“7 years ago, I leaked my ex’s ‘nudes’. I was very stupid” – By David Hundeyin
I have a story to tell. It is not a nice story, neither is it one that portrays me in a particularly good light, but it has to be told publicly, so that we can tell the truth to ourselves about the sort of society and culture we live in. And I’m talking about Nigeria, just to be clear. It’s the story of the worst thing I have ever done in my life.
Seven years ago in 2010, during my university sophomore year, I did something that I later came to understand is now classified as borderline sexual assault. No, I didn’t put my hands on anyone or say anything or do anything overtly aggressive. In fact all I did was put something up on the Internet about someone.
Before we go further, a background. The lady in question was a borderline special someone I was in a borderline relationship with. Now I won’t go into what she did or did not do, because that will only look like I am making excuses for what I did. Let’s just say when it ended, it ended really badly and I was really mad. Like really, really mad.
A friend of mine (also a lady incidentally) then brought it to my attention that said ex-someone was putting my business up on Twitter, and so I joined Twitter for the first time to check it out for myself. It was as my friend said and more. I became even more enraged. Then my friend put this “great” idea in my head – “put something up to publicly shame her and force her to apologise to you.”
Now I’m making no excuses, but I was 19 at the time and not the wisest person around. Functionally intelligent maybe, but not wise. I took the devil’s bait and I then uploaded a compromising photo of the offending entity on Twitter accompanied with an ultimatum to apologise lest other embarrassing photos follow. I could mention that I edited the photo before uploading it, removing her face and lady parts, but that doesn’t really change anything.
I did “revenge porn”.
A few years later, when I had become marginally wiser than a 19 year-old university rich kid, the gravity of what I had done began to sink in. There were no real consequences to me from the incident, but I realised that what I had done was one of the most vulgar manifestations of masculine arrogance and dick-privilege.
First of all, regardless of what she had done or how angry I felt, why did I think it was OK to bring her body into the matter and make it a public object of shame? What did her body have to do with it? Would I have appreciated it if the roles were reversed? What if everytime I offended someone in some way, I was at risk of having my naked form uploaded to the Internet for public consumption? Would that be OK? So why did I think that was fair game?
Because she is a woman.
I realised that despite how much I considered myself to be some kind of Man 3.0, I still had a deep lack of respect for women and feminine agency. When I wanted to retaliate at someone for hurting me personally, I thought it was fine to use her body as a bargaining chip. As if it’s not HER body to control, but mine. I thought I somehow had a right to do that to her.
And I had none. None whatsoever.
That was completely out of line and scandalous. So why did I do it? Where did this idea come from? In fact, the truth is that this is how Nigerian men are raised, some more so than others. I never saw my dad openly disrespect my mum, but I grew up around other misogynistic influences. So instead of becoming an active misogynist-rapist, I became a passive-aggressive misogynist, which I suppose is slightly better, but not by much.
We are a nation of masculine-dominated aggressiveness. Even the women, like my friend (also Nigerian) who suggested the idea of revenge porn to me, have internalised this attitude and help perpetuate their own oppression. We are raising a generation of rapists and enablers. Unlike me, not many of them will get to study university course modules that break down and analyse their own behaviour and make them understand that dismissing and undermining the agency of women over their own bodies is the exact same behavioural pathology as racism.
To the lady I wronged who shall remain unnamed, I offer my frank and unreserved apologies. I did something creepy, stupid and borderline rapey without understanding the implication of it, and I have to live with that. The only atonement I can make is to ensure that my son(s) at 19 will be better than I was.
