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Sandra Ezekwesili has an idea of male privileges, but so do women

Sandra Ezekwesili

Before now, we’ve been made to believe that there are certain things men can do which women can’t. These ideas have come from generations ago of conditioning society in favour of men against women – men are allowed to hold powerful positions in society and women compensated with lower ranks.

However, in recent times, women have championed conversations that sought to change the narrative for them. Women have also spoken against ideas that seem to degrade them while making passing comments on privileges that men have endured for centuries.

Today on Twitter, Nigerians are debating Sandra Ezekwesili‘s ideas which spoke loudly on the male privileges women have endured for the longest.

The On-Air Personality had reacted to Nigerian singer, Paul Okoye’s outburst on the #EndSARS media protest that rocked Twitter Sunday, October 4, 2020. Okoye had in his very passionate video, addressed Nigerians to keep up with the energy in calling out the police who have abused the rights of Nigerians in several ways.

The singer made the video with no clothes on his upper body and while everyone took the message and ignored his appearance, (I mean, it was a video made from the comfort of his house) Sandra tweeted: “Male privilege is making a viral shirtless video and having everyone pay attention only to your message.”

As expected, her tweet opened a series of reactions on the micro-blogging platform. Many Nigerians took the opportunity to kick against her ideas with many asking her to lead by example and make videos of herself shirtless in making important statements.

Here are a few reactions:

Depending on how you see it, Sandra’s points are absolutely thought-provoking if you consider that every side of gender has privileges. But Sandra ignoring the entire message to start a motivational note on gender equality goes without saying that the digression was absolutely a distraction from the pressing issue.

Men may have sustained centuries of privileges for their gender, but so have women. We may want to blame society for creating a hypersexualised image of women, especially with certain body parts, but women have also played on some of these derogatory ideas about them for their personal needs.

It is also easy to dismiss female privilege as a silly idea organised by gender apologist – after all, it is wildly believed that men have vast systemic power over women and, because of that, ​“female privilege” over men does not exist.

Depending on how you see it, every gender is aware of their privileges and have at some points used it for their personal gains. Women have shared almost naked photos of themselves on social media to gain the likes and comments, men have said something like ‘well, you know you can count on me for the job because I won’t ever be pregnant.’

However, as a society, we should work towards deconstructing certain ideas that have been branded as norms especially those that are derogatory for both genders.

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