Critical Viewpoints of Dating culture in Nigeria
An excellent ‘think pieces’ creator and a feminist created a video essay about dating in Nigeria, and I also relate to her thoughts and concerns about dating.
When we think about dating and love relationships, we have a depiction of how this culture should look; she calls it the commodification of dating (relationships) in today’s digital space, where social media influences what our dating preferences or needs might be. It is then identified as the tradition, norm, and anything apart from that is considered an anomaly. Humans love creating traditions — there are special days to commemorate things and special events designated for those days.
And in a patriarchal society we witness a lot of these events designed around a particular day to pacify women for their yearlong servitude to men. So, a man is expected to give roses, a money bouquet, or do something special on these days.
Patriarchy is something hilarious, for the men benefiting also want to win all year round; hence, redundant, tiresome discussions like 50/50, provider, alpha males, and simps were invented in the late 2010s, all centered around why women should benefit nothing out of relationships.
In our grandmother’s days, there was nothing like dating.
Women were sold off like goats to the highest bidders or the most prospective suitors. In colonial Nigeria, there was little emphasis on enamoring your partner or truly loving them. At the core, even today — the basis of courting and dating is the primal Nigerian society’s need to procreate and continue their somewhat pathetic legacy. Hence, our grandmother did just that: procreate, procreate, and procreate.
Dating became a necessity for the younger generation to create a family as it approached my mother’s time. She would narrate tales as to how my father courted her, and one thing always stood out to me. Money and resources were very much needed in patriarchal merits.
Following the advancement of feminism and promotion of the girl child’s right to education, women found their feet in becoming self-reliant after being denied that freedom. We could see a huge influence in this in millennial women and how they shaped the narratives of women in corporate and business, leading to the ‘girl boss era,’ where women were said to have prioritized their careers over romantic relationships and where it was absolutely empowering to be a working-class woman, but following the early 2020s, we see a decline in upholding feminist ideologies as struggles not fought were painted as liberating and were admired by the new generation.
This was a noticed global dynamic change, as Nigeria has always been a conservative nation, but with the advent of the internet, we saw an increase of conservative ideologies.
Dating culture has become an abhorrent topic in modern conversations, but I feel that inasmuch as women are trying to choose better for themselves and ‘not to settle for lackadaisical men,’ it is still rooted in patriarchal terms, which is fine if you are ready to abide by the patriarchal double-edged sword. Celibacy; cooking and being subservient for the one true man; and protecting your peace and hoping to meet ‘the one’ are still rooted much in society’s sale of female idealization for romantic relationships and retiring to domesticated, genderized roles for a special man and the perfect relationship.
Most women don’t understand love and perform it instead according to societal terms by acting out genderized roles.
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Female dating preference today is rooted around transactions, where the man is expected to provide while she acts out her subservient roles and lets him lead.
Despite how progressive modern society strives to be, women are yet to come to terms with the fact that the socialization of men is the greatest inhibitor to their perfect relationships, and their optimism to meet ‘the one’ doesn’t equal the perfect man ideology because none exists, and those unlearning patriarchal ideologies are a very insignificant population of heterosexual males. Hence, to experience ‘love,’ you will have to forgo your ideologies to fit into the norm or remain likely single until death.
For unlike our grandfathers — patriarchal progenitors — the modern generation male hybrid simply wishes you to be comfortable with whatever state you find it in and still be subservient as a female.
The reason why 50/50, simps, alpha males, providers, and submission discourses are regurgitated to a disgusting state in today’s online spaces.
We have lost our individuality to the commercialized dating preferences online, and expressing a different preference is met with mockery and predation, as male socialization weighs female accessibility to how cheap she ‘sells’ herself.
Individuals with a simplistic approach towards dating, as just liking each other, most especially women, are seen as cheap. Their values compared to being bought food to access them rather than the idea of women just liking men.
The most ‘expensive women’ are seen as the most valued ones.
And while poor men struggle to fit into the patriarchal standard, they wish for a sliver of success to become what they complain about.
What remains constant in male poverty or wealth is the entitlement to women’s lives being centered around them.
Female introspection on relationships and curation of personalized dating preferences without external influences that commercialize the ideal gift or think of our relationships as undervalued by escaping the media stereotypes/concept of relationships are badly needed.
At the same time, we also need to learn how to play around patriarchal rules to achieve self-preservation.
I think patriarchy is a self-destructive and contradictory system that also hurts men, but most men are too comfortable with the leverage it gives them over women to care if it is the rope trying to strangle them as well.
