A television presenter, Adaora Sidney-Jack in her new book, “Politics, Pussy and Power”, which has sparked controversies, says apart from the fact that sex does not sell in politics, the need to change gender stereotypes against women must be deliberate as Nigeria’s traditional setting risks passing the baton of ’masculanisation’ of politics to the next generation amongst other glaring red flags. She spoke with Kuni Tyessi
What served as motivation behind ‘Politics, Pussy and Power’ and what do you hope to achieve at the end?
It started with elections. I ran in 2019 to represent my constituency, Okigwe Constituency at the State House of Assembly and prior to that, I had been actively involved in gender advocacy, reconstruction of the mindset especially within the female space and changing stereotypes within gender norms and having fought it using the media through my space, I felt that one of the ways to bring the conversation to a larger space was to run elections, so that we can have a larger space of young women who will also benefit from that leadership and also to participate. So going deeply into the murky waters of politics, my eyes opened into the layers of conversation on stereotypes and negative gender identity, and I thought that one that came to the fore was on issues where certain stereotypes have been normalized against women and seemingly looked at as the norm.
The only way to change that was to tell the truth as it is. First was the sexualization of the female gender and how it cuts across from film, music, politics and how the consideration for nocturnal meetings seem enabled to prevent women from participating in politics because it’s in the night. However, some of those things were constrictively done so that women will be seen to be in that space and then those narratives are used against them.
The idea that women attend meetings at night makes them less good wives, partners, and mothers, or that they are wayward, randy, and the words like prostitute are brandied. So, there is a lot of emotions using gender stereotypes against women. This is one of the fore. So, I thought this was very important, having walked across different gender lenses in the space of main streaming gender, principally using digital, social and traditional media, one of the things I have often come across are the issues on the narrative that depict women negatively. I spoke widely to a lot of my older female mentors and this was something that I worried about. But then I didn’t want to disguise the element of truth. I was tired of baby-sitting the narrative and we keep speaking in our boxes and corners- gossiping, bashing and gnashing our teeth, but then when we come out, we act normal and the process is been normalized with the hope that it will take time to change. In order for things to pass and get the treatment they deserve; we need to sharpen them.
So, for me, the title of the book was a way of saying enough of the pretense and behind the door conversation and this is what it is. If women can take the bold step and critically look at the narratives that have shaped us negatively, we can then begin to unlearn certain things and reshape the minds of those who are really ignorant about it. Basically, it was for the demystification of social aberrations that has hindered the female space for a long time. When people use the word- pussy, the first thing they think is either it’s a female genital or somebody who is weak or in different cultural contexts, it means different things. In the Australian culture for example, it means a garment of honour and this applies to other cultures. But the way, it has been woven to depict something negative and I think it was deliberate to limit spaces for women when it comes to socialization.
What the book hopes to achieve is that it helps to re-orientate, de-stereotype and uncover the biases and tell it as it is. Until we own our truth and tell it as it is, nobody will fix them. My state is immensely patriarchal and very few women thrive in politics. Those who have thrived are labelled. Coming up as the first female and young girl within that conversation at the time that I ran, exposed me to some of the biases. So, if I’m going into the murky waters of politics again, I am not going there to undo some of the narratives and taking myself as the guinea pig in the process and this was just what I did in bringing out this book.
Are you in anyway saying that you were exposed to sexual molestation when you went into politics and can you share one or more experiences?
Sexual molestation has different spaces and identifications when you want to explain it. You have the emotional, abusive, yet non-physical. So, you’re limited and cannot come to certain spaces and meetings; you’re denied to know the appropriate meeting time for certain meetings and it’s when decisions have been taken that you’re told, and it is just so that you can be discredited and told that you’re not serious and ready to play politics. There are different levels and I faced all of them. The only one I would say quite frankly, and probably coming from the space of the media, everyone knew that I have cheer leaders, mentors and people who will rise at the snap of a finger. So, coming to me physically with sexual harassment would have been, perhaps, the end of anyone who tried to do it because there will be visible attacks and I wouldn’t be the only one to-do the attack as the whole community of women will be at it. So, the best way for them to do it is to increase emotional abuse and deny me access to network of several things. I think for me, when you do that, you’re not only breaking the fabric of the self-esteem of the woman, but making her question the reason behind her choice to run in the first place. Those kinds of things can limit, break or totally excommunicate to the point when she says she no longer wants to be involved.
But as I was going through this process, I was recording. I had a diary from the first day that I resigned from work down to the time that I ran for elections and finished. I have over eight diaries where I penned down my pre and post-election experiences and they serve as angles of healing. When you are over with the elections, you come out scarred and sometimes experience private trauma that you can’t share with people. There are silent pains that makes you question why you had to run and to what benefit. Those are processes women go through. I went through that and I’m still healing. It’s not a day’s journey healing for women who come out of elections without winning.
The trauma women go through is not just about losing financial capacity, but losing certain levels of network. Some lose relationships, friends, family and some lose self-identity. Some people give everything by throwing their all into the ring and when they come out, they’re lost and don’t know where to start. Those are the kinds of things I had to grapple with and come back to base to say- this is a story not just for me, bur for other women, particularly young women to learn, and it will either shape them to want to come back and try again, or they stay away to grapple with pain and emotions and thinking that the worst has happened and denying the capacity that we carry to those who can earn from it in terms of servitude.
So, I can tell you that the worse kind of harassment is the one which you cannot see and unveil, but you’re dealing with it in your quite corners. You’re also worried about safe spaces- who do I tell and who do I not tell? How do I express this and what will be the outcome? It was a lesson learned and if I have to go through it again to learn lessons and come out stronger, then I’ll do it again. Until I had to go and run, I thought it was easy. I thought it was about semantics and doing campaign and saving some money.
In fact, I had a campaign budget and knew what I wanted to spend. But when you get into the election proper, the budget you have just becomes a to-do-list. By the time you begin to unveil what you need to spend in an election, you’ll know that election is a bank. The experience and evaluation of the process is enormous. Sharing some parts of the book with some people and the process of writing it was an uncovering for me and it was therapy for me too. In writing, I felt a certain kind of relief and it’s something other women can try to do generally. This, I would recommend for anybody.
Do you think you would have won if you had mortgaged your sexuality?
Even those who did, some did not win! Sexuality could be for both men and women? Who said the men are also not mortgaging their sexuality? Why must it only be women?
It is a patriarchal society and this is expectedly so.
Yes, but it also happens, but the men feel entitled to it. They fell that it’s a right and they have been created to be needy and their nomenclature is to be attracted, to want and to be given to. They see a woman as a creation that should be taken and conquered and that’s the concept that has been woven into our socialization over the years. That’s why we hear things like ‘a woman is to be seen and not heard; and women should be seen and speak in certain ways.’ If this is not so, why do they say that women who go into elections are men? Have I changed my genital? I haven’t! It’s what a man is running for that I’m also running for and at no time did I announce that I went through a transgender surgery.
This also is the gender identity that the men play at in order to masculine the female to think that if she dares run for an election, she has lost her feminity. Meanwhile, across the world and in different parts of Africa, women are running and winning elections and yet they remain female. It doesn’t stop them from being soft or hard if they choose to. It is a process of engagement and this is what politics is all about. Those are the kinds of narratives I have tried to unveil in the book. At some point, it became a case of- ‘women who run in elections don’t get married’ or ‘if they are married, they lose the marriage.’
Therefore, if a woman decides to give her body, that’s her prerogative which was done voluntarily as an adult. However, if a woman is manipulated, cajoled and excessively drawn into a circle of blackmail, then this is wrong. Some women are oblivious of their rights and do know that there are laws that protect them. Rather than be bold and speak loudly about it, they quietly commit to saving their space and race because for them, it’s about winning. When they don’t win, even in their narrative and quietness, it’s the men that in turn use it as a toga of onslaught and you see them going to social media and the quantum of bullying becomes so visible. We live in a patriarchal society and the question now is- how do we unbundle it if we don’t take the bull by the horn?
One of the things I also strongly observed was culture and tradition playing strong roles in politics. Whether we accept or not, we are traditional citizens that have been mentored by our traditions. As we keep growing, we see ourselves in a larger traditional space of what we should be, how we should be, what we should sound like, how we should dress, when we should marry, when we should have children; if you don’t marry, they’d say you’re not married. If you marry, they’d say you don’t have a child. If you have children, they’d say you don’t have a boy. There is always something about the female gender that begs for validation by the society and until we deconstruct the gender norms, no matter how much of activism we will do, it will not work.
It’s the way the mindset has been programmed, we need to unweave it and begin to look at where to start from. If we don’t change it, we are endangered by doing same to our daughters. The space women are exposed to is already blackmailed and it’s so strong in politics. It’s not even seen. It’s something you can’t even touch. So, it’s a case of- how dare you? So, women have to go in strong with defensive mechanisms. You have to be mentored to toughen yourself. No matter how much sex you give, if you’re not popular, you’d still not win elections. Yes, sex sells in the media and music, but not in politics. One thing I am hoping that we end and get right is putting an end to money politics and the sexualisation of politics- be they in innuendos or in kind.
What sex is to women in the way they see and take it, is what violence is to men. The men use sex to mystify a woman’s ability, while they use violence to hold down the youths and leave them there impoverished. Until someone goes between the lines to say enough is enough, it will not get any better.
Are you in any way saying that men are the problem of Nigeria?
They are not just the problem of Nigeria, but the problem of themselves and I say this in two categories. One, if men were to have political will, they would have passed the gender bill and that’s why I said they’re the problems of Nigeria and of themselves. We had a parliament of men that in signature affirmed that they were going to pass the five gender bills. We went on advocacy visit and sat with them, including first ladies with caps in hands. It looked like we were going to take the day. But when we got in there, they voted all five gender bills down.
Tell me, if the men are not the problem of Nigeria, will they discredit the fifty percent of the entire population? They denied the currency of young girls that have been sexually abused and their ability to have a voice. Their action was also a way of saying yes to rape and yes to girls out of school. Is that not men against Nigeria? Men against themselves! Did they not turn down the five gender bills and by so doing, they have denied their generations of girls the ability to run in elections and actually make a goal for the extra seat bills.
The men need to understand that they cannot work in isolation. Women are the ones who are displaced, they lose spouses during terrorism. They are at the end chain of subsistence farming and are the ones that suffer during food emergency crisis. They are the ones who access primary healthcare centres and even at that, they are disenfranchised due to one disability or the other. Society is shaped in a way that women bear the burden and the change of reactions. So why can’t they sit in parliament and embolden the voices of the 50 percent? Women are not going there to take their seats but to enhance it.
We all have to become feminists in our thinking in one way or the other and feminism is not about de-masculinizing men which is what they often think. This is not about chromosomes, but about doing the right thing for the human being who is female. What is good for you as a man is also good for the female. It’s about generating policies and implementing them. If we don’t change the narrative, it will be difficult for us to attain the SDGs, and this is not about quota system. I can’t begin to tell what women in mining go through. That’s a total conversation all the way.
If we don’t remove the negative gender identities, we may just be running in circles and what I hope to get from the book is for younger voices to emerge by telling their truth and being relatively daring. Until we dare the odds, the normalization of how we are seen as women will continue to be the umbrella and that is what the world wants us to see. That’s what the system of masculinity wants us to be, and we didn’t start it, neither did our mothers, and that is why we have to be deliberate. So, the question is: if we fail to do this, is the future really female? This means we are going to have the future generation of girls still covered in biases.
Have you thought about the possibilities of your book being banned due to the use of the informal word- pussy?
That’s exactly why I wrote it. That’s the reason I wrote it. The guilt trip is the reason for writing the book. There are books having penis in their titles. Why haven’t they been banned? There are even books with bolder titles. I did a thorough research before I wrote the book. It took me a year and eight months to finally settle for publication. Many have criticized the title and asking questions like why this title? Couldn’t you have used terms like roses, biscuits, sunshine and other soft words instead of pussy? They said I should have chosen a title more feminine and pleasant. There was no narrative that wasn’t given in all of this. My biggest convert was my father. I had to unveil, re-narrate and explain until he got it. My father is a traditional man and things like this are seen from a cultural perspective. If I could win him over, I was sure that I won into half of my journey.
He said go ahead and publish. However, it may spark some fire, so get ready for the backlash. There are many men in his category and until someone helps them understand the need to reshape these identities, they’ll continue to pass this normalization to their children and the generations after. The fear we have as women is the reason society has continued to win. My publishers were also excited with the title seeing it come from Africa. They say it’s bold and daring. They have been the ones who have been deliberate with the book being on amazon. We need to de-sexualize such words so that people don’t think pussy and think women. People should not see pussy and see weakness or a depiction of feminity or negativity.
Edited by Lolo Helen Pat Okeke
