THE MYSTIQUE OF WOMEN
S. Sivasubramanian
Women species always mystify me, especially their attitude towards their partners. Today I was sitting in McDonalds with my daughter feeding her with their unhealthy and tasteless breakfast. I saw a young Indian or Pakistani couple with their daughter doing exactly the same. The wife was completely enraged. With a facial expression that permeates anger and malice miles around her, she was haranguing her husband in no uncertain words and the poor husband with a poker face was taking the shit silently. She went on and on for over 30 minutes with the pathetic child trying to bring peace in between her mouthfuls. After feeling totally defeated in her attempt to nudge her partner into acts of violence, the wife stormed out of the café into the car and slammed shut the door, if only the car had a life it would have cried. The hapless husband, collected his daughter, dumped the food scraps along with whatever remnants of his pride in the trashcan and joined his wife in the car. Why did an insensitive female humiliate the male specie in public? Is this the birth of new age insensitive females? Lets us look into this psyche a little deeper.
Traditionally the male was considered docile, less sensitive, a workhorse that ploughs along to keep the family well maintained, save those sick and alcoholics. The women always played a second fiddle often giving an impression of being powerless. In grandmother’s era, the grandfathers roared and hit their wives in public prove their masculinity whilst the grandmothers quietly tuned the actions of their men in private. Later in my mother’s era, the men’s public roaring and wife bashing came down whilst their public articulation was more explicitly choreographed by the wives in private. In my times, I find wives turning more vocal and domineering in public. I ever so often see males being harassed by their wives in public with gay abandon, inviting them to lose their control so that the skewed up laws can be used against them.
In one instance at Sydney, I saw a hapless Latino, angrily push a huge metallic advertising hoarding only to send his loyal wife scurrying into the hands of perfect strangers who promptly called the cops and had him removed. In another instance in India, I was observing my maidservant teasing and taunting her husband (a watchman in my apartment complex) throughout the day with every new taunt elevating her husband to new levels of tolerance. Around that evening, I heard sound like a clap of thunder and instinctively looked out of the window, it was the husband’s tolerance falling down from dizzy heights on to his wife’s cheeks. The wife holding her throbbing cheek was hurling abuses and trampling what is left of the ego and self-respect of the hapless husband. I am not justifying the wife bashing here but I am appalled at the calculated cunningness with which the docile male specie is driven to this extreme and the women specie immediately cornering sympathy sentiments. I wonder if this behavior increases the propensity of male alcoholism and debauchery.
In States, one wife took a restraining order to keep her husband away from home and accused him of improper behavior with his daughter to negate him of his own child. When confronted in private the wife agreed that the husband was an impeccable father whilst in court she insisted otherwise only to kick him where she can get the maximum leverage from law.
I have seen several successful executives of different races and nationality spending increasingly long hours at office to escape their harassing wives, proving the adage there is always a woman behind every successful man.
Why do these genteel creatures turn feral? What causes this transformation? Is it a simple case of economic emancipation of women? Is it natural evolution of the dominated species becoming the dominating species? Consider the animal world especially the communal animal clans like Lions and Monkeys, the male species are domineering and has a role of protecting the clan and impregnating their females. The females have no use from the males, tolerate their domination as a price for sex during heat. In the much-evolved human race, is it the economic necessity that held the women live with men more closely in yesteryears? And with the economic liberation and freely available sex, does the tolerance level of women coming down? Are women seeing roles of building home to be too condescending? Are we witnessing the landmark event of Darwinian Evolution – the women folks losing their femininity?
