The Artistic matriarch;Herself. Just herself.

“The voice of a Black woman should always be herself. No edits – no erasure – no pressure – no expectations – no additions – no intruders.”

MALEBO SEPHODI.

I grew up in an ignorance that ironically existed with the incongruous knowledge, that   whining about how inopportune it was to be a woman, under the guises of feminism was just that- a guise.

It was an ideological form on the surface exhibiting the likeness of a benevolent nature it had nothing to do with. A feminist was deemed indolent, idle and saturated with the obviously detrimental dissonance of “western” ideals that was against all the African culture stood for.  She was indolent and idle because she had the time, despite all that was expected of her, to give into expressions of such abhorrence- the desire for herself  to be more than just the thing she was expected to be.

Feminists for me growing up were a silent warning, blaring instead with the nuances of a failed maturity and development of the female within her society. She was a dangerous societal rebel perpetuating a dangerous and vitally unnecessary counter culture. She was the cancer that didn’t know it was an abnormality. She was the human searching for identity but treacherously beguiled into the belief that anomalous was in fact identity achievement.

The women on the news about something feminist were the few rotten apples that warped the use of education in themselves by the intake of too much information, not to mention abusing the space and freedom of reformative thought, encouraged through education. A woman highly educated was an intimidation and even one of post modernity’s most specific type of Frankenstein’s monster. Her efforts in the name of feminism were a stench the older apples helped the younger apples isolate as emanating from an intellectual rot. As a younger apple, you were to beware the same fate did not befall you.

The incongruences aforementioned however, were rooted in different places, that they grew deep and too close together in to eventually constitute this knowledge, that was indeed mostly ignorance. In this day that is the post-franchising-rights-accorded-to-women era, a woman could be anything if she wanted. The Declaration of Human Rights sufficed for a statement in affirmation of the very existence of human equality.  There wasn’t any need for all the advocacy being shouted from the top of the mountain and into every person’s ear, to let women do what they were already allowed to do. In any case, within society and its culture, there were abilities women had that made their functions exactly what they were good for; to bear children and take care of the home. It’s not like men could have babies. So all this Roe V Wade stuff was definitely ludicrous; a gateway to the complete dissension of all that was reasonable, and all that is humane in society. Nonetheless, society has bent over backward with planned parenthood and convention after convention for the woman. Roe V wade was even passed in her favor.

What more do women want?

I however remember, the mixed reaction we got as children from some grownups when on the one hand a boy said he wanted to be a doctor, and for that he got a pat on the back, and on the other, a girl said she wanted to be the same thing but this time the grown up teared and exclaimed in awe and in sight of the difficult beauty of such an aspiration.

I also remember what the country was like when the headlines announced girls performed better than the boys. The Ministry of Education was always balling and “doing a  great job”. When the boys did better, there wasn’t as much excitement. Like in some way it was an expectation they were ashamed of expecting. Sometimes, a long with such headlines, meetings for “educational reforms” were simultaneously announced.

Within being in a girls’ secondary school for 6 years was the subtle message that for the very fact that we were girls, we had a lot more to prove to the world with our appearance, conduct and performance. It was important to be the best girls’ school and after that better than the other boys’ school.

I feel the confusion even more now as a female artist, when someone goes ahead to say, “Wow, you play the piano and you are girl!” in such genuine bewilderment. Or when you are to perform and you are expected to “entertain” in something  preferably revealing and give the “people” a good time. The boy can keep his shirt on or take it off of he wants, but the girl must make the general contents of her bosom visible. Huh.

If indeed post- franchise-rights-accorded-to-women era, made women able to do whatever they wanted to do, why is there still the shock and resultant resistance towards the woman, when she steps out to do that thing? If the international law governing the world and its constitution of sovereign nations provides a principle agreed by the people of nations that all are equal, why are women in some of these nations viewed as possessions and property and treated as such- unequal?

What were the facts? Are we equal? Or it’s just that we would like for us to be? Because even while we are equal, by such reactions was the presupposition that we weren’t, or in the very least, there was a problem we were having with moving from one thing into the other.

In any case, am I the only one who thinks that when a woman decides she has the right to kill her own unborn children, it is a cry for help from the madness of despair and not just an absurdity that should be dismissed as such? That woman has decided so much that nothing will control her, even her natural ability to have children is indicted as an oppressive control. She feels she has a sort of control when she decides she doesn’t have to have the baby that she already has. She decides a lifestyle where natures consequences are made illusory simply through the exercise of her right to unsee what is to her deemed controlling and inconvenient- her own natural abilities. I can relate with a fear of control if at all this is what this is about.

I need to clarify what I’m saying here.

I am saying that even while a lot has changed for the sake of the woman, not much has.

I think this only because of the existence of such a history and story as that of the woman, is in so many ways still a healing wound and in other places a reminding scar of that very history and story. We are dealing with it in ways we don’t even know we are. It’s the existence of Sauron even after Sauron’s destruction. It is the way he comes back to the present even when he is deemed such a thing of the past.

The grown ups, the teen girls in the secondary girls’ school, the ministry of education, nations, international bodies making laws for women, and that someone with that God awful comment about my artistic abilities, and even the woman marching for the right to kill her unborn children are facing the same reality. They know a history and remember a story that cannot be unknown, unremembered and especially undone. Everyone is dealing with that in their own way. I am too by writing this entry. It is frightening. It can be overwhelming.

But it can be overcome. Not magically made illusory. Not undone. Not unseen. Not ignored.

Overcome.

I am not one with the right to decide what others will do with a weight and remembrance of such a nightmare, or how one will overcome it if in fact it should be overcome. All I know is that for myself, I must begin to accept this background and history that in many unfortunate ways is being repeated and in others still too present in our reactions and thoughts about the woman in the instance that is myself and other women in the arts.

This is why I am for the artistic matriarch. What she is and what she can do for herself, her gender and her community is in the object of healing and acceptance of this story that we can move past, despite its overwhelming and paralyzing memory, or even in the instances of its reincarnation that has sparked up reactions like the “me too” movement.

We can heal and we can heal right. This is why I must celebrate the female artist.

I celebrate the artistic matriarch as much as I celebrate the female athlete, the woman politician, the woman at home taking care of her children and husband, because all these women are being who they are, by in some way being what they can be for themselves and others despite and in spite of their history and story.

I want to celebrate what the woman can be, especially in the instances where she is that thing she actually and essentially is, and where she is leading and guiding and helping those around her and herself out of the fright and existence of such past and present for her sex.

Feminism can be loosely defined as the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of equality of the sexes. Feminism is most often misunderstood by men and women to be a competition, as absurd as a class debate with the motion, “Girls are better than boys.” The girls will go on marches and hold the signs that say “All men are trash.” They will argue the problem is solely patriarchy.  The men will begin the Men’s Rights Movement and deride the women’s right activists. No one will win because no one can. Everyone will just be hurting and alienating the other using they different influences and powers they have over each other.

None is better than the other. None is lesser than the other.

He is himself. Just himself.

She is herself. Just herself.

I believe when Chimamanda says, “We should all be feminists”, she means  that we should be for us all; for women and for men too. It’s just that in some ways, we already are for the men but not for the women, both in light of the woman’s history and story within culture and society over centuries as well as in light of its perpetuation. Maybe in some other ways we are for the women and not for the men. The issue is that in all this, I feel responsibility, duty, right and privilege are blurred into themselves. I’ve seen them blur into my own mind and paralyze me into inaction. I don’t know what those mean to you and what they stand for, but I know that meshed they are an identity achievement impediment. The individual won’t know who they are and so society comprising these individuals won’t know who it is.

We can’t be anything for ourselves. We cant be anything for each other.

We should be for each other.

We are getting through things we don’t even know we are dealing with in our societies and cultures, expressed in what then becomes trend, counter culture and ideology. We move forward through these things, but I feel most of the time we have forgotten where we have come from and further forgotten than nonetheless, we are affected by our stories, even as general but oddly specific and individual as the stories of our genders when it comes to the questions, “What does it mean to be a man? or “What is it to be a woman?”

I believe the existence of an artistic matriarch is sign of potential for the healing of ourselves and society.

Maybe when it isn’t a shock but an expectation that an African woman can direct a movie, win an Oscar, write a TV show, take amazing pictures with a camera, be an actress, play a piano, paint a picture and when she is actually supported and acclaimed for being who she is and doing what she can do, then some sort of healing and a better kind of acceptance will have begun.

Maybe.

Let’s try to begin with celebrating the artistic matriarch and reminding her and ourselves that she is not an anomaly.

She is herself.

Just herself.