Not too long ago, I had a troubling experience. My 28-year-old cousin and I were sitting at a nice luncheonette to have something to eat. It was on a weekend and we’d been victual-shopping really all day; hence, the need to have something in this quiet, mostly empty eatery down the street for some strength before deciding what to do about dinner much later. A long stretch of neatly arranged chairs fanned out on either side of us, unoccupied, and yet a man sidled right up, leaned his large body between us, and yelled for the server. Then he turned to my cousin asking about her name. “I’m sorry,” she responded politely, inching her chair closer to mine, telling the man, “Could you please excuse us? I’m talking to my sister for now.” But the man trained his gaze on her, touched her shoulder, and made a face like she’d hurt his feelings. ‘Can’t a guy even get to know a girl he likes anymore?, he said cockily, before turning away. Though a disturbing experience, but this story is not that unusual because this is what it’s like to be a woman in our society – apologizing to men we don’t know for affronts we have not committed and other times, we’re made to stuff down our own discomfort to make men we do not know feel good about themselves, for fear that retaliation could follow.
Thus, passed down like a defective gene, male entitlement has always been with us and if you look carefully, it’s hard not to be aware of the aggressive entitlement that many men feel toward women’s bodies such that being catcalled or sexually harassed on the street is an unfortunate part of daily life for many women. In fact, it would seem that simply existing is often enough for the female gender to be the target of men who feel entitled to their time, attention, affection and in most cases, bodies. Whereas it’s not just the persistent guy in the eatery or bar asking for a name or phone number, it’s also the man who thinks he has the right to catcall a woman because she is walking down the street, and then thinks he has the right to get angry if she doesn’t respond in the way he thinks she should; it’s the men who are distraught over being “just friends” with girls because they think they deserve something more. More than that however are the men acting as if women should be instantly flattered by a compliment, even one as demeaning and inane as Babe, your backside na die.
Then again, problematic male behavior seems widespread enough that it goes without saying that our conception of masculinity is flawed. Let’s face it; entitled men are products of a society that constantly bombards them with images of women’s bodies as objects for consumption. The idea that men are owed sex is everywhere, from the movies we watch to the music we hear to the headlines we read. Far too many men grow up thinking they are owed sex and that if they drive the right car, frequent the right clubs, say the nice things, women will obligingly remove their clothes and grant them access to their bodies such that when women veer off-script and refuse, the consequences are mostly tragic. These messages aren’t shouted or barked, but like most effective messages, they are subtle and implied. They are there in our everyday interactions, coloring our language, attitudes and traditions.
Yet, it has to be stated that not all men behave toward women with a sense of gendered entitlement, but the ones who do make many women feel they have to be wary of all men because this subtle sense of ownership feeds violence. In this wise, it’s the little moments that add up, to build up and give permission to a man to want to touch, to hit, to rape and even to kill women. It’s the systemic and institutionalized ownership that allows lawmakers, judges and the society at large to question a rape victim’s level of sobriety or her past sexual history. Simply put, the entitlement culture is the basis for a lot of bad behavior from men toward women.
In the final analysis, we must come to the realisation that the culture of male entitlement in the society is real and it is killing women and it would seem that attacks against women will only continue if we don’t find a way to rehabilitate the thinking and views that posit females as objects, to be owned and used, for male pleasure and purpose. This is an important message that we must all spread as women’s safety and lives depend on it, and until men learn it’s okay to respect how women decide and want to respond to their overtures including flatly rejecting such, no one will be safe. So, we need to focus on both changing our cultural attitudes and modeling other ways of men relating to women they are interested in to halt the cycle of entitlement. Indeed, more men need to take on the burden of confronting male entitlement directly, so as to not leave it to women alone to fight a battle that is already asymmetrical in nature resulting from patriarchal supremacy and entitlement. The truth that has to be emphasised is that women don’t owe men their time, their attention and certainly not their bodies.
These are all things that women can give men; that men can give women; that any adult can give to another adult. But it has to be a choice, always – not a debt or an obligation. And that choice has to come from a real desire to defer, to give time and attention, to have sex, or to do anything – not just flowing from deeply rooted stereotypes about gender and the social hierarchy that consign women to subservience to men entitlement.
Yakubu is of the Department of Mass Communication, Kogi State University, Anyigba
