By Stephanie Hegarty
BBC News, Lagos It is one of Facebook's fastest growing
communities and has become such a
phenomenon that last week, Mark
Zuckerberg asked to meet its founder. But
what is Fin?
Female IN or Fin is a "secret" Facebook
group that has recently clocked up over a
million members, largely from Nigeria.
But it's a secret that founder Lola Omolola
wants you to know all about - if you're a
woman that is.
Though it has a vaguely romantic air, secret
is just Facebook terminology, Ms Omolala
says. It means invitation-only - you need to
know a member to get in.
"It's a safe place, for a woman who has
something to say," Ms Omolola explains.
"You don't have to agree but it is her story,
she can say it."
The group is a sort of confessional space,
where women share stories that they might
be uncomfortable - or even afraid - to tell in
person.
It doesn't offer anonymity - members have
to post under their real names.
And the stories are stunning, although they
remain strictly confidential.
In the few days that I've been a Finster, I've
read testimonies on domestic abuse,
physical and emotional violence, child abuse
and rape.
One woman speaks about the moment she
told her parents she was about to have a
child as a single girl of 17, another about
finally being accepted as a lesbian by her
mother after many years.
They are brave and intimate, telling of failed
relationships or unconventional sexual
preferences.
The posts are brutally honest but many of
them are laced with self-deprecating
humour.
Like the woman who mortified herself on a
first date in front of a banquet hall of people
or the lady who stole the keys of a bus
driver after he bumped her car and refused
to apologise.
Many of the stories speak of a distinctly
Nigerian experience.
Until recently the group was called Female In
Nigeria, so it's not a surprise that most of its
members are just that.
"The Nigerian woman has been the core of
this process, because I am a Nigerian
woman," says Ms Omolala.
A former journalist, she moved from Nigeria
to the US in the early 2000s at the age of 24
and started the group nearly three years
ago.
She had had an idea to start something for
some time - a forum where Nigerian women
could talk openly about the issues that
affected them. But it was the kidnap of the
Chibok girls that drove her to do it.
"I knew the cause of it," she says.
"When you grow up in a place where a
woman's voice is not even valid, everything
reinforces that idea that we're not good
enough."
It didn't surprise her that a group of men
could kidnap and enslave these girls,
because they didn't see them as equals.
"Between the ages of three and six I noticed
that whenever a girl shows any sign of self-
awareness she gets silenced. When I said
anything I got a pinch - a real, live pinch."
Those pinches came from aunties, uncles,
even her mother but never from her father.
And it's him that Ms Omolola traces her early
feminism to.
Her father was a part-time businessman and
was often at home with the children while
her mum worked as full-time haematologist.
"We never felt any gender disparity," she
says.
"I realise now how much effort it must have
taken. It was not something he was just
stumbling into. It was an active choice."
Fin started out as a group where women
could discuss women's issues - one of the
first blogs was on domestic violence - and
Ms Omolola expected it to be an abstract
conversation.
But women responded with their own
stories.
Almost instantly it became a place where
people could share things they had never
shared before.
"When we started I used to cry. I stopped
sleeping, I stopped eating," she says. "I was
not ready for the stories that were coming
out."
"There were women who had been abused
for 40 years and hadn't told anyone. No-one
should live like that."
Now the group gets hundreds of
applications for posts every day but they are
managed and approved by a group of 28
volunteers. About four or five make it on the
page.
Fin has strict rules. Above anything else,
Finsters are not allowed to judge each other.
Any negative comments are removed, as is
the member who posts them.
"I noticed that those people who try to shut
women up in real life, they came there," says
Ms Omolola.
"They are so deeply conditioned to work
against their own interest.
"It's the online version of the pinch and the
shush."
But the pinchers and shushers were
persistent.
In a religiously conservative society like
Nigeria, expressions of female sexual
freedom were never going to go
unchallenged.
Some members tried to get around the ban
by commenting with passages from the
bible which condemned the woman's
actions.
That inspired a second rule - no preaching.
"We prohibit religious-themed advice," it
says in the rules. "Fin is not a place of
worship."
People have likened Fin and its founder to
the devil, they've called the group evil, a
corrupter of young women.
Ms Omolola says she has been the subject of
concerted attacks by church groups. But
she's not worried.
"Most people think that the controversy
would kill me," she says. "They don't realise
that it's actually empowering me."
After amassing a million-strong membership
and a high-profile meeting with Mr
Zuckerberg, what is next for Fin?
Ms Omolola has dreams of expanding the
group into bricks and mortar, providing
centres where women can go to talk about
their experiences in a safe space.
But that may be a long way off.
"It needs money and right now I have
none," she says. "I can't even pay my rent."
It's something that she discussed with
Zuckerberg and though Facebook haven't
offered funding yet, she's still in
conversation with it on how to move the
group forward.
From day one, she says, she had offers from
companies who want to advertise on Fin
but she has refused to monetise women's
stories.
On Mr Zuckerberg's prompt she is now
focusing on promoting the message of the
site - female empowerment and tolerance.
And she's doing interviews for the first time. Source www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-40261913

Female gender should be respected...

FINLOVE...FINCARES...I SEE YOU ALL SIS!