I am half-Man. I am half-capable.
I am half strong. I am half intelligent. I am a half. And the man is whole. In
simple terms that is who the unlucky women are think they are: Halves, and not
halves of a whole, because Man is whole. Woman is just a half that will never
be complete.
If you did not grow up this way,
then you are lucky. We are the women buried under ground. The seeds who never
flowered because they were never watered. Told that they are seeds, and they
will always be seeds, and they cannot be anything beyond a seed. A woman is
small; A woman is weak; A woman is unintelligent—and because she is
unintelligent, she needs a man. She needs to comply to certain standards, and
those standards only: Cook, clean and say false pretty things to false pretty
guests. (As if that is all a wife should be; as if that is all a woman can be.)
A woman is, like the child and the mentally unstable, unable to form her own
decisions. But unlike the child and the mentally unstable, a woman should be
covered and invisible. Show your face or say your name, and you are shunned. A
woman cannot be anything but a seed and a half.
This is why these women never
hold authority, never speak up, and view the participation of their own sex in
the workforce as blasphemy! Their mothers were never allowed to grow, and their
mothers’ mothers’ were never allowed to grow and all their life they remained a
seed and a half. Their life is half-important, their opinions are half-important,
their capabilities are half-important. We are halves. We are presented with the
right to earn an education, to build ourselves, to contribute to our society,
but our voice cannot be heard, and should not be heard, and our independence is
impossible because a woman will always be a half.
This hurts the Man too, the logic
that he is whole. How many boys were raped in school? How many young men raped
in universities? How many of them raped by strangers? How many by relatives?
How many by inmates? None. A Man is a strong whole who cannot be hurt, and if
he is hurt and traumatized and broken, then he is a half, no longer a whole—he
is a Woman. If a man sheds a tear, he is a half. If Man follows the steps of the
Prophet Mohammad PBUH, and Man cooks, cleans and values the opinions of his
wives, then Man is half.
I’ve always hated myself, because
I cannot be that Woman. Someone else
has always hated them selves, because they cannot be that Man. We are a society that promotes self-hatred and
underdevelopment. I realized my fault was in the way I never questioned my
being a seed. It’s when I started to realize that Man was a seed too, and then
man developed and blossomed. Why cant Woman do the same? Because Woman was
never allowed to look beyond what was there. And Man is stuck in the illusion
that he is in the position of power and dominance, when, in reality, Man is a
half of a whole, just like Woman.
