afromatriarch:

*Long post* of Back/African radical feminist critiques of the nuclear family and its relationship to empire and state power. Below I’ll share some excerpts from Black/African women’s writings on the patriarchal nature of the nuclear family and its subordination of women. I will share excerpts from The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970) (United States) as well as Oyeronke Oyewumi’s (West Africa) critique of the nuclear family from an African feminist perspective (although I would not at all describe Oyewumi as a radical feminist, I am specifically focusing on her critique of the nuclear family).

I’ll first start with Kay Lindsey’s The Black Woman as a Woman (1970) in which she perfectly and simply articulates the problems with the nuclear family-state relationship as far as: the ownership of women in marriage, how the nuclear family upholds capitalist systems of exploitation, as well as the control of empire (colonialism and slavery) based on White men extending their power through women’s bodies, and capitalist exploitation of Black people. Her commentary asks why Black people in their emancipation from slavery seek to uphold such a model:

The original sin in this context was the separation of the sexes, which on
the surface appeared to be merely a division of labor, with respect to each sexes capacity to do certain types of work – the fact of childbearing and the supposed physical limitations of the female being the rationalization for this division. This theory cannot be supported in light of the many contradictions in different societies where the roles of men and women are the reverse of the ones which we have known and which have been promoted in our own
lives. A more realistic theory would be that out of the supremely human frustration of attempting to close the gap between our physical limitations and our boundless imaginations, men attempt to co-opt other human beings in order to extend themselves.

The temporary incapacitation of women in pregnancy and childbirth offered men the opportunity to use women as their extensions, and in so doing, devoured the consciousness of women, robbing them of their potential autonomy. From females, men moved on to children; out of this grouping the family evolved. The family and the land on which it lived and cultivated its crops became the man’s property, which was protected and defended against all comers [a person or thing likely to succeed; one showing promise of attaining success: a political comer. Basically, anyone attempting to seize his possessions and take ownership of the means of production]. From protection and defense of his property, man moved on to the seizure of the land of others and his prisoners of war became his slaves. Upon this base, the state evolved and empires were created.

That there are parallels between being a woman and being Black has not been denied, but that there are parallels between the Black woman and the white woman has always been resisted, and the Black woman has been set apart consistently from her white counterpart. We have instead been considered as a special subgroup within the Black community, which Black men should try to deal with as their own private extensions. This is an illusion perpetrated on the Black man in order to deflect him from the task at hand, which is not to create a domestic niche for his woman, but to re-create society at large, a task which involves direct conflict with the white agency, which at the very least would overturn all its institutions, including the family.

The family, as a white institution, has been held up to Blacks as a desirable but somehow unattainable goal, at least not in the pure forms that whites have created. Witness the Black middle class or pseudo-escapees into the mainstream. This group has assumed many of the institutional postures of the oppressor, including the so-called intact family, but even here we find a fantastically high divorce rate and the frustration on this domestic level has increased dissension between individual Black men and women, when it should instead be a signal that something is radically wrong with the model they have chosen to imitate. A latter-day effort, and more superficial for all that, on the part of the white agency is to encourage the acquisition of property among Blacks via Black Capitalism, which, if the idea took hold, would probably serve to further intensify the stranglehold on women as property.

The family has been used by the white agency to perpetuate the state, and Blacks have been used as extensions of the white family, as the prisoners of war enslaved, to do the dirty work of the family, i.e. the state. If the family as an institution were destroyed, the state would be destroyed. If Black people were destroyed, but the family left intact, the basic structure of the state would allow for rebuilding. If all white institutions with the exception of the family were destroyed, the state could also rise again, but Black rather than white.

In Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female (1970) Francis Beal (spelled Beale in the anthology) similarly critiques the nuclear family in relation to capitalism but also looks at the construction of ideal manhood and womanhood, Black male patriarchy, women’s subordination and women’s specific and particular restrictions under such ideals. Like many other Black feminists, in her paper, she speaks about Black liberation movements in which Black men attempted to push Black women into a subordinate and secondary roles under a Black male patriarchy. She also elaborates on how the capitalist and nucleic family framework has affected intra-community Black family relations, in upholding ideals which were/are particularly impossible for Black people to meet:

In keeping with its goal of destroying the Black race’s will to resist its subjugation, capitalism found it necessary to create a situation where the Black man found it impossible to find meaningful or productive employment. More often than not, he couldn’t find work of any kind. And the Black woman likewise was manipulated by the system, economically exploited and physically assaulted. She could often find work in the white man’s kitchen, however, and sometimes became the sole breadwinner of the family. This predicament has led to many psychological problems on the part of both man and woman and has contributed to the turmoil that we find in the Black family structure.

Unfortunately, neither the Black man nor the Black woman understood
the true nature of the forces working upon them. Many Black women tended to accept the capitalist evaluation of manhood and womanhood and believed, in fact, that Black men were shiftless and lazy, otherwise they would get a job and support their families as they ought to. Personal relationships between Black men and women were thus torn asunder and one result has been the separation of man from wife, mother from child, etc.

America has defined the roles to which each individual should subscribe. It has defined ‘manhood’ in terms of its own interests and ‘femininity’ likewise. Therefore, an individual who has a good job, makes a lot of money, and drives a Cadillac is a real ‘man,’ and conversely, an individual who is lacking in these ‘qualities’ is less of a man. The advertising media in this country continuously inform the American male of his need for indispensable signs of his virility the brand of cigarettes that cowboys prefer, the whiskey that has a masculine tang, or the label of the jock strap that athletes wear.

The ideal model that is projected for a woman is to be surrounded by hypocritical homage and estranged from all real work, spending idle hours primping and preening, obsessed with conspicuous consumption, and limiting life’s functions to simply a sex role. We unqualitatively reject these respective models. A woman who stays at home caring for children and the house often leads an extremely sterile existence. She must lead her entire life as a satellite to her mate. He goes out into society and brings back a little piece of the world for her. His interests and his understanding of the world become her own and she cannot develop herself as an individual having been reduced to only a biological function. This kind of woman leads a parasitic existence that can aptly be described as legalized prostitution.

Furthermore it is idle dreaming to think of Black women simply caring for their homes and children like the middle-class white model. Most Black women have to work to help house, feed, and clothe their families. Black women make up a substantial percentage of the Black working force, and this is true for the poorest Black family as well as the so-called ‘middle-class’ family. Black women were never afforded any such phony luxuries. 

Though we have been browbeaten with this white image, the reality of the degrading and dehumanizing jobs that were relegated to us quickly dissipated this mirage of womanhood. The following excerpts from a speech [Ain’t I a Woman?] that Sojourner Truth made at a Women’s Rights Convention in the nineteenth century show us how misleading and incomplete a life this model represents for us:

‘… Well, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be
something out o’ kilter. I tink dat ‘twixt de niggers of de Souf
and de women at de Norf all a talkin’ ‘bout rights, de white
men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all dis here talkin’
‘bout? Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped
into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have de best
place every whar. Nobody ever help me into carriages, or
ober mud puddles, or gives me any best places, … and arn’t
I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! … I have plowed,
and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could
head me-and ar’nt I a woman? I could work as much as a
man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as well – and
ar’nt I a woman? I have borne five chilern and I seen ‘em
mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a
mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard – and ar’nt I a woman?’

[
‘
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I
think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about
rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over
ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages,
or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me!
Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man
could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man –
when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne
thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my
mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?’]

Let me state here and now that the Black woman in America can justly be described as a ‘slave of a slave.’… It must also be pointed out at this time that Black women are pot resentful of the rise to power of Black men. We welcome it. We see in it the eventual liberation of all Black people from this corrupt system of capitalism. Nevertheless, this does not mean that you have to negate one for the other. This kind of thinking is a product of miseducation; that it’s either X or it’s Y. lt is fallacious reasoning that in order for the Black man to be strong, the Black woman has to be weak. Those who are exerting their ‘manhood’ by telling Black women to step back into a domestic, submissive role are assuming a counter-revolutionary position.

This is also directly relates to African feminist critiques of the nuclear family form, specifically Oyeronke Oyewumi’s and Ifi Amadiume’s work, as alien to many cultures and as one which is deeply patriarchal in nature. Oyewumi denies male-female gendered systems were a primary form of power relations in diverse African cultural systems, specifically basing this in West African Yoruba culture. She declares that seniority rather, was the primary system of constructing power relations. I’ll first share an extract of her thoughts on the nuclear family before some of Bibi Bakare-Yusuf’s critique of Oyewumi’s work. From Oyewumi’s Conceptualising Gender (2002):

Gender is first and foremost a socio-cultural construct… In this paper, I want to add another dimension to the reasons why gender must not be taken at face value and specifically to articulate an African critique. First I will explore the original sources of feminist concepts that are the mainstay of gender research? I wish to suggest that feminist concepts are rooted in the nuclear family. This social institution constitutes the very basis of feminist theory and represents the vehicle for the articulation of feminist values. This is in spite of the widespread belief among feminists that their goal is to subvert this male-dominant institution and the belief amongst feminism’s detractors that feminism is anti-family. Despite the fact that feminism has gone global, it is the Western nuclear family that provides the grounding for much of feminist theory. Thus the three central concepts that have been the mainstay of feminism, woman, gender, and sisterhood are only intelligible with careful attention to the nuclear family from which they emerged….

… What is the nuclear family? The nuclear family is a gendered family par excellence. As a single family household, it is centered on a subordinated wife, a patriarchal husband, and children. The structure of the family conceived as having a conjugal unit [husband-wife-children] at the center lends itself to the promotion of gender as a natural and inevitable category because within this family there are no crosscutting categories devoid of it. In a gendered, male-headed two-parent household, the male head is conceived as the breadwinner and the female is associated with home and nurture. Feminist sociologist Nancy Chodorow gives us an account of how the gender division of labor, in the nuclear family in which women mother, sets up different developmental and psychological trajectories for sons and daughters and ultimately produce gender beings and gendered societies.

According to Chodorow: ‘The family division of labor in which women mother gives socially and historically specific meaning to gender itself. The engendering of men and women with particular personalities, needs, defenses, and capacities creates conditions for and contributes to the reproduction of this same division of labor. Thus the fact that women mother inadvertently and inevitably reproduces itself.’ (Chodorow 1978:12).

Gender distinctions are foundational to the establishment and functioning of this family type. Thus, gender is the fundamental organizing principle of the family, and gender distinctions are the primary source of hierarchy and
oppression within the nuclear family. By the same token, gender sameness is the primary source of identification and solidarity in this family type. Thus the daughters self-identify as females with their mother and sisters. Haraway in turn writes: ‘Marriage encapsulated and reproduced antagonistic relation of the two coherent social groups, men and women.’ (Haraway1991:138)

Oyewumi points out that the nuclear family re-produces a gendered hierarchy of male>female in which sons and daughters are raised and socialised. She also stresses that this patriarchal family form is not universal and that feminists also speak to specific, social, cultural and societal frameworks which differ all across the African continent.

This is not to say that patriarchy or male supremacy and male>female power relations as a socio-cultural and economic systems are a Western invention, though some African’s would argue this based on their reading of matriarchy. It would in any case be necessary for something in the culture to exist which values men over women, in order for patriarchy to take such a hold. As Bibi Bakare-Yusuf explains in her critique of Oyewumi’s work:

It makes more sense to assume that there must have been an element within Yoruba culture itself – a ‘cultural fit’ between an unmarked gender ideology in Yoruba society and gender coding in European culture that allowed for easy adaptation of colonial rule. This is not to deny the violent disruption wrought by the colonial processes, rather, it is more the case that cultural actors are more strategic (albeit tacit) in their response to change and innovation… Yoruba society, in all its plurality, already had the potential to absorb external schemas and power dynamics…

…Oyewumi ultimately rejects any form of western categorisation [gender hierarchy of male>female and male-female as basis on which primary social roles are constructed] as inappropriate to different contexts, such as Yoruba society. In this case, gender distinction, as with her highly dubious reference to homosexuality, can only be seen as a ‘western import’. In contrast, the Yoruba society’s polytheistic* form (as I have been arguing) means that it is much more ready to accept and absorb difference than Oyewumi might think… Beneath the surface of language, gender distinctions (as with other allegedly second-order modes of power structure) have always already been at work in Yoruba society; the only thing western discourse has done is to have helped to articulate it and invite more work raising it to a critical discursive plane…

…it is then possible to examine the ways in which gender inequality may yet still exist by other means despite its absence within discourse [Oyewumi bases her rejection of gender inequality on the Yoruba language being non-gendered and sex-neutral, words do not explicitly refer to male or female when naming family, lack of sex-specific pronouns, etc; she also bases her ideas on diverse social, political, spiritual and economic roles historically occupied by both men and women]. Or it maybe that gender demarcation and discrimination on further exploration is relatively absent. 

[However, earlier on in her paper, Bakare-Yusuf explains how female people, girls/women are still situated lower in social hierarchies, even when power relations are primarily based on seniority.]

In this case, the analysis of other social systems may reveal distinctive constellations of power (both as capacity and as constraint). It is however unlikely that a result which privileges one mode of power above all others (such as Oyewumi’s notion of seniority or the feminist reification of gender) will entirely escape a similar form of critique as that staged here, which detects ideological complicity at work in the argument.

Most importantly, we must reject outright any attempt to assign a particular conceptual category as belonging only to the ‘West’ and therefore inapplicable to the African situation. For millennia, Africa has been part of Europe as Europe has been part of Africa and out of this relation, a whole series of borrowed traditions from both sides have been and continues to be brewed and fermented. To deny this inter-cultural exchange and reject all theoretical imports from Europe is to violate the order of knowledge and simultaneously disregard the contribution of various Africans to European cultural and intellectual history and vice-versa. Finally, asserting a polytheistic approach to understanding Yoruba (and other African) social dynamics does not lead to an outright rejection of Oyewumi’s theorisation of seniority. Rather, what is now required is to open up a space where a multiplicity of contradictory existences and conceptual categories can be productively engaged within our theorising. It is in this way that we can understand and maintain Africa and local knowledge in the plural.

*On Yoruba polytheism, Bakare-Yusuf explains:

I will suggest that acknowledging the specific theological-aesthetic horizon of Yoruba culture leads to insights into the structure of Yoruba social dynamics. In contrast to Weber’s protestant monotheism, the Yoruba social system is inherently polytheistic. Polytheism is not simply a plural relation to the spirit-world; rather, deeply inscribed theological imperatives have an organising power that spreads far beyond religious practice [for example, the patriarchy in religion-patriarchy in the rest of society, which is also justified through religious doctrine]. Polytheism engenders a fluid and pragmatic attitude, not just towards gods, but towards all things, categories and concepts.

For me, work on diverse African social systems sheds light on the nuclear family as not some ‘natural’ creation of heterosexual desire, being alien to many other cultures; rejecting this institution is not a rejection of community but of patriarchal control of women and a centralised system of state control through which the state becomes the patriarchal father and operates through the nuclear family, with women as property. Existing and as well as imaginings of societies where women from top to bottom organise their lives outside of male domination and control (which is not the same as saying male supremacy is not at all present), for me, provides a map on how to challenge patriarchal social and economic structures as well as tackle centralised economies which enable the hoarding of welath, land and resources. 

Regardless of debates around gender in African contexts, as an African woman based on the continent (in South Africa – a country by the way), I know/see how women are oppressed on the basis of their physical, biological sex, their race, through European settler colonialism and its relationship to capitalism and White monopoly capital, their same-sex loving lesbian sexual orientation, et cetera. This is our reality and I see Radical African Lesbian Feminism as the best way forward for liberation and thus, it provides the best tools of analysis. 

It would require an alternative and far longer post to unpack debates among African feminist women in regards to male-female-man-woman gendered systems and their historical existence and basis of power dynamics in African societies, especially in relation to Oyewumi’s The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997) and I will not do that here. Considering that I made reference of Oyewumi’s work, I felt it necessary to provide at least one critique, of which there are others. 

You can check my #african feminism tag for more information around these issues. Please don’t hesitate to ask me to explain anything in particular, especially people who do not speak English as a first language!

References:

Bakare-Yusuf, B. 2003. “Yoruba’s Don’t do Gender”: A Critical Review of Oyeronke Oyewumi’s The Invention of
Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. 

Beale, F. 1970. Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female , in The Black Woman: An Anthology, edited by Toni Bambara. New York: Washington Square Press: 109-122

Lindsey, K. 1970. The Black Woman as Woman,
in The Black Woman: An Anthology,
edited by Toni Bambara. New York: Washington Square Press: 103-108.

Oyewumi, O. 2002, Conceptualising Gender: The Eurocentric Foundatoions of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies.

Truth, S. 1851. Ain’t I a Woman?

afromatriarch:

*Long post* of Back/African radical feminist critiques of the nuclear family and its relationship to empire and state power. Below I’ll share some excerpts from Black/African women’s writings on the patriarchal nature of the nuclear family and its subordination of women. I will share excerpts from The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970) (United States) as well as Oyeronke Oyewumi’s (West Africa) critique of the nuclear family from an African feminist perspective (although I would not at all describe Oyewumi as a radical feminist, I am specifically focusing on her critique of the nuclear family).

I’ll first start with Kay Lindsey’s The Black Woman as a Woman (1970) in which she perfectly and simply articulates the problems with the nuclear family-state relationship as far as: the ownership of women in marriage, how the nuclear family upholds capitalist systems of exploitation, as well as the control of empire (colonialism and slavery) based on White men extending their power through women’s bodies, and capitalist exploitation of Black people. Her commentary asks why Black people in their emancipation from slavery seek to uphold such a model:

The original sin in this context was the separation of the sexes, which on
the surface appeared to be merely a division of labor, with respect to each sexes capacity to do certain types of work – the fact of childbearing and the supposed physical limitations of the female being the rationalization for this division. This theory cannot be supported in light of the many contradictions in different societies where the roles of men and women are the reverse of the ones which we have known and which have been promoted in our own
lives. A more realistic theory would be that out of the supremely human frustration of attempting to close the gap between our physical limitations and our boundless imaginations, men attempt to co-opt other human beings in order to extend themselves.

The temporary incapacitation of women in pregnancy and childbirth offered men the opportunity to use women as their extensions, and in so doing, devoured the consciousness of women, robbing them of their potential autonomy. From females, men moved on to children; out of this grouping the family evolved. The family and the land on which it lived and cultivated its crops became the man’s property, which was protected and defended against all comers [a person or thing likely to succeed; one showing promise of attaining success: a political comer. Basically, anyone attempting to seize his possessions and take ownership of the means of production]. From protection and defense of his property, man moved on to the seizure of the land of others and his prisoners of war became his slaves. Upon this base, the state evolved and empires were created.

That there are parallels between being a woman and being Black has not been denied, but that there are parallels between the Black woman and the white woman has always been resisted, and the Black woman has been set apart consistently from her white counterpart. We have instead been considered as a special subgroup within the Black community, which Black men should try to deal with as their own private extensions. This is an illusion perpetrated on the Black man in order to deflect him from the task at hand, which is not to create a domestic niche for his woman, but to re-create society at large, a task which involves direct conflict with the white agency, which at the very least would overturn all its institutions, including the family.

The family, as a white institution, has been held up to Blacks as a desirable but somehow unattainable goal, at least not in the pure forms that whites have created. Witness the Black middle class or pseudo-escapees into the mainstream. This group has assumed many of the institutional postures of the oppressor, including the so-called intact family, but even here we find a fantastically high divorce rate and the frustration on this domestic level has increased dissension between individual Black men and women, when it should instead be a signal that something is radically wrong with the model they have chosen to imitate. A latter-day effort, and more superficial for all that, on the part of the white agency is to encourage the acquisition of property among Blacks via Black Capitalism, which, if the idea took hold, would probably serve to further intensify the stranglehold on women as property.

The family has been used by the white agency to perpetuate the state, and Blacks have been used as extensions of the white family, as the prisoners of war enslaved, to do the dirty work of the family, i.e. the state. If the family as an institution were destroyed, the state would be destroyed. If Black people were destroyed, but the family left intact, the basic structure of the state would allow for rebuilding. If all white institutions with the exception of the family were destroyed, the state could also rise again, but Black rather than white.

In Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female (1970) Francis Beal (spelled Beale in the anthology) similarly critiques the nuclear family in relation to capitalism but also looks at the construction of ideal manhood and womanhood, Black male patriarchy, women’s subordination and women’s specific and particular restrictions under such ideals. Like many other Black feminists, in her paper, she speaks about Black liberation movements in which Black men attempted to push Black women into a subordinate and secondary roles under a Black male patriarchy. She also elaborates on how the capitalist and nucleic family framework has affected intra-community Black family relations, in upholding ideals which were/are particularly impossible for Black people to meet:

In keeping with its goal of destroying the Black race’s will to resist its subjugation, capitalism found it necessary to create a situation where the Black man found it impossible to find meaningful or productive employment. More often than not, he couldn’t find work of any kind. And the Black woman likewise was manipulated by the system, economically exploited and physically assaulted. She could often find work in the white man’s kitchen, however, and sometimes became the sole breadwinner of the family. This predicament has led to many psychological problems on the part of both man and woman and has contributed to the turmoil that we find in the Black family structure.

Unfortunately, neither the Black man nor the Black woman understood
the true nature of the forces working upon them. Many Black women tended to accept the capitalist evaluation of manhood and womanhood and believed, in fact, that Black men were shiftless and lazy, otherwise they would get a job and support their families as they ought to. Personal relationships between Black men and women were thus torn asunder and one result has been the separation of man from wife, mother from child, etc.

America has defined the roles to which each individual should subscribe. It has defined ‘manhood’ in terms of its own interests and ‘femininity’ likewise. Therefore, an individual who has a good job, makes a lot of money, and drives a Cadillac is a real ‘man,’ and conversely, an individual who is lacking in these ‘qualities’ is less of a man. The advertising media in this country continuously inform the American male of his need for indispensable signs of his virility the brand of cigarettes that cowboys prefer, the whiskey that has a masculine tang, or the label of the jock strap that athletes wear.

The ideal model that is projected for a woman is to be surrounded by hypocritical homage and estranged from all real work, spending idle hours primping and preening, obsessed with conspicuous consumption, and limiting life’s functions to simply a sex role. We unqualitatively reject these respective models. A woman who stays at home caring for children and the house often leads an extremely sterile existence. She must lead her entire life as a satellite to her mate. He goes out into society and brings back a little piece of the world for her. His interests and his understanding of the world become her own and she cannot develop herself as an individual having been reduced to only a biological function. This kind of woman leads a parasitic existence that can aptly be described as legalized prostitution.

Furthermore it is idle dreaming to think of Black women simply caring for their homes and children like the middle-class white model. Most Black women have to work to help house, feed, and clothe their families. Black women make up a substantial percentage of the Black working force, and this is true for the poorest Black family as well as the so-called ‘middle-class’ family. Black women were never afforded any such phony luxuries. 

Though we have been browbeaten with this white image, the reality of the degrading and dehumanizing jobs that were relegated to us quickly dissipated this mirage of womanhood. The following excerpts from a speech [Ain’t I a Woman?] that Sojourner Truth made at a Women’s Rights Convention in the nineteenth century show us how misleading and incomplete a life this model represents for us:

‘… Well, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be
something out o’ kilter. I tink dat ‘twixt de niggers of de Souf
and de women at de Norf all a talkin’ ‘bout rights, de white
men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all dis here talkin’
‘bout? Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped
into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have de best
place every whar. Nobody ever help me into carriages, or
ober mud puddles, or gives me any best places, … and arn’t
I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! … I have plowed,
and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could
head me-and ar’nt I a woman? I could work as much as a
man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as well – and
ar’nt I a woman? I have borne five chilern and I seen ‘em
mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a
mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard – and ar’nt I a woman?’

[
‘
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I
think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about
rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over
ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages,
or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me!
Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man
could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man –
when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne
thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my
mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?’]

Let me state here and now that the Black woman in America can justly be described as a ‘slave of a slave.’… It must also be pointed out at this time that Black women are pot resentful of the rise to power of Black men. We welcome it. We see in it the eventual liberation of all Black people from this corrupt system of capitalism. Nevertheless, this does not mean that you have to negate one for the other. This kind of thinking is a product of miseducation; that it’s either X or it’s Y. lt is fallacious reasoning that in order for the Black man to be strong, the Black woman has to be weak. Those who are exerting their ‘manhood’ by telling Black women to step back into a domestic, submissive role are assuming a counter-revolutionary position.

This is also directly relates to African feminist critiques of the nuclear family form, specifically Oyeronke Oyewumi’s and Ifi Amadiume’s work, as alien to many cultures and as one which is deeply patriarchal in nature. Oyewumi denies male-female gendered systems were a primary form of power relations in diverse African cultural systems, specifically basing this in West African Yoruba culture. She declares that seniority rather, was the primary system of constructing power relations. I’ll first share an extract of her thoughts on the nuclear family before some of Bibi Bakare-Yusuf’s critique of Oyewumi’s work. From Oyewumi’s Conceptualising Gender (2002):

Gender is first and foremost a socio-cultural construct… In this paper, I want to add another dimension to the reasons why gender must not be taken at face value and specifically to articulate an African critique. First I will explore the original sources of feminist concepts that are the mainstay of gender research? I wish to suggest that feminist concepts are rooted in the nuclear family. This social institution constitutes the very basis of feminist theory and represents the vehicle for the articulation of feminist values. This is in spite of the widespread belief among feminists that their goal is to subvert this male-dominant institution and the belief amongst feminism’s detractors that feminism is anti-family. Despite the fact that feminism has gone global, it is the Western nuclear family that provides the grounding for much of feminist theory. Thus the three central concepts that have been the mainstay of feminism, woman, gender, and sisterhood are only intelligible with careful attention to the nuclear family from which they emerged….

… What is the nuclear family? The nuclear family is a gendered family par excellence. As a single family household, it is centered on a subordinated wife, a patriarchal husband, and children. The structure of the family conceived as having a conjugal unit [husband-wife-children] at the center lends itself to the promotion of gender as a natural and inevitable category because within this family there are no crosscutting categories devoid of it. In a gendered, male-headed two-parent household, the male head is conceived as the breadwinner and the female is associated with home and nurture. Feminist sociologist Nancy Chodorow gives us an account of how the gender division of labor, in the nuclear family in which women mother, sets up different developmental and psychological trajectories for sons and daughters and ultimately produce gender beings and gendered societies.

According to Chodorow: ‘The family division of labor in which women mother gives socially and historically specific meaning to gender itself. The engendering of men and women with particular personalities, needs, defenses, and capacities creates conditions for and contributes to the reproduction of this same division of labor. Thus the fact that women mother inadvertently and inevitably reproduces itself.’ (Chodorow 1978:12).

Gender distinctions are foundational to the establishment and functioning of this family type. Thus, gender is the fundamental organizing principle of the family, and gender distinctions are the primary source of hierarchy and
oppression within the nuclear family. By the same token, gender sameness is the primary source of identification and solidarity in this family type. Thus the daughters self-identify as females with their mother and sisters. Haraway in turn writes: ‘Marriage encapsulated and reproduced antagonistic relation of the two coherent social groups, men and women.’ (Haraway1991:138)

Oyewumi points out that the nuclear family re-produces a gendered hierarchy of male>female in which sons and daughters are raised and socialised. She also stresses that this patriarchal family form is not universal and that feminists also speak to specific, social, cultural and societal frameworks which differ all across the African continent.

This is not to say that patriarchy or male supremacy and male>female power relations as a socio-cultural and economic systems are a Western invention, though some African’s would argue this based on their reading of matriarchy. It would in any case be necessary for something in the culture to exist which values men over women, in order for patriarchy to take such a hold. As Bibi Bakare-Yusuf explains in her critique of Oyewumi’s work:

It makes more sense to assume that there must have been an element within Yoruba culture itself – a ‘cultural fit’ between an unmarked gender ideology in Yoruba society and gender coding in European culture that allowed for easy adaptation of colonial rule. This is not to deny the violent disruption wrought by the colonial processes, rather, it is more the case that cultural actors are more strategic (albeit tacit) in their response to change and innovation… Yoruba society, in all its plurality, already had the potential to absorb external schemas and power dynamics…

…Oyewumi ultimately rejects any form of western categorisation [gender hierarchy of male>female and male-female as basis on which primary social roles are constructed] as inappropriate to different contexts, such as Yoruba society. In this case, gender distinction, as with her highly dubious reference to homosexuality, can only be seen as a ‘western import’. In contrast, the Yoruba society’s polytheistic* form (as I have been arguing) means that it is much more ready to accept and absorb difference than Oyewumi might think… Beneath the surface of language, gender distinctions (as with other allegedly second-order modes of power structure) have always already been at work in Yoruba society; the only thing western discourse has done is to have helped to articulate it and invite more work raising it to a critical discursive plane…

…it is then possible to examine the ways in which gender inequality may yet still exist by other means despite its absence within discourse [Oyewumi bases her rejection of gender inequality on the Yoruba language being non-gendered and sex-neutral, words do not explicitly refer to male or female when naming family, lack of sex-specific pronouns, etc; she also bases her ideas on diverse social, political, spiritual and economic roles historically occupied by both men and women]. Or it maybe that gender demarcation and discrimination on further exploration is relatively absent. 

[However, earlier on in her paper, Bakare-Yusuf explains how female people, girls/women are still situated lower in social hierarchies, even when power relations are primarily based on seniority.]

In this case, the analysis of other social systems may reveal distinctive constellations of power (both as capacity and as constraint). It is however unlikely that a result which privileges one mode of power above all others (such as Oyewumi’s notion of seniority or the feminist reification of gender) will entirely escape a similar form of critique as that staged here, which detects ideological complicity at work in the argument.

Most importantly, we must reject outright any attempt to assign a particular conceptual category as belonging only to the ‘West’ and therefore inapplicable to the African situation. For millennia, Africa has been part of Europe as Europe has been part of Africa and out of this relation, a whole series of borrowed traditions from both sides have been and continues to be brewed and fermented. To deny this inter-cultural exchange and reject all theoretical imports from Europe is to violate the order of knowledge and simultaneously disregard the contribution of various Africans to European cultural and intellectual history and vice-versa. Finally, asserting a polytheistic approach to understanding Yoruba (and other African) social dynamics does not lead to an outright rejection of Oyewumi’s theorisation of seniority. Rather, what is now required is to open up a space where a multiplicity of contradictory existences and conceptual categories can be productively engaged within our theorising. It is in this way that we can understand and maintain Africa and local knowledge in the plural.

*On Yoruba polytheism, Bakare-Yusuf explains:

I will suggest that acknowledging the specific theological-aesthetic horizon of Yoruba culture leads to insights into the structure of Yoruba social dynamics. In contrast to Weber’s protestant monotheism, the Yoruba social system is inherently polytheistic. Polytheism is not simply a plural relation to the spirit-world; rather, deeply inscribed theological imperatives have an organising power that spreads far beyond religious practice [for example, the patriarchy in religion-patriarchy in the rest of society, which is also justified through religious doctrine]. Polytheism engenders a fluid and pragmatic attitude, not just towards gods, but towards all things, categories and concepts.

For me, work on diverse African social systems sheds light on the nuclear family as not some ‘natural’ creation of heterosexual desire, being alien to many other cultures; rejecting this institution is not a rejection of community but of patriarchal control of women and a centralised system of state control through which the state becomes the patriarchal father and operates through the nuclear family, with women as property. Existing and as well as imaginings of societies where women from top to bottom organise their lives outside of male domination and control (which is not the same as saying male supremacy is not at all present), for me, provides a map on how to challenge patriarchal social and economic structures as well as tackle centralised economies which enable the hoarding of welath, land and resources. 

Regardless of debates around gender in African contexts, as an African woman based on the continent (in South Africa – a country by the way), I know/see how women are oppressed on the basis of their physical, biological sex, their race, through European settler colonialism and its relationship to capitalism and White monopoly capital, their same-sex loving lesbian sexual orientation, et cetera. This is our reality and I see Radical African Lesbian Feminism as the best way forward for liberation and thus, it provides the best tools of analysis. 

It would require an alternative and far longer post to unpack debates among African feminist women in regards to male-female-man-woman gendered systems and their historical existence and basis of power dynamics in African societies, especially in relation to Oyewumi’s The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997) and I will not do that here. Considering that I made reference of Oyewumi’s work, I felt it necessary to provide at least one critique, of which there are others. 

You can check my #african feminism tag for more information around these issues. Please don’t hesitate to ask me to explain anything in particular, especially people who do not speak English as a first language!

References:

Bakare-Yusuf, B. 2003. “Yoruba’s Don’t do Gender”: A Critical Review of Oyeronke Oyewumi’s The Invention of
Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. 

Beale, F. 1970. Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female , in The Black Woman: An Anthology, edited by Toni Bambara. New York: Washington Square Press: 109-122

Lindsey, K. 1970. The Black Woman as Woman,
in The Black Woman: An Anthology,
edited by Toni Bambara. New York: Washington Square Press: 103-108.

Oyewumi, O. 2002, Conceptualising Gender: The Eurocentric Foundatoions of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies.

Truth, S. 1851. Ain’t I a Woman?