Thought Picnic: The notion of men as they are rather than as they ought to be

You read me right

I guess after reading a few of my blogs, there will be no doubt in the mind of the reader that I have libertarian and liberal views about many things concerning our humanity.

Yet, I am hardly tolerant of abuses of religion, the law, in the family, of customs, traditions or somewhat long-held belief systems that either curtail or proscribe the opportunities for freedom, liberation and expression.

Vigilant nosey parkers

In 1894, at the tail-end of Queen Victoria’s long reign when supposedly Victorian values had become quite entrenched and were being exported to its colonial outposts, there was an upheaval taking place in England.

The licence for the Empire Theatre of the Varieties had come up for renewal, this was vehemently challenged under the leadership of Laura Ormiston Chant of the National Vigilance Committee with the charge that the theatre exhibited indecency on stage and tolerated prostitution in its tiers.

Whilst the new licence placed wide restrictions on the activities of the theatre, there was a wider debate in society as to whether entertainment and enjoyment should be so strictly regulated at the behest of a morality and purity brigade. Laura Ormiston Chant did not particularly have an auspicious backstory besides having run away from a home with parents that were strict disciplinarians and who run a girls’ institution.

The fallout

Meanwhile, the first anti-homosexuality laws were passed in 1885 in the Labouchere Amendment making gross indecency a criminal offence in the United Kingdom and many of those empire era laws that have now been expunged from our law books are being reaffirmed by many of the colonies that have since been independent from the British Empire since the 1960s under that guise that such is not according to our customs, traditions or beliefs.

One notable consequence of these Victoria purity drives was what ensnared Oscar Wilde when he file a libel action, lost it, which resulted in a new trial, a conviction and disgrace in 1895.

Men as they are

However, within the furore of the debate about morality laws, a young Winston Churchill wrote to the Westminster Gazette in 1894 and stated the following:

“State intervention in the form of statute will never eradicate evil.
It may make it more dangerous for the evildoer.
But such a policy, while not decreasing immorality, only increases its ill effects.
The state should protect [its citizens] from harm,
and must govern men as they are and not as they ought to be.”

This is where the issue of morality laws places all sorts of unacceptable constraints on the freedom of expression and articulation allowing for undue and unwarranted prosecution of people for harmless activities that have been rescheduled as crimes.

Live and let live

We have too many instances of the force and imposition of various unyielding and ultra-conservative belief systems with extreme tendencies given the weight of the law to force people to be a certain way rather than be themselves and by that be better participants in their communities and societies to the good and better of all.

There is no doubt in my mind that when we not only govern but begin to see, to accept and to celebrate “men as they are and not as they ought to be” having already put in place the systems to ensure none of the vulnerable amongst us comes to harm by reason of our liberties, being fully protected in their rights and privileges and full members of the society they are in, the world will no doubt be a better place.

Opinion: Marriage as a commitment between consenting adults

Changing views

My views about marriage have broadened and liberalised over decades to the point where I am quite easy with the idea that any two consenting adults in love can decide to formalise their relationship with a marriage ceremony.

It is strange that though I have transitioned from High Church Anglican through almost fundamentalist Pentecostal to rather a relapsed and nominally assenting Christian, there were times when I thought divorce was unthinkable or even unforgivable, but with time by understanding human nature more, I have realised no marriage is made in heaven, the partners in a marriage have to work hard at it.

Then again, I will also challenge the young-earth creationist view that appears to put marriage firmly in the docket of a Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic construct. Maybe up half the world follows that belief system, but there are considerably large Asian religious groups, agnostics, atheists, apostates and non-religionists that do not subscribe to the Adam and Eve Genesis mythology of the human race, yet they all seem have a tradition of marriage with all its ceremonies. Religions of the world – Wikipedia.

Marriage is more civil than religious

Love carries a deeper relational context between people, be it between man and woman, man and man or woman and woman, but more broadly, marriage, whilst is still appears to cling to religious apron strings in many societies has long been extricated from the grip and hold of religion.

It is mostly a civil and legal contract of commitment with accoutrements that accrue to it, giving legal standing to the relationship, recognition of next of kin and a partnership that gives a greater say to the spouse over the family in important matters of life and death.

The religious part of marriage has almost become a kind of nostalgia, a sop to the innate spirituality of the participants who generally might not be regular attendees of the religious establishment that grants a blessing to the union.

A matter of equality, respect and dignity

It is in light of this that I welcome the Same-Sex Marriage ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges where James Obergefell sued to have himself recognised as the spousal survivor on his husband’s death certificate.

The majority verdict delivered by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy made a most profound announcement that should once and for all put paid to the culture wars and wedge issues that have long become the staple of conservative American rhetoric and religious disputing.

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfilment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilisation's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgement of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.”

I read this to mean that love is the foundation of marriage regardless of the pairing of genders and it deserves to be treated with respect, dignity and fully honoured by the law of the land.

Just over a month before, Ireland, a recently very Catholic country voted in a referendum that garnered 62% of the votes accepting that, “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”

Fundamentally, marriage as an institution whichever way you view it is rapidly becoming more a subject of recognising a commitment of consenting adults and providing them with all the rights, the privileges and the benefits that such a union entails before the law. It must not be reductively seen in its primary purpose for procreation, else people cannot make choices about having offspring and to be found infertile will seemingly be too unnatural to contemplate, yet life is that different for different people.

Address the matter of consent

More importantly, what we should address is where minors or non-adults are conscripted by mechanisms of religion or custom into marriages outside of their fully informed consent, but coerced by parentage, relations, traditions or customs – such activities generally defined as child marriage can in no way be accepted as a contractual engagement of commitment between consenting adults or an expression of love, no matter how that illicit union eventually turns out.

Then, on the issue where people especially the Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts averred that the majority ruling he dissented to might lead to polygamy, if the question of marriage with the view to equality does not fully enshrine and honour the rights to polyandry too, then polygamy should not have the free run to trample on the marriage commitments of the woman or consign her to sharing her husband if the man will not countenance the idea of sharing his wife.

One to one, on the matter of love and commitment, marriage is a wonderful thing and as James Obergefell did say, he hopes that the term ‘gay marriage’ will soon become a thing of the past as we just default to the simple term, marriage.

Thought Picnic: Living your own life, creating your own norms

Father and son, Justice Oputa and Charles Oputa aka Charlie Boy
Courtesy of Nancy Keshy Ademolu

You do your norms

I happened upon a Twitter firestorm about norms, standards, customs and values. My Nigerian friends were at their sententious best from judgemental through castigation to excoriation, disgust heaped infamy on notoriety, what a sight it was.

Now, it was the difficult case of the son of an establishment figure at his father’s funeral service, where he gave no space for expected norms or decorum that people felt both scandalised and mortified, yet I was unperturbed.

Peace is all

In my view, father and son had made their peace with each other, the father a respected judge, the son an anarchist of sorts, a complete opposite of his father in demeanour and conduct, at 63, still playing tearaway with incredulity. His father knew all that and yet he made no plans to have his funeral conducted by any other than his son as he deems fit.

Beyond that, the funeral services of very important personalities can so easily be gatecrashed by political transients seeking validation through egotistical displays of shameless megalomania. What should be a solemn and sombre occasion can readily descend into farce because of these trashy people. [Information Nigeria]

It can become a protocol nightmare for the family of the deceased, it is probably best to suggest they keep away than have them create a rowdy scene. If the programme does not confer the honour of making a speech, the uppity had rather keep their seats or send in their regrets for not attending.

Trash the norms

In any case, the broader issue was about what was expected and what was observed. The son was never a conformist and the expectation that he would conform to a certain type was at best wishful.

Having broken all the rules of convention, we should have expected the unconventional and that could well be bizarre and lacking in taste, but that was his prerogative and he exercised it to the full.

Many people many not be worthy of example or even close to being role models but as outliers they are bold, courageous and out there, living their own lives happily without a care for what others think about them.

Live your own life

To some, it is almost lascivious, yet it is the ultimate pursuit of happiness and long may we have such amongst us to teach us that we do not have to conform, we can break the rules, jettison the norms and still be well-adjusted and successful people.

The bigger question is, when are we going to begin to live our own lives, the lives we have charted and wished for regardless of what others think they have as influence over us?

The life to choose your own career without sanction, the life to love the one your love without question, the life to live with the full expression of your sexuality without shame, interference or fear, the life to be you and be accepted for who you are.

The themes of tolerance, acceptance, understanding and humanity become the focus as is the need for everyone including ourselves to mind our own business.

Opinion: The Cultural Ghettos of Parenting in Diaspora

I could have been a lawyer

If I had not taken that decision to switch from the liberal arts and social sciences to pure science and mathematics in the second term of the penultimate year of my secondary school education, I might well have become a lawyer with the career path towards becoming a judge.

Nothing excites me more than to read the conclusions of judges when delivering judgements on socially sensitive issues. The clarity of thought that is presented in the simplicity of expression leaves no one in doubt as to the persuasion that inspired their words.

I have worked with lawyers before and any legal drama in television especially Perry Mason has always caught my fascination.

Cultural parenting in Diaspora

Sadly, the cases I will refer to in this blog pertain to parenting issues of immigrant communities in the United Kingdom that need scrutiny and addressing. There have been too many instances of cruelty towards children meted out in brutalisation passing for discipline, honour killings to restore parental honour in their communities, Female Genital Mutilation, witchcraft stigmatisation, bizarre and macabre rituals, to mention just a few.

Parents who have come within the crosshairs of the law have usually claimed racial prejudice and a miscarriage of justice. They protest that they are innocent and though there is nothing on God’s good earth that can justify their actions, the rights their children may not have in their home countries in what we delusionally call 'our culture' are all too well protected in the West.

Children have rights

The first lesson any immigrant parent must learn by observation or through coercion is a child in the West has rights and the State where those rights are found to have been violated will prosecute the parents to the full extent of the law.

Whilst one can understand the fears of parents who have in their own upbringing have been given the big stick and very little carrot. I dare say, the emphasis is more on size of carrot and when it is offered in the West – it can be more than just effective, the relationship that stems from love rather than the duty of parental provision – most Western kids are not unruly, ill-disciplined, uncontrollable and disastrously beyond redemption.

You’re now in Rome

The narrative is the same in many immigrant communities, the parents come from a country with different cultures and practices to live in the West, they have their children born and bred in the West, the children might be aware of their parents' heritage but they are essentially Westerners in mind, outlook, expression and culture.

No amount of community activity apart from the core environment of the home country is going to turn those children into cultural carbon-copies of their parents. As they say, when in Rome, do as Romans do.

Integrate or lose out

Again, one can understand the comfort a sense of community provides people, but like I have written many times before, these communities have a tendency to ghettoise to the extent that they become time-capsules of practices from home countries that probably have been jettisoned decades ago.

Parents who fail to integrate properly in host countries are at risk of first running afoul of the law leaving them unprepared for seriously dire consequences – brutalisation and murder leading to long terms of imprisonment – all of which could have been completely avoidable.

The honest truth is those who fail to integrate end up not being able to cope with the cultural clashes they face and they take out their frustrations on their usually vulnerable children who are caught between the freer world beyond their doors and the hell at their homes – it need not be so.

What horror!

In the case of the Nigerian couple [1] jailed for brutalising their six children, it is a damning indictment of parenthood to have a 9-year old write. “My mum is the worst mum ever because she can’t cope with five of us, her broken hand and being pregnant. She always leaves me out so I always starve and I am forced to work. If I don’t get enough house work done, I am beaten without mercy with the wooden end of a broom. I have scars all over me to prove it. I can’t stay here. I would like a new mum.” Your heart just bleeds. I can honestly say, this is not Nigerian culture, it is just wickedness.

However, the one pertaining to Pakistani parents who murdered [2] their daughter for thwarting their desire to put her into a forced married in what is commonly known as an “honour killing” just shows what many children could face in the West.

Just beyond reason

The Sentencing Remarks [3 PDF] of Mr. Justice Roderick Evans in the case of R v Iftikar Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed should be classic text for the reading of any parent in an immigrant community – what reads as so particular here is as general as you can have an assessment of issues of parenting in Diaspora.

The first question he asks sets the tone for what follows. “What was it that brought you two – her parents, the people who had given her life – to the point of killing her?”

Her father who apparently had lived in the United Kingdom from the age of 10 probably suffered what many multi-cultural kids suffer in being told that they are not this or that enough. Having first married a Danish lady, had issue and even lived in Denmark, there is no doubt that he had adopted Western customs and values until he returned to Pakistan to marry a village girl who appeared to roll back his years of Westernisation to the customs of rural Pakistan.

Pakistan in Warrington

The judge being almost too perceptive for words continues – “You chose to bring up your family in Warrington but, although you lived in Warrington, your social and cultural attitudes were those of rural Pakistan and it was those which you imposed upon your children.”

“Shafilea was a determined, able and ambitious girl who wanted to live a life which was normal in the country and in the town in which you had chosen to live and bring up your children. However, you could not tolerate the life that Shafilea wanted to live.”

The judge clearly identifies with Shafilea here as what you would expect of a child; any child regardless of parental heritage born and bred in the UK. The life she wanted to life was normal for the town and country she lived in and that is where the conflicts with a distant, unknown, strange and alien rural Pakistan of her parents knew began.

“You wanted your family to live in Pakistan in Warrington. Although she went to local schools, you objected to her socialising with girls from what has been referred to as “the white community”. You objected to her wearing western clothes and you objected to her having contact with boys.”

The short paragraph above with what I have highlighted “Pakistan in Warrington” or “Nigeria in Peckham” is a kinder reference to the immigrant ghettos that foist strange and stringent adherence to alien community standards on the parents. The subtext here is that the United Kingdom is a white-majority country, you cannot bring your children up cocooned from that reality and culture.

Children need a reference point

“She was being squeezed between two cultures, the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace and the culture and way of life you wanted to impose upon her.” The children sadly have no reference point for what the parents believe in.

“Your problem was that, in what you referred to as your “community”, Shafilea’s conduct was bringing shame upon you and your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than your love of you (sic) child.”

Therein is the real sad chapter of this heart-rending tale, the willingness of the parents to sacrifice their child on the altar of a belief system or way of life that meant more to them than the love for their child.

To have killed their daughter in the presence of her siblings and successfully used that terror to make them adhere and conform to what was literally an oath of silence for over 7 years is as evil as any parent can get.

In conclusion

For them, I really have no sympathy, there is much else the judge said that could be read in the judgement but the points I want to make are clear.

Parenthood comes with great responsibilities and along with that should be a good understanding of the environment in which your children are growing up. For them to be well-adjusted in their upbringing, it is important that the children recognise in their parents what they also see about them.

Most crucially, the children have rights, rights that will be defended to the utmost by the State; that is part of what civilisation is about, giving everyone born into this world a sense of dignity, pride and respect from the cradle to the grave.

Sources

[1] Nigerian couple who beat their 6 children and gave the baby a morphine overdose jailed. | mailOnline

[2] Shafilea Ahmed's parents jailed for her murder | The Guardian

[3] The Sentencing Remarks of Mr. Justice Roderick Evans in the case of R v Iftikar Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed | Chester Crown Court | Judiciary of England and Wales - PDF

Nigeria: No Gas Mask for the Tear-gas of Corruption

The proposal

We were partners, him twice my age, a lawyer and moving in the big political and business circles that included being one of the directors of the United Bank of Africa.

I came to his notice by reason of work I was doing at a legal publishing firm after he had parted with a princely sum to acquire the Nigerian Supreme Court Cases in 40 volumes, one of his side businesses was a printing press that used conventional methods, he now wanted in on the desktop publishing craze that I had become of the experts of.

We met and talked, I was impressed but never in awe, my demeanour was quite unusual for me because I did not fawn, genuflect unnecessarily and spoken my mind with confidence on my area of expertise.

We agreed to form a company, we called in NextStep Ltd and I was the Technical Director with a 30% stake to optimise the design to printing process of his printing press. It looked like an exciting prospect though it was never one I could devote my full time to, I had many commitments as a consultant.

Taking the next steps

We won a few jobs and began to make some money when we decided the equipment needed upgrading – this all included getting a new computer, a new scanner and software for optical recognition, design and a few other things.

We also agreed that it would be best to get all this stuff from England and we set the ball rolling for that, that was when I noticed that there were many ready to work the system to their advantage in what became a catalogue of corrupt activity.

As a bank director, he had the means to acquire foreign currency beyond the stated limits to be taken out of the country at any one time.

My passport could only be endorsed with £1,515 though we needed £5,000, arrangements were made to get the whole lot and then have me handle just the amount endorsed.

Leeches and fleeces

He had a sister, not qualified for much and she just happened to have a plumb job at the bank in the foreign exchange department, one will not suggest nepotism but there was enough evidence around the place to show that it was rife.

In exchanging Naira to Pounds, she creamed off 20% for herself in cahoots with a few other wolves that included the assistant and somewhat close confidant of her brother. They hated the fact that I would not join in their enterprise to cream off more and still expected me who to their minds was the sudden “interloper” partner of a company I had all the rights to be part of to feather their nests, I refused.

Then I was to travel to the UK with an ex-partner of my partner with whom there was a great falling out years before only to be resolved for the purposes of keeping an eye on me and him being known and I barely known; it did not bother me.

Leave with ease

My getting a visa was easy, I did not need any references, I had enough evidence to prove I was born in the UK and I had legitimate work going on in Nigeria. We had a jovial conversation rather than a tough interview as consulate officer shared jokes about many who had visited with tall tales to tell, it was hilariously shameful.

What probably impressed him most was that I felt I had much to do in Nigeria and just wanted the opportunity to visit the UK at will when I needed to.

Meanwhile, as my air ticket was being arranged, another group of leeches were there to cream off bits for themselves too; they were all just a reprehensibly hungry bunch looking for scraps anywhere money seemed to be present.

At the airport, going through customs, all the money budgeted for what we needed to do, there were official beggars at each stage seeking bribes with seemingly friendly questions asking what I had brought for them.

My passport in her pocket

I got away with a lot just because of my accent, I was firm and probably cheeky by Nigerian standards because I said I believed they were paid to do their jobs and let legitimate passengers through the system without seeking gratuities.

This all worked until I got to the final checkpoint where this pregnant woman took my passport, leafed through the pages and on seeking the endorsement thought she could have some for herself. It so made me angry but what she did was pocket my passport and walk away.

You only pocket someone else’s passport if you are up to no good and since I was not used to any of the obsequiousness that appeals to the egos of abusers of power, I sought my travel companion and pointed out the woman to him to sort out the situation.

He had once worked for the Nigerian Airways and he knew how to pull a few strings though I cannot say what he did, he retrieved my passport as I half cursed that unborn child of a rottenly corrupt woman – how the brood of such can ever turn out right escaped me – that child will be about 23 years old now.

Everyone gets a piece

My companion had his own plan which he executed to perfection in the UK, he had all the VAT receipts paid into his account in London and so everyone walked laughing all the way to the bank whilst I watched the rot that exemplifies Nigeria – corruption is in the fabric of the personification of the country, it is not just in leadership alone.

When I returned from the UK, I gave complete account of how the moneys were spent but all my honesty simply exposed me to criticism from all corners including my partner, he went on post false stories about me to all the contacts we made in the UK after I left Nigeria. The man just had no integrity and thought he could use his powerful status to destroy me, it took a while but by the time I constructed the litany of atrocious behaviour I condoned to my relations, they came to appreciate my side of the story.

My staff in the slammer

Meanwhile, dabbling in the business of selling Christmas cards having joined up with some hustler out of town, his staff stole some of the cards and went selling them around town.

The partner then corralled all staff including mine without the courtesy of informing me and had them locked up. I only heard the next day that they had been in a police cell for the night.

I made for the police station and in my characteristic Un-Nigerian manner told the officer in charge that I will not be leaving the police station without my staff. I took a seat and left the system to work itself out.

In the end, my staff negotiated a fee that I paid in cash and I signed a form that clearly stated that no money had exchanged hands in obtaining the release of my staff – it was the last straw for me.

At that point, I had reached a decision, in all my working life in Nigeria I had been able to evade all the issues with the Nigerian way of doing things, people respected my views and did not expect of me things I was not ready to condone.

Our parting

In the case of this man who literally hated my guts but wanted my genius, it was an uneasy clam that had evolved into a perfect storm.

I will not be talked to in ways I have never been talked to by my parents. I will not have money thrown to me across the table as if I was begging for it; it was like I was putting him through a boot camp of attitude adjustment that he had perfected over years with impunity.

He could not understand why because of what I had in my head I did not bend to his authority like all the others did and I had one answer for him.

“You don’t give a 24 year old 30% of a company and think that is the end of his life; I will throw it away and start all over again somewhere else with even greater success.”

Yes and the postscript to that tale was summed up in the words of a friend. “Akin, when you left NextStep, there were no other steps to be taken.” We could have done something great with that company but there was just no scope for such with the kind of people I had to work with.

That was it

Everyone seems to be steeped in some activity for some sort of corrupt enrichment, even cashing checks at the bank, tellers wanted a cut too apart from those who wanted me to inflate my contract fees to accommodate kickbacks.

It was difficult doing business because rent-seekers were at every turn, if I was in competition for a job with a female; I will not catch the man’s fancy for possible sexual favours. In the end, I told the fixers to pad the numbers as they want but it must not reflect in the invoices I submitted – the straight and narrow just made you look square – the time to leave Nigeria had come and it was done in just 28 days.

Africa: The Spectrum of FGM is NOT homogenous

“Many who before regarded legislation on the subject as chimerical, will now fancy that it is only dangerous, or perhaps not more than difficult. And so in time it will come to be looked on as among the things possible, then among the things probable;–and so at last it will be ranged in the list of those few measures which the country requires as being absolutely needed. That is the way in which public opinion is made.” Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn

Screaming cakes losing the FGM message

At the beginning of the last week, we ran the gauntlet of a travesty masquerading as art; it was art that was tasteless, ignorant, stupid and worthy of excoriation.

Indeed, we need to bring to light the horrors of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or Female Circumcision but there is no excuse to treat this matter with levity and caricature if you have any inkling or knowledge of what it entails, who is affected, how entrenched it is and the obstacles in culture, traditions, norms and values that need to be overcome to consign these acts to oblivion.

Such was the display of utterly, utterly bad art when on a cake made almost to the form of Sarah Baartman [Wikipedia] who in the early 19^th Century was the unfortunate freak show in Europe.

The cake was cut into in Sweden by people who should know better of the suffering of women less fortunate than themselves to their entertainment and the artist with face painted like the cross between a golliwog [Wikipedia] and a piccaninny squealing and crying at each cut in the supposedly virginal area of the cake representing the act of circumcision.

It plumbed the depths of distaste and disgust but more importantly, it drew no attention to FGM or the plight of women who suffer from the debilitating effects of FGM, rather it became an odious platform for the artist, galvanised the global rebuke of the Swedish Culture Minister with a petition online asking for her to apologise for her cretinism to culminate in her resignation.

Mind Of Malaka does this matter the greatest justice with her blog titled Of Cakes and Clitorises.

FGM is NOT a Single Story

Now, I have been engaged in a rather robust discussion on Twitter on the matter of FGM where I have a rather pragmatic approach to the subject.

Having taken a stance on the event of the Swedish cake one should be careful not to be railroaded by what is turning out to be a single narrative of FGM thereby conflating the desired end of FGM with every societal, traditional, religious, economic and social strand as if the practitioners are a homogeneous entity – they are not.

Looking at the prevalence of FGM [Wikipedia] across Africa [Graphic from Wikipedia], the practice cuts across 30 countries from West Africa, through Central to East Africa and veering up to the North of Africa where in Egypt it affects 97% of females but you then wonder why the countries to the West of Egypt that have affinity with its peoples like Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco do not practice FGM.

However, this practice appears to date back to the Pharaonic times, in essence there is a mountain of entrenched traditions and customs behind this activity that might prove immovable even to those with the very best intentions.

Beyond this, each country and within these countries we have communities that implement any of the 4 types of FGM [Wikipedia] cutting with Ethiopia, Gambia and Guinea implementing the most intrusive Type IV mutilation that could affect 73%, 60-90% and 99% of females in those countries respectively.

Whilst Gambia and Guinea are close neighbours in West Africa, Ethiopia is as remote as you can get from West Africa as you wonder about the correlations between these countries.

Tough work ahead

Much as we would that FGM is outlawed, banned, proscribed, abrogated or even criminalised, we are nowhere near seeing that desire in reality, the practice is rife, the practitioners cover a broad spectrum of people from the enlightened to the oblivious and resistance to being sacrificed on the altars of traditions and customs is at best patchy and within relatively minor tribes.

Outlawing FGM in Africa requires political will and concerted efforts at education to persuade the core practitioners of alternatives if possible or ameliorating measures need to be implemented to monitor and regulate the practice.

Applying the political theory of the Overton Window [Wikipedia] to FGM, there are quite a number to whom the prospect of outlawing FGM is unthinkable whilst the cake eaters of Sweden and certain activists on this matter are on the other side of the spectrum where the idea is popular and they are ready to make it policy.

As for so many new ideas because the concept of the eradication of FGM is relatively new by reason of its extant prevalence, the unthinkable has to become radical, then acceptable before it is regarded as sensible from which point it might become popular and consequently it might become policy.

Developing approaches to eradication or regulation

The age-old value systems that aimed to deprive females of sexual expression for the fear that overarching patriarchy might lose complete control of their womenfolk needs to be visited with temperance because the diehards might well prefer to die out than to see needed change threaten their station.

There is no easy solution to this matter and it continues to this present day, girls sacrificed to long held belief systems many put at untenable risk to life, health and welfare – each of these need addressing as much as the aggressive push to make FGM history.

There are proactive and reactive approaches to consider much as some might deign to bludgeon and others might be indifferent. These customs being part of the societal framework of the affected communities has both men and women involved in the propagation of the acts as their norms and no greater purpose is served if any side is castigated as if to blackmail them into submission to the intended goal of the eradication of FGM.

Proactive alternative

On the proactive side, the Guardian newspaper Fighting Back [The Guardian UK] section filmed a documentary about changing attitudes to FGM amongst the Pokot people [Wikipedia] of Kenya where parents, daughters and activists worked towards adopting alternative womanhood initiation rites.

The main thrust of this exercise had to address a number of underlying issues –

• The reassessment of the value of females in those communities.
• The need for the education of females with the promise that they can be of greater significance to their communities than the immediate value of a dowry mostly comprised of cows and beer
• Addressing the apparent sense of loss of a girl is not circumcised and married off
• Addressing the communal stigmatisation that accompanies girls who have refused to be initiated through FGM
• Persuading the elders, men and the community to accommodate new thinking that makes FGM insignificant and unnecessary as a precursor to marriage
• Removing FGM from the process of initiation into womanhood.

One striking thing that came out of the documentary was the recognition that girls who have decided not to follow tradition might harm themselves though it was also encouraging that honour killings prevalent in other societies where the price placed on female chastity is astronomically high did not present itself in the Pokot narrative.

Reactive for safety

On the reactive side, this came as a result of a botched FGM activity [AkinBlog.NL] in Nigeria in 2012 that led to the loss of life by exsanguination – the poor girl bled to death in hospital, the perpetrators being her grandmother and other womenfolk relations having run out of options after crudely mutilating the girl.

It goes without saying that FGM entails radical intrusive surgery outside of professional supervision with crude implements in possibly non-sterile conditions.

What is interesting is the news [The Guardian UK] that as many as 100,000 women in Britain have undergone the FGM procedure. Much as it is illegal in the UK, ethnic minorities who one would expect are enlightened, emancipated, educated and well aware of the complications that do result from FGM procedures are adhering to the practice and are not persuaded of the need to change.

The news story highlights a more interesting development. There is a part of these ethnic minority communities that are concerned about surgical procedures carried out by the unschooled that they have procured the services of medical practitioners to perform the FGM procedure.

In my blog written in February, the death of the girl was preventable if the FGM procedure was not carried out and where I ran the gauntlet of serious opposition and the amazingly implacable was when I suggested that as long as FGM continues to exist in whatever community until it is eradicated, the girls made to suffer such procedures must have at the minimum a safe environment under medical supervision where the procedure is carried out.

Bridging the contrary and the compromise

In my view, this is not to find a workaround that will give FGM a new lease of life halting the drive to have it eradicated but it is to bring the activity under regulation, supervision and safe environments to deal with the immediate complications of administering FGM.

This is by no means comfortable, but the practitioners who have not been persuaded of the need to stop FGM will procure the services wherever they can – it is only sensible and it will be utterly curmudgeonly to refuse girls safe environments for FGM when the battle and the war to abolish FGM is far from won.

I extended that thinking yesterday with the suggestion that FGM education be aggregated into primary healthcare delivery systems and having brought FGM under medical supervision, it offers the opportunity to address this matter as elective surgery with outcomes and consequences all of which must be preceded with levels of counselling, consultation, possible success factors and the repercussions for maternal welfare which can be debilitating on quality of life for the person, her offspring and her community.

In effect, if we are cajoled into adopting a single story on FGM so as to treat it as a homogenous procedure practiced by a non-diverse people of Africa with apparently similar traditions and customs such that activism simply presents an unyielding single solution without working out different compromises for the varied communities that will help those immediately affected, we would be no further than what we saw in Sweden and we might well go up there and eat some cake.

Nigeria: Please Support Project Alert

The appeal

I am writing this blog to ask you to support the work and activities of Project Alert, an NGO that caters for incidences of violence against women in Nigeria.

I believe Nigeria is quite needful of agencies that challenge and address societal, cultural, traditional and religious attitudes that tolerate, condone or encourage the abuse of women and minors. There are too many victims suffering in silence, left in abominable hellish lives because of the stigma of acknowledging problems they have experienced and because the law places undue strain on them giving advantage to perpetrators to terrorise with impunity.

Support for agencies like Project Alert and Prevent Abuse of Children Today (PACT) that I wrote about a few months ago is necessary to ensure that victims of abuse are not permanently damaged without respite, succour or comfort; it is also important that we are able to refer victims to these organisations at the earliest opportunity to get help which might include treatment, counselling, material support or even legal advice – all of which are critical to the healing process.

What you can do

Project Alert requires your support in cash and kind as listed on their Donate page, I hope we can engage some expertise to facilitate an online donation kiosk as well as a courier service to help first as collection points of gifts and then to deliver the gifts to the agency.

• Pledge to support Project Alert
• Help create an online payment kiosk with minimal administrative costs (Pro-bono web gurus?)
• Make material donations to the women’s shelter
• Make cash donations to help run Project Alert
• Offer to ease administrative burdens of collecting and delivering gifts made to Project Alert
• Share information about the services Project Alert offers
• Support activities that promote the rights of women and minors (On blogs, Twitter, Facebook, media, etc. )

Josephine Effah Chukwumah, the Executive Director talks about the activities of Project Alert here and you can find references to Project Alert in the news here.

Project Alert - Contact Details

Ultimately, people need to know they can get help and we all can support those who deploy resources to help. Thank you.

The Backstory

I write a lot and probably do not write enough. However, I have found that much of what I write revolves around human rights; the rights of children, the rights of women, the rights of the poor, injustices, sexual abuse, sexuality and other taboo subjects that need the clear light of day.

The difficult subjects I write about come from my experiences and observations, I may not be able to empathise but I hope that I can at least sympathise with victims of all sorts of abuse and neglect and in the process use my writing to stimulate honest debate and possibly the change that will ensure victims can get help, seek redress and receive justice.

Sharing my own personal experiences has helped me reach out to others who have encountered similar and sometimes more heinous violations of their persons that are beyond description but until we acknowledge the prevalence of these evils we will never be anywhere near being able to help and heal – sometimes, what the other person needs is just someone to believe their story first whilst our society would rather deny the existence of such evils.

Only a few weeks ago, I had someone challenge the notion that boys could be sexually abused, the import being it was more a pleasurable educational experience than a violation of their person and a loss of innocence – only one word could sum up that thinking – IGNORANCE!

My Sex Post

It was just over 5 years ago when some of my blogging friends were writing excited blogs about their first sexual experiences, most of them strove for and lost that innocence in their late teens having exercised curiosity and interest for many years before.

Then, it was customary for these blogs to be written with a template that comprised a series of questions that you had to answer after which you tagged 5 other friends and in the process you socially networked your intimate experiences with boasting and much else.

I was tagged and I did not have the kind of story my friends had to tell, in fact, I could only answer the first question about when I first had sex, the other questions would have been too difficult to answer for a 7-year old even if he had the luxury of putting almost 40 years between that experience and now. [My Sex Post]

We are many, not a few

What surprised me about that blog was the number of people who had had similar experiences as mine, male and female, in the apparent comfort and safety of their homes without anyone to talk to about the violations of their bodies and the loss of their innocence, many still bearing the scars until today.

We need to move on from the constant indifference and denial of the sexual abuse of minors and women in Nigeria and have to appreciate that victims need all the help they can get to deal with paedophiles, incest, rape, harassment, prostitution, battering, mutilation and other unmentionable evils.

If there are other agencies in Nigeria that you know of who address these issues, please do not hesitate to leave a comment.

Thank you.

Thought Picnic: FGM - On my use of "Clitoral Disgust"

Courtesy of UNIVERSAL Health: Female Genital Mutilation in Africa

Why the title?

Soon after publishing my blog about FGM in Nigeria, I entered into discussion about the title I had given the blog with the view that I review the construct and possibly the wording.

FGM in Nigeria: Raze the Abattoirs of Clitoral Disgust

I am sure most of us know what Female Genital Mutilation is, it is also called Female Circumcision and it is evident what the practice entails; the mutilation of female sexual organs.

In coming up with the title, I could have used one of seven easily mentionable names of the object but I chose an adjective which contextually was already attributive and followed that with the noun form rather than the verb form of Disgust to create an adjectival phrase.

This in my view captured the fact that butchering exercise redolent of abattoirs was in traditional disgust of the object that was only mentioned in my blog within the types of FGM that WHO indicated.

Between abattoir and surgery

The use of the word abattoirs cannot be faulted if one views the implements used in this exercise which are by no means surgical by any stretch of the imagination and primitive in the extreme. The victims of FGM do not have the luxury of anaesthesia when then these caveman procedures are done apart from physical restraint and it is unlikely that the practitioners are trained to handle emergencies if they do occur.

If we can move beyond the title which at worst should be forgiven for taking artistic licence and read the story, it is of a girl, Joy Youmgbo who went to visit her grandmother for Christmas, she was mutilated, suffered great agony for days and died a horrific painful death that medical records cited as a result of post-circumcision haemorrhage.

Face up!

We would not have heard of this criminality – and I say criminality because no such operations as cutting the flesh in tender areas, no matter the traditional expertise should ever be conducted outside hospitals, in this day and age – if the other sister had not run away from home in the fear that the same fate might befall her.

Now, this topic is controversial and there are those for and against FGM, in my view, if the practise cannot be stopped, then the theatre of that practice must change.

If FGM must occur then it should only be in hospitals under strict medical supervision all the parties involved having undergone essential counselling and therapy before the decision to cut is made.

In the end, I stand by the title I chose, it in my view conveys the complete context of the blog that follows and the sooner we called a spade, a spade, we can start digging.

Thank you.

Reference

UNIVERSAL Health: Female Genital Mutilation in Africa