GENDER IDENTITY THROUGH THE NIGERIAN QUEER LENS

Upon hearing the news of childbirth, the first question many Nigerians ask is, “Is the baby girl or boy?” They rarely consider an in-between or neither, because infants are automatically assigned the gender that matches their sex, expected to identify as this and perform its roles as they grow.

Gender identity is the personal conception of one’s own gender. Although the most common gender identities in the world are boy/man and girl/woman, there are more identities than this binary category covers. Some people grow up to continue identifying as the gender that correlates with their assigned sex, and are called cisgender. Others choose a gender identity different from their assigned sex, and are called transgender. There are people who do not identify as either of the binary, and are referred to as genderqueer or non-binary.

While a doctor can determine and pronounce a baby’s sex, it ought to be up to that child to decide its gender identity as it grows, knows itself intimately, interacts with the world, and discovers different ways it wants to express itself.

In a Nigerian society where gender roles are nearly enforced on individuals right from childhood, there is little to no space for people of a perceived gender to behave contrary to the stereotypes attributed to that gender. Gender expressions are determined by and restricted to sociocultural expectations of what a girl, boy, woman, and man should be; an attempt to step outside of these boxes is attracting an unpleasant attention to oneself.

Despite the laws and hostility hindering the freedom of queer people in Nigeria, some of them are stepping out of the closet regardless and are at their most authentic in safe spaces. Findmymethod.org provides such a safe space for people of all gender identities to interact on their forum from anywhere in the world.

To document experiences of genderqueer Nigerians, I spoke to four of them and asked what it means to identify differently from the conventional gender binary.

Xaron, 18

My pronouns are he/him/they/them. I am a writer, curator, and medical student at a Nigerian university.

I was assigned the boy gender at birth, but I came out as a non-binary in my second year at the University. I have a community of people who support and give me the opportunity to express myself as a queer person and creative, especially in relation to my gender identity. I have only come out to my brother and friends for now, and the reception is encouraging. I haven’t come out to the rest of my family because I’m not sure what their reaction will be- and more importantly, how it will affect me at this point.

I have felt gender dysphoria for the longest time- in my former schools, at home with my parents and in any situation where I had to socialize. I noticed that anytime I was in a social setting, the internal conflict between whom I was supposed to be (a cis boy/man) and who I really felt like inside heightened. In dealing with this, I secluded myself.

Gender identity is a very sensitive and personal issue for people all over the world. And that’s good; I think it’s important that people are being intentional about how the world sees them and how they choose to interact with the world.

The challenges I face as a nonbinary person living in Nigeria are multifaceted; it is hard educating people on my gender identity and the use of my pronouns because not many people understand that here.

Dams, 24

My pronouns are she/her/they/them, but I have been more open to the use of he/him recently.

My pronouns are she/her/they/them, but I have been more open to the use of he/him recently.

I’m Nigerian-American, born and raised on Long Island, New York. I’m a recent college grad who is currently exploring coding and music production.

I was assigned the girl gender at birth, but I’ve always been a bit masculine. After my first breakup, I went through a rough patch where I looked back and couldn’t recognize myself. I didn’t feel like whom I wanted to be, so I reached out to other more masculine presenting and non-binary people and realized I fit better with them. While I was connecting with these people, I ended up with a lot of friends who wanted to or were transitioning. I was confused about whether being masculine meant I was expected to transition or if I was supposed to hate feminine parts of myself.

After shaving my head, I realized I didn’t have to change anything. Somewhere in the process, I realized I can love having a fade and big tits. I can be muscular and wear nail polish. I can shop in the men’s department and wear makeup.

Some of my friends and family know about my gender change, while others don’t. They may not accept it or have a hard time accepting it when they find out, but I don’t care.

Z, 21

I’m comfortable with any pronouns. I use she/her/they/them/he/him, depending on the setting.

I love writing, cooking, fashion, agriculture, dance, and have taken an interest in photography lately.

I think gender identity is deeply complex, and believe the stereotypical binary is woefully, laughably inadequate.

I have been genderqueer since I was little. I was often mistaken for a boy, probably because I never made my hair. This stopped when I entered puberty, but I never quite felt like the woman/girl tag was the entirety of my existence. It took some time to find the gender identity I felt comfortable with, and it took about a year for me to get used to using it publicly — as publicly as I can, at least.

I’m yet to come out to my family, but I plan to before I hit 25. My mother and siblings will be surprised, but not too shocked. I’m pretty vocal about my opinions about the LGBTQ+ community.

Being a non-binary Nigerian living in Nigeria feels like I’ve been locked inside a tiny, stuffy closet.

Grey, 22

I was assigned the boy gender at birth, but my pronouns are they/them.

When I came out as non-binary, it finally felt like the right time to admit that I did not feel like the gender I was assigned at birth. My friends have been supportive since I did.

My gender change necessitated name change, and it gave a feeling of transformation; a sort of reclaiming. Ultimately, the goal is to transcend gender.

Originally published at http://nimisire.wordpress.com on September 23, 2020.

Emitomo Tobi Nimisire is a writer, sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) consultant, feminist researcher, and a communications strategist. She is a Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), Common Purpose and Margaret Ekpo Youth Fellow, and ONE Champion. Nimisire applies an intersectional approach to analysing and proposing solutions to developmental issues and implementing sustainable solutions to them. She is committed to working on and creating programmes and projects that improve the quality of human lives.

Not trans enough, not woman enough

The paradox of existing, the double standard of living

Aside from knowing I was different as a child, I knew there were certain things I wouldn’t be. It’s not because I can’t be, but because I don’t fit the standards, and that has always been my point to rebel. It was always as if we were born into a To-Do list, playing by the rules designed by society to ward us off from being ourselves.

Growing up as an androgynous child, I never really struggled internally with my gender identity despite not knowing exactly what it was. I just wanted to live life. I remember vividly how I would stand in front of my mother’s mirror with her dress and heels on, admiring myself while mentally carving imaginary lines around my body. The most challenging part of my childhood was the constant need to validate my gender identity. I long struggled with gaining social acceptance, as certain masculinity standards and behaviour were expected of me that I couldn’t perform.

I vividly remember when I was 10 years old when my very homophobic and misogynistic uncle badgered me and body shamed me. The only explanation he had for a child with a non-conforming body was to call me GAY, when I didn’t even know what that meant. Some of us wouldn’t be here if our queerness had been treated positively by our parents or more attention was paid to the developmental part of our lives. What gender we were attracted to was more significant than other vital aspects of our lives. I wonder, however, what fear caused a loving mother to send their child away from the safety of home the moment they found out about the deal breaker. I’ve heard parents threaten their children with isolation and conversion practices if they ever turn out to be Queer.

As an asexual and agender trans person who has had the priviledge to medically transition, many people wonder what it is like to be me, tearing up the list and owning up to my true form.

As the years passes, through self-introspection, positive interaction and relationships, I gained a better understanding of myself. I became more positive, political and politically conscious, and I could see beyond the past. I realise “transitioning” is more personal. It extends beyond seeing myself imprisoned in a body I do not want or aspiring to be in one that I want. We all undergo change at different points in our lives, but the difference in time is
a privilege – we all grow. As a transgender woman, transition is more than a journey. It is liberation in every aspect of her.

I live my life based on life-taught lessons and experiences. As I grew older and met other people, applying these lessons and also continuously learning and evolving changed my perspective of life. It made me see myself as I truly am. I had no choice but to love, love myself and build a house for love to blossom. My matrix changed when I began to see myself as truly a minority in a minority.

However, my bargain also grew with me, from the need to constantly validate myself to the struggle to be socially accepted and now the denial of my existence. Whenever people have even the slightest chance, my transness becomes a point of opinion. Regardless of their own gender identity and sexual orientation, their opinion is usually about me not keeping up with the norm and not living up to the demeaning perspective they choose to have against transwomen.

It erases my own experience as an individual, whatever the standard may be. Personally, the base of my transness is freedom and for me to be truly free, rebellion became remedy.

As a woman who lives in a body that breaks binary boundaries, my existence is continually debated. There is the yes that says you do not belong here and the no that says this is where you should be. There is always this constant pressure to validate my femininity as a trans woman and also align my struggles as a woman when in queer affirming spaces. Transgender people do not owe you normalities nor do we owe abnormalities.

Some transgender people do not subscribe to what society deems to be valid explanations for their identities. Our individual understanding of ourselves and circumstances is based on our personal experiences.

Being a person who doesn’t fit into any definition or box, I am constantly in need of doing ten times as much as I can to be truly visible. Since the socially constructed perspectives of what it means to be a transgender woman do not entirely reflect my reality, I am constantly made to question my existence and values.

We must realize that as conscious and evolving creatures, we possess the potential to do many things and to be none at the same time. Therefore, why do we construct standards and try to force everyone to live by the rules? People who reinforce the status quo are rewarded while those who do not are pushed away.

Transgender women do not have to prove their femininity by wearing makeup or glamorous dresses. Gender nonconforming people do not have to prove that they are who they are by getting a septum piercing.

It costs us nothing to acknowledge people in the way they want to be. Literally nothing.

Adunni Tiwatope is a trans/non-binary writer, creative director and storyteller specialising in gender literacy and community management. She writes about sociopolitical and cultural issues that impact the lives of minorities, most especially gender-diverse minorities, highlighting concerning situations while fostering positive visibility. She is the current Programs director at Queer City Media and Production, a community-based advocacy media network and a Research officer at AreaScatterAfrica, a trans research network. Adunni is a multi-talented creative hoping to explore her creativity beyond limits. Adunni is currently spearheading a Transitioning Home housing project designed to support pre-op transwomen to receive housing in their first 3-6 months of hormonal therapy use while they move forward with navigating life, securing employment with community-based network setups and acquiring empowering skills. To support Nigerian Trans Transitioning Home, click on the link below https://t.co/D0RBlsumY3 She believes in a world where minorities are empowered to make change happen.

Race, identity, Body Dysmorphia and the Nigerian Woman

One of the most used beauty brands on the continent, Dove, came under fire for their most recent advertisement.

Feminism has no space for Transphobia – A series of Tweets by OluTimehin Adegbeye

Having a marginalised identity does not automatically amount to expertise on any or all marginalisations. 

I learned this the hard way.

Equality will always feel like oppression to the privileged.

At moments like this I’m reminded it’s crucial to listen more and speak less. The worst thing about being loud and wrong is the loudness.

In a way, the knee-jerk reaction of cis-women to vehemently deny trans-womanhood as womanhood, reminds me of the reactions that survivors of (violent) penetrative rape had to my assertion last year that any absence of consent in sexual activity is in fact rape.

It’s this idea that validating experiences not our own (or not those that are historically mainstream) ‘diminishes’ the value of a thing.

An idea which is of course, patently false. 

Drawing borders around the validity of experiences doesn’t actually make the experiences of those outside the borders go away. It just makes it okay to gaslight the fuck out of them. 

But people KNOW what they’ve been through & who they are. Gatekeepers force madness on folks by insisting that things they know to be true are lies, then turn around & call them mad.

You’re already inside the circle. Nobody is pushing you out. We’re just saying that you drew the line at the wrong point & it needs to move.

Now comes the real question: Whether you want to stand inside a circle where you have to be next to people you don’t see as fully human.

That’s what drives pushback against inclusion really: people who have something thinking people who are less human than them will get it too. 

Transphobic cis women act as if the category ‘woman’ is so valuable that ‘men’ will want to steal it from them. How laughable is that??

Men KNOW how trash it is to be a woman in this world. That’s why they’re always on about not wanting/being afraid for their daughters followers. 

Even cis-women don’t want to be ‘women’ as it is constructed within the gender binary. That’s why feminism exists in the first place.

So why would anyone with any kind of real ‘male privilege’ want to give that up…to ‘become’ a woman?

Nigerians will defend gender essentialist transphobia as if we don’t culturallly call men ‘woman wrapper’ or ‘woman’ as an insult.

If we really care about people, we need to stop defending borders that attempt to invalidate their lives (and eventually, simply kill them).

stop judging our bodies! – Okwei Odili

​When Malcolm X told a thick crowd of African Americans that the most abused person in America is the black woman, he didn’t say it under the influence of ogogoro or overfeeding.

He said it because among our people are men like Trick daddy, African American men who hate African American women. Because these men hate themselves. Because these men cannot fight for their mothers and sisters.

According to failed and now fat rapper, Trick daddy, African American women are ‘hoes’ that need to sit up before the Latina and white ‘hoes’ take all their men. 

SAD.

Let us bring it back to Nigeria where many women are bleaching.

I shared an article talking about the pressures on women in Nigeria to emulate fake/un-African beauty standards and it was a Nigerian man here who said, Are the women being forced by men to bleach? Well I’d like to tell you about someone I dated as a young woman, who actually bought me the cream to ‘tone’. I dumped him.

I will also like to refer you to mainstream Nigerian music videos by popular Nigerian males filled with non African women, who look different than us. Each one fairer than the next. Diversity is the spice of life, to me. So I appreciate everybody. But to belittle one over another, especially the queens, I can’t take.

Not everybody has the psychological strength to refuse what is subtly or not subtly drummed into their ears. So yes, because men and women rely on each other, they have the capacity to influence one another. So yes, the bleaching continues.

Africa is the seat of the diamonds and gold, cocoa and rubber, oil and super humans, yet we assist those who hate us, to hate us. How dare we assist them, to un-glamourise us, we who are queens and kings, colorful, even when we are sleeping.

SAD.

Time to stop this. Leave African women alone. Stop asking us about our hair, stop judging our bodies. Our hair, breasts, nose, hips, vagina and all are OURS. We don’t tell you what to do with your body.

And STOP that fucking picture where all we do is carry water or firewood on our heads in 2016. 

Stop comparing us to anybody because we are too damn magical for all your collective idiocies and divisional tactics.

– OKWEI-UGO ODILI.

Personhood and Bodily Autonomy: aka Who owns the breast? The man or the Baby?

One of the funniest jokes in the whole wide world, and one of the most serious question is … who owns the breast? Man or baby.

Now you might think we are exaggerating but we dare you go to any gathering where alcohol and food is flowing in abundance, and a lady with an amazing posterior, aka breast, passes by, and come back with that claim of exaggeration.

This topic has been discussed for years, accompanied by titters and uncomfortable avoidance of one another’s eyes, but it never loses it’s freshness … who owns the breast?

Ownership is the operative word here.

A sitting senator, Shehu Sanni, last year did a brave thing, something that most Nigerian politicians shy away from. He declared his assets.

This honest and forthright deed broke more than the taboo of asset declaration and Nigerian politicians, it also broke the silence on what an average Nigerian man considers his property.

Senator Shehu Sanni – Hero of our democracrazy

Senator Sani Jibril listed his wives and children in the asset declaration form. And instead of being outraged, Nigerian journals praised him for this heroic deed with the blazing headline Meet The Senator That Declared His Wives Among His Assets….Right Or Wrong?

Actually, the headline was clickbait for those nosey feminists and gender rights activists, because the content of the article did not question the rightness or wrongness of his declaration. It simply went on about his ‘bravery’ and ‘heroism’.

Let’s be candid, we know that a lot of Nigerian men consider their wives and children as their property. And post-birth, women are ‘allowed’ by their husbands to ‘breastfeed’ the baby, with the ‘understanding’ that the breasts actually, really, truly belongs to him.

Don’t get us wrong, women also discuss this ‘important’ issue with a lot of tittering.

Wikipedia defines bodily integrity[autonomy] as the inviolability of the physical body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy and the self-determination of human beings over their own bodies. It considers the violation of bodily integrity as an unethical infringement, intrusive, and possibly criminal.

In simple English, Wikipedia is saying that your body belongs to you, to do with as you like. Bodily autonomy is your right, as backed up by Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.

The question is why do Nigerian men believe they OWN a woman’s body?

Culture: They believe that once they pay ‘bride price’ this means they have bought their wives. Actually any man who thinks this way is recognized under the law as a criminal, because in a sense, you’re admitting that you’ve partaken in human trafficking.

Religion: Many clerics, both in Nigeria and other parts of the world are fond of misquoting and taking things stated in their different holy books out of context.

Sexism: The sexism prevalent in the country, due to the fact that a lot more value has been placed on a male child, gives men the impression that they have the right to the body of any woman they meet. That’s why the boys at Yaba, or any large market, would grab at any girl they see, sexual harassment is rampant in both schools and offices, unchecked. Because men have been taught that women are less, that they are the head, women are … sidekicks.

And why do women take it? Because of the above listed, and a lot of us don’t know that we have the power to sue harassers … and win! Check this out … Former Microsoft Nigeria Employee gets N39m for unlawful Sack after Sexual Harassment and this Supreme Court – Female Child can Inherit Property in Igboland.

Yes we understand how utterly outrageous it is that we are celebrating these victories in 2016! But it’s a start and we know we are not alone, or helpless, or have to submit to dehumanization because culture or religion or the patriarchy says so.

Now back to the question – who owns the breast? Man or the baby?

Please answer the question with the fear of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights… who owns the breast?

…You give away your power the moment you start to believe that you have none…

On Abortion – Bunmi Tella

I was asked where I stood on abortion in Africa….here’s my response…..

I’m definitely pro-choice and hate to see men legislating on matters which they know nothing about.

Just a couple of months ago the Sierra Leonean government tried to pass a bill legalizing first term terminations and it was vetoed by male religious leaders on the basis that it’s a sin. Meanwhile that country has the highest rate of maternal deaths in Africa and since the war a steady increase in incest and rape.

It is unfair that men get to decide such matters without much consideration for the mother – who is essentially then victimized twice.

The uncomfortable truth is that even if it’s not rape or incest, a woman should have the option to say ‘I’m not ready – I cannot handle this’.

A woman having unwanted babies is the fastest path to poverty and misery.

The other day I saw a video of 2 men “fishing” a baby out of a river. It had been abandoned by its mother.

When we force people, who are not ready to be mothers, into motherhood we sentence the child to a lifetime of neglect at best and outright abuse at worse.

Its unwanted children that become victims of sexual, physical, emotional and psychological abuse. Its unwanted children that become thieves, murderers and rapists.

During the first term, the fetus is barely a fetus and if i was a fetus I’d rather be terminated than condemned to a life of misery.

There is a reason China had its one child policy and African governments should be embracing terminations en masse to stop poverty if nothing else.

I don’t understand how you can care so much about some cells the size of a grape in a woman’s body but you can’t bring yourself to care about the abject poverty and the miserable life a huge chunk of your population is condemned to.