Any talk of womanhood, especially in grammatically gendered (neo)European languages, puts us into a colosseum of “Western” notions of gender and fe/male, where we lose because the fight is on their terrain, using their terms as faux weapons. Oyèrónké Oyèwùmí has successfully argued the categories of “gender” and “woman” are not cross-culturally inherent in social relations, and remarking how these social construct entering the English language in the late 19th and early 20th century have been used uncritically.[1] In the context of Oyèwùmí’s Yorùbá culture, the category of “woman,” as biologically determined, did not exist until British colonial rule. The Yorùbá language, like the Akan language of Ghana which I speak, are gender-neutral. They do not grammatically declare gender. Cultural context does.
families
Gendered | Intimate | Household | Violence
EssaysCommentBorn into a family, we recreate it so others can cycle in and out. With each entry and exit, we accrue unresolved-ness that plays out in our being and in our family, at times violently. My view is simple: the source of and success against gendered intimate household violence is our families. If Covid-19 exposes, laying bare more than some imagined, the (ill-)health of family discloses intergenerational violence while granting us the tools to expunge it. I’ve digested Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyèwùmí’s The Invention of Women, as well as Tommy Curry’s The Man-Not and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. And yet, I’m unconvinced the central problem is nor can be resolved by focusing on women/girls or men/boys as if contestants in the oppression game—jostling for who is the most oppressed. These approaches seem too schizophrenic and divisive. They fall short because they embody rather than challenge assumptions about the common denominator—gender.