[The Sexuality Blog] Monalisa Chinda thinks gendered violence happens because women ‘provoke’ men

You would think that at this point, in September 2017, someone would have at least educated the average Nigerian celebrity on what not to say in a televised interview, or at least the kinds of statement that simply will not stand in polite company. But you would be wrong, because it seems every Nigerian celebrity has something painfully inaccurate and sometimes downright ignorant to say when matters of gender and sexuality come up. But the last person you’d expect to go on an internationally televised interview and shame women would be a Monalisa Chinda-Coker, a celebrity who herself has undergone domestic violence and has been forced to leave a marriage to protect herself and her daughter from abuse, but here we are.

We have affirmed repeatedly that NOTHING, gives anyone the right to physically assault another person. But even more damaging is the assumption that gendered violence only happens between intimate partners. It does not. A good percentage of women are raped by people they only know casually and have no intimate relationship with. Many women are assaulted simply because they refuse to give a man a phone number or pass by him while he is out with his friends. This idea that somehow all physical assault is ‘provoked’ and therefore a justifiable retaliatory response is dead in the water and stupid that someone as supposedly educated as Monalisa Chinda would parrot this lie.

All our celebrities need to do better, they need to educate themselves, act better. But until these their insensitive statements begin to cost them money, they will not learn.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail