Writings :: The Selfishness of Men. Amera Ziganii Rao
He left me because I wanted a career. So I made it into a huge vocation. My father educated me in the best schools and then it turned out he wanted me to be an accomplished bride. There is no difference in the world today, from the age of Jane Austen.
A man with money fools a woman even more, because he appears to want to take care of her. It turns out he just wants her at home. Hijabed, out of sight, and preferably, bare foot and pregnant. So she can be all for him. So she can always be there. Daddy taught him that if he went out and earnt the money, she would worship him and be happy for any scraps of affection or pocket money he throws her way. So a hunter before marriage, she is suddenly expected to cull that side of her completely. All for La Familia. The whole idea that she is too powerful for him is a lie. It's not power. A poorer man will tell her to go out to work. She will be expected to cook, clean and bring home bread too. It's not about power. It's about vocation and more power. His career is supposed to come first. He is supposed to come first and she is supposed to support him.
That is the same drive that moves a father to tell his well educated daughter that she is not really very good at anything. And that it would be preferable if she goes out and does a secondary sort of support job. He sincerely believes it. Not because of her talents or lack of talents. But because he knows that no man is going to want her if she is as powerful as she is. So he feels he is doing her a favour by keeping her down, keeping her secondary. Teaching her how to be a wife. It's his duty after all, as a father. The poor misguided harbinger of evil.
And for the daughter, she sees her father turn on her in the same way he turned on her mother. And she has watched a mother frustrated and unsatisfied because he expected her to be a mother with a secondary type job instead of the career she had been educated for. He suddenly wants her to shut up, even though he married her for her mind, as much as her body. Her vibrant and warm and passionate personality. Suddenly, it's not needed anymore. And life is suddenly called obedience. The sinister subconscious control that means a father will first, for years, push his daughter like he pushes his son. Until the mysterious, marriageable age. Then, all of a sudden, she is stupid and foolish and most of all, difficult - their favourite word - for wanting to pursue her ambitions. It's all suddenly pie in the sky, instead of real pragmatic ambition.
The subconscious drive to make her a wife is to take away her power, after letting her play with the boys, for what turns out to be a short out take in a female's life. She has been allowed to spread her wings, by supposedly tolerant fathers, and now she has to take responsibility for being a woman. So she leaves that offer, moves out of the home and is ostracised instead. Valiantly, she stands alone and does her own thing and then she meets male bosses who treat her with the same patriarchal subconscious drive to make her a wife. While she is lost, broken, confused and weak.
And then she meets her man. Wealthy and appearing to be so kind and good, because he appears to want to take care of her. And then she finds out the truly, unsurpassably, horrendous truth. That he wants her barefoot in the house with no job. He's loved her for her power, he's attracted to her first, because of her intelligence and beauty and dynamism, and then he expects her to actually give up her life, give up her career, out of her love for him. THAT is not love. That is not even human. The Beast is suddenly lying in bed next to her. Her man has gone.
If a woman has to choose to give up her career in 2011, in the Western World, to a European man, because he is gracing her with his love, his care and his providing, there is absolutely no cultural difference anywhere. Taliban or not, the patriarchal toilet tribe, man is alive and well. He wants an intelligent, accomplished bride who will entertain him at home. So it's back to the accomplished bride. If she wants to work, she can do a part time job, what's the problem with that? But to 'let' her actually have her career? How selfish of her, how cruel of her and how ugly of her. That is not love. If a man tells a woman to give up her career, either by her doing a part time job that is not her profession or by not wanting her to work at all, that is not love. If a man grunts and tells her she does not need him if she loves her work so much and makes a lot of money, that is not love. If he doesn't want to hear her news of the day, as she lets him speak his, that is not love. That is dehumanising, violating and neglecting, whatever you want to call it. Most people call it tradition. Am I the only one in shock, that tradition means the death of a woman as anything but a womb, servant, nurse and carer? I hope that always shocks me. Otherwise, I'll know I am dead. Nothing has changed.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
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