By Funke Egbemode
Which one of you started this new campaign of ‘women enslaving men’ again? I have been seeing the articles on different platforms about how women have a playbook on how they will make men become their slaves. And their text is taken from a book called The Manipulated Man written by Esther Vilar in 1971. Yes 1971. Originally written in German and later translated to English.
Guys, are we still on this matter? Why are you like this, seriously? How are we enslaving you and why do you need a 53 year-old book as reference in the year of our Lord 2024? Come on, it is your world and you have run things the way you designed them for centuries. These are things you have enjoyed tremendously and rubbed women’s faces in. You wanted us in the kitchen, we stayed there. You wanted us in za ozza room, we stayed there. You wanted us to be seen and not heard, we obeyed. You wanted many wives and concubines, we bore it all. Did women stop men from doing anything? What exactly are we being blamed for, please?
There is a way men want the world to work and that is the way they have skewed it since the Garden of Eden. They have socialized us poor girls to accept a certain way and we have accepted our lot over the year. For centuries, we have been blamed for everything from how Adam ate the forbidden fruit and why it is Eve’s fault. There is also the unsaid implied thought behind that saying: “behind a successful man is a woman”. Is someone saying Adam had no free will, something that God installed in every human male and female? Adam could have turned down Eve’s offer and gone to the other side of the garden. But nope, he gobbled down the apple, probably stepped it down with very cold water and then blamed Eve for his pleasure.
Why do you guys blame us for your pleasure? Why? You made love to a woman very deeply and passionately for 12 straight months, refusing to wear condom each time, and then it’s the woman’s fault that she’s pregnant.
A modern man in this age and tech century fills a woman up with millions of his seeds for 52 weeks and then announces like a dumdum: “I’m not ready to be a Father”. “You want to trap me with this pregnancy.”
What did the ‘efulefu’ think he was doing when he was pumping the chick up? Did he think you can delete sperm like you can delete your WhatsApp storage when the phone announces it is dangerously low on space?
Mean men and their pumping skills that they crown with shameless irresponsibility, isn’t that how they filled the world with single mothers? Please who is enslaving who here? The man who wants skin-to-skin, unhindered access to the woman’s womb but refuses to accept the fruits of his labour when they germinate? Who is the slave? The man who moves on to the next open womb or the depressed woman who has to face the shit and shame of being an unwed mother?
Let’s look at the unsuccessful man and what is behind him. He has a university degree. His wife has one too. They both lose their jobs. She goes to learn cake-making and how to tie gele. He continues to apply for a Nine-to-Five job. She tells him to go learn photography. His eye almost pops out of his socket. His veins threatened to pop. How can you? She faces her new hustles and add event planning. Soon, she has a staff of 10 plus a personal assistant to monitor her commitments. She invites her husband to join in the business. He accuses her of wanting to turn him into her apprentice. Ten years later, she has a clientele list that has First Ladies and blue-chip companies and Oga is still a struggling nine-to-five manager.
‘She has used his head.’
‘She did not help him.’
‘See what she wears and see the car he drives.’
It’s her fault again. She’s the woman behind the unsuccessful man. Men, why are you like this? She’s now picking bills a man should and would prefer to pick, making her the slave. Yes, yet, we are the ones manipulating you. Please, what’s the colour of your problem?
I just finished reading a story of how men do and undo themselves. Two children had decided to take their mother to a shopping mall in Ibadan on her birthday. Nice kids just wanted to do something for their mother.
Imagine their shock and pain when they saw their father in the food court buying a meal for another woman on his wife’s birthday? Thank God for level-headed girls. They took their mother elsewhere. Of course, the he-goat Daddy has ruined their mum’s birthday. Would it have killed the man if he had given the wife a treat on her birthday and postpone the side-chick’s outing till the following day? No. He had to hurt her. Do you know any woman who will forget that slight? And what did my friend, Dr. Lasisi Olagunju have to say in defence of his fellow man? He said women like to monitor their husbands like monitoring spirits! I’m yet to recover from his mischievous logic.
Anyways, let’s fast forward to 15 years from now. Picture those children in Canada with their mother. They decide to keep her with them so they could take care of her hypertension.
Daddy of side-chick fame is now in his 70s, dodging Okada and goats while he tries to cross the road to buy ‘Ewa Aganyin’. His girlfriend has moved on, he now lives alone. Someone like my friend, Dr. Laz will accuse the children of being mean and their mother of witchcraft.
‘Those children he trained have now abandoned him.’
‘Only his wife is enjoying the fruits of his labour. ‘
‘So unfair, they want the man to die alone’
Someone rescue me. E gbami o. Did Daddy not know that there’s more to Daddyhood than paying school fees, assuming he actually paid and paid in full? Did nobody tell Daddy that the children were taking judicial notice of how he was maltreating their mother? Did Daddy Wa not read what I wrote about ‘Amen Junction’ and how men always have the consequences of their actions waiting for them later in life?
Guys, my point is, do not turn things on their heads. Stop quoting from books to manipulate facts. What you buy is what you get. You said you wanted a man’s world, women agreed and all we are doing is living in it with you. Where then is the slavery there?
*Egbemode (egbemode3@gmail.com)
