Anita Hogan: An Apologia (Part 2).

In the first part of my apologia, I attempted to explain and rationalise Anita's action on the basis of its consequence and also on the basis of its intention. And the responses from villagers living in the square of public opinion have midwifed a hitherto unexplored perspective, and that is the unintentional which in a way constitutes the pivotal issue in any controversy.

My point of departure on the second leg of this journey will be a sketchy examination of the fall of woman from grace to grass historically and how everything humanly possible has been done to make her remain under perpetual subjection and oppression. In the beginning, humanity lived in a state of sexual promiscuity, and women as mothers, were the only definitely ascertainable parents of the younger generation. They were treated with a high degree of consideration and respect, which was enhanced to the complete rule of women (matriarchy or gynecocracy). No one doubted feminine superiority when it came to matters of wisdom and insight , of clarity and compassion, of planning and thinking. This was something many men could not imagine. Afterall, didn't women have a direct line to the goddess? Were they not, infact, exact physical replicas of the goddess? And was not the goddess good? Men had to justify their existence, for they had very little importance beyond their ability to fertilize female eggs and move heavy objects. They were very much like worker ants and bees. They did the heavy physical labour, and made sure that children were produced and protected.

When everybody figured out that the men had a role to play in the process of reproduction, however, during the early hunting-gathering times, some of the men pulled off a power-grab, converting the goddesses that were worshipped to gods, and asserting control over the fertility of women the same way they controlled the fertility of a field or a flock of sheep. The men took over, and everything that had been associated with the great goddess had to also undergo a sudden transformation. For example, the horned bull, an ancient symbol associated with the worship of the goddess was transformed into the horned and hoofed devil of christian iconography. The serpent was also a symbol of metarmorphosis which in historic times was identified with the transformative powers of the goddess. Clearly the serpent was too important, too sacred, and too ubiquitous a symbol of the power of the goddess to be ignored. If the old mind was to be refashioned to fit the new system's requirements, the serpent would either have to be appropriated as one of the emblems of the new ruling classes or, alternately, defeated, distorted and discredited. But the most astonishing evidence of the lingering power of the serpent comes to us from the story of Adam's and Eve's fall from the paradise. For it is the serpent who counsels woman to disobey Jehovah and to herself eat from the tree of knowledge, the counsel that to this day is still said to doom humanity to eternal punishmment. The fact that the serpent, an ancient prophetic or oracular symbol of the goddess, advises Eve, the prototypical woman, to disobey a male god's command is surely not just an accident.

The fact that Anita Hogan, an up-and-coming actress had her pictures stolen by a male technician who transferred them to a male blackmailer who sold them to a male-dominated propaganda machine, is also not just an accident. Women will continue to serve as pawns on the chessboard of male chauvinism unless they decide to take the bulls (yes, that same ancient symbol associated with the worship of the goddess) by the horns and emancipate themselves from mental slavery. They can start that today by choosing to listen to Lagbaja's "Who Man?" instead of Fela's "Lady." Woman can be generally broken down to that which produces a body from its body. She is the greatest mystery of creation and the most mystical of all creators who seals the life-giving act with ritualistic mating with her offsprings. It would surprise you to know that the word "motherfucker" contains more than the epithet it is supposed to represent. That is because no one born of a woman can claim not to have had their genitals come in contact with their procreator's. And to imagine that someone had the brazeness of opining that it was a goog thing Anita had a miscarriage because the child would not have been able to live with the shame of her mother's nudity. I must assume naturally that that person is also ashamed that his genitals came in contact with his mother's while he was being given birth to. We came to this world naked; the entryway to life is a womb, and the door is a vagina.

The role played by the media in this game of callous deception, hypocrisy, shameless propaganda and undue sensationalism is not surprising. They have only been living up to and acting out the truth contained in the much hackneyed quoth that the pen is mightier than the sword. We only need to take a look at the most acclaimed tool of the profession: the pen. It is a pointed object like the sword, which is the symbol of male dominance. The pen is also called stylus which shares the same etymology with phallus, another male symbol of dominance. The media is therefore a key instrument for keeping women in subjection to men. It is the main propapanda machine in a male-dominated world for keeping women under men's command. The stylus is mightier than the sword, and yet, in all its magnificence, is dwarfed by the phallus. It is a man's world. Stylus. Sword. Phallus.

By way of concluding this piece, I would want to compare Anita's action of storing her nude pictures to Adam's and Eve's action of partaking of the knowledge of good and evil. It is the greatest single event in the history of Nigerian womanhood. Imagine a scenario in which a horde of naked women have taken to the street to demonstrate against an unpopular action or decision by the petty government of Obasanjo. That will spell and portent eternal doom for the administration. Indeed, the reinterpretation of this most famous of all acts of overcoming the traditional inhibitions imposed on our society in new and more prohuman symbolism is integral to the ideological transformation that must accompany the social, economic, and technological shift from a dominator to a partnership system.

Anita Hogan: An Apologia.

In a society where women are regarded and treated as houseslaves and where additionally the frei körper culture is yet to be consummated, voyeurism is the rule rather than the exception. The eyes of the voyeur, this sick animal that luxuriates in feasting on other people's acts of intimacy, are, unfortunately, ubiquitous. Lovers no longer have any hiding place, husbands and wives no longer have any sense of privacy, laptops no longer have any personal usability, boxers' shorts and G-strings have suddenly become collectors' items. And to imagine that a section of the Fourth Estate of the Realm, the mirror of the society, is enmeshed in the vortex of this voyeuristic fetishism, is indeed discombobulating. It displays a lack of proper understanding of the historical role played by women in the life creation process.

Poor Anita has attracted opprobrium to herself, albeit innocently, and the disvalue of her action of storing images of herself and her inamorata's in the nude on the hard drive of her PERSONAL computer has led to the disparagement of her person on the pages of newspapers. I am happy that the Church, that veritable institution of inveterate Tattufery of morals, has not waded into this matter. Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone. Is it not worthy to note that the whole time Adam and Eve were naked in the garden, they never for once drew God's ire? But the very moment they decided to cover their nakedness was the same instant that God had them expelled from Eden. Was Eden then a nudist colony and God a voyeur? God is and remains the Great Unseen and the Unseen Watcher and Eden was definitely nature at its best. Now here lies the paradox. Adam and Eve -- the mythical names we have given to represent First Man and First Woman -- were naked the whole time until they partook of the knowledge of good and evil. What has been described as the fall of Adam was actually his upliftment --the greatest single event in the history of humankind. For without it, the world of relativity would not exist. The act of Adam and Eve was not original sin, but in truth, first blessing.

Coming to the story of Anita, all she did was to take pictures of herself in nature, within the SAFE confinements of her apartment. The only other person that was present was of course not a television crew or a pornograph shooting outfit, but her lover. Her naivety was in taking her laptop to a technician for repairs without first of all deleting the pictures. She ought to have known better, afterall she is a Nigerian living in Nigeria where anything can happen. The technician and his gang of criminals, voyeurs par excellence, managed to obtain these pictures and circulated them round some media houses because Anita refused to submit to their blackmail. And one of these media organisations responsible for the publication of a seedy and junk newspaper that was already notorious for its journalistic vagabondage, decided to publish the PRIVATE pictures for PUBLIC consumption.

Nobody, I repeat, virtually nobody has come to the defence of this hapless creature, who in the course of time has had to be hospitalised and treated for traumatic depression, and had even experienced a double miscarriage: a miscarriage of justice and a miscarriage of her pregnancy. Almost everybody has been calling for her blood -- her colleagues in Nollywood, the womenfolks, the menfolks, etc. And I see some jealousy in all this spate of condemnations. Male jealousy: " Ha ha, served her right. She didn't consider any of us rather than this uncircumcised caucasian good enough for her." Female jealousy. The women are saying the same thing because the caucasian lover had picked Anita out of the pack. But I am cocksure that if Anita had taken those pictures with a nigerian boyfriend, the whole spectacle would have been dead and buried for good without even providing the comic relief it has so far provided to the pathetic state of the nation in which our leaders are as bad as their followers. I am also quite sure that Anita did not pose in the nude because her boyfriend was white; she would have done the same thing if she had a Nigerian boyfriend. To cut a long story short, she did it for love. I know many Nigerians out there who will not do such a thing for love's sake, but just to satisfy their concupiscence. There is this notorious abortionist who will not terminate an unwanted pregnancy without first of all going to bed with the patient with a camera at hand. What is love? Maybe love is that longing which dwells in the hearts of men for that thing in women which makes the former conscienceless and uncontrollable. Maybe not.

THE SECOND YEAR ANNIVERSARY.(Part 2)

It is true that one of the mysteries of life is the way bad luck comes in clusters. Barely a month after my mother made the journey to a new city in another dimension of life, her husband of so many years, Thomas Omorodion Agho, my father, the kindest, best and bravest of men whose stock-in-trade was his self reliance, also got transsubstantiated. From the myriad of hypotheses rationalising what to many people seemed unnatural, I now deduce a conclusive conclusion: that it is impossible to sever the umbilical cord bonding two entities that God in His, Her, It's infinite wisdom has decided to bind together.

My parents were like brother and sister and it was impossible to drive a wedge between them in life and most especially in death. While my mother was the axis around which I spun, my father was the pivot around which I turned, and both of them constituted the hub of my life. If I have to choose when, where and with whom to incarnate in my next life, I will never hesitate in naming these two gentle souls as my next earthly progenitors. Eh Pop, my thoughts are with you and Mum every single second of every passing minute. Rest in peace.