“To be submissive, you must be powerful” | 6 takeaways from Jumoke Adenowo’s King Women interview

Access Bank’s Accelerate TV has a webseries – King Women directed by Kemi Adetiba and on Monday on the interwebs, Jumoke Adenowo – award-winning Nigerian architect, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, as well as a speaker, radio host, and author gave a story of her life.

Jumoke Adenowo’s episode of King Women is a punchline fest, all packed with thought-provoking quotables as the renowned architect goes from her life story and into societal concepts. She takes on the ideologies of the Nigerian society that need to be re-examined and even adjusted.

Eloquent and intelligent in disbursing her ideas and ideologies, Jumoke Adenowo is a gem. Sounding off her feminist views, she actually navigates the topic of marriage especially in Africa at a time where feminism in marriages was not really a thing intelligently. It has to be established that not everything is black and white and especially with human relationships and interactions, one shoe does not fit all.

Her episode – Episode 11 is a must watch, but here are a couple of takeaways from the episode.

  1. To be a woman, is to be vile: She recalls an event when she was 37 and was with her husband. In inquisitive fashion, she tried to see the podium better and her husband helped her up by lifting her up to get on the podium. When she was there, a SSS operative looked at her with disgust and asked “Do you see any women here?” Anti-feminists today argue that women don’t need feminism as women are free these days, but the truth is – there remains a prejudice against women in Africa and especially Nigeria and while in communities like the US it’s subtle, Nigerian men very often show their disgust for women.
  2. Women with father figures grow up better and different from women without father figures: Daddy issues are a real thing. Women are usually less assertive and less likely to understand rules and follow them because they lacked their own daddies. While this might seem mild, most women begin to look for a man or daddy in their partners and this leads to terrible dysfunctional relationships where one person is treated like crap and taken for granted.
  3. To be submissive, you must be powerful first: Sitting down when it is suggested or instructed that you have a seat without having your alternative is mere obedience. To be a real KING or QUEEN, you should have your own things covered and locked down. Jumoke Adenowo said she did not mind not having a rich husband because she knew she was going to be rich. Before a person can lay claim to anything, they must first have the power over that thing. Getting a No on a trip when you can’t afford it and staying home is obedience.
  4. Children shouldn’t be made to deal with their parents issues: Mummy married daddy and not you. You do not have to bear the burden of daddy’s infidelities and actions or inactions. Children should be children because they can and should only be children. Most stuck up people today come from backgrounds where they have had to bear the burden of stressful relationships and needed to age because they instantly became backs and psychologists taking up adult roles when they were just children.
  5. The first generation of Nigerian men trying to deal with monogamy might have done a shitty job: Learning feminism, learning and unlearning homophobia as well as learning that the enigma that is Bobrisky should be understood and left alone wasn’t quite difficult for me, but it was a task as is every learning curve. Looking at Nigeria in the past where fathers had at least two wives to the golden age of one wife, the middle class dream must have been steep. Despite going to court and church and getting exposed, men of those days argued that monogamy was not a male thing. While a lot of them tried, a lot of them failed. The outside concubine, the additional wife, the random child that showed up at the burial of the man or during property sharing were still a thing. Even now, Nigerian men are still showing ‘scummy’ tendencies but it might be better. A lot more people know better. Despite not having the perfect one daddy, one mummy template, it’s getting better.
  6. In the early 70’s you couldn’t have one child: What was worse than having no child as a Nigerian woman? Having one child. It showed that the woman was a one hit wonder, a James Blunt, a Theo Walcott. Despite advances in science now, Nigeria is still mostly backward and a woman needs to have more than one child to prove that she is a woman and as a woman, it’s only right that she be useful for breeding and only kitchen purposes. Now, women are taking a stand! Men are becoming feminist allies! People are seeing that relationships are about communication and old templates do nothing but ruin general happiness levels – levels already getting ruined by the state of the world, Nigeria and how sick the naira is in comparison to the dollar.

There are a lot more gems on the video and it is a must watch.

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