bristling with half- baked knowledge from the books we had read.

(Nigerians, as you might know, are very quick to give unsolicited advice.)

At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men And Who Likes To Wear Lip Gloss And High Heels For Herself And Not For Men.

it shows is how that word feminist is so heavy with baggage,

If we do something over and over again, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over again, it becomes normal.

The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative.

What struck me– with her and with many other female American friends I have– is how invested they are in being ‘liked’. How they have been raised to believe that their being likeable is very important and that this ‘likeable’ trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly.

not having a marriage at all– that in our society is much more likely to be used against a woman than against a man.

What if their attitude was not ‘the boy has to pay’, but rather, ‘whoever has more should pay’?

But by far the worst thing we do to males– by making them feel they have to be hard– is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.

I know young women who are under so much pressure– from family, from friends, even from work– to get married that they are pushed to make terrible choices.

But the reality is more difficult, more complex. We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are.

how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.

Cooking, by the way, is a useful and practical life skill for a boy to have. I’ve never thought it made much sense to leave such a crucial thing– the ability to nourish oneself– in the hands of others.

am trying to unlearn many lessons of gender I internalized while growing up.

The sad truth of the matter is that when it comes to appearance, we start off with men as the standard, as the norm. Many of us think that the less feminine a woman appears, the more likely she is to be taken seriously. A man going to a business meeting doesn’t wonder about being taken seriously based on what he is wearing– but a woman does.

The ‘male gaze’, as a shaper of my life’s choices, is largely incidental.

Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender, or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable.

‘Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?’ This type of question is a way of silencing a person’s specific experiences.

Some people will say, ‘Oh, but women have the real power: bottom power.’ (This is a Nigerian expression for a woman who uses her sexuality to get things from men.) But bottom power is not power at all, because the woman with bottom power is actually not powerful; she just has a good route to tap another person’s power.

Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.