These Nigerians
have been raised to think of women as inherently guilty. And they have been raised to
expect so little of men that the idea of men as savage beings with no self-control is
somehow acceptable.

What if the parents, from the beginning, taught both children to cook Indomie? 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.

Beware of perpetrators in disguise... Some people set fires wherever they go, and have mastered the art of playing the burn victim.

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.

Young women are not putting themselves in danger. The people around them are doing the real damage. Who? you might wonder. The abstinence teacher who tells her students that they'll go to jail if they have premarital sex. The well-founded organization that tells girls on college campuses that they should be looking for a husband, not taking women's studies classes. The judge who rules against a rape survivor because she didn't meet whatever standard for a victim he had in mind. The legislator who pushes a bill to limit young women's access to abortion because he doesn't think they're smart enough to make their own decisions. These are the people who are making the world a worse place, and a more dangerous one, at that, for girls and young women. We're just doing our best to live in it.

Because when there is true equality, resentment does not exist.