#WhenIWas 21 I was horrified by Twitter

Yesterday the Everyday Sexism project started a #WhenIWas thread on twitter which asked (mostly) women and girls to document the sexual harassment they can remember from ages as young as 5 or 6. It exploded on twitter and ended up trending worldwide. Feeling shaken by some of these tweets I decided to cook myself dinner because I find cooking weirdly therapeutic. While I was cooking I turned on my radio, it happened to be tuned into Radio 1’s evening ‘Newsbeat.’ The two top stories were Lily Allen’s interview detailing how she was stalked and consequently victim-blamed by the metropolitan police and the enquiry launched yesterday by the UK government into sexual harassment in schools. A government that, by the way, recently announced that sex education would no longer be compulsory in schools. However, this is not tory-bashing blog post for once it is a reactionary and perhaps emotional call to action:

I already knew that the sexual harassment reported under the #WhenIWas thread existed; of course I did but for some reason it still shocked me. It still shocked and appalled me that girls as young as 10 years old can recall being sexually harassed as they walk down the road in their schools uniforms, it still shocked me that there were almost 20,000 tweets reporting situations where rape was absolutely insinuated. It still shocked me that Lily Allen was essentially told to ‘hush up’ about the way she was victimised and stalked by a man who broke into her home, where her children were sleeping. It still shocked me hearing the reports from teachers and students, female and male, about their experience of sexual harassment in schools. The #WhenIWas tweets revealed just how normalised, prevalent and accepted rape culture is in the UK today and around the world. From telling girls in schools what not to wear on non-uniform day to avoid being ‘distracting’ to boys and teachers to being cat-called on the walk home from school, to being groped in public spaces or sexually assaulted in private ones, these tweets paint a picture of modern Britain that frightens, restricts and angers women. Rightly so.

(N.B. Of course, sexual harassment does not just affect women as a troll so kindly pointed out to me. The #WhileIWas thread predominantly documented and targeted women’s experiences and women do tend to experience harassment more widely. BUT reconceptualising gender roles in regard to sex would also involve removing the stigma and silence that shames men also.)

Everyone remembers the first time they are cat-called walking down the road in their school uniform or groped in a night club. That’s just part of being a girl, right? And everyone remembers the first time they try and speak out about it to ripostes of: “Don’t take yourself so seriously” “It’s a compliment” “Oh boys will be boys” or worse, “Don’t be so frigid.” From the minute to the very extreme, rape culture joins the dots between girls being groped on public transport from as young as 13 years old to grown women being silently raped in their bedrooms. This is not a world where I want to raise a child. In a world that boys are taught that sex and women are public property they are entitled to and girls are taught that their sexuality can be reduced to feeling ‘flattered’ by an old man in a white van honking his horn. I fear for my 17-year-old sister although she’s probably already experienced some of the above, I fear for any young boy assaulted at school and silenced because he ‘got some action’ and ‘should be proud.’ Whilst the enquiry launched by the government is a step in the right direction it is nothing without education. Consent education, sex education, and relationship education. Education that teaches girls and boys not only that to rape or be raped is abhorrent but also that lifting a girls skirt up on the stairs on the bus ‘as a laugh’ or calling boys ‘frigid’ for ignoring advances from their teacher is also wrong. The taboo surrounding sexual harassment in this country must be broken and education is the only way to do that. Only by breaking that taboo and teaching girls and boys, women and men about sex properly and publically will the #WhenIWas horrors be stopped.

Nigeria Decides in the Spectre of Boko Haram

As the results from the Nigerian national election trickle in it looks likely that the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan has been ousted by the ex-military, Muslim APC candidate and anti-corruption advocate: Muhammadu Buhari. He has received the majority in over a third of the states regions including the capital, Abuja. In the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency, security is rightly top of the election agenda. Women’s rights are intrinsically entwined here but rarely mentioned. Boko Haram translates as ‘Western education is sinful’ and as this denotes the group exists to halt the westernisation of the newly secular Nigerian education system and thus create an Islamic Caliphate in Northern Nigeria. They have been active since 2002 but many consider their tactics, particularly the instrumental use of women and women’s oppression to be a modern phenomenon for the group. The Sunni fundamentals recent pledge of allegiance to the Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria is worrying to foreign defence ministers in both the local region and the world around. Furthermore, surrounding countries are currently facing huge refugee influxes as a result of Boko Haram’s progress. It goes without saying that these refugees are predominantly women and children. Buhari has a fight on his hands. Because of and in spite of the rise of Boko Haram, feminism and women’s rights must also top the newly elected ministers priorities. Unfortunately, it has not been at the top of the election agenda and many Nigerian women understand formal political arenas to be patriarchal institutions therefore have no intentions of voting. For instance, it took Jonathan almost 3 weeks to acknowledge the missing Chibok girls and they are nowhere to be seen in election rhetoric.

It is impossible to see this crisis without considering gender, gender stereotypes and gender-based violence. (GBV) Boko Haram’s very modus operandi is the instrumental oppression and violation of women and girls. Once again, women serve as a currency to Boko Haram, a very valuable one. However, with the highest rates of female circumcision in the region and the constant struggle for girls right to education, Boko Haram are not alone in their patriarchal treatment of women. Nevertheless, counter to popular western ideas of the ‘monolithically oppressed African women’ feminism in Nigeria is thriving and although there is only a 8% proportional share of women in the national assembly this does not mean women are keeping quiet about their oppression. What the mainstream news didn’t tell us about this hitch in the election is that as well as problems with anti-corruption election cards, last Sunday a group of some 2000 female anti-corruption APC campaigners protested in the River State. Women’s political agency is alive and well. For the nation often considered the ‘Capital of Africa’ as the largest oil producer and biggest economy in the region it is extremely significant that Nigeria lead the way for women’s rights and the fight against Islamic extremism that targets them. Development should occur only alongside progressive moves in the fight against women’s subordination; particularly the fight against epidemics of FGM and forced marriage in the region.

Not if Boko Haram have anything to do with it. Similar to the Islamic State, the oppression of women and girls is sewn explicitly into the fabric of Boko Haram. Indeed, their initial presence in western media was as a result of the international outrage at the kidnaping of over 200 schoolgirls in 2013. Since then, although the western bandwagon seems to have trailed off the road, hundreds more women and girls have been kidnapped, raped and forced to marry members of the group. Paradoxically, in recent months, Boko Haram have exploited gender stereotypes by dressing themselves as women to commit attacks. Furthermore several of the recent suicide bombers have been women. This poses questions of whether Boko Haram are now recruiting women or whether this is simply another forced violation of women’s lives. The ascendance of Boko Haram can fundamentally be interpreted as an backlash to the rise of feminism and other ‘western ideals’ in Nigeria. The African region becomes increasingly integrated into the rampage of liberal globalisation, despite plighting resource curses and corruption. Alongside this follows a imperialist spread of western ideals. Personally I would not consider equality between men and women to be a ‘western ideal’ and I am sure that the majority of Nigerian women would not either.

Boko Haram absolutely threaten this progress and the election of a new leader in Nigeria could be a turning point in either direction. Whilst Jonathan has in place a Civilian Joint Task Force in Northern Nigeria this does not seem to be quashing the group like he had hoped. The news that the Arab League is developing a military force in the Middle East to counter their threats without Western intervention should serve as an exemplar to the African Union. The outlook for women is dismal given election rhetoric but in the fight against Boko Haram the Nigerian state can only ignore the fight for women’s rights for so long. The future of all Nigerian women and men hangs in the balance. Men are at risk of being killed on suspicion of allegiance to Boko Haram or being forced to have such allegiance and women risk further violation of their bodies and minds.