The Culture of Hypocrisy...

Chimamanda has written a piece in the UK Guardian today, about the bill to stop women dressing ‘indecently’ currently being discussed by the Nigerian Senate. The piece speaks of the culture of hypocrisy prevailing in Nigeria where there is endemic institutional corruption, but the ‘morality’ that is flavour of the day is women’s dressing choices. To an extent the piece touches on the issue of Gender affiliations that have been discussed by bloggers such as Nneoma and Ebele.

I was slightly confused at the point where she mentions that the bill will particularly discriminate by class but I assume she was using the term ‘class’ in Nigeria interchangeably with economic status (class in other parts of the world particularly the UK or India is more a social stratification. Jeremy of Naijablog discusses class in Nigeria here).

At this point in history when Democratic voting African American women are torn between the fight to remain loyal to their gender or race (even the candidates Hilary and Obama will admit that there is little difference in their policy approaches), perhaps its time to discuss gender affiliation and particularly gender roles…

PS: Alice Walker has written a poignant piece about being an African American woman who will vote for Obama (see here).