LETTER

Letter to a facebook girlfriend

By Odimegwu Onwumere

My Dear, I have avoided treating leprosy with the prescription of malaria. When you talk about semantics, some words, their literary definition, does not tap into the origin of such words. Sexist, as far as I was taught, doesn’t mean what you have in mind. 

If you have read very vast, you would know that the word, mostly, came into being during the slave trade, when white masters and mistresses were sending their African women (slaves) to labour, whereas those masters and mistresses enjoyed. As a result of this, the African (slave) women started to think if they were not women, just as their white mistresses, hence the word “sexism”. I beseech you to understand that the literary definition of sexism or sexist as “Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women” is not in the background formation correct. I wish that you can lay your hands on the book, “Ain’t I A Woman?”

However, I don’t think you are a more woman or more schooled than the men and women who have contributed their opinion to this. I tell friends not to align insolence with stubbornness, especially when a woman is disposed of this trait. Such a woman is like the Ben Bergor's saying: It is amazing how quickly the kids learn to drive a car, yet are unable to understand the lawnmower, snowblower or vacuum cleaner. This may also sound sexism to you. But I must say it. Any woman that has the fear of men's nature-given position in the world will find it very hard to stay with any man who knows his onus. It is not good for a woman to think herself as an intelligent, sensitive before a crowd but regrettably, she is with the thinking of a comedian.

For your info, if there is any man who adore women, that man should be me. But I do not adore women who, because, they feel that they went to school or occupy 'positions', so for that reason, they forget their chemistry and role as women. Women who feel that they know it all by being loquacious make me take pills sometimes, and I don’t smile when I wake up.

My Dear, I am not trying to be conceited, but it is obvious that some women’s childhood is what they spend the rest of their lives overcoming, and they won’t get it. I am seeing such women very much on Facebook.

Ndi’Igbo would say: Agwa bu mma nwanyi!

POST SCRIPT: I’ve a female friend who was born and bred in Europe. In one of my conversations with her, she told me that she could not buttress any point why African women tend to be Europeans more than the owners. Her fears are that most African women who are engrossed in this habit have not even left the shores of their villages to any part of their countries, let alone, leaving the shores of their countries to Europe. She frowned that some of African women at home are culprits, they are ill-advised to accept the notion that they can eschew their womanhood and equate with the men or exhibit bestial acts against the men. She said that this crassness does not mean that a woman is strong. She said that when they, African women, who were born and bred in Europe, try to tell our misguided women at home that our beliefs are immeasurable to the philosophy of Europeans, such women cast venom and vituperation and take them as backward women. Her angst is that if the women who were born and bred in Europe are rejecting the Europeans garbage, shouldn't that make our imprudent African women at home think twice?