To wrap up June, I bring you something I’ve been working on for a few weeks. I’m not sure if this quite falls within the theme of controversy I’ve been working with, but it is a delicate matter I have chosen to tackle with humour.
Without wasting your time, I’ll be ranking real-life sexual harassment lines that have been said to me and other women from bad, to disgusting, to criminal, to downright electric chair-worthy.
I sent out a Google Form to collect additional experiences from other women (whom I refer to as anon in this piece). You can still fill it out here, and if I get enough responses, I might just make a part 2.
This is a word that almost every woman in Nigeria has been called before. If you dress in a way that one random uncouth man does not like, be ready to be called ashewo.
If you ignore a man’s catcalls, you are a prostitute. If you are a successful woman, you must be a prostitute. A married woman who is unable to have kids? You must have been a prostitute before marriage.
A young woman who is not yet married? Surely you must be doing prostitution. This one is so common that I dare say it doesn’t faze most women to be called ‘ashewo’ or ‘prostitute’ again in Nigeria.
This is one of the uncreative things guys say to girls when they refuse to answer their cat calls.
I received this on my anonymous form, and I’m sure almost all girls can attest to the fact that they’ve been a victim of a guy’s attempt at a lame comeback after ignoring his advances.
Guess where they said this one to me? 100 marks for you if you said Yaba.
I was with my best friend on this fine day, and we were walking through the market stalls at Tejuosho when a random man pulled my wrist out of nowhere and said, ‘won’t you say ‘hi’ to daddy?’
I pulled my hand away and responded with the loudest ‘eww’ I have ever said in my life, and then hissed and walked away; meanwhile, the man and his companions were laughing.
An anonymous girl sent this in through my Google form. Apparently, a guy was ogling her boobs as she was walked the streets of Yaba market.
He then asked her ‘come you dey breastfeed?’ to satisfy his curiosity about why her boobs looked the way they did (she wasn’t wearing a bra).
Like many of the other things you will see on this list, this one was said to me at Yaba (that place has traumatised me).
I was walking along the road with my best friend, and as usual, those sellers came to convince me to buy their boyfriend jeans, even though we went there for something completely unrelated.
I told this guy I was not interested a few times and kept walking away, only for him to drag my hand, to which I yelled at him not to touch me.
That was when he made his statement insinuating that I am in no place to tell him or any man not to touch me, since he was sure that I was not a virgin, i.e., I’d already been ‘touched’ by a man. LOL.
I remember this same thing being said to me in slightly different words years ago, when I was about 16 or 17 years old, also at Yaba, by the way.
On this fine day, me and my best friend went to our university sport center to jog a bit. You know. Fit fam and all.
And while we were stretching in preparation for our run, a group of guys walked past us, and they started making jokes about how wide our legs could stretch.
Then one of them decided to advise us to continue stretching to prepare for our honeymoon, and the rest of his friends started cackling.
This also happened at my university sport centre as I and my best friend were entering the gate.
The security guy looked at both of us with lust in his eyes and said something about how he didn’t know which one of us to pick for himself, as if we were his to pick in the first place.
Well, I don’t need to tell you that this is bordering on rape and anyone who says this to someone is a person I would not trust around a woman.
On this day, while I was doing leg raises with my best friend at our university sport center, a guy passed with his friend and said very loudly that my legs would be sweet to spread open.
Okay, so the first part of this one is not necessarily criminal. However, I, and most other women, consider it a threat to our lives when a guy says that he will end up being the one we marry.
Because why are you so sure? Who told you I want to marry you? It’s giving ‘I want to ruin your life.’
But the other part of the sentence is so much worse and is pretty ‘rapey’. It might be shocking to some people, but it is a fairly common thing girls hear.
The line usually goes something like “I go impregnate you now, your body go calm down.” It is said in different contexts, but typically as a threat when a girl turns down a guy’s advances repeatedly.
I received this as one of the submissions on my anonymous google form, and my flabber was ghasted at how blatant this one was.
This girl was on her own, and a guy asked for her number. She refused to give him and he called her a slut (how ironic).
He then proceeded to tell her that if she had been alone, he would have raped her.
“Someone has texted me talking randomly about sucking my breasts and coming over.” - anon
“I was in Yaba market when one masquerade came to use cane to tap my breast” - anon
“I was going to my hostel when this idiot of a security man started toasting me and was threatening to not allow me enter if I didn't do his bidding” - anon
“I was walking in Unilag and talking to my friend about money and joking when a random guy passed by and made a comment about having good "mint" to give me.. ew” - anon
It is easy to laugh at the ridiculousness of some of these, and honestly, sometimes humour is all we have left.
But the truth is: this is the daily reality of Nigerian women.
I put it to you that practically every adult Nigerian woman has experienced verbal and or physical sexual harassment.
At the very least, every woman knows a woman who has experienced this. And we are tired.
These lines aren’t hypothetical. They were said with full confidence to real women who had to walk it off like it was normal.
But there’s nothing normal about having to live your life expecting daily sexual harassment when you go outside.
Existing as a woman shouldn’t feel like consent to public commentary and violation.
I remember being at a workspace full of men when someone played a video of a busty woman being groped in a pool by a crowd of men. They all laughed.
I said it wasn’t funny, and they said I was too sensitive.
Guys need to hold their friends accountable instead of laughing or staying quiet when their friends say these disgusting things.
We need to call out this wretched behaviour wherever and whenever it manifests.
That is the moral lesson. Selah.
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