In the Company of "Useless Women": The Fierce Urgency of Intersectional African Feminist Advocacy—Final.

These disruptive women realize if things have to change, some person or generation of women has to say "enough." Women before them had taken the bullshit lying down; they never complained, but here come these "maladjusted women.” They are five sisters whom religion never taught me about. The daughters of Zelophehad—Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.

They, as I have used the term, are the embodiment of the useless women of their time. These daughters approached Moses with their grievance that they could not inherit their father's property because they were women and could not marry whom they thought best. Moses approached God; God told him these women were right. (See Numbers 27:1-11 and Numbers 36:1-12.) Discrimination against them was not right. This meant that if they had stayed quiet, they would have believed that God hated them and preferred men.

I started this series last year and thought to wrap it up this Women's Month. Religion will rather talk about Esther, Sarah, and other women that they can interpret to serve patriarchal goals than about these women.

Professor Obadare defines the “useless woman” as one who, consciously or otherwise, transgresses both the (un)articulated paradigms and presuppositions regarding female conduct, especially in relation to male figures or male spaces, whether in a domestic or a public setting. The Useless Woman, to invoke one of our feminist forebears, Ama Ata Aidoo, is ‘Sister Killjoy'—a killjoy for predatory patriarchy that derives joy from our subjugation. In Sara Ahmed’s view, she is a feminist killjoy, the one with no "use" but "bodies out of place," "misfits," or "troublemakers." (19).

I have chosen to be useless to the following:

offering my intellectual and other intelligences for the furtherance of a system that undermines women and minorities

Complicity and silence when people are persecuted for their religion

Femocracy (with a nod to Amina Mama) using women’s issues for personal gains while claiming to speak for them.

Dear womxn, Remember, as Angela Davis said, "Freedom is a constant struggle," so if you fail, learn the lesson, rise, and start again.

As another forebear, Sojourner Truth, said, “If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to get it right side up again!”

When they stare you down with their look, mumble inanities, and haze you, maybe you should consider that you are in the company of "useless" women, so long as you stand with a clear conscience for the causes of women, children, and the nation.