WEBVTT 00:00:14.951 --> 00:00:19.378 My brother Chuks and my best friend Ike are part of the organizing team, 00:00:19.378 --> 00:00:23.088 so when they ask me to come, I couldn't say no. 00:00:23.626 --> 00:00:24.859 But I'm so happy to be here. 00:00:24.859 --> 00:00:27.418 What a fantastic team of people who care about Africa 00:00:27.418 --> 00:00:29.948 I feel so humble and so happy to be here. 00:00:29.948 --> 00:00:33.647 And I'm also told that the most beautiful, 00:00:33.647 --> 00:00:36.771 most amazing little girl in the world is in the audience 00:00:36.771 --> 00:00:38.399 her name is Kamzia Adichie 00:00:38.399 --> 00:00:41.533 and I want her to stand up... she's my niece! 00:00:41.533 --> 00:00:46.691 (Applause) 00:00:51.123 --> 00:00:57.485 So, I would like to start by telling you one of my greatest friend, Okuloma. 00:00:57.485 --> 00:00:59.217 Okuloma lived on my street 00:00:59.217 --> 00:01:01.596 and looked after me like a big brother. 00:01:01.596 --> 00:01:06.061 If I liked a boy, I would ask Okuloma's opinion. 00:01:06.061 --> 00:01:09.318 Okuloma died in the notorious Sosoliso Plane Crash 00:01:09.318 --> 00:01:12.575 in Nigeria in December of 2005. 00:01:12.575 --> 00:01:15.832 Almost exactly seven years ago. 00:01:16.063 --> 00:01:21.591 Okuloma was a person I could argue with, laugh with, and truly talk to. 00:01:21.591 --> 00:01:25.078 He was also the first person to call me a feminist. 00:01:25.802 --> 00:01:29.161 I was about fourteen, we were at his house, arguing. 00:01:29.161 --> 00:01:33.165 Both of us bristling with half bit knowledge from books we had read. 00:01:33.165 --> 00:01:36.690 I don't remember what this particular argument was about, 00:01:36.690 --> 00:01:39.589 but I remember that as I argued and argued, 00:01:39.589 --> 00:01:43.988 Okuloma looked at me and said, "You know, you're a feminist." 00:01:43.988 --> 00:01:46.394 It was not a compliment. 00:01:46.856 --> 00:01:50.420 I could tell from his tone, the same tone that you would use to say something like 00:01:50.420 --> 00:01:53.165 "You're a supporter of terrorism." 00:01:53.165 --> 00:01:55.415 (Laughter) 00:01:55.415 --> 00:01:59.245 I did not know exactly what this word "feminist" meant, 00:01:59.245 --> 00:02:02.178 and I did not want Okuloma to know that I did not know, 00:02:02.178 --> 00:02:04.920 so I brushed it aside and I continued to argue. 00:02:04.920 --> 00:02:07.623 And the first thing I planned to do when I got home 00:02:07.623 --> 00:02:10.650 was to look up the word "feminist" in the dictionary. 00:02:10.650 --> 00:02:14.956 Now fast forward to some years later, I wrote a novel 00:02:15.002 --> 00:02:17.561 about a man who among other things beats his wife 00:02:17.561 --> 00:02:20.120 and whose story doesn't end very well. 00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:22.681 While I was promoting the novel in Nigeria, 00:02:22.681 --> 00:02:28.590 a journalist, a nice well-meaning man, told me he wanted to advise me. 00:02:29.405 --> 00:02:32.883 And for the Nigerians here, I'm sure we're all familiar with 00:02:32.883 --> 00:02:38.360 how quick our people are to give unsolicited advice. 00:02:39.436 --> 00:02:43.237 He told me that people were saying that my novel was feminist 00:02:43.237 --> 00:02:45.116 and his advice to me -- 00:02:45.116 --> 00:02:47.519 and he was shaking his head sadly as he spoke -- 00:02:47.519 --> 00:02:50.584 was that I should never call myself a feminist because 00:02:50.584 --> 00:02:54.916 feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands. 00:02:54.934 --> 00:02:58.568 (Laughter) 00:02:59.679 --> 00:03:02.561 So I decided to call myself "a happy feminist." 00:03:03.299 --> 00:03:05.993 Then an academic, a Nigerian woman told me 00:03:05.993 --> 00:03:08.843 that feminism was not our culture and that feminism wasn't African, 00:03:08.843 --> 00:03:11.139 and that I was calling myself a feminist 00:03:11.139 --> 00:03:14.125 because I had been corrupted by "Western books." 00:03:14.125 --> 00:03:17.257 Which amused me, because a lot of my early readings 00:03:17.257 --> 00:03:19.173 were decidedly unfeminist. 00:03:19.173 --> 00:03:21.767 I think I must have read every single Mills & Boon romance 00:03:21.767 --> 00:03:24.169 published before I was sixteen. 00:03:24.169 --> 00:03:26.384 And each time I tried to read those books 00:03:26.384 --> 00:03:28.599 called "the feminist classics" I'd get bored 00:03:28.599 --> 00:03:30.816 and I really struggled to finish them. 00:03:30.816 --> 00:03:33.057 But anyway, since feminism was un-African, 00:03:33.057 --> 00:03:37.390 I decided that I would now call myself "a happy African feminist." 00:03:37.974 --> 00:03:42.241 At some point I was a happy African feminist who does not hate men 00:03:42.241 --> 00:03:43.895 and who likes lip gloss 00:03:43.895 --> 00:03:47.387 and who wears high-heels for herself but not for men. 00:03:48.065 --> 00:03:50.398 Of course a lot of these was tongue-in-cheek, 00:03:50.398 --> 00:03:54.741 but that were feminists so heavy with baggage, negative baggage. 00:03:55.004 --> 00:03:56.652 You hate men, you hate bras, 00:03:56.652 --> 00:03:59.847 you hate African culture, that sort of thing. 00:04:00.463 --> 00:04:02.834 Now here's a story from my childhood. 00:04:03.081 --> 00:04:04.581 When I was in primary school, 00:04:04.581 --> 00:04:09.016 my teacher said at the beginning of term that she would give the class a test 00:04:09.339 --> 00:04:12.519 and whoever got the highest score would be the class monitor. 00:04:12.519 --> 00:04:15.174 Now, class monitor was a big deal. 00:04:15.174 --> 00:04:17.588 If you were a class monitor, 00:04:17.588 --> 00:04:20.881 you got to write down the names of noise makers, 00:04:21.497 --> 00:04:24.456 which was having enough power of its own. 00:04:24.456 --> 00:04:29.234 But my teacher would also give you a cane to hold in your hand 00:04:29.234 --> 00:04:33.251 while you walk around and patrol the class for noise makers. 00:04:33.251 --> 00:04:36.639 Now of course you're not actually allowed to use the cane. 00:04:36.639 --> 00:04:40.557 But it was an exciting prospect for the nine-year-old me. 00:04:40.557 --> 00:04:43.458 I very much wanted to be the class monitor. 00:04:43.458 --> 00:04:45.675 And I got the highest score on the test. 00:04:45.891 --> 00:04:49.613 Then, to my surprise, my teacher said that the monitor had to be a boy. 00:04:50.243 --> 00:04:54.116 She've forgotten to make that clear earlier because she assumed it was... obvious. 00:04:54.146 --> 00:04:56.669 (Laughter) 00:04:56.669 --> 00:04:59.884 A boy had the second highest score on the test 00:04:59.884 --> 00:05:02.415 and he would be monitor. 00:05:02.661 --> 00:05:05.256 Now what was even more interesting about this 00:05:05.256 --> 00:05:08.437 is that the boy was a sweet, gentle soul 00:05:08.437 --> 00:05:12.017 who had no interest in patrolling the class with the cane, 00:05:12.109 --> 00:05:15.565 while I was full of ambition to do so. 00:05:16.581 --> 00:05:18.900 But I was female, and he was male 00:05:18.900 --> 00:05:21.349 and so he became the class monitor. 00:05:21.441 --> 00:05:24.187 And I've never forgotten that incident. 00:05:24.310 --> 00:05:26.986 I often make the mistake of thinking that 00:05:26.986 --> 00:05:29.662 something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else. 00:05:29.662 --> 00:05:32.340 Now, take my dear friend Louis for example. 00:05:32.340 --> 00:05:34.407 Louis is a brilliant, progressive man, 00:05:34.407 --> 00:05:36.851 and we would have conversations and he would tell me, 00:05:36.851 --> 00:05:41.198 "I don't know what you mean by things being different or harder for women. 00:05:41.198 --> 00:05:43.618 Maybe in the past, but not now." 00:05:43.645 --> 00:05:48.224 And I didn't understand how Louis could not see what seems so self-evident. 00:05:48.362 --> 00:05:52.301 Then one evening, in Lagos, Louis and I went out with friends. 00:05:52.301 --> 00:05:54.828 And for people here who are not familiar with Lagos, 00:05:54.828 --> 00:05:57.155 there's that wonderful Lagos' fixture, 00:05:57.155 --> 00:06:01.638 the sprinkling of energetic man who hung around outside establishments 00:06:01.638 --> 00:06:05.243 and very dramatically "help" you park your car. 00:06:06.043 --> 00:06:09.337 I was impressed with the particular theatrics 00:06:09.337 --> 00:06:12.631 of the man who found us a parking spot that evening, 00:06:12.631 --> 00:06:15.927 and so as we were leaving, I decided to leave him a tip. 00:06:16.495 --> 00:06:18.173 I opened my bag, 00:06:18.173 --> 00:06:19.859 put my hand inside my bag, 00:06:19.859 --> 00:06:22.677 brought out my money that I had earned from doing my work, 00:06:22.677 --> 00:06:25.439 and I gave it to the man. 00:06:25.977 --> 00:06:27.117 And he, 00:06:27.117 --> 00:06:30.323 this man who was very grateful, and very happy, 00:06:30.323 --> 00:06:32.345 took the money from me, 00:06:32.345 --> 00:06:34.123 looked across at Louis, 00:06:34.123 --> 00:06:36.094 and said "Thank you, sir!" 00:06:36.094 --> 00:06:41.441 (Laughter) 00:06:41.441 --> 00:06:45.100 Louis looked at me, surprised, and asked 00:06:45.100 --> 00:06:48.969 "Why is he thanking me? I didn't give him the money." 00:06:48.969 --> 00:06:52.838 Then I saw realization dawned on Louis' face. 00:06:52.838 --> 00:06:55.945 The man believed that whatever money I had 00:06:55.945 --> 00:06:59.682 had ultimately come from Louis. 00:06:59.928 --> 00:07:02.159 Because Louis is a man. 00:07:02.805 --> 00:07:04.750 The men and women are different. 00:07:04.750 --> 00:07:07.244 We have different hormones, we have different sexual organs, 00:07:07.244 --> 00:07:10.199 we have different biological abilities, 00:07:10.199 --> 00:07:13.015 women can have babies, men can't. 00:07:13.015 --> 00:07:14.772 At least not yet. 00:07:15.727 --> 00:07:20.382 Men have testosterone and are in general physically stronger than women. 00:07:20.644 --> 00:07:24.020 There's slightly more women than men in the world, 00:07:24.020 --> 00:07:26.888 about 52% of the world's population is female. 00:07:26.888 --> 00:07:30.772 But most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men. 00:07:30.772 --> 00:07:34.336 The late Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate, 00:07:34.351 --> 00:07:37.458 Wangari Maathai, put it simply and well when she said: 00:07:37.458 --> 00:07:41.161 "The higher you go, the fewer women there are." 00:07:41.823 --> 00:07:46.269 In the recent US elections we kept hearing of the Lilly Ledbetter law, 00:07:46.269 --> 00:07:49.917 and if we go beyond the nicely alliterative name of that law, 00:07:49.917 --> 00:07:52.736 it was really about a man and a woman 00:07:52.736 --> 00:07:55.555 doing the same job being equally qualified 00:07:55.555 --> 00:07:58.374 and the man being paid more because he's a man. 00:07:58.374 --> 00:08:01.458 So in the literal way, men rule the world, 00:08:01.458 --> 00:08:04.705 and this made sense a thousand years ago 00:08:04.705 --> 00:08:08.168 because human beings lived then in a world 00:08:08.168 --> 00:08:12.348 in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival. 00:08:12.348 --> 00:08:17.026 The physically stronger person was more likely to lead, 00:08:17.396 --> 00:08:20.533 and men, in general, are physically stronger. 00:08:20.533 --> 00:08:23.366 Of course there are many exceptions. 00:08:23.366 --> 00:08:27.332 But today we live in a vastly different world. 00:08:28.240 --> 00:08:32.150 The person more likely to lead is not the physically stronger person, 00:08:32.150 --> 00:08:35.786 it is the more creative person, the more intelligent person, 00:08:35.786 --> 00:08:37.822 the more innovative person, 00:08:37.822 --> 00:08:40.659 and there are no hormones for those attributes. 00:08:40.659 --> 00:08:43.739 A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, 00:08:43.739 --> 00:08:46.789 to be creative, to be innovative. 00:08:46.789 --> 00:08:51.149 We have evolved; but it seems to me that our ideas of gender had not evolved. 00:08:51.149 --> 00:08:56.068 Some weeks ago I walked into a lobby of one of the best Nigerian hotels. 00:08:56.068 --> 00:08:58.924 I thought about naming the hotel, but I thought I probably shouldn't, 00:08:58.924 --> 00:09:02.981 and a guard at the entrance stopped me and ask me annoying questions, 00:09:04.106 --> 00:09:07.228 because their automatic assumption is that a Nigerian female 00:09:07.228 --> 00:09:10.813 walking into a hotel alone is a sex worker. 00:09:10.813 --> 00:09:12.180 And by the way, 00:09:12.180 --> 00:09:14.666 why do these hotels focus on 00:09:14.666 --> 00:09:19.283 the ostensible supply rather than the demand for sex workers? 00:09:19.822 --> 00:09:25.046 In Lagos I cannot go alone into many "reputable" bars and clubs. 00:09:25.046 --> 00:09:27.251 They just don't let you in if you're a woman alone, 00:09:27.251 --> 00:09:29.504 you have to be accompanied by a man. 00:09:29.890 --> 00:09:32.604 Each time I walk into a Nigerian restaurant with a man, 00:09:32.604 --> 00:09:35.638 the waiter greets the man and ignores me. 00:09:36.438 --> 00:09:39.093 The waiters are products... 00:09:39.293 --> 00:09:41.944 at this some women felt like "Yes! I thought that!" 00:09:41.944 --> 00:09:44.563 The waiters are products of a society that 00:09:44.563 --> 00:09:48.272 has taught them that men are more important than women. 00:09:48.272 --> 00:09:51.282 And I know that waiters don't intend any harm. 00:09:51.282 --> 00:09:55.410 But it's one thing to know intellectually and quite another to feel it emotionally. 00:09:55.410 --> 00:09:57.886 Each time they ignore me, I feel invisible. 00:09:57.886 --> 00:09:59.821 I feel upset. 00:10:00.037 --> 00:10:03.120 I want to tell them I'm just as human as the man, 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:06.358 that I'm just as worthy of acknowledgement. 00:10:06.541 --> 00:10:08.415 These are little things, 00:10:08.415 --> 00:10:11.369 but sometimes it's the little things that sting the most. 00:10:11.369 --> 00:10:14.145 And not long ago I wrote an article 00:10:14.145 --> 00:10:17.094 about what it means to be young and female in Lagos, 00:10:17.094 --> 00:10:20.794 and the printers told me "It was so angry." 00:10:21.086 --> 00:10:23.119 Of course it was angry! 00:10:23.119 --> 00:10:26.194 (Laughter) 00:10:27.069 --> 00:10:28.748 I am angry. 00:10:28.748 --> 00:10:31.870 Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. 00:10:31.870 --> 00:10:33.459 We should all be angry. 00:10:33.459 --> 00:10:37.190 Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change; 00:10:37.190 --> 00:10:40.416 but, in addition to being angry, I'm also hopeful. 00:10:41.051 --> 00:10:43.846 Because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings 00:10:43.846 --> 00:10:46.661 to make and remake themselves for the better. 00:10:46.661 --> 00:10:48.910 Gender matters everywhere in the world, 00:10:48.910 --> 00:10:53.052 but I want to focus on Nigeria and on Africa in general, 00:10:53.052 --> 00:10:55.010 because it is where I know, 00:10:55.010 --> 00:10:56.849 and because it is where my heart is. 00:10:56.849 --> 00:10:58.712 And I would like today to ask 00:10:58.712 --> 00:11:02.459 that we begin to dream about and plan for 00:11:02.459 --> 00:11:06.261 a different world, a fairer world; 00:11:06.261 --> 00:11:08.948 a world of happier men and happier women 00:11:08.948 --> 00:11:11.113 who are truer to themselves. 00:11:11.113 --> 00:11:12.848 And this is how to start: 00:11:12.848 --> 00:11:14.949 we must raise our daughters differently. 00:11:14.949 --> 00:11:17.833 We must also raise our sons differently. 00:11:18.294 --> 00:11:21.419 We do a great disservice to boys on how we raise them; 00:11:21.419 --> 00:11:24.390 we stifle the humanity of boys. 00:11:24.775 --> 00:11:27.490 We define masculinity in a very narrow way, 00:11:27.490 --> 00:11:30.477 masculinity becomes this hard, small cage 00:11:30.477 --> 00:11:33.230 and we put boys inside the cage. 00:11:33.230 --> 00:11:36.097 We teach boys to be afraid of fear. 00:11:36.097 --> 00:11:40.388 We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability. 00:11:40.526 --> 00:11:42.758 We teach them to mask their true selves, 00:11:42.758 --> 00:11:47.659 because they have to be, in Nigerian speak, "hard man!" 00:11:48.626 --> 00:11:52.631 In secondary school, a boy and a girl, both of them teenagers, 00:11:52.631 --> 00:11:55.222 both of them with the same amount of pocket money, 00:11:55.222 --> 00:11:58.521 would go out and then the boy would be expected always 00:11:58.521 --> 00:12:01.752 to pay, to prove his masculinity. 00:12:02.436 --> 00:12:05.158 And yet we wonder why boys are more likely to steal money 00:12:05.158 --> 00:12:07.399 from their parents. 00:12:07.880 --> 00:12:10.602 What if both boys and girls were raised 00:12:10.602 --> 00:12:14.175 not to link masculinity with money? 00:12:14.175 --> 00:12:17.748 What if the attitude was not "the boy has to pay" 00:12:17.748 --> 00:12:21.041 but rather "whoever has more should pay"? 00:12:21.041 --> 00:12:23.804 Now of course because of that historical advantage, 00:12:23.804 --> 00:12:25.997 it is mostly men who will have more today, 00:12:25.997 --> 00:12:28.192 but if we start raising children differently, 00:12:28.192 --> 00:12:30.561 then in fifty years, in a hundred years, 00:12:30.561 --> 00:12:35.455 boys will no longer have the pressure of having to prove this masculinity. 00:12:35.455 --> 00:12:39.025 But by far the worst thing we do to males, 00:12:39.025 --> 00:12:41.335 by making them feel that they have to be hard, 00:12:41.335 --> 00:12:45.167 is that we leave them with very fragile egos. 00:12:45.275 --> 00:12:49.467 The more "hard-man" the man feels compelled to be, 00:12:49.637 --> 00:12:51.742 the weaker his ego is. 00:12:53.128 --> 00:12:56.096 And then we do a much greater disservice to girls 00:12:56.096 --> 00:12:59.953 because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of men. 00:13:00.567 --> 00:13:04.068 We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller, 00:13:04.068 --> 00:13:05.867 we say to girls, 00:13:05.867 --> 00:13:09.284 "You can have ambition, but not too much." 00:13:09.284 --> 00:13:12.469 "You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, 00:13:12.469 --> 00:13:15.197 otherwise you would threaten the man." 00:13:15.197 --> 00:13:17.872 If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, 00:13:17.872 --> 00:13:19.900 you have to pretend that you're not, 00:13:19.900 --> 00:13:24.390 especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him. 00:13:24.974 --> 00:13:27.541 But what if we question the premise itself, 00:13:27.541 --> 00:13:31.560 why should a woman's success be a threat to a man? 00:13:31.560 --> 00:13:35.133 What if we decide to simply dispose of that word, 00:13:35.133 --> 00:13:40.488 and I don't think there's an English word I dislike more than "emasculation." 00:13:40.934 --> 00:13:44.464 A Nigerian acquaintance once asked me if I was worried that 00:13:44.464 --> 00:13:46.847 men would be intimidated by me. 00:13:46.847 --> 00:13:48.688 I was not worried at all. 00:13:48.688 --> 00:13:50.756 In fact it had not occurred to me to be worried because 00:13:50.756 --> 00:13:53.563 a man who would be intimidated by me 00:13:53.563 --> 00:13:57.549 is exactly the kind of man I would have no interest in. 00:13:57.549 --> 00:14:04.535 (Laughter) (Applause) 00:14:04.535 --> 00:14:07.741 But still I was really struck by this. 00:14:07.941 --> 00:14:12.542 Because I'm female, I'm expected to aspire to marriage; 00:14:12.542 --> 00:14:15.182 I'm expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind 00:14:15.182 --> 00:14:17.822 that marriage is the most important. 00:14:17.822 --> 00:14:20.464 A marriage can be a good thing; 00:14:20.464 --> 00:14:24.927 it can be a source of joy and love and mutual support. 00:14:24.927 --> 00:14:27.664 But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage 00:14:27.664 --> 00:14:30.573 and we don't teach boys the same? 00:14:31.080 --> 00:14:33.989 I know a woman who decided to sell her house 00:14:33.989 --> 00:14:37.483 because she didn't want to intimidate a man who might marry her. 00:14:38.222 --> 00:14:42.243 I know an unmarried woman in Nigeria who, when she goes to conferences, 00:14:42.243 --> 00:14:44.232 wears a wedding ring 00:14:44.232 --> 00:14:47.836 because according to her, she wants the other participants in the conference 00:14:47.836 --> 00:14:50.565 to "give her respect." 00:14:50.565 --> 00:14:53.350 I know young women who are under so much pressure 00:14:53.350 --> 00:14:56.505 from family, from friends, even from work to get married 00:14:56.505 --> 00:14:59.477 and they're pushed to make terrible choices. 00:14:59.477 --> 00:15:02.134 A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, 00:15:02.134 --> 00:15:06.946 our society teaches her to see it as a deep, personal failure. 00:15:06.946 --> 00:15:10.366 And a man at a certain age who is unmarried 00:15:10.366 --> 00:15:12.872 we just think he hasn't come around to making his pick. 00:15:12.872 --> 00:15:14.598 (Laughter) 00:15:14.598 --> 00:15:16.716 It's easy for us to say, 00:15:16.716 --> 00:15:18.956 "Oh but women can just say no to all of this", 00:15:18.956 --> 00:15:21.445 But the reality is more difficult and more complex. 00:15:21.445 --> 00:15:23.156 We're all social beings. 00:15:23.156 --> 00:15:25.624 We internalize ideas from our socialization. 00:15:25.624 --> 00:15:28.479 Even the language we use 00:15:28.479 --> 00:15:31.334 in talking about marriage and relationships illustrates this. 00:15:31.334 --> 00:15:34.189 The language of marriage is often the language of ownership 00:15:34.189 --> 00:15:36.690 rather than the language of partnership. 00:15:36.690 --> 00:15:39.737 We use the word "respect" 00:15:39.737 --> 00:15:42.784 to mean something a woman shows a man 00:15:42.784 --> 00:15:45.832 but often not something a man shows a woman. 00:15:46.170 --> 00:15:48.965 Both men and women in Nigeria will say - 00:15:48.965 --> 00:15:51.760 this is an expression I'm very amused by - 00:15:51.760 --> 00:15:54.557 "I did it for peace in my marriage." 00:15:54.557 --> 00:15:56.772 Now when men say it, 00:15:56.772 --> 00:15:59.891 it is usually about something that they should not be doing anyway. 00:15:59.891 --> 00:16:01.730 (Laughter) 00:16:01.730 --> 00:16:04.209 Sometimes they say it to their friends, 00:16:04.209 --> 00:16:07.914 it's something to say to their friends in a kind of fondly exasperated way, 00:16:07.914 --> 00:16:10.813 you know, something that ultimately proves how masculine they are, 00:16:10.813 --> 00:16:12.760 how needed, how loved -- 00:16:12.760 --> 00:16:15.709 "Oh my wife said I can't go to club every night, 00:16:15.709 --> 00:16:18.450 so for peace in my marriage, I do it only on weekends." 00:16:18.450 --> 00:16:20.493 (Laughter) 00:16:20.493 --> 00:16:23.932 Now when a woman says, "I did it for peace in my marriage," 00:16:23.932 --> 00:16:27.327 she's usually talking about having giving up a job, 00:16:27.327 --> 00:16:28.918 a dream, 00:16:28.918 --> 00:16:30.852 a career. 00:16:30.852 --> 00:16:33.882 We teach females that in relationships, 00:16:33.882 --> 00:16:36.912 compromise is what women do. 00:16:36.912 --> 00:16:39.942 We raise girls to see each other as competitors 00:16:39.942 --> 00:16:43.230 not for job or for accomplishments, which I think could be a good thing, 00:16:43.230 --> 00:16:45.440 but for attention of men. 00:16:46.085 --> 00:16:48.907 We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings 00:16:48.907 --> 00:16:51.236 in the way that boys are. 00:16:51.236 --> 00:16:54.551 If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about our sons' girlfriends. 00:16:54.551 --> 00:16:56.855 But our daughters' boyfriends? God forbid. 00:16:56.875 --> 00:16:58.379 (Laughter) 00:16:58.379 --> 00:17:00.293 But of course when the time is right, 00:17:00.293 --> 00:17:04.064 we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husbands. 00:17:04.403 --> 00:17:05.873 We police girls, 00:17:05.873 --> 00:17:07.821 we praise girls for virginity, 00:17:07.821 --> 00:17:09.769 but we don't praise boys for virginity, 00:17:09.769 --> 00:17:12.994 and it's always made me wonder how exactly this is supposed to work out 00:17:12.994 --> 00:17:15.504 because... (Laughter) 00:17:15.766 --> 00:17:23.213 (Applause) 00:17:24.152 --> 00:17:28.867 I mean, the loss of virginity is usually a process that involves... 00:17:28.867 --> 00:17:30.754 Recently a young woman 00:17:30.754 --> 00:17:32.891 was gang raped in a University in Nigeria, 00:17:32.896 --> 00:17:34.730 I think some of us know about that. 00:17:34.730 --> 00:17:36.666 And the response of many young Nigerians, 00:17:36.666 --> 00:17:38.098 both male and female, 00:17:38.098 --> 00:17:40.476 was something along the lines of this: 00:17:40.476 --> 00:17:42.974 "Yes, rape is wrong. 00:17:42.974 --> 00:17:47.019 But what is a girl doing in a room with four boys?" 00:17:47.019 --> 00:17:52.391 Now if we can forget the horrible inhumanity of that response, 00:17:52.391 --> 00:17:57.413 these Nigerians have been raised to think of women as inherently guilty, 00:17:57.736 --> 00:18:01.233 and have been raised to expect so little of men 00:18:01.233 --> 00:18:04.679 that the idea of men as savage beings without any control 00:18:04.679 --> 00:18:06.495 is somehow acceptable. 00:18:06.495 --> 00:18:09.127 We teach girls shame. 00:18:09.127 --> 00:18:11.603 "Close your legs", "Cover yourself". 00:18:11.700 --> 00:18:13.981 We make them feel as though by being born female 00:18:13.981 --> 00:18:16.262 they're already guilty of something. 00:18:16.262 --> 00:18:18.544 And so, girls grow up to be women 00:18:18.544 --> 00:18:20.746 who cannot see they have desire. 00:18:20.746 --> 00:18:24.442 They grow up to be women who silence themselves. 00:18:25.257 --> 00:18:28.516 They grow up to be women who cannot see what they truly think, 00:18:28.516 --> 00:18:30.016 and they grow up - 00:18:30.016 --> 00:18:32.250 and this is the worst thing we did to girls - 00:18:32.270 --> 00:18:36.807 they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form. 00:18:36.807 --> 00:18:42.762 (Applause) 00:18:42.762 --> 00:18:46.126 I know a woman who hates domestic work, 00:18:46.126 --> 00:18:47.479 she just hates it, 00:18:47.479 --> 00:18:49.789 but she pretends that she likes it, 00:18:50.435 --> 00:18:54.333 because she's been taught that to be "good wife material" 00:18:54.333 --> 00:18:58.857 she has to be -- to use that Nigerian word -- very "homely." 00:18:59.625 --> 00:19:00.883 And then she got married, 00:19:00.883 --> 00:19:02.865 and after a while her husband's family 00:19:02.865 --> 00:19:06.635 began to complain that she had changed. 00:19:06.635 --> 00:19:08.237 Actually she had not changed, 00:19:08.237 --> 00:19:10.396 she just got tired of pretending. 00:19:10.873 --> 00:19:13.342 The problem with gender, 00:19:13.342 --> 00:19:16.377 is that it prescribes how we should be 00:19:16.377 --> 00:19:19.195 rather than recognizing how we are. 00:19:19.802 --> 00:19:22.232 Now imagine how much happier we would be, 00:19:22.289 --> 00:19:25.557 how much freer to be our true individual selves, 00:19:25.557 --> 00:19:29.200 if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations. 00:19:29.200 --> 00:19:34.133 Boys and girls are undeniably different biologically, 00:19:34.133 --> 00:19:37.191 but socialization exaggerates the differences 00:19:37.191 --> 00:19:39.685 and then it becomes a self-fulfilling process. 00:19:39.823 --> 00:19:42.171 Now take cooking for example. 00:19:42.171 --> 00:19:45.951 Today women in general are more likely to do the house work than men, 00:19:45.951 --> 00:19:47.302 the cooking and cleaning. 00:19:47.302 --> 00:19:48.874 But why is that? 00:19:48.874 --> 00:19:51.566 Is it because women are born with a cooking gene? 00:19:51.566 --> 00:19:53.358 (Laughter) 00:19:53.358 --> 00:19:56.951 Or because over years they have been socialized to see cooking as their rule? 00:19:57.443 --> 00:20:00.402 Actually I was going to say that maybe women are born with a cooking gene, 00:20:00.402 --> 00:20:04.390 until I remember that the majority of the famous cooks in the world, 00:20:04.390 --> 00:20:06.647 whom we give the fancy title of "chefs," 00:20:06.647 --> 00:20:08.428 are men. 00:20:09.275 --> 00:20:10.857 I used to look up to my grandmother 00:20:10.857 --> 00:20:12.570 who was a brilliant, brilliant woman, 00:20:12.570 --> 00:20:14.736 and wonder how she would have been 00:20:14.736 --> 00:20:18.365 if she had the same opportunity as men when she was growing up. 00:20:19.195 --> 00:20:21.724 Now today, there are many more opportunities for women 00:20:21.724 --> 00:20:23.775 than there were during my grandmother's time 00:20:23.775 --> 00:20:26.661 because of changes in policy, changes in law, 00:20:26.661 --> 00:20:28.466 all of which are very important. 00:20:28.466 --> 00:20:32.435 But what matters even more is our attitude, our mindset, 00:20:32.490 --> 00:20:35.356 what we believe and what we value about gender. 00:20:36.063 --> 00:20:38.408 What if in raising children 00:20:38.408 --> 00:20:41.853 we focus on ability instead of gender? 00:20:41.853 --> 00:20:43.377 What if in raising children 00:20:43.377 --> 00:20:47.152 we focus on interest instead of gender? 00:20:47.152 --> 00:20:49.521 I know a family who have a son and a daughter, 00:20:49.521 --> 00:20:51.196 both of whom are brilliant at school, 00:20:51.196 --> 00:20:53.287 who are wonderful, lovely children. 00:20:53.287 --> 00:20:55.808 When the boy is hungry, the parents say to the girl 00:20:55.808 --> 00:20:58.962 "Go and cook Indomie noodles for your brother." 00:20:58.962 --> 00:21:02.821 Now the daughter doesn't particularly like to cook Indomie noodles, 00:21:02.821 --> 00:21:05.609 but she's a girl, and so she has to. 00:21:05.725 --> 00:21:07.196 Now, what if the parents, 00:21:07.196 --> 00:21:08.465 from the beginning, 00:21:08.465 --> 00:21:14.089 taught both the boy and the girl to cook Indomie? 00:21:14.089 --> 00:21:17.185 Cooking, by the way, is a very useful skill for boys to have. 00:21:17.185 --> 00:21:21.794 I've never thought it made sense to leave such a crucial thing, 00:21:21.794 --> 00:21:25.028 the ability to nourish oneself, 00:21:25.028 --> 00:21:27.316 in the hands of others. 00:21:27.316 --> 00:21:32.055 (Applause) 00:21:32.055 --> 00:21:35.845 I know a woman who has the same degree and the same job as her husband, 00:21:35.845 --> 00:21:38.576 when they get back from work she does most of the house work, 00:21:38.587 --> 00:21:40.972 which I think is true for many marriages, 00:21:40.972 --> 00:21:42.972 But what struck me about them was that 00:21:42.972 --> 00:21:45.539 whenever her husband changed the baby's diaper, 00:21:45.539 --> 00:21:48.446 she said "thank you" to him. 00:21:49.046 --> 00:21:53.750 Now what if she saw this as perfectly normal and natural 00:21:53.750 --> 00:21:57.485 that he should, in fact, care for his child? 00:21:59.592 --> 00:22:03.406 I'm trying to unlearn many of the lessons of gender 00:22:03.406 --> 00:22:05.669 that I internalized when I was growing up. 00:22:05.669 --> 00:22:08.419 But I sometimes still feel very vulnerable 00:22:08.419 --> 00:22:11.169 in the face of gender expectations. 00:22:11.169 --> 00:22:14.258 The first time I taught a writing class in graduate school 00:22:14.258 --> 00:22:15.726 I was worried. 00:22:15.726 --> 00:22:19.254 I wasn't worried about the material I would teach because I was well-prepared 00:22:19.254 --> 00:22:21.483 and I was going to teach what I enjoy teaching. 00:22:21.483 --> 00:22:24.011 Instead, I was worried about what to wear. 00:22:24.811 --> 00:22:26.805 I wanted to be taken seriously. 00:22:27.295 --> 00:22:29.014 I knew that because I was female 00:22:29.014 --> 00:22:32.999 I will automatically have to prove my worth. 00:22:33.461 --> 00:22:35.379 And I was worried if I looked too feminine 00:22:35.379 --> 00:22:37.509 I would not be taken seriously. 00:22:37.540 --> 00:22:41.609 I really wanted to wear my shiny lip gloss and my girly skirt, 00:22:41.686 --> 00:22:43.379 but I decided not to. 00:22:43.379 --> 00:22:45.965 Instead, I wore a very serious, 00:22:45.980 --> 00:22:49.175 very manly, and very ugly suit. 00:22:50.036 --> 00:22:52.666 Because the sad truth is that when it comes to appearance 00:22:52.666 --> 00:22:54.590 we start off with man as the standard, 00:22:54.590 --> 00:22:56.171 as the norm. 00:22:56.202 --> 00:22:58.563 If a man is getting ready for a business meeting 00:22:58.563 --> 00:23:00.421 he doesn't worry about looking too masculine 00:23:00.421 --> 00:23:02.875 and therefore not being taken for granted. 00:23:03.029 --> 00:23:05.835 If a woman has to get ready for business meeting, 00:23:05.835 --> 00:23:09.564 she has to worry about looking too feminine, and what it says 00:23:10.439 --> 00:23:13.429 and whether or not she will be taken seriously. 00:23:14.059 --> 00:23:16.872 I wish I had not worn that ugly suit that day. 00:23:17.272 --> 00:23:20.218 I've actually banished it from my closet, by the way. 00:23:20.724 --> 00:23:25.663 Had I then the confidence that I have now to be myself 00:23:25.663 --> 00:23:28.588 my students would have benefited even more from my teaching, 00:23:28.588 --> 00:23:30.503 because I would have been more comfortable, 00:23:30.503 --> 00:23:33.438 and more fully and more truly myself. 00:23:33.715 --> 00:23:38.133 I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness 00:23:38.163 --> 00:23:40.432 and for my femininity. 00:23:40.432 --> 00:23:46.539 (Applause) 00:23:46.539 --> 00:23:49.810 And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness 00:23:49.810 --> 00:23:52.052 because I deserve to be. 00:23:52.113 --> 00:23:54.745 Gender is not an easy conversation to have. 00:23:55.637 --> 00:23:57.915 For both men and women, 00:23:57.915 --> 00:24:01.493 to bring up gender, sometimes encounters almost immediate resistance. 00:24:01.493 --> 00:24:04.242 I can imagine some people here are actually thinking 00:24:04.242 --> 00:24:06.515 "Women, true to selves? " 00:24:08.407 --> 00:24:10.249 Some of the men here might be thinking 00:24:10.249 --> 00:24:12.306 "Okay, all of this is interesting, 00:24:12.306 --> 00:24:14.784 but I don't think like that." 00:24:14.861 --> 00:24:16.953 And that is part of the problem. 00:24:16.953 --> 00:24:20.157 That many men do not actively think about gender 00:24:20.157 --> 00:24:21.601 or notice gender, 00:24:21.601 --> 00:24:23.707 is part of the problem of gender. 00:24:23.707 --> 00:24:26.219 That many men, say, like my friend Louis, 00:24:26.219 --> 00:24:28.758 that everything is fine now. 00:24:28.758 --> 00:24:32.063 And that many men do nothing to change it. 00:24:32.063 --> 00:24:34.902 If you are a man and you walk into a restaurant with a woman 00:24:34.902 --> 00:24:37.281 and the waiter greets only you, 00:24:37.281 --> 00:24:39.312 does it occur to you to ask the waiter 00:24:39.312 --> 00:24:41.697 "Why haven't you greeted her?" 00:24:43.866 --> 00:24:46.303 Because gender can be... 00:24:47.306 --> 00:24:54.210 (Laughter) 00:24:55.732 --> 00:24:59.383 Actually we may repose part of a longer version of this talk. 00:25:00.306 --> 00:25:03.920 So, because gender can be a very uncomfortable conversation to have, 00:25:03.920 --> 00:25:06.861 there are very easy ways to close it, to close the conversation. 00:25:06.861 --> 00:25:10.101 So some people will bring up evolutionary biology 00:25:10.101 --> 00:25:11.281 and apes, 00:25:11.281 --> 00:25:14.881 how, you know, female apes bow down to male apes 00:25:14.881 --> 00:25:16.603 and that sort of thing. 00:25:16.603 --> 00:25:18.931 But the point is we're not apes. 00:25:18.931 --> 00:25:24.736 (Laughter) (Applause) 00:25:25.685 --> 00:25:30.227 Apes also live on trees and have earth worms for breakfast 00:25:30.227 --> 00:25:31.925 but we don't. 00:25:32.078 --> 00:25:33.393 Some people will say, 00:25:33.393 --> 00:25:36.469 "Well, poor men also have a hard time." 00:25:36.469 --> 00:25:38.665 And this is true. 00:25:38.957 --> 00:25:41.257 But that is not what this... (Laughter) 00:25:41.318 --> 00:25:44.077 But this is not what this conversation is about. 00:25:45.508 --> 00:25:49.214 Gender and class are different forms of oppression. 00:25:49.214 --> 00:25:52.731 I actually learned quite a bit about systems of oppression 00:25:52.731 --> 00:25:55.380 and how they can be blind to one another 00:25:55.380 --> 00:25:57.620 by talking to black men. 00:25:58.420 --> 00:26:01.297 I was once talking to a black man about gender 00:26:01.297 --> 00:26:02.439 and he said to me, 00:26:02.439 --> 00:26:04.358 "Why do you have to say 00:26:04.358 --> 00:26:06.218 'my experience as a woman'? 00:26:06.218 --> 00:26:07.387 why can't it be 00:26:07.387 --> 00:26:10.285 'your experience as a human being'?" 00:26:10.808 --> 00:26:13.088 Now this was the same man who would often talk about 00:26:13.088 --> 00:26:16.006 his experience as a black man. 00:26:18.462 --> 00:26:21.480 Gender matters. Men and women experience the world differently. 00:26:22.029 --> 00:26:24.580 Gender colors the way we experience the world. 00:26:24.580 --> 00:26:27.210 But we can change that. 00:26:27.210 --> 00:26:28.631 Some people will say, 00:26:29.421 --> 00:26:31.925 "Oh but women have the real power, 00:26:31.925 --> 00:26:33.386 bottom power." 00:26:33.386 --> 00:26:36.151 And for non-Nigerians, bottom power is an expression which -- 00:26:36.151 --> 00:26:37.724 I suppose means something like 00:26:37.724 --> 00:26:41.614 a woman who uses her sexuality to get favors from men. 00:26:41.998 --> 00:26:45.421 But bottom power is not power at all. 00:26:46.775 --> 00:26:50.083 Bottom power means that a woman 00:26:50.083 --> 00:26:53.362 simply has a good root to tap into, from time to time, 00:26:53.362 --> 00:26:55.996 somebody else's power. 00:26:56.027 --> 00:26:57.356 And then of course we have to wonder 00:26:57.356 --> 00:26:58.685 what happens when that somebody else is 00:26:58.685 --> 00:27:00.014 in a bad mood, 00:27:00.014 --> 00:27:01.541 or sick, 00:27:01.541 --> 00:27:03.472 or impotent. 00:27:03.472 --> 00:27:07.080 (Laughter) 00:27:07.807 --> 00:27:12.748 Some people will say that a woman being subordinate to a man is our culture. 00:27:13.841 --> 00:27:15.622 But culture is constantly changing. 00:27:15.622 --> 00:27:18.578 I have beautiful twin nieces who are fifteen 00:27:18.578 --> 00:27:19.969 and live in Lagos, 00:27:19.969 --> 00:27:22.853 if they had been born a hundred years ago 00:27:22.863 --> 00:27:25.155 they would have been taken away and killed. 00:27:25.155 --> 00:27:29.427 Because it was our culture, it was our culture to kill twins. 00:27:29.427 --> 00:27:32.222 So what is the point of culture? 00:27:32.361 --> 00:27:33.683 I mean there's the decorative, 00:27:33.683 --> 00:27:35.056 the dancing... 00:27:35.056 --> 00:27:40.285 but also, culture really is about preservation and continuity of a people. 00:27:40.285 --> 00:27:41.402 In my family, 00:27:41.402 --> 00:27:44.657 I am the child who is most interested in the story of who we are, 00:27:44.657 --> 00:27:45.798 in our tradition, 00:27:45.798 --> 00:27:48.111 in the knowledge about ancestral lands. 00:27:48.188 --> 00:27:50.874 My brothers are not as interested as I am. 00:27:50.951 --> 00:27:53.074 But I cannot participate, 00:27:53.074 --> 00:27:54.877 I cannot go to their meetings, 00:27:54.877 --> 00:27:56.680 I cannot have a say. 00:27:56.680 --> 00:27:58.707 Because I'm female. 00:27:58.707 --> 00:28:00.943 Culture does not make people, 00:28:00.943 --> 00:28:02.914 people make culture. 00:28:05.420 --> 00:28:08.014 (Applause) 00:28:09.112 --> 00:28:12.497 So if it's in fact true that the full humanity of women 00:28:12.497 --> 00:28:15.837 is not our culture, then we must make it our culture. 00:28:17.283 --> 00:28:22.149 I think very often of my dear friend Okuloma, 00:28:22.149 --> 00:28:26.847 may he and all the others that passed away in that Sosoliso Crash 00:28:26.847 --> 00:28:29.299 continue to rest in peace. 00:28:29.299 --> 00:28:32.876 He will always be remembered by those of us who loved him. 00:28:33.338 --> 00:28:36.289 And he was right that day many years ago 00:28:36.289 --> 00:28:38.191 when he called me a feminist. 00:28:38.191 --> 00:28:39.989 I am a feminist. 00:28:40.374 --> 00:28:42.508 And when I looked up the word in the dictionary that day, 00:28:42.508 --> 00:28:43.709 this is what it said: 00:28:43.709 --> 00:28:44.964 Feminist, 00:28:44.964 --> 00:28:47.433 a person who believes in the social, political 00:28:47.433 --> 00:28:50.242 and economic equality of the sexes. 00:28:51.239 --> 00:28:52.881 My great grandmother, 00:28:52.881 --> 00:28:54.235 from the stories I've heard, 00:28:54.235 --> 00:28:55.942 was a feminist. 00:28:55.942 --> 00:28:59.235 She ran away from the house of the man she did not want to marry, 00:28:59.235 --> 00:29:02.083 and ended up marrying the man of her choice. 00:29:02.083 --> 00:29:05.166 She refused, she protested, she spoke up 00:29:05.166 --> 00:29:10.546 whenever she felt she's being deprived of access, or land, that sort of thing. 00:29:10.573 --> 00:29:13.756 My great grandmother did not know that word "feminist," 00:29:13.976 --> 00:29:16.733 but it doesn't mean that she wasn't one. 00:29:17.194 --> 00:29:19.859 More of us should reclaim that word. 00:29:20.628 --> 00:29:23.534 My own definition of feminist is: 00:29:24.041 --> 00:29:26.305 a feminist is a man or a woman 00:29:26.305 --> 00:29:28.019 who says - 00:29:28.019 --> 00:29:37.666 (Laughter) (Applause) 00:29:37.666 --> 00:29:40.673 a feminist is a man or a woman who says 00:29:40.673 --> 00:29:44.162 "Yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today, 00:29:44.162 --> 00:29:45.618 and we must fix it. 00:29:45.618 --> 00:29:48.037 We must do better." 00:29:48.867 --> 00:29:50.493 The best feminist I know 00:29:50.493 --> 00:29:52.991 is my brother Kenny. 00:29:53.555 --> 00:29:57.709 He's also a kind, good-looking, lovely man, 00:29:57.709 --> 00:30:00.175 and he's very masculine. 00:30:00.175 --> 00:30:01.651 Thank you. 00:30:01.690 --> 00:30:06.735 (Applause)