I will be honest, inspite of all the patriarchal brainwashing I received from an early age, I never took men seriously. I dated for fun until they started killing women and throwing them outside high rise buildings on the first date then I realised that dating is now a matter of life and death in Kenya that I decided to retire from anything to do with men coz my parents are too old to bury me it’d kill them. I never took any man to meet my parents even though thrice men ,one who I wasn’t even dating but he wanted to marry me found their own way into my mother’s house. I never felt the urge to procreate with any man I dated. Didn’t stop me from lying to them that I’d one day have their kids - this promise is what men are dying to hear - nitakuzalia! 
I never saw myself getting married to anyone. Brainwashing is powerful but you can only deceive yourself for so long. I remember a man I was dating telling me, I can’t wait to wear your ring, I thought we would have kids and also you, you don’t want to get married. You see when you are brainwashed from a young age, you are blind to the fact that you don’t want, what you were told should be the central longing and purpose of your life. It’s easier for an external observer to see what your brainwashing won’t allow you to admit. That you don’t want to get married. That you don’t want to have the children of these men. It just wasn’t something I longed for inspite of all the patriarchal brainwashing from childhood that those two should be the purpose of my life.
To be honest, it’s a life long struggle and unlearning. Something engraved in you from childhood isn’t easy to overcome and it can infact make you sick. How can I be told that this is everything I should want as a woman yet it is something that doesn’t make me happy, something that doesn’t make sense to me, something I don’t really desire, something I can’t seem to take seriously, something I find myself sabotaging?
When everyone tells you from childhood that you as a woman should want nothing more than marriage and children but you don’t, you sabotage anything towards that end. My entire life, I actively avoided pregnancy and marriage. When I got to a point where the pregnancy and marriage were nearing even of my own initiative like when I wanted to get JUNGUU kid through IVF , I ran! I sabotaged it because I didn’t genuinely want it, I was told I should want it. I would hover as closely as possible without getting into it. This is why when the date came when I was supposed to start my IVF process I started having panic attacks and sleepless nights. I sought counsel from different pastors about why I was so conflicted about taking the plunge. They all told me what my authentic self had been telling me but I was fighting because of the brainwashing I have suffered through out my life as a woman and a girl. They validated what I knew deep down in my know, that I should never do such a thing. That suddenly gave me exit and peace at the same time. I stopped the IVF shenanigans and I never looked back. It’s not easy to overcome patriarchal brainwashing even when it’s bad for you and is even making you ill. Look at all the women who are in toxic relationshits and marriages until it kills them literally! Others have kids they don’t have the ability to care of and then , they go into psychosis and kill the children, themselves and even men though rarely. Patriarchal brainwashing is dangerous.
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THE ERA OF DE-CENTERING MEN:
HOW WOMEN FINALLY WOKE UP IN 2020 AND CHANGED THE WORLD
Women have come a long way in 2025. And truly, if you step back and trace the path behind us, you realize that this awakening didn’t happen overnight. It took centuries of unlearning, several generations of women quietly screaming into pillows, and a few decades of “soft” rebellion disguised as self-care for us to finally arrive here. Today’s woman — of all races and cultures are waking up, including the Black woman in the diaspora, the African woman on the continent, the Caribbean woman, the American woman — is waking up with a kind of clarity that our ancestors never had the luxury to hold.
And to appreciate how far we’ve come, you have to understand the psychological maze we were born into.
Because the grooming started early.
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The Fairy Tales That Lied To Us
Long before we ever fell in love, long before we met our first boyfriend, long before we knew what marriage was, the world had already planted the seeds of romantic suffering into our little heads. We were trained like pigeons in somebody’s emotional laboratory. Some of us got it through Disney; others got it through Nollywood; many of us got it through African folklore; and nearly all of us were spiritually injured by Barbara Cartland and Mills & Boon.
Think about the Western fairy tales. Cinderella was a domestic slave who won the affection of a man who couldn’t recognize her by anything except the size of her foot. Snow White was kissed in her sleep by a stranger. Sleeping Beauty? Same thing. Beauty fell in love with her kidnapper — a literal beast with anger issues — and they packaged it for us as true love.
These were not innocent stories. These were psychological conditioning. These stories taught little girls that:
• Suffering is romantic.
• Silence is virtue.
• Male aggression is passion.
• Enduring mistreatment is how you earn love.
Meanwhile, boys were not being given “How to Be a Prince” training. They were being told: “A woman who suffers for you is a good woman—you don’t even have to be nice or kind to her.”
The imbalance started early.
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African Folklore: The Original Red Flags
And if the Western fairy tales did not succeed in fully corrupting our expectations, African folklore was waiting for us with its own Pandora’s box of manipulation.
Take the story I wrote about in undergrad — the one about the princess, the most beautiful girl in the land, who kept rejecting suitors because she knew what she wanted and refused to settle. A discerning princess. A woman with standards. But in the world of folklore, this was presented as a flaw. So the spirits decided to “teach her a lesson” for being too picky.
A spirit borrowed body parts to disguise himself as the man of her dreams — tall, handsome, strong, wealthy-looking. The perfect illusion. She married him. And on the way home, he returned the borrowed limbs one house at a time until she was left walking beside something that looked like a walking curse.
And the moral of the story was:
“If you’re too picky, you will end up with something worse than your dream man.”
Imagine teaching this to little girls.
Imagine the psychological violence.
Africa taught girls not to choose.
The West taught girls to choose wrong.
And the global romance industry sealed the deal.
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Mills & Boon: The Finishing Touch on Emotional Grooming
Mills & Boon, Harlequin, Barbara Cartland — all these romance novels that raised our mothers and aunties taught generations of women that “love” begins with a man being rude, dismissive, harsh, dominating, or emotionally unavailable.
The storyline was always the same:
He insults her.
She stands up to him.
He becomes even more aggressive.
She endures.
He softens.
She melts.
They kiss.
Roll credits.
This was not romance.
This was psychological grooming.
This is why, in adulthood, so many women mistake disrespect for chemistry. This is why a man raising his voice feels “normal,” why emotional chaos feels like passion, why arguments feel like flirting.
This is why the urban “ride-or-die” era came so naturally — women were prepared for it. Women went to prison for men. Women birthed children for men who couldn’t even send them a commissary $20. Women hid guns, lied in court, fought strangers in parking lots, got cheated on with courage — all because we were socially programmed to equate suffering with loyalty.
Romeo and Juliet didn’t help either.
Another tale of delusion: two teenagers with no sense of proportion, dying for a romance that lasted three business days. Shakespeare sold us tragedy as destiny. Society sold it as an ideal.
But 2025?
Women have finally woken up.
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The Unraveling of the Old World
Women today are seeing clearly. The fog has lifted. The spells have broken. Now that the psychological debris has been swept off our lens, you can see why women are leaving marriages, rejecting proposals, ghosting men, choosing single motherhood, choosing peace.
Because once you remove centuries of conditioning and finally ask the forbidden question — the one patriarchy hoped we’d never investigate — everything collapses:
“What do women actually get out of marriage?”
Let’s be honest. Without the fantasy, without the community pressure, without the religious propaganda, without the fear of loneliness, what exactly do women gain?
Most women gain:
• Powerless companionship
• Emotional exhaustion
• Unpaid domestic labor
• Pregnancy risk and pain
• Postpartum loneliness
• Financial vulnerability
• And, for many, abandonment
Men, on the other hand, get:
• A housekeeper
• A therapist
• A sex partner
• A nanny
• A status symbol
• A personal assistant
• A stabilizer
• A woman who carries the mental load of an entire household
For free.
And without reciprocity.
And so women began to exit the institution.
Quietly at first.
Then publicly.
Then globally.
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When Men Defined “Relationships,” They Exposed Themselves
When men — the Andrew Tates, the Kevin Samuels wannabe philosophers, the “conscious community” sages, the HOTEP delegation, the Dr. Umars with their performative Pan-Africanism — started explaining what heterosexual relationships meant to them, it became painfully clear that their definition of partnership had nothing to do with companionship or love. The HOTEPS were busy announcing that they were “returning to African roots” so they could practice polygamy — not African governance, not African accountability, not African heritage, not African community building — just the part that gives them multiple women to rotate like tires. That was the extent of their cultural research.
Meanwhile, the Kevin Samuels disciples and the Tate militia were demanding to know, “What do you bring to the table?” while simultaneously insisting on “domestic discipline,” a coded phrase for controlling women through fear, humiliation, and punishment. Their concern was not partnership but servitude — a woman who sacrifices her time, her body, her energy, her ambition, her peace, and still says thank you for the privilege. They wanted submission without protection, loyalty without reciprocity, obedience without love. These were their relational goals. Not intimacy. Not companionship. Not building a future. Just access and dominance.
I remember how disoriented I felt the first time I heard that question: What do you bring to the table? Because in my understanding, marriage was supposed to be companionship, tenderness, co-creation, building something meaningful together. It was supposed to be generational love, generational stability, and generational wealth. It was supposed to be modeling emotional intelligence for the children you claim to be raising. But what did we get in return? Nothing but demands for servitude wrapped in the language of masculinity and spiritual jargon.
The more these bandits asked us what we brought to the table, the more we actually started thinking about it. And that’s when the fog cleared. Because everything we had been doing — the emotional labor, the domestic labor, the womb labor, the financial sacrifice, the loyalty, the endurance — all these things we had been giving freely, proudly, and consistently were suddenly “not enough” for men who contributed nothing but entitlement. We looked at our exhaustion and asked, why is our labor worthless but their bare minimum praised like a miracle?
And when we looked deeper, the reality was unhinged. For all the sacrifices women made, what did we get? Cheating. Financial abuse. Emotional abuse. Public humiliation. Private humiliation. Some were cheated on with their friends. Some with neighbors. Some with housemaids who were minors.
Everywhere we looked — marriages were burning like cheap generator wires. The celebrity scene offered no comfort: professional athletes impregnating strangers, musicians abandoning their families, actors embarrassing their wives online. And then, the audacity — some of these bandits even dared to demand alimony from women who worked their bones into wealth.
And the irony? The wealthy men protected themselves. They signed prenups. They built legal fortresses around their assets. But women were socialized never to consider protecting their money and assets. “A woman must cover shame.” “A woman must protect the marriage.”
We were taught to cover their disgrace, cover their betrayals, cover their irresponsibility, cover their failures — because the burden of family reputation somehow belonged to us alone. Nobody ever taught men to protect the women who built the home they’re so desperate to be head of.
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The Womb and the Weaponization of Motherhood
Once women began to speak freely about their experiences to each other on social media, another truth rose to the surface:
Men have used women’s wombs as leverage for centuries.
Across the world, the pattern is identical:
Men want children.
Men demand children.
Men pressure women for children.
Men weaponize pregnancy to bind women to them.
Until the child arrives.
A few weeks after the baby is born, the same man is suddenly too tired, too angry, too absent, too overwhelmed, too ego-injured to show up.
Let’s be honest:
Many men adore the idea of fatherhood far more than the actual labor of fatherhood.
In the U.S., in the UK, in the Caribbean, in Nigeria, in Ghana, in Canada, in Australia — everywhere — you will meet half-Black children, half-Nigerian children, half-Caribbean children, whose fathers:
• vanished
• went incommunicado
• became strangers
• weaponized custody
• or chose another woman
And yet these same men come online every day to debate submission.
This abandonment is not anecdotal — it is global.
And women finally said:
“I’m not birthing anything for a man who might disappear.”
“I’m not risking my life when every seven seconds a woman dies in childbirth.”
“I’m not losing my health for someone who won’t even hold my hand through labor.”
Thus the revolutionary shift:
Women with money, clarity, and peace began choosing motherhood without men.
Ebony K. Williams.
Linda Ikeji.
Toke Makinwa.
Women who said, “I choose motherhood on my terms, not on the terms of men who don’t know how to partner.”
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The Era of Husbandits: Pump, Dump, and Deliver the Consequences
Something new is happening — something men used to brag about is now returning to them like a boomerang. Historically, men used pregnancy to trap women. They used babies as spiritual handcuffs. They believed that once a woman carried their child, her destiny was locked to theirs forever. They weaponized pregnancy as a strategy — a way to clip a woman’s wings, reduce her mobility, slow her ambitions, and bind her to domestic servitude. They bragged openly about it, as though impregnating a woman was some kind of chess move in a game only they were allowed to win.
But 2024 and 2025 flipped that table in the most poetic way.
Women are no longer the ones being trapped.
Women are no longer the ones being held hostage by biology.
Women are no longer the ones being forced to sink with a sinking man.
Now the consequences are circling back to the sender — directly, immediately, and with karmic precision.
Women today are flipping the script boldly, fearlessly, with a clarity previous generations were never allowed to hold:
“I’m not being trapped. YOU will be the one trapped by your own responsibilities.”
And there is a particular Reddit story that became the turning point for me — one that made everything click. A man gave his partner an ultimatum:
“Get pregnant or get out.”
He wanted to control her body, her destiny, her future. He wanted a child as insurance. He wanted to bind her.
So she got pregnant.
She carried the pregnancy.
She survived the birth.
And then, without theatrics, she quietly picked up her bag, and left him with the baby. She also left a Dear John letter.
And before anyone starts pretending this was an isolated incident, let me be very clear:
It. Was. Not.
I have heard at least six versions of this exact story in the last year alone — women pressured into pregnancy by men who wanted a baby as leverage, only to find themselves walking away after childbirth because the fog lifted and the truth became too loud to ignore:
“This child deserves peace. I deserve peace.
YOU insisted on this pregnancy.
So YOU raise your child.”
And while some women are walking away from men who tried to trap them with pregnancy, others have lived the nightmare version of that story — where men, once they had secured the children, turned around and weaponized the children against the mother.
Nowhere was this more visible than in the case of Precious Chikwendu, the former beauty queen whose ex-partner, Femi Fani-Kayode, separated her from her babies for years. After surviving alleged violence and emotional torment, she was denied access to the very children she carried, birthed, nursed, and nearly died bringing into the world. Her case became the symbol of how men — especially powerful men — use children as tools of punishment when they feel a woman slipping from their control. What happened to Precious is exactly why women now refuse to tether their futures to men who see children not as human beings, but as bargaining chips.
And the trend continues everywhere.
On TikTok, a young man recorded himself in tears, lamenting that his child’s mother had walked away and left him with their newborn — shocked that the “trap” snapped back on him.
In another case, a woman with six children walked away and left the man with all six. Why? Because he was the one who insisted on those pregnancies. He wanted children because he thought children would clip her wings, tie her down, and suffocate her ambition. She gave him what he wanted — and then gave herself what she deserved: freedom.
For centuries, men treated pregnancy like a binding contract for women but a casual suggestion for themselves. They could stay or leave. They could parent or vanish. They could perform or disappear. But the woman? She was expected to sacrifice her body, career, mind, dreams, mobility, friendships, earning power, mental health — everything — for the “family.”
2025 shattered that assumption for sure.
Women are now choosing motherhood — or choosing freedom — but only on their terms.
And when men try to weaponize pregnancy, women return the weapon with the safety pin removed.
Women are pumping and dumping husbandits — leaving them with the exact responsibilities they tried to weaponize.
Men are crying, but the truth is simple:
You wanted the baby.
Now hold the baby.
And this shift didn’t fall from the sky.
We saw women like Ebony K. Williams openly choose single motherhood, saying:
“I tried the relationship route. It did not give what it was supposed to give. I choose motherhood without male chaos.”
We saw Toke Makinwa and Linda Ikeji embrace the same clarity — women who understood that peace is more valuable than partnership, and that motherhood does not require a man who brings nothing but stress.
Women are choosing themselves.
Women are choosing control.
Women are choosing clarity.
Women are choosing peaceful parenthood over chaotic partnership.
This is the new era —
the era where women are no longer the ones being left holding the consequences.
Men are.
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The Global Abandonment Pattern: Women Who Walked Through Fire
To understand the scale of women’s awakening, look at the women whose suffering shook the world:
Keke Palmer, who exposed emotional and physical abuse despite fame.
Michel’le, who survived decades of brutality from powerful men.
Tina Turner, who escaped one of the worst marriages ever documented.
FKA Twigs, who sued her ex for coercive control, reshaping UK dialogue about abuse.
Keisha Buchanan, who survived emotional and financial trauma.
Mel B, who escaped a long-term abusive marriage while the world watched silently.
Juliet Ibrahim, a Ghanaian actress who walked away from domestic violence.
Shatta Michy, who exposed emotional cruelty in her partnership.
Nigerian women?
Some of the strongest examples:
May Edochie, who walked away from public humiliation with grace.
Annie Idibia, a lesson in what loyalty to the wrong man can cost.
Judy Austin, proof that a man who betrays one woman will betray another.
Regina Daniels, living the gilded-cage version of patriarchy.
Precious Chikwendu, who survived alleged brutality and a vicious custody battle with Femi Fani-Kayode.
And if you want to look back in history, meet Omu Okwei, the Merchant Queen of Ossomari — a real Igbo powerhouse from the early 1900s who built an empire rivaling colonial merchants. Yet even she, a wealthy and powerful woman, still faced emotional abandonment from men who could not match her brilliance. Her story is proof that patriarchy does not reward women, not even the exceptional ones.
All of these women — modern and historical — testify to the same truth:
Suffering has never protected women from betrayal.
Loyalty has never shielded women from violence.
Marriage has never guaranteed love, safety, or stability.
So why should women keep sacrificing?
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The Decline of Marriage and Birthrates: A Global Consequence of Female Clarity
Birthrates are collapsing everywhere — Japan, South Korea, Italy, Ghana, Nigeria, the U.S., the U.K. The world is panicking. Politicians are crying. Economists are confused.
But the reason is simple:
Women finally did the math.
Childbirth is expensive.
Motherhood is exhausting.
Men’s participation is optional.
And peace is priceless.
Women are no longer signing up to sink with ships captained by men who don’t know how to row.
Women are choosing:
• therapy over toxicity
• money over male validation
• peace over partnership
• joy over duty
• solitude over suffering
And the world is stunned.
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The Final Awakening: Women Have Left the Group Chat
2025 marks an unprecedented shift:
Women have left the group chat of suffering.
Women are tired of being:
• the backbone of families
• the emotional packhorses
• the unpaid therapists
• the wombs deployed for men’s ego
• the cushions for male incompetence
Women have stopped centering men, and the world is trembling.
Men are screaming about loneliness.
But loneliness is not the problem.
Accountability is.
Women are no longer willing to negotiate their peace, their sanity, their wealth, their bodies, their futures, or their children’s futures just to say, “I have a man.”
Women now understand:
If a man brings nothing to your life, he is subtracting from it.
If a man brings chaos, he is a liability.
If a man brings suffering, he is a bandit.
Women are not waiting for collective consciousness.
Women are the collective consciousness.
Women are choosing themselves.
Women have left the group chat.
And men?
Men can talk to themselves.
Uchenna Oti made these jeans for me.