I spent the first 10 years of my life in a large family, a family made up, on the one hand, of brothers only (my two sisters did not live with us) and of mother. On the other hand, this family is composed of grandmother and aunts only, the uncles already left home and the grandfather, late. A large concession, an environment “dominated” by women. The only men being me and my twin brother of about ten years and our older brother, barely a decade old. Our house was a bit far from the village, about 2 km, on a main road side. It was in this context that I realized that wearing a penis is synonymous with power:
- My grandmother was a restaurateur. A gentleman came to lunch one day and said to my brothers and me, « So you, little boys, are the bosses of this big house… » And my grandmother answered: « Yes, the man who will come to touch the young ladies is warned… »
- To go at night to the village, my grandmother always insisted that one of the boys accompany the women: « How can you, women, go out at night alone? For her, the presence of a boy, even a very young one, is more reassuring than a hundred of women, whatever their age.
- As we left the main road to take the narrow paths that led to the farms, our farms, the group of women always slowed down to let one of the boys in front lead the group… A little man with a cutter in front of a horde of adult women is a picture that people who passed us admired. And our mother and aunties were proud to show that their boys were « taking their responsibilities… »
These are, among so many others, how my brothers and I were socialized to masculinity and our role as men in relation to women.
Paradoxically, as the only children in the house, and despite the presence of aunts in their twenties in the compound, my brothers and I all did domestic chores including selling vegetables on trays on our heads through the village alleys at dusk on sunny days. On these occasions, the comments of the village women would stick us with various stamps. Some of the women were very complimentary: « You boys are even better than girls… », « Your mother is happy. Your wives will be more… ». Others, with a firm face and a serious voice, threw us: « boys who do this do not often marry… » or « this kind of boys are always lazy, stingy… » This contradiction was, however, temporary (at least in my mind) since finally everything led to believe that my brothers and I were doing the housework on loan. If our sisters were there, the situation would not be the same.
It should be noted that at that time I was the laziest boy in the house (laughs). While the three of us were praised and criticized for our involvement in housework, it was me that my mother criticized and punished the most for my refusal to work in the kitchen…
At the age of 12, the three of us left home for our studies. My brothers and I were no longer together. Personally, my life didn’t change much during the next fifteen years, after which I finished my studies.
In the first years of my professional life, I was (still) convinced (due to the education of the first 10 years) that men are superior to women and that each one has a precise (social) role to play in life, roles that are not interchangeable.
However, a series of facts will influence me without my realizing it.
- I went through the different levels of education (elementary, middle school, high school) with many girls. But when I got to college, I only found 4 out of the more than 100 I met who were my « close » peers. A phenomenon I didn’t understand. And when I looked into it, the answer was that girls are lazy, they don’t like to study, a reason that some of these girls seem to corroborate through their behavior and attitudes towards studies…
- During my university studies, I was a volunteer in a small association managed by one of my aunts, focus on girls’ education. I thought I was there because it was managed by my aunt and I liked social works.
- My aunt was involved in gender equality promotion and had many books on gender in her library. I read a good portion of them. They weren’t great thoughts on gender, just productions of some and women’s unions/organizations. Today, with a lot of hindsight and in the current state of my knowledge and experience, these documents are in fact, more feminine than feminist, with superficial analyses… But I read them anyway and they had their effect.
- In the family law course at the university, the professor went to great lengths to show us the unfortunate situation of married women under the old French law and how the situation evolved until the French civil code (1804) and, since then, until today. I don’t know why but I didn’t like this picture. The beginning of a revolt?
- Then it was the master’s degree in international human rights law. One of the teaching units of the program was women’s rights with developments on violence against women and girls, historical efforts to systematize their rights as well as the conventional mechanisms that protect these rights
All this did not prevent me, in 2011, from posting the following on Facebook: « Woman will be equal to man the day she accepts to be bald and will find it class and distinguished ». However, the revolt in me, in relation to the privileges I have as a man on one hand and against the denial of rights and violence against girls and women, on the other hand, was in gestation. In 2012, I decided to joind Plan International Togo as gender specialist, armed with a solid knowledge of women’s rights and gender equality. It is, to this day, one of the best decisions of my life, because it was the beginning of a long and exciting journey in contributing to children, adolescents and young people gender transformative protection but also of a continuous learning on gender equality and women’s rights. I fell in love with gender equality. Finally, and for now, the graduate degree in gender and development made me who I am: a feminist. Proud to be one.
To be continued…