@DemolaRewaju: The five strengths of a woman (Y! Superblogger)

by Demola Rewaju

Some may read this and conclude that I’m a sexist but that really is far from the truth. I’m just a believer in the unique differences of the sex with full acknowledgment that for ages, the definition of strength has been wrong and that is why we erroneously concluded that women are the weaker sex whereas, all they are called in some holy texts is the ‘weaker vessel’ which makes references to their body, not their minds or their spirit. Those men in all the ages who have ignored the power of women have found themselves at its receiving end and have met an inglorious end.

Just yesterday, I was reading up some materials and I had to make references to the apocryphal book of first Esdras where it told the story of three bodyguards of the ancient King Darius who got into a speech contest about the power of wine, truth and women – the man who argued for the prevailing power of women won the argument: proof that even from ancient times, men have understood that women are not weak but that their strength is merely different from the manly definition of strength. These are some of the thought I expressed in this article from Oh Brother that I wrote on the matter some weeks back (Click the Link to Read it). This piece therefore continues from there and talks about, five ways in which women establish their strength.

Shakara – I got to understood this as a womanly factor when I was very young and having girl issues – I knew this girl liked me but everytime I tried to get closer to her, shakara would start. (For foreign readers who don’t understand what shakara means, please read on, I’ll explain in just a minute). I took my troubles to a female cousin and all she would say was simply that shakara was the essence of a woman, that was what made her a woman until I turned to books and found the answer that shakara was actually a survival tactic invented by ancient women that has evolved into their great strength.

In those days, women had little power of their own, even over their body. A man would use a woman for sexual satisfaction and even if she wasn’t so inclined, he would merely have his way – rape it was, but it was never called that because women were not seen as having power over their own body. Women therefore learnt to give in but to offer more than just sex, they wanted men to know the difference having sex with a woman who wasn’t interested in sex and one who was willing to have sex, and when men saw the difference, men dropped the way of force and used other means to try and get a woman to give in to them willingly and voluntarily – that is how shakara started and how it became a strategy of power. You see, the more force a man exerts, the more it shows he isn’t ready to win the favours of a woman and so long as a man tries to exert his own strength, a woman can keep up with her shakara. I wrote a whole article on shakara last year and you should read it to understand my thoughts on the matter better.

Sensitivity (Intuition) – This is the second strength of a woman but by no means inferior to any other. Women by nature are intuitive because they see a different dimension of things than men. Sensitivity is a certain alert to issues even when things look normal or ordinary, it is an acute emotional awareness of a different rhythm at work around you; one you shouldn’t ignore for any reason because it is natural gift given to women to cope with the world as it is. With the light of modern innovation and thinking, logic has gained more prominence than intuition but the latter remains a valid pointer to how things may go even before logic has any inkling of it. The problem is that we usually try to justify intuition with logic whereas, intuition is its own warning and proof, all by itself. I once read of a woman who had an irrational fear from the moment she met an innocent looking man at her staircase but rather than takes steps to protect herself immediately, she tried to justify her fear logically and ended up being raped and almost killed by the man when she allowed him to escort her to her apartment. Intuition was what saved her after he had raped her because despite the fact that he kept assuring her that he would soon leave, her intuition told her otherwise and she ran out of the house the first moment she got, this time choosing to follow her instincts.

During therapy, her intuition was `shown to be logically driven – the man had given off signals that he would kill her (as it was found he had killed other victims in the past). The event may be as simple as the way the driver picks up the car keys in the morning to go and drop the children in school but a sensitive person picks this up and acts on it, only if the senses are validated. The problem is that most women try to explain this intuition and end up being unable to do so hence, they are conditioned to lose faith in it and persistently shut it down over the years.

Strength of a woman intuition

Observatory Powers – many men have learnt this one but none can compare with a woman who can blend in when she wants to and simply allow herself to be ignored while she studies events around her and makes her own conclusions. Some say this is why women’s intuition is so strong – because they observe patterns and can easily notice a deviation from the norm which alerts their sixth sense. In a society that pays little attention to women and one that has them in a place of weakness, women have learnt over the ages to observe closely and look for what makes each man or person tick: women can accurately treat men in the right way to trigger the effect they want to trigger. A woman can know (if she sets her heart to it) the day her man starts cheating on her, from a simple thing as how or whether he pecks her on when he gets home from work, by observation.

Role Playing – Women are masters (or mistresses) at multitasking and can play different roles in a very short period. Women do this because it is expected and demanded of them to be mothers, wives, leaders, followers, team members etc. and women try to excel at all these tasks.

The power of observation is also responsible for the different roles a woman takes on – knowing what motivates each man, a woman can wear the mask she needs to wear in order to get the best out of her man. With one man, a lady can be assertive, and with another be submissive – she knows just what each man needs to bring the best out of him or make him feel better about himself.

Acceptance – this is where the sexists may come at me but in these parts of the world, women are expected to accept the role that society has carved for them and it is a wonder how women cope with half of the things men dish out to them that no man would ever be able to accept if the roles were reversed. Imagine a man in a marriage of twenty years coming home to tell his wife that he has another family outside this home with two kids; and the woman is expected to accept it and be fine with it. If she’s not, the extended family members are recruited to plead with and threaten her to accept her new position as the first of two wives…now reverse the roles and see if men would accept the same.

I do not support the restriction of women to certain roles and I think these strengths can be harnessed by wise women and used to increase their power within the society. The truth is obvious even if we men don’t admit it: the strength of women is what keeps the world going.

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Demola Rewaju blogs at www.DemolaRewajuDaily.com

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