Written by Idayat Jinadu
It is said that when Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, they were cursed. Eve’s curse was severe pain in childbearing, and Adam’s was endless toil in life.
I think differently.
I believe the real curse of Eve was heterosexuality; fundamental attraction to the sex who is hellbent on the subjugation, marginalisation, and oppression of the womenfolk.
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I am a Nigerian woman who lives at home, and I’m not spared from the daily horrors of misogyny. It is only the 6th month of 2025, and there have been 75 recorded cases of femicide in Nigeria. These are just the ones that received media attention. When we log online, we see and hear from women all around the world who are experiencing misogyny in their countries. From the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan to the South African lady who went on a date and was murdered by the man she went to meet, to the South Korean women who spoke out on the horrors of being female in their country and Indian women who stormed in anger when a doctor was raped and murdered at her place of work. There’s no place like home for women. Sexism is the one prejudice that has influence and dominance in every culture and society in the world. Women have to constantly live with men who have proven countless times through the decades, centuries, and millennia that they have little regard for the life, dignity, and autonomy of women, which is why heterosexuality is a curse. It has to be.
Feminists who are attracted to men constantly have to live with the paradox of desire and oppression. Romantic fulfilment is such a fundamental aspect of life for humans. There are several studies on the effects of loneliness and isolation on the human psyche, and companionship is highly regarded as one of life’s antidotes to pain. However, men are robbing heterosexual women of their right to a painless life of true and genuine romantic connection. Now, women have to be determined about survival, autonomy, and freedom by an important insistence on feminism. This includes championing sub-movements like 4B, which is swearing off men and intimate engagements with them for ever and ever, at least until there’s a societal upturn and women’s fundamental (agency, dignity, autonomy, and right to life) and non-fundamental (love for K-pop, Taylor Swift, and the colour pink) human rights are regarded and treated without disdain and dehumanisation.
Let’s unpack the female heterosexual paradox of desire and oppression.
A paradox is when something combines contradictory features or qualities, even though it sounds reasonable. We have concepts like the Paradox of Choice, where having many options appears to mean an effortless decision process, but the reality is that having many options makes choice much more difficult. The Paradox of Choice refers to the difficulty of deciding what to watch on Netflix, despite having thousands of options available.
When heterosexual women are faced with the paradox of desire and oppression, it is painful. Desire is an innate need; oppression is a fundamental injustice against women’s personhood. On the surface, it might seem reasonable to simply fall in love with a man who is ‘different’ and doesn’t hate women but is moderately sexist and teachable, but it is contradictory because patriarchy doesn’t favour women who are with ‘different’ men, nor does the act erase the fact that men systematically prey on women. Misogyny, the hatred of women and the root of sexism/patriarchy, is systematically entrenched, and we have to admit that women’s desire for romantic companionship with men is like a rope on the neck of a bull that’s supposed to be charging forward.
Is this fair? No. Do we live in a fair world? No.
The world is male, and so is the gaze. Women live in a system that’s fundamentally against us, and resistance is met with systematic gaslighting. It is met with generational gaslighting.
“We must be crazy for wanting freedom from imaginary oppression!”
“Not all men!”
“These women are mad for not seeing that they wouldn’t even have rights in the first place without men giving them!”
“Feminists are man-hating women!”
And many more.
As feminists, we are made to feel crazy for being angry at the injustice that is being thrown at women. There’s no other prejudice in the world whose injustice to its oppressed is so universal and justified. Misogyny is the longest-running war in the history of human existence, pushed by men with casualties of women. Yet, the harm against women is heavily denied and merely pronounced as fabrication. The world will look at femicide, rape, assault, and several other indignities against women in their noses and still call bull. Even the language isn’t any less depressing.
‘Violence against women’, they’ll say. Who is committing the violence?
‘Child marriage’, they’ll say. What are the statistics on the rate at which girls are married off at young ages? Here in Nigeria, a sitting governor decided to train the male children of the victims of banditry in vocational schools and tertiary institutions, but he decreed the female children should be married off to old men. When we say child marriage, does it, therefore, not erase the fact that female children are the ones forced into marriages?
There are no inalienable rights for the female sex. This is why sex-based violence is regarded frivolously by society. Rapists get a tap at the back of their hands, as if they are schoolchildren who didn’t trim their fingernails. Assaulters are celebrated by society regardless; case in point, Chris Brown got a stadium crowd in Germany just recently in the month of June, year 2025.
This paradox of desire and oppression – what do we do with it? Is it that important that we must be with men? Or do you think we can achieve our goal of liberation regardless, perhaps just a little slower?
I am heterosexual, and I won’t lie and say I don’t crave companionship. I have desired men in embarrassing ways. I have been through the whole nastiness of being attracted to men with fragile egos and toxic masculinity. And like most romantic people who believe in love, I still look forward to experiencing genuine connection.
But at what cost? I think this is the question we must ask ourselves: at what cost? Even if your man or my man turns out to be truly empathetic and non-misogynistic, in the case of finding a needle in a haystack or a camel going through the eye of a needle, it still begs the question, at what cost?
Or do we just be with men while fighting men? Is the curse then ours to carry?
About the Author:
Idayat Jinadu is a brand strategist and PhD student working on the culture of waste disposal and its effect on environmental security for her dissertation. She is inspired by impact and wants to create things that matter for people who need them to be free, liberated, and who they truly want to be. She is on the writing track for the 2025 Adventures Creators Programme.
