“I want a world where girls can decide by themselves how they wish to address their sexuality” - Emma Onekekou (Burkina Faso/Côte d’Ivoire) 4/4
We’ve come to the fourth and final part of our interview with Emma Onekekou. After telling us about her childhood (Part 1), her resistance as a teenager (Part 2), and the power she has found in writing (Part 3), we finish the conversation by talking about her impact and her hopes (and fears) for the future.
Emma was interviewed by Françoise Moudouthe in late 2019, as part of a global project documenting girls’ resistance. The conversation was also edited into this four-part interview by Françoise. You can learn more about the series here.
Trigger warning: this conversation contains mentions of violence and abuse which may be triggering for readers. Kindly take a moment to decide if you want to keep reading. If you do proceed, we encourage you to centre your wellbeing and stop reading at any point, as you need
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When you look around, do you see the impact of your resistance? Do you think it changed something?
Yeah, I think so. I may be a bit self-centered, but I think so haha! Whenever a person visits my blog, reads its content, shares it, or comments on it (even to critique it), it is impactful to me. It means that we exist.
Particularly, every queer woman who feels represented, seen, heard, or who finds herself in a sincere, healthy, and welcoming space...that’s also a huge impact. As long as my action helps a single person, it is impactful for me. Because this person will change someone else and so on. It’s the creation of a solidarity chain that comes from what I’ve done.
Do you think that the challenges and the hardships you went through during your teenage years armed you to support young girls who go through the same thing today?
Yes and no. I’d say yes first because it’s something I’ve experienced, so when facing a certain situation, I’ll know how to react. And no, because I think it’s only my personal experience. I’m not equipped enough to do it. It doesn’t stop me from doing it though, with my nieces and their friends. And when I talk to them, I start by telling them that I know they’re anchored with their religious view of the world, but that I lean on my experience.
When you think about the future, what does the world that your past and current resistance will have helped create look like? Especially for the girls today and tomorrow?
The world I want for the future is the one I want for my daughter today. She’s 9. I want a world where girls can decide by themselves how they wish to address their sexuality. That’s very important to me.
I also want a world where we can separate religion from girls’ education. I don’t know if you understand what I mean by that: I’m not saying that families should stop passing on religious values to their daughters. What I’m saying is that they shouldn’t be told that their body is a temple for the Holy Spirit and that they, therefore, have to dress and behave a certain way to be the virtuous woman that religion demands. Let’s raise our girls simply as human beings, just like we raise our boys. And I want girls to have access to education because it’s an opportunity that they’re rarely given.
In your opinion, which part of this vision is possible to achieve during...let's say the decades you have left to live?
I don't know. Honestly, when it comes to women, you know, you fight, and at some point, you think “it's never going to change”. Every day I wake up, I feel like I'm dealing with issues that were put on the table a hundred years ago, and yet I'm still debating this.
But to answer your question, I hope that at least the issue of sex education for girls will be addressed in my remaining time. Girls have been conditioned so much to get married and everything, so I think they should at least be taught to manage their sexuality so that even when they do get married, they can at least have limited pregnancies, and be able to decide what they want for their bodies. Even if they don't go to school, we can teach them that. But I don't know if it's feasible. It's hard to say. And it makes me angry.
Anger is a fair reaction to all of this! Thank you for sharing your story with us Emma.
You can explore the other stories in our series here.