Half

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.