On the 6th of October 2020, a representative of model Gift Camille called out rapper Lil Frosh on Instagram for physically abusing his then-girlfriend. Since that post, Frosh (Sanni Goriola Waisu) has been dropped from Davido’s record label, and publicly condemned by the rapper in an Instagram press release. As far as repercussions go, that is definitely a good first step, making it clear to the general public that domestic abuse will not be tolerated in that corner of the music industry, which is notorious for protecting or making excuses for people who abuse their power and influence.
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On social media sites like Twitter, the reactions have been about what you’d expect from the cesspool that is twitter. A lot of womxn have voiced their support for Gift, and pointed out just how common this kind of abuse is in our society. After all, in the first half of this year alone we’ve seen gendered violence take over the national conversation with the assault and subsequent death of 22-year old Uwa Omozuwa, which spawned protests all over Nigeria. This isn’t even the first time that a Nigerian musician has been exposed on social media as an abuser. D’banj, a musician that most of us grew up with, was revealed over the summer to have used his power and influence to cover up a string of sexual assaults. He has faced no repercussions and has unsurprisingly come out unscathed.
And that’s not even taking into account the response from (mainly) men on social media, who reminded us again and again that to be a womxn in Nigeria is to have your humanity and your safety be nothing more than a topic of debate. It was actually triggering to scroll through Twitter in the aftermath of both incidents and to see people making jokes about the rape and murder of a young womxn, and the sexual assault of another. To see people questioning the legitimacy of survivors who were brave enough to come forward with their own stories and publicly hold accountable the people who have harmed them.
When I was made aware of the Lil Frosh situation, I actively avoided social media because I was terrified of what the response would be. I didn’t want to see people question Gift, accuse her of lying for clout, or ask her all the same stupid questions that womxn have to answer again and again when something like this happens. “Why didn’t she leave him?” “Why did she wait until now to come forward?” “What did she do to deserve it?”.
Every time I see people ask these questions, I want to scream. I want to say that it doesn’t matter. There is literally nothing that can justify physically assaulting your partner. It doesn’t actually matter if this was the very first time or the fourth time this happened because the response would be the same. It wouldn’t matter if she had spoken up about the abuse as soon as it happened or if she’d waited years and then come forward. It makes no difference if she filed a police report or she chose not to do so. She could have cursed him out for all I care, it wouldn’t have justified being assaulted the way that she was. I could say any of that, but I would get drowned out by all these people on the internet with an opinion on somebody else’s pain, all these people who have internalized some incredibly worrying ways of thinking from a society that views womxn as objects.
It’s not like this is an issue that’s specific to social media. People have been saying misogynistic things since forever especially in the media. It could be an opinion piece about what “good womxn” should and shouldn’t do, or advertising featuring womxn being bent over their husband’s knees as punishment for making his coffee wrong; it’s the depiction of womxn in television and film as one-dimensional bits of clay that men can mould however they like. It’s everything, all the time, all at once.
Sexist Chase and Sanborn Coffee Ad from the 1950s. Source: Purple Clover
With social media, however, there’s the issue of volume. There’s more of these voices, repeating the same bullshit they learned from music or movies or from their dads or their older brothers. It’s all of these voices, chiming up all at once to ask us the same questions that we have heard over and over again, encouraging each other to be the absolute worst. And I’m tired of it. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
This week, it’s Gift Camille. Last week, it was Megan Thee Stallion. Next week, who knows. Womxn will have to answer all the same questions. We’ll have the same conversations all over again, about how this kind of violence is taught to men by patriarchy, about how young men are learning these lessons. (Lil Frosh is in his early 20’s. How young did he learn to defend his masculinity by terrorizing the womxn around him?). We’ll talk about how young girls are taught to ignore certain warning signs, to overlook a guy’s bad behaviour, to see that kind of aggression as desirable, as sexy. We’ll talk about how victims and survivors of abuse are discouraged from speaking up, are told by their families to “just manage him”, are shamed when they do decide to come forward. We will go on and on about how this is a systemic issue, about how important it is for womxn to have financial freedom and safe places to go to when this kind of thing happens.
We will talk until we are tired. We will protest, we will make hashtags, we will share our stories. And then when this inevitably happens again, it will be like we never said anything.
