Hmm where do I start? Perhaps one experience that stands out was the night I came home from the club and kept calling and banging on the gate for 2+ hours and the security man didn’t respond bcs the landlord instructed him not to open the gate whenever I came back from my “runs.” https://twitter.com/Jollz/status/1258710625259261953

While standing outside alone with a female friend, scared shitless because it was midnight and our phone batteries were low and we literally had nowhere to go, a male occupant came back from another club with his girl and it didn’t take up to 2 mins for the gate to be opened.

So there we were, in tears, clutching on to our pepper spray, starting to worry that perhaps the security guy was dead or in danger and that was why he couldn’t pick his calls, not knowing that it was all a deliberate ploy to punish us for doing some imaginary “runs.”

It was the male neighbour and his girl that started fighting for us because we were too weak and frightened to even speak. Why did he leave us out there in the middle of danger? Why did he only open the gate when a “he” called? Didn’t he know we could’ve been raped or kidnapped?

The poor man apologized and said he was only acting on instruction because he didn’t want to lose his job. Apparently, the last two times he opened the gate for us against the rule, he got into trouble with the landlord and received threats of dismissal should it happen again.

This hurts me particularly because it triggered a lot of emotions and memories inside of me. You don’t want to reenact the fear I felt that night because you wouldn’t be able to. All it took to be branded an “ashawo” was to come home after 9 pm. That was it.

Like I always say, all women are (potential) victims of the normalised disrespect of “ashawos” bcs all it takes to be one is to be female. And if we continue to accept othering or treating them w disdain, we are all just one bum short/mini skirt away from experiencing the heat.