BY OBIENYEM VALENTINE
The fact that few societies were said to be matriarchal does not distract from the fact that most societies, as far back as we can pry into history, were largely, sometimes absolutely, patriarchal. Man has continued to resent the idea of equality between him and the woman. Most histories, legends, anecdotes, myths, and stories show strong bias against women. Some are deliberately, sometimes mischievously, invented to prove the superiority of man.
The Christian Bible tells us in the creation story that God had the creation of man in mind; woman was afterward created as a helpmate of man, after God saw that man was lonely. Even when Maimonides proceeded to interpret the creation story of Genesis allegorically, he said that Adam was the active form or spirit, Eve was passive matter, which is the root of all evil. This corresponds to the Chinese principle of yin and yang.
Steeped in this, steeped in Aristotle’s philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas believed that nature always wishes to produce a male, and that woman is something defective and accidental (deficiens et occasionatum); she is a male gone awry (mas occasionatum); probably she is the result of some weakness in the father’s generative power.
Further to the above, Aquinas believed that woman is the weaker vessel in body, mind, and will, and that in her sexual appetite predominates, while man is the expression of the more stable element. Both man and woman are made in the image of God, but man more especially so. Man is the principle and end of woman, and God is the principle and end of the universe. She needs man in everything; he needs her only for procreation. Man can accomplish all tasks better than woman – even the care of home. She is a part of man, literally a rib. She should look upon man as her natural master, should accept his guidance and submit to his corrections and discipline. This was one of the reasons why, perhaps, in ancient Russia, on the marriage of a daughter, the father struck her gently with a whip, and then presented the whip to the bridegroom, as a sign that her beatings were now to come from a rejuvenated hand.
The Hindu creation legend is equally low in its opinion about women. In the beginning, says that legend, when Twashti, the Divine Artificer, came to the creation of a woman, he found that he had exhausted the best materials in the making of man and had no good materials left. In this dilemma, he fashioned her eclectically out of the odds and ends of creation: “He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the weeping of clouds and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot’s bosom, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of joys, and …Compounding all these together he made woman, and gave her to man”. Implicit in this legend is that woman is more tender, attractive, untrustworthy, contradictory, light-hearted, timid, pretentious, and wicked than man.
Man has tried to demonstrate his superiority in a thousand different ways. In some ancient societies, the husband was permitted to divorce his wife for unchastity; the woman could not divorce her husband for any cause. “A faithful wife,” said Manu “must serve her husband as if he were a god, and never do ought to pain him, whatsoever be his state, and even though devoid of every virtue.” In the code of Manu still, woman was ineligible to hold property. The knowledge of the Vedas was denied her; for a woman to study the Vedas, says the Mahabharata, “is a sign of confusion in the realm”. The Hindus believed that a wife who disobeyed her husband would be a jackal in her next reincarnation. The position of woman in early societies was one of subjection verging upon slavery.
In Igbo society, as in Yoruba, some sacred duties are to be performed by man. In the old Jewish custom, upon counting his property, the man counted his wife first. The typical Jew thanked God that he had not been born a woman; and the woman replied humbly “I thanked God that I was made according to His will”. (White, M., woman in World History, P. 176).
In the early history of Islam, Mohammed (Peace be upon Him), tried to bring man and woman on equal footing. He did not quite succeed because in Islam today, a woman does not become Imam. Go to Mosques, as in Synagogues, the woman still occupies a separate place different from men – perhaps a clumsy compliment to her distracting charms, and she cannot be counted towards making a quorum.
The story of Genesis tells us that sin entered into the world through a woman, while humanity was redeemed by the death of a God – man. The Code of Manu in phrases reminiscent of this says that “The source of dishonor is a woman; the source of strife is a woman; the source of early existence is a woman; avoid a woman”. Woman, Hipponax carried the logic to merciless extreme, brings two days of happiness to a man “One when he marries her, the other when he buries her”. If you wish to succeed in anything, said Omar, one of the earliest Moslem Caliphs “Ask a woman for advice and do the opposite”.
Most of us, especially women, will disagree with Omar, and even stone Hipponax to death. But have you thought about the problem of evil and sin in this world? Why is it that we have more female than male witches, and why is it that Satan has always considered women as his favorite instrument? Women will resent Hipponax, but if you ask those of them who believe in reincarnation, what they wish to be in their next rebirth, 99% of them will choose to be men. Am I correct?
It is not for nothing that most societies are reluctant to have daughters but rejoice at the birth of a son. He, not she, they think, can carry on the father’s name; the daughter will marry into another, perhaps a distant household, and be lost to her parents as soon as the rearing is complete. Some men were known to have exposed their daughters to death or not to visit the nursing women for giving birth to a daughter.
I personally resent the views of some societies about woman over the centuries. I am glad that there has been a progressive emancipation of woman. Thus, some of these ideas have, or are disappearing or have changed greatly. Due to civilization, women themselves have started challenging society’s traditional image of what a woman may choose to be. Women now take on jobs that were formerly done by men, women now go into politics, rule nations, fight wars as seen in the equestrian statute of Amina in a prancing charger. Some of them have succeeded where men dared not succeed. This has made some people to wonder if the Presidency of this country should not be conceded to them. We salute the courage of our women.
Frankly speaking, I resent the antics of women that think that emancipation means that they should be indistinguishable from men, no. There is the equality of both sexes in their persons, but proportional equality is also created by the differences in their psychophysical natures. What each sex should do is to strive to perform the roles suitable to his own nature. Equality can never be similarity and equality is meaningful when it is among equals, both in mental and physical attributes. To pursue equality between sexes in the sense some women think is to rebel against the law of the creator and indisputable order of nature.
*Mr Obienyem a public Affairs Analyst wrote from Awka