Anatomy of Female Power Page 9

Aurore was having none of it, and said so in blunt terms. A husband faced with the same threat, would fear social disgrace, and would buckle and become a "galley slave", all because he had undertaken to economically support his wife! Yes, what even a woman's own mother would not put up with, her husband is required to endure.

  Mindful of this threat of prostitution, whereby wives can blackmail their husbands, some men in the world's more pragmatic cultures operate on the principle that, no matter what a man provides his wife, she may still prostitute herself for more; therefore, give her as little as possible, and turn a blind eye to her whoring, but collect your children from her when they grow big enough. This is illustrated in the following fictional episode: {82}

  'Don't let's waste time, Alhaji, my children... are at home' Folake said shaking her enormous buttocks to him as she walked to the bed and undressed at the same time. Karimu, shaking all over his body, followed up in a school boy's obedience.

  In five minutes when they lay spent on the bed, he continued his research.

  'I'm confused Mama Toyin, but why disgrace your husband? You mean he doesn't feed you?'

  'Oh, are you a stranger in Yorubaland?' she asked slowly and gasped for more breath. 'I think this country ranks among the leaders in the rate of adultery in the world...'

  'Why?' he feigned seriousness.

  'I will tell you. You see what you men here do is that when the woman joins you in the matrimonial home, you give her some paltry sum of money to start some business, in most cases trading. That is all. All that the woman and the children will need; feeding and clothing and everything, is financed from this trade. What they refuse to know is that the profit from the trade may not always be enough to support the incurred expenses. That means that money has to be taken from the capital of the business. You do that and the business starts to decline. There is nothing you can tell the husband to win his sympathy...'67

  Under that situation, some women reciprocate by bearing children for different men, with or without formally marrying any of them. They then collect from each as hefty a sum for business or child support as they can extract. An aspect of this practice is reported in this story from a Lagos hairdressing salon:

  Omoba announced her intention of making a name change. She, formerly known as Mrs Omoba Y was now to be addressed as Mrs Omoba Z. I can't give you a report on whether all documents were to remain valid or not. My guess though is that there are no documents!... Omoba was changing her (marital) status for the sixth time because she had just had her sixth child for the sixth man! That is to say, {83} every time Omoba had a child, she took on the last name of the man... Omoba's point was that, it was all well and good to want or expect a man to make a commitment formally but, 'what if he couldn't or wouldn't?' She believed the next best thing for a woman's protection is to adopt his name. Omoba believed that having a child for a man was as major an event as marriage itself.86

  As we have seen, each double standard, including that which is most on women's minds, works to men's disadvantage, and helps to guarantee at least one of women's numerous privileges. Yet feminists purport to crusade against the double standard in order to remove its disadvantages to women! Now, wouldn't it be nice if feminism really wanted a single standard of human freedom? Wouldn't it be nice to have a single code of conduct for the lioness and the ox? And wouldn't it be nice if that code specified that neither should devour the other? Wouldn't that be simply wonderful for the ox?

  But alas, given their complementarity, requiring men and women to be treated the same, to have identical rights and responsibilities, would be like forcing right hands into left gloves. Yet some brilliant feminists would have us believe that that would be freedom!

  While some double standards are inherent in the complementarity of male and female, there are many which are not: the latter could be abolished without harm, except to women's privileges. Dress codes could be either drab for all, or sexually provocative for all; adverts could flaunt the appropriate male characteristics, as ubiquitously and provocatively as they do female sexual characteristics, so that the environment is as erotically unsettling for women as it is made for men. Women could be treated the same as men in war, so they can risk death equally.

  If every abolishable double standard were abolished, many of men's handicaps in life would vanish. With a mountain of male disabilities thus removed, men would begin to rise toward equality in hardships and privileges with women. {84}

  11. The Silly Souls of Men

  Masculine woolly-mindedness has been a source of female power for a long way back.69

  - Robert Ardrey

  The head of the average man is packed with silly beliefs about men and women. Like fumes of booze that boost the ego, these beliefs cloud up man's perception, and leave him swaggering and staggering through life like a hopeless drunk, to be taken advantage of by any woman who wants to.

  Among the most notorious of his beliefs are that women are weak and fragile; that men are cleverer than women; that women are fickle, passive, irrational, helpless and sentimental; that men are superior to women in the natural order of the universe; that women are mysterious. These beliefs are so palpably silly that any clear-eyed and fair-minded observer can only agree with Marie Corelli who spoke of the "silly souls of men"70 by which women entrap them.

  A sober look at the actual world yields quite a different picture. It shows that women are far less fragile and weak than they pretend to be; that women are cleverer than men; that their fickleness, passivity, irrationality and helplessness are calculated instruments of power; that women are far less sentimental, but more down-to-earth, cynical and ruthless than men; that, in so far as a natural order exists, women are, within it, superior to men; and that women are not mysterious at all, but only appear so owing to male foolishness. Let us go through these popular male illusions and see how badly they accord with the realities, and how women use them to exploit and rule men.

  Are women weak and fragile? At any rate, are they as weak and fragile as male pride imagines them to be? As we could all verify for ourselves, some men are physically stronger than some women, and some women are stronger than some men. Even if it is true that, on {85} average, and in specific aspects, men are stronger than women, the difference is routinely exaggerated, by men so as to boost their egos, and by women so as to get men to do things for them.

  I was once helping a friend help his girlfriend move her belongings out of a New York apartment. After taking a heavy trunk down to the moving van, we were huffing and puffing our way back up the stairs. As soon as the woman and a girlfriend of hers saw us, they dropped a mattress they were carrying to the elevator, and began to complain that it was too heavy! Yet, before they saw us, they carried it with no visible difficulty!

  The idea of the stronger male is often dramatized by the image of a weak, defenceless wife cowering before blows from her huge husband. Yet incidents of husbands who are battered by their much stronger wives abound. Much is not heard of these for two reasons: male pride would not advertise the fact, and women's dissembling often gives the impression that the husband-battering wife is herself the battered wife. Here is a story of a dissembling bedroom terrorist, as it was reported in the Nigerian press by a woman columnist:

  Just recently, a colleague recounted his experience with one of his neighbours. Cotenants used to look at the husband of this woman with distaste - what with her constant shrills of pain and cries that her husband was beating the life out of her. On the day in question, my colleague could no longer stand the woman's heart-rending cries for help. He tried the couple's door; it was locked as usual. Out of desperation, he climbed through to their balcony to try to appeal to the callous man through their bedroom window. He told me: 'I was surprised to find the woman riding on the back of her husband and giving him a good pummelling, and at the same time screaming at the top of her voice that she was being beaten to death.'71

  As in the matter of physical strength, the customary
contrast between female fragility and male sturdiness enables women to push unto men as much as possible of the world's tough and risky jobs. Because it helps them to exploit men, women have a vested interest in making themselves look more fragile than they really are. In fact, one of the perennial objectives of female fashion is to heighten the illusion of female fragility. {86}

  The devices used for this purpose have ranged from foot binding in old China; through tight corsets that produced on the women of Victorian England the illusion of an hourglass waist, just waiting to break; to the high-heeled shoes of the modern West. The Victorian illusion of female fragility was given both a physical and a psychological dimension, through a self-presentation which combined a thin waist, a pale skin which showed every blush, and fainting fits which called for smelling salts. Such a woman would appear so fragile in body and soul that any gallant man would feel obliged to reach out and support her.

  In 20th century Western fashion, the high heel is the foundation for the elaborate disguising of female sturdiness. Consider a woman who has dieted herself down to twiggy thinness; who stuffs herself into a skirt that is tight about the knees or ankles, hindering her from taking long and vigorous strides; who then perches herself on stiletto heels, to produce an overall effect of a tall, thin, willowy masquerade walking on wobbly stilts. The impression she has carefully created is of an adult who cannot balance firmly on her own two feet. Like an invalid who can hardly stand up straight, her figure cries out for help, for a sturdy man to sweep her off her feet and carry her across a windy street, or up a hill path; or better yet, for some gallant who will pull up beside her in a Rolls Royce and save her the obvious difficulty of walking down the street.

  Given her self-created image of helplessness, what man would be so ill-mannered, so ungallant as to ask her to carry a heavy, bulky box and step across a gutter?

  A man once got a woman to take off her high heels and her knee-tight skirt. As she stood on her stockinged feet, as firm and stable on the ground as one of Degas' dancers, he exclaimed:

  Look at those ankles! Look at those calves! Where is the fragile, willowy woman who was staggering in the breeze a while ago? So that's what those high heels are about? So that's what tight-kneed skirts are about?

  At which the lady picked up her handbag and struck him, drawing blood from his lip! Yes, women's craftiness in hiding their sturdiness and strength is extraordinary.

  Women may not be as weak or fragile as they look; but aren't men certainly cleverer? Now, now; men the cleverer sex? These creatures that women fool with a bit of face paint here, some finery there, and a {87} smile under dimmed lights? These gulls who can be subdued with a trickle of actress' tears, or confused with a sliver of thigh showing through a split in the skirt? These fools who, down through history, have been stuck with clearing the marshes, digging the coal, and getting bloodied in battle? They the cleverer sex? Ridiculous, simply ridiculous!

  Lest we forget, cleverness is not demonstrated by getting stuck with the hardest, dirtiest, riskiest jobs in the world, but by dumping them on others. Even in the routine matter of winning a living, any woman who doesn't want to be bothered with it manages to dump it on some man: either her father, or her lover, or her husband, or her sons and sons-in-law. Yet who are so stupid as to claim that they are cleverer than women? The very same men who serve women!

  In the West, some of these men, especially the brawny robots who are so easily manipulated by women, will go so far as to speak of the "dumb blonde" as the ultimate in human stupidity. Yet, to look into the matter is to discover that the allegedly dumb blonde is no such thing! She lives rich by expending little more than the yellowness of her hair. She uses her yellow hair to rule the heart and pick the pocket of some blonde-obsessed macho with more money than sense. She laughs her way through an easy life and into a hefty inheritance. If anything, she is a great maximizer of returns, cleverly getting the best of life with the least effort. Frankly, the proverbial "dumb blonde" is probably the cleverest thing in the world.

  And if a "dumb blonde" is actually stupid at things which need intellectual sophistication, well why not? In her world, all the mental calisthenics she needs is to say her wish and some blonde-struck macho would move mountains to satisfy it. Any wonder if she should fail to exercise, let alone build up her brainpower? Anyway, however dumb a "dumb blonde" actually is, she is still cleverer than any man she rules through his worship of her yellow hair; for how can one be cleverer than one's ruler? In any case, the degree of a "dumb blonde's" dumbness is a direct measure of just how little brains it takes a woman to rule even the cleverest of men.

  It must be conceded that a beautiful woman does not need much brains to get what she wants in life. As the Igbo say, beauty is woman's wealth. Stupid though a beautiful woman may be, when she presses the appropriate button on his ego, some big, clever robot will do her bidding. If she says: "I bet you aren't man enough to lift that rock," his taunted ego would respond: "Not man enough to lift that little pebble?" {88}

  And to prove that he is indeed Superman, our Samson will sprain his spine and risk a hernia to lift a ten-ton rock all by himself.

  Faced with the chore of doing the family accounts, she will slip out of it by saying: "Darling! You know I don't have a head for numbers. Be an angel and give your brilliant attention to these bank statements." And to live up to the flattery, he will work all night on the accounts while she gets her beauty sleep. Yet, all that notwithstanding, the robot actually believes that he is cleverer than his manipulator!

  Women, alas, are not stupid. But being brilliant manipulators, they choose to appear stupid so as not to wound the male ego with the truth. As a result, men appear cleverer than women, but only in the dumb male's eyes. And whenever a woman is sorely tempted to stop dissembling, and to show just how clever she is, the female superego, alias "The Angel in the House," would whisper to her (as it reportedly did to Virginia Woolf):

  Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own.72

  And why should she not obey? What does she lose by allowing her slave to believe whatever nonsense makes him work tirelessly for her?

  Men do need to look with sceptical eyes at women's show of stupidity. When men do, they will discover, probably to their shock, that it is a calculated stupidity in the service of cupidity. And they must concede that it takes great cleverness to feign such stupidity successfully.

  Men claim that women are fickle, passive, irrational, helpless and sentimental. To the extent that these claims are true, these characteristics are not the marks of weaknes's or inferiority which men presume them to be: rather, they are proof of women's supremacy, and they also serve as tools of female power.

  Isn't fickleness a trait of arbitrary power? Any subordinate soon learns not to be fickle toward his superior; fickleness in a subordinate is called unreliability, and it is one luxury he cannot afford unless he wishes to be fired. Only male despots, like Stalin or Louis XIV, can be as fickle as the average woman.

  And isn't passivity a mark of enormous power and privilege? Note how the ceaseless activity of worker bees serves the passive queen bee! {89} And isn't much of woman's show of irrationality a part of her power play, a ruse to frustrate men into yielding to her whatever is at issue? She puts on an act so irrational that the exasperated man, in exchange for some peace and sanity around the house, grants her whatever it is she wants. When seen in their proper light, her fickleness, passivity and irrationality are not signs of weakness or inferiority, but rather testaments to woman's superior powers. They are, indeed, not the traits of serfs, but the privileges of princesses.

  The illusion of female helplessness is also a handy weapon against men. It ought to be pretty obvious, especially after the triumphs of women in previously male careers, that anything man can do woman can also do, except inseminate women. So woman is, intrinsically, no more helpless than man. But exagge
rating her helplessness serves her well: it helps to get men to work for her, from opening doors to fighting wars that safeguard her interests. On the domestic front, she frequently takes the most outrageous advantage of her alleged helplessness. For instance, consider this case of a man who discovered his wife's infidelity. Confronted with the evidence, she eventually confessed, but added: "I shan't see him anymore; if you left me, 1 wouldn't know what to do". With his gallantry thus triggered by her alleged helplessness, he let her get away with her serious breach of their marital contract! The male illusion that women are sentimental probably derives from the fact that women are given to such emotional displays as hugging and crying, indulge in baby-talk with babies, and are avid readers and prolific writers of romances. It is therefore presumed that they are not ruthless, tough-minded or cynical. As usual, the realities are rather different.

  In a letter to Madame Mohl, an old family friend of hers, Florence Nightingale, the famous Lady with the Lamp, said:

  You say women are more sympathetic than men. Now if I were to write a book out of my experience, I should begin, Women have no sympathy. Yours is the tradition - mine is the conviction of experience.73

  One mother, writing to one of her daughters, said of another daughter: {90}

  Annie is a hard wee nut, don't get taken in by her tears, she can turn them on at the touch of a button?74

  That should make us wonder at any woman's ever ready river of actress' tears!

  And in comparing her father, Pandit Nehru, with herself, Indira Gandhi said:

  I am less romantic and emotional than he was. Women are more down to earth than men.75