Anatomy of Female Power

by Chinweizu

  When she gushes 'out she loves him,

  He cannot but wonder which arm or leg

  The lovely shark is after.111

  To the masculinist, a wedding is a ceremony in which a woman is issued with a public licence to ride piggyback on a man and exploit him. He therefore does his best not to wed. He does not believe in marrying to obtain househelp. Unlike the macho; he finds it cheaper (financially, emotionally, mentally) to rent househelp than to marry it.

  The masculinist does not subscribe to gallantry. He does not believe I that a man should open doors for, or give up his seat to, a woman, not unless she is infirm from age or disease, in which case she gets the same considerateness as aged or infirm men. He does not believe that it is for any man to defend any woman’s honour. He believes that, if her honour matters to her, a woman is quite capable of defending it herself.

  The masculinist believes that every woman should protect herself. She should learn karate and other martial arts so as not to depend on men for her physical defence. He believes that, since rape is better prevented than punished, martial arts, as well as anti-rape techniques should be standard items in every girl’s education.

  The masculinist believes that if it is all right for women to be feminists, it is all right for men to be masculinists. What is good for the goose is good for the gander: each should, therefore, define and protect its own interest.

  But what is the male interest? Or rather, what are the sorts of things that are NOT in the male interest?

  It is not in the male interest to be a nest-slave, or to be programmed for nest-slavery.

  It is not in the male interest to be society’s specialists in violence, war and other dangerous pursuits. So long as these pursuits are {127} necessary, men and women should equally engage in them. The proposal, in February 1980, by US President Jimmy Carter, to draft men and women for military service;112 and the decision, in February 1989, by Canada, to integrate its armed forces and make women serve in wartime combat roles, including infantry units,113 – these are both in the male interest.

  It is not in the male interest to maim or slaughter one another in their competition for wombs.

  It is not in the male interest to be killed by a woman when a liaison between a man and a woman breaks up, or when the woman, like the notorious Jean Harris, fears the man might leave her.

  It is not in the male interest to live in an environment that is polluted with sexual stimulants which weaken men's bargaining position in transactions with women.

  It is not in the male interest to be exploited through alimony payments and other rackets of divorce.

  Now, how do matriarchism, feminism and masculinism relate to one another? Broadly speaking, feminism and masculinism are two different revolts against matriarchy. Feminism is a revolt by some women who are bored or frustrated within the matriarchist paradise; masculinism is a revolt by some of the helots on whose backs that paradise rests.

  How does masculinism regard matriarchism and the tendencies within feminism?

  Matriarchists have been the expert exploiters of men since the beginning of human society. Their ideology, matriarchism, still demands the same thing from men: obedient and uncomplaining servitude. Since they are dedicated to nest-slavery, matriarchism and matriarchists are most dangerous to masculine liberty; they are, therefore, the focus of the masculinist's freedom-loving scrutiny.

  From the masculinist point of view, the demands of tomboy feminism are understandable, negotiable and mostly reasonable. Equal opportunities in the world of their brothers and fathers for those women who prefer careers in that arena? Yes. Equal pay for equal work? Yes, of course. But why, the masculinist wonders, do tomboy feminists limit their clamour for equality to the soft, white collar jobs in the erstwhile male sphere? If, as they insist, equality should replace complementarity as the overriding principle in the gender division of labour, risk and status, then why do tomboys not demand that both genders be equally drafted into infantry platoons or coal pits? Should gender equality stop {128} short at the edges of swamps, mine pits and battlefields? Until tomboys demand equal access to the nasty and strenuous jobs which men do, the masculinist can only be sceptical of tomboy feminism's good faith. To the tomboy feminist who advocates gender equality, the masculinist would address this vital question: Is it fair to reorganize the centres of male power to accommodate women without also reorganizing the centres of female power to accommodate men? Upon the answer received would depend the masculinist's attitude to the tomboy feminist.

  The demands of termagant feminism are another matter entirely. They are not demands with discernible remedies, but rather excuses for guilt-tripping, harassing and mauling men in the unhallowed tradition of harridans and shrews. To termagant feminism belong those man haters who would legitimize man-killing for nest desertion (Jean Harris and her supporters), or even man-killing for spurned love (Ishtar style), on the implicit ground that a man has no right to choose whom to love, but must submit to any woman's offer of her embrace, like a slave to a tyrant's wishes. To termagant feminism belong the palimony racketeers and the alimony extorters; and the man-humiliators who demand: "Love me, love my menstrual blood" (even in this age of aids?). Of termagant feminism, all sane males must beware.

  Paradoxically, the tomboy is the masculinist's least uncongenial type of woman. She is his partial ally in revolt against matriarchism; and, temperamentally, she is like a buddy with whom he could have sex and children. The termagant, though sometimes quite deadly, is the least problematic to the masculinist: her nuisance can usually be avoided from afar.

  Being determined to obtain his liberty, the masculinist looks at nest slavery with unsentimental eyes; for only by understanding man's condition can he hope to change it. He accepts that man's subordination to woman derives from the five pillars of woman power. He knows that, with man's loss of control over the kitchen and the cradle, he really has never had any chance of being anything but the slave (glorified when necessary) of woman. As a realist, he accepts that woman's control of the womb will remain unassailable until cloning techniques are perfected.

  He knows that probably nothing can be done about woman's relatively greater psychological maturity. But he also knows that much can be done, through cultural training, to whittle down woman's control of kitchen and cradle, and to reduce the deranging powers of the erect {129} penis. He therefore welcomes feminist demands that men be obliged to work as baby-minders. When men get control of the cradle, they will be able to train children in the male interest, and so reduce the numbers of machos and mushos in the world. When men get control of the kitchen, female power over man's stomach will diminish. A man who cooks cannot be half-starved into submission, on any matter, by his wife. The masculinist believes in bringing about the revolt of the helots of matriarchy. Ah, what a different world it would be if only the macho ego would give up its ingrained stupidity and respond to the masculinist call: Men of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your macho illusions and your nest-slave burdens! {130}

  Notes

  1. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, eds., Picking on Men Again, London: Arrow Books, 1986, p. 88.

  2. Regina Joseph, "In Defence of Marriage", Sunday Punch (Lagos), May 22, 1983, p. 7.

  3. Harold Coulander, ed., A Treasury of African Folklore, New York: Crown Publishers, 1975, pp. 362-363.

  4. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 35.

  5. Andrea Dworkin, Right-wing Women, London: The Women's Press, 1983, p. 223.

  6. Carol Hanisch, "Men's Liberation", in Redstockings, Feminist Revolution, New York: Random House, 1978, p. 72.

  7. Denyse Plummer, "Woman is Boss", on the cassette Who is the Boss?, Trinidad & Tobago: Multi Media Limited, 1988, CP 3889.

  8. Interview by Rolake Omonubi, Sunday Tribune (Ibadan), January 22, 1984, p. 11.

  9. Esther Vilar, The Manipulated Man, London: Abelard-Schuman, 1972, p. 10.

  10. Ibid., p. 39.

&nb
sp; 11. Sigmund Freud, Character and Culture, New York: Crowell-Collier, 1963, pp. 37-38.

  12. Jonathon Green, ed., Says Who?, Harlow, U.K.: Longman, 1988, p. 598.

  13. Robert Ardrey, African Genesis, London: Fontana, 1967, p. 162.

  14. Bunmi Fadase, "The 60th Birthday Party that Went with a Bang!", The Punch (Lagos), May 2, 1983, p. 4.

  15. William Ross Wallace, in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, London, OUP, 1964, p. 557.

  16. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 82.

  17. B unmi Fadase, "Watch out Girls, The Men are Getting Liberated", The Punch (Lagos), August 8, 1983, p. 4.

  18. Chinweizu, ed., Voices from Twentieth-Century Africa, London: Faber and Faber, 1988, p. 249.

  {131}

  19. Miriam Lichtheim, ed., Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vo1.3, Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1980, p. 178.

  20. Bunmi Fadase, op. cit.

  21. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 114.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches, New York: Vintage, 1978, p. 72.

  24. Chieka Ifemesia, Traditional Humane Living Among the 19bo, Enugu: Fourth Dimension, (n.d.) p. 57.

  25. Helene Deutsch, The Psychology of Women, Vol. II, New York: Bantam, 1973, pp. 329-330.

  26. Karen Payne, ed., Between Ourselves, London: Picador., 1984, pp. 360-364.

  27. Ibid., p. 365.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid., p. 25.

  30. Bunmi Fadase, op. cit.

  31. Willard Trask, ed., The Unwritten Song, Vol. ll, New York: Macmillan, 1967, p. xxvi.

  32. Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls, New York: MacmiIlian, 1977, p. 39.

  33. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 18.

  34. Jan Knappert, ed., An Anthology of Swahili Love Poetry, Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1972, p. 87.

  35. Ambrose Bierce, The Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary, ed. by EJ. Hopkins, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983, p. 215.

  36. A.K. Adams, ed., The Home Book of Humorous Quotations, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1969, p. 210.

  37. Quoted by Herb Caen, in The San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 1980, p. 35.

  38. Barbra Streisand, "Woman in Love", in Barbra Streisand, A Collection of Greatest Hits... And More, CBS 465845 4.

  39. "Moonlight Love Song", by the Ora of Bendel State, Nigeria, tr. by Oje Odihirin, in C.O.D. Ekwensi, ed., The Festac Anthology of New Nigerian Writings, Lagos: Federal Ministry of Information, 1977, p. 46.

  40. Jan Knappert, op. cit.

  41. F.P A 's Book of Quotations, New York: Funk and WagnaIIs, 1952, p. 864.

  42. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 140.

  {132}

  43. Jorge Amado, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, tr. by Harriet de Onis, New York: Bantam, 1971, p. 236.

  44. From "The Lala-Song ofthe Village Girls", in Charlotte and Wolf Leslau, eds., African Poems and Lo ve Songs, Mount Vernon, N.Y.: Peter Pauper Press, 1970, pp. 20-22. 45. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 74.

  46. Ibid., p. 75.

  47. From "Song of the Bridesmaids", in Charlotte and Wolf Leslau, op. cit., pp. 6-7.

  48. "The Groom Said 'No' ", The Weekly Star (Enugu), March 15, 1981, p. 9.

  49. Joseph L. Henderson, "Ancient Myths and Modern Man", in C. G. Jung, ed., Man and His Symbols, New York: Dell, 1968, p. 127.

  50. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 88.

  51. Fred Metcalf, ed., The Penguin Dictionary of Modem Humorous Quotations, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986, p. 162.

  52. Livia, wife of Emperor Augustus Caesar of Rome.

  53. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 117.

  54. BBC World Service, September 23, 1982.

  55. Anthony King, "Mrs Thatcher: Matching Up to Princely Standards", in The Daily Telegraph (London), October 6, 1988, p. 12.

  56. Gail Sheehy, "The Bendix Furor - Woman's Untold Story", The San Francisco Chronicle, October 13, 1980, p. 6.

  57. Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill, London: Cassell, 1979, jacket blurb.

  58. Ibid., p. 236.

  59. Ibid., p. 498.

  60. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 45.

  61. Isidore Okpewho, ed., The Heritage of African Poetry, London: Longman, 1985, p. 162.

  62. Karen Payne, op. cit. , p. 234.

  63. Andrea Dworkin, op. cit., p. 216.

  64. Quoted in Chinweizu, The West and the Rest of Us, Lagos: Pero Press, 1987, p. 242.

  65. Karen Payne, op. cit. , p. 87.

  66. Ibid., pp. 87, 88.

  67. Kowus Bisi-Williams, "Why Women Flirt", Vanguard (Lagos), March 17, 1989, p. 12.

  68. Gloria Ogunbadejo, "The Human Angle", VaI nguard (Lagos), February 28, 1989, p. 5.

  {133}

  69. Robert Ardrey, op. cit., p. 138.

  70. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 168.

  71. Bunmi Fadase, "Talk about 'Battered-Men' ", The Punch (Lagos), July 11, 1983, p. 4.

  72. Karen Payne, op. cit., p. 3.

  73. Ibid., p. 109.

  74. Ibid., p. 239.

  75. Quoted in South magazine (London), December 1984, p. 19.

  76. "The Cynic in Mrs. America", in "Jeremy Campbell's Washington Letter", The Standard (London) March 10, 1982, p. 7.

  77. Miriam Lichtheim, op. cit., p. 195.

  78. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit. , p. 90.

  79. Who Said What When?, London: Bloomsbury, 1988, p. 271. SO. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 92.

  81. Ibid., p. 171.

  82. Gbemi Egunjobi, "Why Do Men Fear Commitment?", Vanguard (Lagos), September 5, 1989, p. 5.

  83. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 86.

  84. Ibid., p. 89.

  8.5. Gilgamesh, tr. by John Gardner and John Maier, New York: Knopf, 1984, pp. 149, 152, 153.

  86. Homer, The Odyssey, tr. by E.V. Rieu, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970, p. 92.

  87. Ibid., p. 164.

  88. Ibid.

  89. Bernard Soulie, Japanese Erotism, tr. by Evelyn Rossiter, Fribourg-Geneve, Productions Liber SA, 1981, p. 68.

  90. Chinweizu, ed., Voices from Twentieth-Century Africa, London: Faber and Faber, 1988, p. 154.

  91. Bunmi Fadase, "Men Who Marry Younger Wives", The Punch (Lagos), February 27, 1984, p. 4.

  92. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965, p. 237.

  93. Fred Metcalf, op. cit., p. 158.

  94. F. P. A 's Book of Quotations, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1952, p. 859.

  95. National Concord (Lagos), p. 1.

  96. Kim Fletcher, "Behind Every Bad Man?", The Sunday Telegraph (London), December 31, 1989, p. 21.

  {134}

  97. Esther Vilar, The Polygamous Sex, tr. by Sophie Wilkins, London: W.H. Allen, 1976, pp. 86-87.

  98. Interview by Charles Okechukwu, The Guardian (Lagos), November 1, 1987, p. 4.

  99. Betty Friedan, op. cit. , p. 29.

  100. Bloomsbury Thematic Dictionary of Quotations, London: Bloomsbury, 1988, p. 134.

  101. Lagos Life, September 14-20, 1989, p. 2.

  102. Semantha Norman; "Why All Men Under 35 Should be Locked Up", Cosmopolitan (London), August 1989, p. 64.

  103. Andrea Dworkin, op. cit., p. 116.

  104. Ibid.

  105. Ibid., p. 117.

  106. Ibid., p. 118.

  107. Ibid.

  108. Debbie Raymond, "A Man Has The Right to See a Naked Body", The Independent (London), July 1, 1989, p. 14.

  109. Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op. cit., p. 53.

  110. Quoted in Chinweizu, Invocations and Admonitions, Lagos: Pero Press, 1986, p. 65.

  111. Variant of "Shark's Love", Ibid.

  112. "Carter Statement on Draft Registration", The New York Times, February 9, 1980, p. 8.

  113. BBC World Service, February (?), 1989.

  {135}

  - B
ooks by Chinweizu

  The West and the Rest of Us

  - Energy Crisis and Other Poems

  - Toward the Decolonization of African Literature (with Onwuchekwa Jemie and Ihechukwu Madubuike)

  - Invocations and Admonitions

  - Decolonising the African Mind

  - The Black World and the Nobel

  - Voices from Twentieth-Century Africa

  - Anatomy of Female Power

  Most of these titles are Available (outside Nigeria) from SUNDOOR BCM Box 4658 London WC1N3XX England