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.