his income and therefore the income of the family? If they had a row on one particular day why is she showing herself, like an American talk-show participant, to every camera with batteries and a lens? Especially when one thing is true: neither party comes to the court with clean hands. In the words of my 95 year old grandmother, "bof uh dem was actin' a fool." Shake hands and walk away.
Finally, in response to the posts regarding wife-beating in Islam. I would like to gently remind you all, my colleagues, that Shari'a law is Semitic law. It is the law of nomadic peoples. It is also the laws created by a Jewish and later Christian book. It is in the Old Testament in the Book of Leviticus. The same chapter we use to beat up on the Muslims is also in the Holy Book of Christendom, be ye Protestant or Catholic. It is the self-same book which castigates homosexuality and allows for wife-beating and honour-killing. The same book also says that masturbation is an abomination in the sight of God (as a lateral and not a lesser) along with "man lying with man." To come out of religion and to go to the United States Department of Justice. The most dangerous place for a White, Christian woman is in her own home. The person most likely to be shot with a legal handgun is the spouse and/or the children of the owner. Infanticide, in the United States, to a 90 percent degree of efficiency is a crime of a single racial/gender demographic: White females. The same is true of spousal contract killing.
Into this violent western panorama comes the African immigrant and his wife. At the worst possible time to be educated and no experience which can be verified in this country. With massive influence by Western media outlets which give an absurd interpretation of what a wife should or should not have (see any "Real Housewives" television broadcast and you'll think every divorced woman or baby momma is pushing at least one Benz). Put this knowledge in the mind of the struggling immigrant wife. I'm not being condescending. In the 1960's and 1970's Black American women also committed this grievous error of believing the rhetoric of western and White women's movements. Although I have been blessed with two marriages and a possible, my sisters have not fared so well. Most educated Black women will NEVER marry. Three-fourths of all African American children are born illegitimate. That television, those movies, and that music are more powerful than a ball of crack and heroine soaked in a bottle of 100 proof tequila. Our media distorts minds and ruins marriages and brings cultural practices to a standing, fatal, unchanging halt. I put to this forum my hypothesis marital violence in the homes of African immigrants has something to do with economy but also the psychological effects of American media and American individualism and American porcine consumption.
In the end. I can sit back in my chair. With my sons sitting around me in various stages of the itis (the lethargy you get after consuming soul food) and say, "that poor family." No one is going to hit me in my face. I keep my skin bleacher at 2%. I don't ask for things I can't have and I try to make all of the children (my 13 year old wears her hair in braids that I braid with my own two hands) on what we have to spend. I don't participate in fronting or flossing. I learned that lesson and paid for that experience a long time ago. I'm not a "real" American. I'm not like the women on TV. I wouldn't be any fun to watch, kneeling on the floor cleaning the bathroom in my makeshift apron of Igbo cloth), cooking, reading Dr. Falola's books, or re-writing a paper for Dr. Emeagwali. I should delete this post for fear of deportation. I wouldn't let some sorry man use my face for a punching bag without a trip to the hospital for him and a trip to the police station for me (oh didn't I tell you, sympathy for battered women is reserved for the small, old, and White - I'm not any of those things). I also would not have allowed that beating to make that man lose his job. As I said before, it appears that both parties failed to wash before they went to the world court. They should have kept all of that wahala to themselves.
Thank you and I encourage responses and feedback.
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
Please excuse me. I posted the wrong link.
Here is more compassionate light on how Islam deals with domestic
violence:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Domestic+Violence++in+Islam&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
On Jun 8, 12:33 am, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelb...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I believe Dr. Wigwe and according to Dr. Wigwe's testimony he has
> been suffering as a hen-pecked husband over a long period of time and
> this is not a side issue:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=Domsetic+violence+against+men
>
> It's the sort of issue that is surely being addressed by people like
> Pastor Adeboye, the Rev. Commander Pastor Ebenezer Obey and perhaps
> more importantly, the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social
> Development.
>
> Fortunately, Dr. Wigwe is not a Muslim and so is not under a cloud of
> suspicion that he was acting under legal cover, to some extent
> provided by Sharia and that he had merely exceeded the limits set by
> Islamic Law. And by the way here the Islamic law is not being
> vilified but explained in a more compassionate light:http://www.google.com/search?q=OIC+Fatwa+on+Domestic+Violence++in+Islam
>
> So the question that remains is what does Nigerian Law say about
> domestic violence?
> And Kenyan Law?
>
> To Abdul Bangura: you talk about Italy and and the widely perceived
> to be gentle Swedes, but what can you tell us about the African
> Diaspora in the United States with regard to violent wife-husband dis-
> agreements?
>
> And apart from Islamic education and respect for Sharia etc. what
> global remedy do you suggest for the majority of people who are not
> Believers?
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
--
La Vonda R. Staples
Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Sciences
Community College of the District of Columbia
"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."
--
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
"Sent from my grandfather's Underwood typewriter."
Femi Kolapo
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ikhide
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2011 6:31 AM
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
kenneth harrow
you asked for some evidence of wife battering. i came across this today; not exactly what you requested, but in the larger sense a response to you and others who have expressed their apprehension about women complaining about abuse, and attributing such complaints to western mores.
this report is not fun, but the situation is dire in many places, and merits all of our concern
ken
On 6/9/11 12:31 PM, Femi Kolapo wrote:
and 2 others
Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against
women, its causes and consequences, Rashida Manjoo (A
/HRC/17/26)
Seventeenth session
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural,
including the right to development
Summary
Over the past three decades, gender-based violence as a form of discrimination against women has become increasingly visible and acknowledged internationally. Despite normative standards having been set, the reality is that violence against women remains a global epidemic, which is further complicated when considering multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. This thematic report examines such discrimination in the context of violence against women and provides a conceptual framework for further discussion.
The report acknowledges the reality that while multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination have contributed to and exacerbated violence against women, information on the intersections between gender-based discrimination and other forms of discrimination, and the consequences thereof, are too often overlooked.
In addition to analyzing the forms, causes and consequences of multiple forms of discrimination as regards violence against women, this report also considers inter-gender and intra-gender differences, arguing that a one-size-fits-all programmatic approach is insufficient for combating gender-based violence. Even though all women are at risk of experiencing violence, not all women are equally susceptible to acts of violence.
It has been stated by this mandate that �the multiplicity of forms of violence against women as well as the fact that this violence frequently occurs at the intersection of different types of discrimination makes the adoption of multifaceted strategies to effectively prevent and combat this violence a necessity.�
This report proposes a holistic approach to conceptualizing and addressing the issue by: (a) considering human rights as universal, interdependent and indivisible; (b) situating violence against women on a continuum; (c) acknowledging the structural aspects and factors of discrimination, which include structural and institutional inequalities; and (d) analyzing social and/or economic hierarchies between women and men and also among women.
I will appreciate if somebody can direct me to some research with some form of quantitative evidence on wife battering in a region, state or community of Nigeria - or �any other African country.��Other than the occasional cases of individuals indicating that they or their mothers had been violently assaulted by their fathers, I find that I have all the while not really read any dedicated research to wife battering in Nigeria. I have accepted and repeated the anecdotal and generalized statements about Nigerian husbands beating their wives, especially supported by the often expressed [as opposed to acted out] cultural attitudes that rationalize why husbands beat wives. I have often heard of serious cases of wife battering in police barracks in Nigeria, but I never lived� in the barracks and, again it was by mere, probably stereotypical, hearsay. I suspect that there should be some research that allows one to gauge how pervasive this culture was/is. Is the problem on the increase or waning? I have in mind here studies based on questions asking people between a certain age range whether or not (a)they have personally seen (or heard) a wife been battered; (b) seen a wife with wound she took during a quarrel with her husband or heard a wife report that she had been battered, or (c) simply heard that men beat their wives, and (d) how many times in the last 5 or 10 years or other time duration; or research based on court or other records. �If I were to be a respondent to such questions, my answers�will be�
(a) 1 time -�personally seen (or heard) a wife been battered far back in 1966(b) 3 times -�seen a wife with wound she took during a quarrel with her husband or heard a wife report that she had been battered(c) uncountable times - �simply heard that African men traditionally beat their wives(d) the cases I have experience of happened- �between 40 and 5 years ago.
F. Kolapo. University of Guelph.
Lavonda Staples
1. Violence against women from non-relationship persons
2. Partner/spousal violence (which can and does occur in lesbian couples)
3. Incest (which is almost always begun before the age of consent so it is also pedophilia)
4. Sexual assault (which can be anything from a touch of the breasts to a smack on the butt to any act up to the point of penetration)
5. Rape (the assailant penetrates the victim - the definition of rape varies from state to state)
6. Statutory rape (a minor does not have the right to consent even if one partner is 16 and the other partner is 19)
7. Sexual exploitation (sexual conversation, photographs, etc. created with a minor and without legal consent of a guardian. Example: Brooke Shields was 14 when she appeared partially nude and in sexual behaviour with David Carradine in the film "Pretty Baby" - all were perfectly legal and not deemed pornography)
8. Now we come to the last category. I submit to you that we pay attention to the women raped in the Congo because the perpetrators take photos. Are the men who lose their appendages any less violated? Are the decimated dwellings any less violated? Are the children who have lost parents over intra-continental and intercontinental (diamonds, petro-chem) disagreements any less violated?
You cannot make a blanket statement regarding African men and violence and include war crimes. If that was the case, if that argument was the same the following conflicts would also be am exemplar of men's ongoing misuse of women and children:
1. China in Korea
2. Russia in any of the countries which were formerly part of the old U. S. S. R.
3. American soldiers in Vietnam (how many thousands of Amerasian children suffer still because of their patrimony)
4. Germany in Poland
5. Germans who operated Ravensbruck (northern Germany) - this place also functioned as a jail for "traitor" German women, gypsies, prostitutes and you might as well call it the revolving brothel. In Ravensbruck, women were "used" and "traded" until death
Sexual war crimes are meant to demoralize an entire people. They are only one weapon in the arsenal of war. It is a tool of war which exists for generations, after treaties have been signed, and becomes a living breathing example of domination (when children are the result of these acts). They are sexual acts against a nation and not an individual person or family.
La Vonda R. Staples
dear femi and others.
you asked for some evidence of wife battering. i came across this today; not exactly what you requested, but in the larger sense a response to you and others who have expressed their apprehension about women complaining about abuse, and attributing such complaints to western mores.
this report is not fun, but the situation is dire in many places, and merits all of our concern
ken
On 6/9/11 12:31 PM, Femi Kolapo wrote:
Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Rashida Manjoo (A /HRC/17/26)and 2 others
Report—
Seventeenth session
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural,
including the right to developmentSummary
Over the past three decades, gender-based violence as a form of discrimination against women has become increasingly visible and acknowledged internationally. Despite normative standards having been set, the reality is that violence against women remains a global epidemic, which is further complicated when considering multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. This thematic report examines such discrimination in the context of violence against women and provides a conceptual framework for further discussion.
The report acknowledges the reality that while multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination have contributed to and exacerbated violence against women, information on the intersections between gender-based discrimination and other forms of discrimination, and the consequences thereof, are too often overlooked.
In addition to analyzing the forms, causes and consequences of multiple forms of discrimination as regards violence against women, this report also considers inter-gender and intra-gender differences, arguing that a one-size-fits-all programmatic approach is insufficient for combating gender-based violence. Even though all women are at risk of experiencing violence, not all women are equally susceptible to acts of violence.
It has been stated by this mandate that “the multiplicity of forms of violence against women as well as the fact that this violence frequently occurs at the intersection of different types of discrimination makes the adoption of multifaceted strategies to effectively prevent and combat this violence a necessity.”
This report proposes a holistic approach to conceptualizing and addressing the issue by: (a) considering human rights as universal, interdependent and indivisible; (b) situating violence against women on a continuum; (c) acknowledging the structural aspects and factors of discrimination, which include structural and institutional inequalities; and (d) analyzing social and/or economic hierarchies between women and men and also among women.
I will appreciate if somebody can direct me to some research with some form of quantitative evidence on wife battering in a region, state or community of Nigeria - or any other African country. Other than the occasional cases of individuals indicating that they or their mothers had been violently assaulted by their fathers, I find that I have all the while not really read any dedicated research to wife battering in Nigeria. I have accepted and repeated the anecdotal and generalized statements about Nigerian husbands beating their wives, especially supported by the often expressed [as opposed to acted out] cultural attitudes that rationalize why husbands beat wives. I have often heard of serious cases of wife battering in police barracks in Nigeria, but I never lived in the barracks and, again it was by mere, probably stereotypical, hearsay. I suspect that there should be some research that allows one to gauge how pervasive this culture was/is. Is the problem on the increase or waning? I have in mind here studies based on questions asking people between a certain age range whether or not (a)they have personally seen (or heard) a wife been battered; (b) seen a wife with wound she took during a quarrel with her husband or heard a wife report that she had been battered, or (c) simply heard that men beat their wives, and (d) how many times in the last 5 or 10 years or other time duration; or research based on court or other records. If I were to be a respondent to such questions, my answers will be
(a) 1 time - personally seen (or heard) a wife been battered far back in 1966(b) 3 times - seen a wife with wound she took during a quarrel with her husband or heard a wife report that she had been battered(c) uncountable times - simply heard that African men traditionally beat their wives(d) the cases I have experience of happened- between 40 and 5 years ago.
F. Kolapo. University of Guelph.
-- kenneth w. harrow distinguished professor of english michigan state university department of english east lansing, mi 48824-1036 ph. 517 803 8839 har...@msu.edu
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
Femi Kolapo
Ikhide;
I get you clear. No woman wants to be beaten and I doubt that any reasonable man would want his mother, daughter or sister beaten by another man who claims to be their husband. To that extent, we have a universal problem. But the manifestation, the scope, the character whether structural, geographical, cultural or whatever, always have local manifestations. If you steal a foreign technology, you better indigenize it. This is where research is most useful.
Research into wife battering and condemnation of its occurrence are two separate issues – but they are also linked and should be linked if ever society is to rationally solve it as a social problem. This we all know and I fail to see why they should be conflated as you seem to have done here. It also does not in any way imply that one is thereby excusing a wife batterer!
Research into poverty, prostitution, bullying, child obesity etc is very common and data on them are continuously updated here in North America and they serve as concrete basis to base policies and other interventionist measures on. They are parallel to but always inform current measures that are deployed to tackle the problems. I see no reason why it should be different for Nigeria or for Africa. Are there regional, cultural, generational, and as you hint here in your post, rural/urban differences, in the incidence, the prevalence and the structures that uphold wife battering in Nigeria?
I see nothing bad, but everything good, in defining the exact nature of this particular problem. Other social problems are measurable with established benchmarks and expected target outcomes. Such “quantitative” determinations facilitate goal oriented policy interventions. Why should wife battering in Nigeria or anywhere in Africa not benefit from such research? Why should all the umbrage, discussion, programs, and money spent on the issue be based only on generalizations and poorly appreciated scenarios?
My request for some quantitative information cannot and does not negate anybody’s individual experiences nor does it foreclose expression of outrage when individual cases occur. But your experience is not mine, as mine is also different from yours, hence, the need to explore and be able to establish the scope of the problem. If anything, it affords a facility for both of us to work on the same page using the same language to solve the issue. But more importantly, it allows for responsible agencies to come up with policies and even programs that can tackle the issue very effectively.
Going through the Wigwe thread, and reading a few commentaries in Nigerian dailies on the issue, I found that a number of men condemned Ambassador Wigwe, it seems to me, on the basis that his actions were quite contrary to what they were taught growing up or contrary to what actually obtained in their communities. I was equally reflecting over the case, and began to scan my immediate and extended family as well as retrace my steps in life to see how many cases of wife battering i have witnessed or that I have first hand information about. To my surprise, I have not been able to count beyond 6, the first and earliest being sometime in 1966, as I mentioned in my earlier post. May be I should say that is 6 too many. I have however, witnessed tremendous yelling and verbal insults hurled between husbands and wives. Perhaps, over the years I must have read in the newspapers of wives beaten by their husbands – but how much such behaviour is reported on the newspaper pages can only be very negligible. It then occured to me also that as vociferous as the condemnation of wife battering is and in spite of many NGOs that work or claim to work with spousal abuse victims in Nigeria, I actually am not aware that there are any accessible dedicated quantitative research on the issue. I may be wrong, and that is why I asked for information of this nature that can be used.
How do we know whether the incidence of wife battering has, say in the past 40 to 50 years, been on the wane in Nigeria compared to an assumed high of the time before 1960 and 70s or vice versa? How much should government commit to fighting the disease? Which part of the body is worst affected? How deep and which areas has been responding to treatment? Do you think only expressing outrage trumps all these questions?
Back to my personal experience, could it be that my non-spectacular experience is the result of having lived most of my adolescent life in rural and semi-urban communities – though one would expect that it is in the rural areas where tradition is reputed to hold more sway over people’s lives that the incident of wife battering would be worst?
For instance, my observations for the rural Igbonna areas where I lived part of my teen life is that traditional living arrangement did not permit for the seclusion or isolation of the husband and wife, as such. So, while there were lots of argument and yelling between quarrelling husband and wife or wives, it was usual that other members of the household (in the traditional compound) often quickly intervened either to settle or castigate one or the other or to lead one or the other party away from the scene until frayed nerves were calmed.
The language, the worldview and the socialeconomic arrangements did discriminate against women, and other structures of oppression can clearly be seen, but my personal experience for the area I was familiar with during the time when I was in those places was that the actual practice of wife battering or wife beating was the exception. I would consider other forms of violence more pervasive in that my neck of the wood. I do not excuse this exception, but even more so, the local people neither did.
All cases that I have direct experience of, the men involved were generally ridiculed. One of the reported cases I am aware of has to do with one of my own sisters. Almost all the people in the town considered the husband irresponsible and shameless to have beaten my sister. He was ridiculed and became the talk of the town – most embarrassing for him. The earliest repeated case that I actually witnessed was between an alcoholic medical doctor and his less educated wife back when my family and we their children lived in Sokoto. My parents and all the neighbours condemned the man and ridiculed him as a wife beater and a drunk. My brother and I were so sympathetic to the woman that we would help her do her dishes and other wise try to be nice to her ones the man was out of the way.
So, Ikhide, you see that my experience is quite different than yours. Without some more information to contextualize my experience, how do you imagine that you or any other person can expect that we can devise the same strategy to solving the problem – a problem we probably appreciated differently or possibly rather poorly? Our efforts will probably remain uncoordinated and, if those who could benefit from advocacy are not convinced of the seriousness of the problem, we will be left with adhoc expressions of umbrage on the net and in the newspapers whenever such cases come out.
Femi Kolapo
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 06:41:05 -0700
From: xok...@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Cornelius Hamelberg
Senegal"
> > Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes
> > and consequences, Rashida Manjoo (A /HRC/17/26)
> > Report
> > —
> > Rights Council <http://reliefweb.int/taxonomy/term/2689>
> > Download PDF (126.55 KB)<http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A-HRC-17-26.pdf>
> > Democratic Republic of the Congo (the)<http://reliefweb.int/taxonomy/term/75>
> 2KViewDownload
>
> application-pdf.png
> < 1KViewDownload
Femi Kolapo
Dear Ken,
I wonder how you came to league me up with “others who have expressed their apprehension about women complaining about abuse, and attributing such complaints to western mores”? I do not know of any of the posts about this issue that has asked the same or similar questions as I did in my post. I also have not in my one post expressed apprehension about women complaining about abuse and [attribute] it to western mores.”
I have no problem with societies and cultures exchanging ideas. African societies have historically adopted and usually adapted ideas from beyond their political and even cultural borders to fit and to answer to specific local contexts and demands. As long as we do that I am happy with natural diffusion and interchange of ideas that hold universal applicability. I also do not have any apprehension about women complaining about abuse when abuses have occurred. The most you can make of my post is that I raised a concern that the discussion (by men and women) about Nigerian or African men battering their wives, as serious as it is, seem to be mostly based on generalizations and conventional assumptions regarding African culture. I implied that this might be because of my own ignorance of available materials. Nowhere did I go into direct judgment of the Wigwe case in that post or expressed worry that women who were abused raised their voices in complaint. I believe that the kind of information I am asking for is very useful and needful, not just for academic purposes, but for the purpose of educating those responsible for establishing and upholding the necessary laws (customary and otherwise) and for effective policy prescriptions.
Thanks for the link you sent, though as you realized, it does not particularly answer my questions and is not specifically about wife battering. I also feel, like La Vonda, that rape as weapon of war and other war crimes committed, especially by armed men, in the context of war are a different category from the wife battering- especially because wife battering by Africans seem mostly to be attributed to unreformed African culture.
Femi
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 16:52:17 +0200
From: har...@msu.edu
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
you asked for some evidence of wife battering. i came across this today; not exactly what you requested, but in the larger sense a response to you and others who have expressed their apprehension about women complaining about abuse, and attributing such complaints to western mores.
this report is not fun, but the situation is dire in many places, and merits all of our concern
ken
On 6/9/11 12:31 PM, Femi Kolapo wrote:
and 2 others
Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against
women, its causes and consequences, Rashida Manjoo (A
/HRC/17/26)
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural,
including the right to development
Summary
Over the past three decades, gender-based violence as a form of discrimination against women has become increasingly visible and acknowledged internationally. Despite normative standards having been set, the reality is that violence against women remains a global epidemic, which is further complicated when considering multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. This thematic report examines such discrimination in the context of violence against women and provides a conceptual framework for further discussion.
The report acknowledges the reality that while multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination have contributed to and exacerbated violence against women, information on the intersections between gender-based discrimination and other forms of discrimination, and the consequences thereof, are too often overlooked.
In addition to analyzing the forms, causes and consequences of multiple forms of discrimination as regards violence against women, this report also considers inter-gender and intra-gender differences, arguing that a one-size-fits-all programmatic approach is insufficient for combating gender-based violence. Even though all women are at risk of experiencing violence, not all women are equally susceptible to acts of violence.
This report proposes a holistic approach to conceptualizing and addressing the issue by: (a) considering human rights as universal, interdependent and indivisible; (b) situating violence against women on a continuum; (c) acknowledging the structural aspects and factors of discrimination, which include structural and institutional inequalities; and (d) analyzing social and/or economic hierarchies between women and men and also among women.
I will appreciate if somebody can direct me to some research with some form of quantitative evidence on wife battering in a region, state or community of Nigeria - or any other African country. Other than the occasional cases of individuals indicating that they or their mothers had been violently assaulted by their fathers, I find that I have all the while not really read any dedicated research to wife battering in Nigeria. I have accepted and repeated the anecdotal and generalized statements about Nigerian husbands beating their wives, especially supported by the often expressed [as opposed to acted out] cultural attitudes that rationalize why husbands beat wives. I have often heard of serious cases of wife battering in police barracks in Nigeria, but I never lived in the barracks and, again it was by mere, probably stereotypical, hearsay. I suspect that there should be some research that allows one to gauge how pervasive this culture was/is. Is the problem on the increase or waning? I have in mind here studies based on questions asking people between a certain age range whether or not (a)they have personally seen (or heard) a wife been battered; (b) seen a wife with wound she took during a quarrel with her husband or heard a wife report that she had been battered, or (c) simply heard that men beat their wives, and (d) how many times in the last 5 or 10 years or other time duration; or research based on court or other records. If I were to be a respondent to such questions, my answers will be
(a) 1 time - personally seen (or heard) a wife been battered far back in 1966(b) 3 times - seen a wife with wound she took during a quarrel with her husband or heard a wife report that she had been battered(c) uncountable times - simply heard that African men traditionally beat their wives(d) the cases I have experience of happened- between 40 and 5 years ago.
F. Kolapo. University of Guelph.
-- kenneth w. harrow distinguished professor of english michigan state university department of english east lansing, mi 48824-1036 ph. 517 803 8839 har...@msu.edu
kenneth harrow
i was trying to respond to more than one concern that the thread over battering--male, female--gave rise to. i did not intend to lump your posting together with others implying that you were stating any more than you actually stated. sorry for the confusion. i posted the response because i thought it would be of interest, though marginal to your specific request.
i agree that not all conditions of rape are the same; i believe the dangers faced by women concerning sexual violence outweigh those faced by men, maybe by 1000 to one; yet the violence against local populations in the east congo now include the raping of men, the penis being used as a weapon to demoralize or destroy populations of all ages and genders--alas.
i am relatively sure this development is not universal as lavonda implied or stated, concerning war. there was rape, to be sure, with previous conflicts; but not used as now in e congo so as to destroy the fabric of the local population and to drive people to flee or submit. rape in previous conflicts was probably driven by libido and the freedom to get away with free sex. that was not the case particularly in previous conflicts in africa. it is now, especially in e congo, the region that i follow most closely, along with rwanda and burundi.
it baffles me why anyone would not wish to take up arms against this form of sexual violence. we all know by now what horrors many of the women have to endure as consequences of this violence, and the icc is now trying bemba and his forces for utilizing it.
anyway, femi, sorry to have given an impression not intended.
ken
On 6/10/11 3:00 AM, Femi Kolapo wrote:
�
Dear Ken,�
I wonder how you came to league me up with �others who have expressed their apprehension about women complaining about abuse, and attributing such complaints to western mores�? I do not know of any of the posts about this issue that has asked the same or similar questions as I did in my post. �I also have not in my one post expressed apprehension about women complaining about abuse and [attribute] it to western mores.�
�
I have no problem with societies and cultures exchanging ideas. African societies have historically adopted and usually adapted ideas from beyond their political and even cultural borders to fit and to answer to specific local contexts and demands. As long as we do that I am happy with natural diffusion and interchange of ideas that hold universal applicability. I also do not have any apprehension about women complaining about abuse when abuses have occurred. The most �you can make of my post is that I raised a concern that the discussion (by men and women) about Nigerian or African men battering their wives, as serious as it is, seem to be mostly based on generalizations and conventional assumptions regarding African culture. I implied that this might be because of my own ignorance of available materials. Nowhere did I go into direct judgment of the Wigwe case in that post or expressed worry that women who were abused raised their voices in complaint. I believe that the kind of information I am asking for is very useful and needful, not just for academic purposes, but for the purpose of educating those responsible for establishing and upholding the necessary laws (customary and otherwise) and for effective policy prescriptions.�
�
Thanks for the link you sent, though as you realized, it does not particularly answer my questions and is not specifically about wife battering. �I also feel, like La Vonda, �that rape as weapon of war and other war crimes committed, especially by armed men, in the context of war are a different category from the wife battering- especially because wife battering by Africans seem mostly to be attributed to unreformed African culture.
�
Femi
�
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 16:52:17 +0200
From: har...@msu.edu
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
dear femi and others.
you asked for some evidence of wife battering. i came across this today; not exactly what you requested, but in the larger sense a response to you and others who have expressed their apprehension about women complaining about abuse, and attributing such complaints to western mores.
this report is not fun, but the situation is dire in many places, and merits all of our concern
ken
On 6/9/11 12:31 PM, Femi Kolapo wrote:
Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Rashida Manjoo (A /HRC/17/26)and 2 others
Report�
Seventeenth session
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural,
including the right to development
Summary
Over the past three decades, gender-based violence as a form of discrimination against women has become increasingly visible and acknowledged internationally. Despite normative standards having been set, the reality is that violence against women remains a global epidemic, which is further complicated when considering multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. This thematic report examines such discrimination in the context of violence against women and provides a conceptual framework for further discussion.
The report acknowledges the reality that while multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination have contributed to and exacerbated violence against women, information on the intersections between gender-based discrimination and other forms of discrimination, and the consequences thereof, are too often overlooked.
In addition to analyzing the forms, causes and consequences of multiple forms of discrimination as regards violence against women, this report also considers inter-gender and intra-gender differences, arguing that a one-size-fits-all programmatic approach is insufficient for combating gender-based violence. Even though all women are at risk of experiencing violence, not all women are equally susceptible to acts of violence.
It has been stated by this mandate that �the multiplicity of forms of violence against women as well as the fact that this violence frequently occurs at the intersection of different types of discrimination makes the adoption of multifaceted strategies to effectively prevent and combat this violence a necessity.�
This report proposes a holistic approach to conceptualizing and addressing the issue by: (a) considering human rights as universal, interdependent and indivisible; (b) situating violence against women on a continuum; (c) acknowledging the structural aspects and factors of discrimination, which include structural and institutional inequalities; and (d) analyzing social and/or economic hierarchies between women and men and also among women.
I will appreciate if somebody can direct me to some research with some form of quantitative evidence on wife battering in a region, state or community of Nigeria - or �any other African country.��Other than the occasional cases of individuals indicating that they or their mothers had been violently assaulted by their fathers, I find that I have all the while not really read any dedicated research to wife battering in Nigeria. I have accepted and repeated the anecdotal and generalized statements about Nigerian husbands beating their wives, especially supported by the often expressed [as opposed to acted out] cultural attitudes that rationalize why husbands beat wives. I have often heard of serious cases of wife battering in police barracks in Nigeria, but I never lived� in the barracks and, again it was by mere, probably stereotypical, hearsay. I suspect that there should be some research that allows one to gauge how pervasive this culture was/is. Is the problem on the increase or waning? I have in mind here studies based on questions asking people between a certain age range whether or not (a)they have personally seen (or heard) a wife been battered; (b) seen a wife with wound she took during a quarrel with her husband or heard a wife report that she had been battered, or (c) simply heard that men beat their wives, and (d) how many times in the last 5 or 10 years or other time duration; or research based on court or other records. �If I were to be a respondent to such questions, my answers�will be�
(a) 1 time -�personally seen (or heard) a wife been battered far back in 1966(b) 3 times -�seen a wife with wound she took during a quarrel with her husband or heard a wife report that she had been battered(c) uncountable times - �simply heard that African men traditionally beat their wives(d) the cases I have experience of happened- �between 40 and 5 years ago.
F. Kolapo. University of Guelph.
-- kenneth w. harrow distinguished professor of english michigan state university department of english east lansing, mi 48824-1036 ph. 517 803 8839 har...@msu.edu
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
Nkolika Ebele
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 8, 2011 5:31 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Abuja, Nigeria
234-803-329-9879
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, June 8, 2011 5:01:05 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: I believe Dr. Wigwe
Executive Director & ASHOKA Fellow
Alliances for Africa
Mobile: + 234 803 302 0779
Int' mobile: + 44 7713 401454
Skype: iheomaobibi
http://www.alliancesforafrica.org
Dr. Valentine Ojo
Very well summed up!
Dr. Valentine Ojo
Tall Timbers, MD
On Sun 06/12/11 5:03 PM , Nkolika Ebele nkol...@yahoo.com sent: