Lacy - A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug: the Working Womans Guide to Overthrowing the Patriarchy

For my babies, Eli and Evie: Youve made me better in every way. Im so glad the patriarchy was wrong about you.

And for Paul: I dont need to share my life with a man, but I want to share my life with you.

I looked to my left down the long, dark, grey tunnel and saw more people joining the mob that was screaming at us. I looked to my right and saw the same. Usually when this many people are pissed off at me, I have some clue what Ive done.

Unless there was some secret escape hatch in the middle of this long tunnel of offices, it seemed clear this situation was going to get a whole lot worse before it got better. The crowd was getting denser and angrier, and the air thicker thanks to the uncirculated 100-plus degree Nigerian heat and the confined space becoming crammed with bodies.

Why dont we just make a run for it? I asked Jason. It seemed that there was still enough room for us to push our way out... for now.

Trust me, we are safer in here, Jason said. Out there anything can happen. Half the people in here are on our side.

Id only met Jason earlier that day, but I did trust him. I had little other choice.

But it wasnt clear that anyone in this crowd was rooting for us to get out of here alive. Everyones face was twisted in anger. They were screaming, but in the smooth echoing walls of the tunnel, I couldnt make out anything they were actually saying. For all I knew, they could have been suggesting a lynching or wishing me Happy Friday! in an overly intense way. It was one screaming din of vowels and consonants all hurtled directly at me and my husband.

A 250-pound bald man was in my face, alternating between jabbing his finger at me and turning to thrust it into the air to whip up the crowd. His eyes were bulging. His veins were bulging. A white tank top stretched painfully across his muscles bearing the inscrutable phrase: Skull Shit.

I cant say I wasnt warned before heading to Nigeria. There were the usual overcautious State Department warnings that I typically ignored. There was every email Ive ever received from a Nigerian prince. There was the dinner the night before I left with a Silicon Valley billionaire who grabbed my arm and said, You cannot go to Nigeria like this. Its too dangerous.

I dont tend to respond well when someone tells me I cant do something. This was 2011, and Id spent the previous two years reporting in Africa, South America, Asia, and the Middle East for a book about the chaos and the opportunity found deep within the megacities, slums, and villages of the emerging world. Going into places that most venture capitalists didnt care about or have the stomach for was what I did.

My photographer husband, Geoff, rationed his vacation time to come on adventures like this with me. I knew before asking that this was a trip he wasnt going to miss. He wanted to explore Nollywood, the gritty but lucrative Nigerian film industry. I wanted to meet scammers. This was going to be fun.

Ironically, it was the reporting on Nollywoodnot the scammersthat had put us in danger.

The crowd was closing in on us. Wed tried locking ourselves in one of the offices of a Nollywood producer Jason was friends withthey looked more like jail cells. There was barely enough room for us to stand amid the piles of DVDs. But the crowd wouldnt disperse.

Hiding and waiting them out wasnt going to work. We were trapped.

They were pissed. They were out for blood. Or money. Or something.

Hopefully money.

Geoff looked into my eyes. I nodded with little more than my eyes. He ducked behind us in the prison-cell-cum-office and slipped the memory card out of the expensive camera hed stashed surreptitiously in Jasons backpack. He stuffed the card in his shoe. After more than a decade together, a husband and wife dont have to say things to each other like Im going to be furious if we lose a finger, AND we lose the fucking pictures and video from today.

You just know.

Thats when the vigilantes came for us.

Its not every day you find yourself in a situation where the vigilantes are the safer choice. But Jason was essentially telling me that was the case. Jason was building a business putting Nollywood content online and was one of the only people paying producers to globally distribute their work. This was basically another day at the office for him.

The vigilantes were also pissed at us for reasons we never got to the bottom of, but they were charged with keeping order. They were coming to escort us to our trial. Going along with them peacefully was our best bet to getting out of this long windowless tunnel with all our fingers and toes intact.

We were taken to see the judge: a man named Bones.

We were marched back into the Nigerian heat of Alaba market, the street hawkers still barking, haggling, and negotiating, the preachers still singing, banging on their electronic keyboards, and trying to save everyone. Save in that God/eternal soul sense. Only a wad of cash was likely to save us from Skull Shit and his crew.

Hopefully money.

Dont worry, as long as I have my checkbook, they need me alive, Jason whispered to me.

The courtroom lookedsurprisinglylike it could have been the set of an old Western. We stood there formally: the accused. Skull Shit and his friends were on the other side fuming. Bones marched in surrounded by his men and took the bench, such as it was. He didnt wear robes and his bailiffs brandished machetes as they walked him in. They made a show of them without acting as though they were making a show of them, dramatically pulling them out of their belts and putting them on the table with a clatter.

I looked at Geoff. He looked more scared than I was, but then again, Id faced down more mobs than he had. More often than not, those were just Internet mobs, like the gang of Internet commenters that threatened me with kidnapping and gang rape if I traveled to Brazil as planned. I agreed not to write about my trip until I got back as a safety precaution. My boss at the time clearly felt mixed about that. He made me promise that if anyone mailed a pinkie to Geoff, hed photograph it for our website. Just think of the traffic, he said joking/not joking.

Journalists have a sick sense of humor.

In that moment, I thought two things. The first was I might lose a body part today, but were clearly going to get out of here alive. Now that were out of that tunnel, this is just a bribe situation. Its a good thing Jason is here. Were going to be fine. And if we are, itll make a great story. We still have the photos. I probably stifled a grin.

The second was directed at my five-months-pregnant belly. I looked down and wordlessly sent a message to Eli, Sorry, kid. Welcome to life as my son.

My publisher wants me to tell you that this book is for everyone. Mothers, daughters, women who never want to be mothers, and the men who work for, employ, or fund all these mothers and daughters.

But lets be real: The bulk of you cant possibly understand the words that follow. If you have never held your own baby in your armsone that you grew in your very own wombyou just will never understand.

You may think you can imagine the greatest love in the world, multiply it by a jillion, and have a sense of what Im talking about. You cant.

You just dont get it.

You wont get it.

Dont even try to get it.

I see you trying. Im serious: Stop it.

That is what every woman hears from the moment she starts inching towards womanhood until she welcomes her own child into the world. Worse than being told how much you will never understand one of the most universal things that biologically unites women is how much of that gospel of motherhood is an absolute lie.