Awakened Female

According to science, the worst pain any human can experience is the pain of being burnt alive, the next in line is the pain of childbirth (some school of thought considers it second to the pain associated with a kidney stone). There are probably as many real-life female heroines as there are males, if not more.

A lot of movies are remembered for their strong female characters. When the Bible spoke about what happened in the garden of Eden it spoke about God giving Adam a “helper suitable for him/helper who is just right for him”. Logically you can’t offer me any help if you’re not much stronger, powerful, richer, more resourceful, or have some qualities that supersede that of the person you’re helping. Or have what they lack.

I have always wondered where our generation and the ones before us got the idea of a meek, subservient gender called female. Is this the gender that is so “weak” that fiery hurricanes are named after them? Next time you want to imagine a woman or a female persona, do not think of the fragile butterfly, or that perpetually heartbroken girl who can’t see how much there is within her.

Think of Hurricane Katrina, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Amina of Zaria, Moremi, Oprah Winfrey, Malala Yousafzai, and a lot of other women scattered all over the world who have all gone ahead to accomplish things beyond the dream of many men despite all the barriers before them.

Rudyard Kipling’s award-winning poem is and will always be my all-time favorite because it tells in such graphic details what Shaggy calls the “strength of a woman” comes to mind every time I think and reflect about the abundant attributes of the woman which society overlooks.

 The Female of the Species

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other’s tale —
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations — worm and savage otherwise, —
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger — Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue — to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fiber of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engine for the same,
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity — must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions — not in these, her honor dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unchained to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions — in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! —
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
The wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges — even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons — even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish — like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice — which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern — shall enthrall but not enslave him.
And She knows because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Dear woman,

You are all that and more.

Do not let society take that from you.

Osoriounmu Oluwafemi Olaoluwayimika is a Veterinary Doctor and Enterprenuer.

 

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