THE TOKE TIZZY
I know my last few posts have been a bit coded for relationship desire and maybe come off pineful… so let’s take a step back and talk about the reality of things.
There’s a certain air about the times we’re living in, this other gender (sure several of my gender too) and this cultural background that brought me up. The stir Toke Makinwa caused through her pregnancy announcement displayed it front and center this summer.
Toke, who’s been the face of “Nigerian baby girls for life” (#BG4L in her bio) known to call out nonsense, advising the ladies…went and announced she was having a baby. Instead of all joy and prayers her way, or even the respectful minding of businesses, the news was received rather somehow.
Especially by the incel anti feminist crowd and honestly— not all men a good number of women with hypertraditional leanings were in there as well. A whole Toke Tizzy.
The narrative floating about is laughable at best if not outrageously telling. A hoard of people acting like Toke “deceived” her following, like she went back on her word. As if she in some way double-crossed all the women who embraced her influence because she decided to journey into motherhood.
But let’s get the record straight. Toke never owed anyone anything. She never said she wouldn’t start a family. She never declared war on marriage. Never said women should protest men. What she did was walk away from a very public humiliation of a marriage where she was disrespected and discarded. Left unattached by offspring. She refused to bend her back to uphold the bare minimum. She did not create feminism (which that in and of itself is not lol Nigerians learn a word and stick it to everything)… She championed choosing herself, her peace and her sanity. That’s self respect and self preservation.
Whether she went for IVF on this new chapter or a private relationship/setup, it is entirely her right. Her private right. If anything, her release of her business on her own time says a lot about her camp, her strict program, her boundaries.
So why the national/international meltdown? Because independent women figuring things out for themselves will always stress people.
You mean you can live a peaceful, faith filled, loving, affirming life without bending to disrespectful, bare minimum, nothing to the table but drama men? You can have stability when you work for it on your own with all the doors our foremothers have opened. And if you desire to be a mother, you can pursue it in the timing and manner that makes sense not because society handed you a manual with a ticking deadline and compromising ultimatums. Wawuuuu.
That’s what has everybody shaking. Not that this woman got pregnant. But that her journey is a reminder that our scripts don’t all have to run the way they traditionally have. Marry young and quick, pray your spouse is normal but if not swallow that struggle, hold on for the sake of appearances. Bear children, live and remain for them…
Women are witnessing success on the other side and drawing lines. And when those lines hold, men have to actually brush up or they get left behind.
No this isn’t the new “first choice”. But not everything goes the way we wish or plan. I know that deeply in my own waiting. God is the author here, not me. And there’s more than one way to ultimately arrive at love and building a family. Ways that don’t come from contorting myself to fit into someone else’s ideal box. Forcing loveless or even worse dangerous relationships just to conceive. If anything, stories like this highlight there’s no reward for settling and sufferhead.
Boundaries are not from bitterness. Choosing peace is not failure. And motherhood— whenever, however it comes— should be the pickiest decision made.
Do I want to be attached to a happenstance man for all the days of my life in order to raise a child UNHAPPILY?
I mean, as long as I have a choice. No thank you
