However, this was weakened by the flexible gender system of traditional Igbo culture and language. As Ifi explained, a major component of this gender framework was that “male roles were open to certain categories of women through such practices as “nhanye”- “male daughters” and “igba ohu” – “female husbands”

What, you’re telling me that boywives were real all along!?

In examining sex and gender in Igbo society today, it is evident that colonisation was not just an event. Colonisation is a structure, an unhealed wound that remains open to this day, in the form of Western gender norms among multiple other manifestations.

Thank you for this article. Deeply interesting.