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| I'm a phenomenal Woman. |
“Favour is a woman”. I read that somewhere in one of the millions of novels I have read in my short lifetime. I fell in love with it at once. Not because of the obvious bias of the situation, but because it said so much about life’s ways in such a short, sharp point.
It is women who hold the nurturing and insightful essence of (hu)mankind. We’ve heard it a million times how women are this and that, and oooh, how wonderful and yet so complex we are; often in comparison to men (who else?). Pardon me if I apologise unregretfully and unrepentantly, but you are about to hear it all over again.
Yes, women are the essence that holds everything in life and the world together, but in patriarchal places like Ghana, women are fucked over and plundered mercilessly in more ways than one. Choose whether the pun intends for you or not.
We are externally-oriented people, who often focus on what The Other Person needs, considers,thinks, and is. We instinctively put others first, and almost always knee-jerk in care and concern wherever the situation arises. We love to be cared for, and we love companionship. Give me a sceptic Arnold Schwarzenegger female look-alike, watch me pair her with a caring, loving man, and see her melt into Rampunzel or Cinderella before your very eyes. No matter how successful, how strong, how illiterate, how mentally crazed, how sceptic a woman is … there is always still a little piece of her that cares about the other person, the helpless, the endangered, the needy.
We are also the more creative of the sexes, and the deeper thinkers who can better conceptualize and direct affairs and dreams than the men.
We love our men though, and a little bit too much. They are the center of our world, the clouds above our heads, the weather at whose mercy we exist. From our mothers who over-pamper their sons and insist on getting silly wives for them, to our sisters who allow our brothers to go scot-free no doing chores or house-maintenance, to our girlfriends and wives who permit our husbands to run riot whenever and wherever, male members free and ready to plunder any permitting female member within reach.
We give them way too much freedom to be unethical, inconsiderate, unselfless, and scheming – and we’ve paid for it with a highly patriarchal society kept alive by women, but constantly diseased and abused by men. We thus, have created for ourselves a vicious situation – we create the men who create the disease, and we are the same women who must tend to the diseased society. Where do we step off? Oh, I don’t know. To me, it seems like we’re in for a long ride.
But I made a choice some years ago to jump off that bus, and face whatever the consequences may be. And I broke quite a lot of bones, and a lot of male egos too. But I healed; my bones set, and my life went on. You can jump off too.
Every now and then, some young girl reaches out a window from that trundling bus and calls out for help. I reach out to them too. Some jump, others don’t. But I know they’ll come around, ‘cus you see, with every circuit that damn bus makes, more and more girls jump, and less and less remain in there. You can’t tell me that that is not infectious. It is! So come join me if you’re a woman who also jumped some time ago. Let’s get more girls and even other women off that bone-shaker and onto solid ground. Let’s increase our numbers, and begin shaping up our societies and our country.
I know that bus-driver looks damn good and handsome. I know he’s promised you lots of good loving and little bundles of joy who look just like him. I know he’s promised you the cruise of a lifetime. Heck, not on a bus like that, he ain’t!
Close your eyes and jump off! Some brothers of his are out there, who understand us and support us. Find someone amongst them. You will, I know it.
So jump, little lady. Jump big sister. Jump, my mother. Onto this solid ground called Me. Onto this solid ground called Liberation. Onto this solid ground called Endless Possibilites.
You can build that machinery. You can invent. You can run that business. You can actualize those thing that you only did in your mind. You can. You too can.
It is necessary, in a world so ruled by men that many women have now been forced to live like men, just to keep up and survive. We are losing our care and love; and we’re growing large egos.
Ah, egos. The sport of man.
A man will do anything and everything to preserve the sanctity of his ego (and even that of his fellow brother). A man will keep a crucial truth to himself for life, pine himself to death in pain, watch his woman walk away, see his children lose the light in their eyes, lose a potential lover, cause a war … if it will preserve the sanctity of his ego!
I don’t know what it is with that, but it has changed women for the worse.
It doesn’t have to be that way. I am certain.
And I am more certain that it shall not be that way … as I watch my sisters from all over the world slowly rising up from the mire of patriarchy, abandonment, abuse, disrespect, and make it!
Does it offend any man or dis-oriented woman that” I walk as if I have oil-fields pumping in my backyard? Or that I walk as if I have diamonds at the juncture of my thighs?”
Now you know why.
Ah. I have said much, haven’t I?
But in the end when all is said and done, if more has been said than done … then we have a problem. So, if you can, take a stand.
To borrow from something my American sisters say, you do not have to like this (me), or agree with it (me); but you will respect me.
Shout- outs to women like this/me who are leaping off that bone-shaker. Who run the world?! Ha!
HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!!!
