Hi Kofoworola, In defence of not kneeling

Dear Kofoworola,

Hi dear,  it always warms my heart to receive mails from you, particularly in times like this when friendships are bogged down and harder to maintain, your recent mail spoke on the recent Twitter kneeling issue and it's extensive fallout, you have asked me to give my two cents on the issue but in the process of drafting a response to your question, I decided to address the issue on a public platform and I hope you don't mind that I did dear friend.

First off, I have to tell you that I agree with the woman, as you know I am a fervent advocate of non-intrusive personal choices, I understand and respect her decision but I  also want to give my gratitude to her husband who did not allow himself to be blindly dissuaded by cultural sentiment that would have made his wife uncomfortable.

Your question asked if I felt kneeling down was right, my dear friend, in my opinion I don't subscribe to a kneeling wedding, the Yoruba culture is full of several instances of beautiful things, the respectful prostrating or kneeling for elders has always struck a deeply poignant note to me, it teaches the duty of being respectful to older ones regardless of our station in life and where we get to.

Our Traditional weddings are also a beautiful sight more often than not, the acceptance into Urban culture of the Yoruba demons in their white Agbada's and the colourful regalia of the Iyawo and her friends generally make this occasions really sweet, however it would be wrong for people to attack the lady because she refused to kneel

For clarity purposes, the lady in question never said she wouldn't kneel to her husbands family, what she made clear was that she wouldn't kneel down to her husband, the man with whom she wants to spend her life with. It is easy to criticize, it is easy to call her names but in hindsight it is particularly easier to get her point if you understand the significance of that kneel.

I have had no issues with people who have had open ended discussions about how they will kneel to her husband (I do not agree, but this people have expressed their ideas without derogatory comments and exercised their freedom of decision) the ones with whom I have taken offence have been those whose arguments has centered around how "this is culture, without it we are nothing", culture is the people, it is dynamic and it is not static, people like to think of culture as a large unchanging mass that cannot be altered, like it is fixed in stone but that is not true, culture has sifted as the human race has moved forward, if a woman chooses not to kneel, it is to her credit and yours as a decent human being to respect her decision.

Also, I wish to talk about the power of signs, other people have argued that they are feminists but since it's just for once day, they'd do it "to avoid unneccesary drama", I personally think this is a wrong attitude Kofo, you know me, I prefer white and black and because these weddings are usually large gatherings that feature lot of children, I see them as learning occasions, if you kneel down to your husband in that occasiona, for better or worse it projects an image of subservience, it legitimizes the Point of view that no your husband isn't your slave owner but he is your Oga and he has authority over you, but if we choose to not kneel and this children see it, we have a starting point to bridge that assertion that a "woman must kneel", girl children who may or may not have known better would be exposed to another reality, a possibility where she doesn't have to kneel for her husband to know she would be "respectful".

For people who believe that culture is absolute, I want to tell a story about a woman, on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, a seamstress sat on a bus and because of the colour of her skin she was urged to give up her sit on a bus and being honest that was the convenient thing to do, she should have given up her seat , the dominant culture of the time was segregation, racismand a bias towards white. In effect Rosa Park was breaking the law when she refused to give up her seat but she didn't give in, because she convinced herself that her little act in that bus had the potential to reverbrate into a wider consciousness, and her act did reverberate, it sparked the Montgomery bus boycott which in turn sparked the Selma protests that eventually led to the groundbreaking Civil Rights act in 1964, I feel insulted when people say its just a little insignificant act, no it is not, not kneeling to your husbands constitutes a refusal to bow to the sexist elements in our culture and I celebrate that.

Kofo, we are culture, you and me and all of us, we do have an obligation to move culture forward because culture is not self-surviving, despite its beauty and longetivity, culture is incomplete, it more often than not cannot deal with the multiplicity of issues that we deal with in modern times, in fact culture has often had to be brought forward into modernity and that is why twins are no longer left to the mercies of the elements at their birth in Calabar or why there has been the reduction in the forced marriage of a wife to someone of her husbands kin after his death amongst the Ibo's,  even the Fulani's no longer flog a man when he wants to marry a wife, oh and amongst us Yoruba's Female Genital mutilation is on its last knees as a part of culture because we have strove to push the culture forward, so don't let anyone tell you culture is all correct and unchangable, that is a blatant lie dear friend.

But ofcoure I don't know all,  I sometimes wonder about the things I don't know too, I don't know if men are scared of this implosion of strong women who would not be subservient, spend their whole lives waiting to be married off or if they are scared of any thing that places women concern in the mainstream because they are always so quick to push culture forward as the legitimator of their attitudes and sadly not only men,  some women also don't know that outside of marriage you can find fulfilment, they regularly go around bashing ladies who choose to challenge the status quo, calling them unhappy or "faux woke"

What I however know is that in Marriages where the weddings featured a lot of kneeling and rolling on the floor, divorces have still occurred because that's just how life is, so please if you don't kneel dont let anyone "bobo" you that your marriage will fail, it's a lie and I don't believe it.

In conclusion Kofo, I understand that this world is deeply heirachical and that heirachy has for the longest while been geared towards favouring men but I hope you understand also that by that lady not kneeling she showed the possibility of another type of world, a world where weddings are held, husbands and his friends prostrate for his wives family and the wife and her friends also prostrate to the husbands family and that is all,  I am so damn proud of that, obviously not everyone understood or supported her but that's OK, progress not perfection

I hope you found answers somewhere within this paragraphs, you too next time don't ask me about this sort of things, you know how I get, thank you for reading my long and boring letter (maybe).

         Your world weary and faithful friend,
                                          Wale