Be your own man

The worst thing, a woman, can do to herself is make someone else her priority. She should be a priority to herself. In my opinion, everyone should do that. This does not contradict romance or being in love. This is a protective shield against life blows. In reality, a woman has no one to reliably depend on but herself. If man means security and peace to a woman, then we must be our own men. We must secure a peaceful space for ourselves, a home where warmth and tranquility is found.

Don't wait for a man to bring you that, be your own man.


This is what jWoman have to say for today

The story of us

Spring in October still takes her by surprise. She has been in the new land for more than four decades now and still the colourful spring that suddenly wakes up at the end of the year just before a hot Christmas, amazes her. In her homeland, things were so different. But that was a long time ago. This is her home now, their home.

Fading old memories of home were playing in her head as she arranged the tea cups and cakes on the tray and carried them out into the veranda. She put the tray on the low table and sat down by his side on the bamboo seats. The weather was great and the view was breathtaking. She was so happy that they had finally purchased his small house by the sea. It was a secluded spot on the beach and rarely did people come this way giving them the experience of a private beach.

He touched her back softly as she leaned to pour the hot tea in the cups. His touch still gives her butterflies, even after all those years together. She looked at him with smiles in her twinkling eyes.

'I love the twinkle in your eyes when you smile', he said with a laugh.

'They twinkle just for you and never for anyone else.'

'Oh, you still know what to say to make me breathless, even after more than 30 years together', and he leaned forward to put a kiss on the corner of her mouth.

Sunset on the beach was her favourite time of the day, and he loved to share that moment with her. So they sat on the veranda silently. They have always had this thing of being able to communicate and bond in silence without words. The peace of their togetherness was enough, it was really more than any words can describe. As they sat there enjoying, a young couple in their early twenties appeared walking hand in hand on the sand, their laughter was loud. It reached the senior couple mixed with the sound of waves and pieces of incomprehensible words. It made them smile and look to each other. The younger couple started chasing each other, then the man grabbed the woman in his arms and splashed both of them into the waves as they kissed passionately. It was an amusing and joyful scene for the senior couple.

They locked their eyes with a look full of satisfied love, peaceful sustained love. They kissed and then he said, 'I wish we have meet when we were their age. I would have made you so happy and we wouldn't have had the hard experiences that we had'.

She answered smilingly,

'These hardships made us what we are, without them we won't be here today'.

He took her hand in his and held it to his lips kissing it so tenderly.

'Yes, my sweet jewelz.'

Her face blushed and the smile grew bigger on her face as she heard him call her this intimate name, only he uses.

'You know babe, I have lived with you all these nice experiences. I have spent my twenties and early thirties with you. We have gone to the beach, to movies and theatre, and even travelled. And you have carried me and spun me around like these two young ones are doing now'. And she pointed at the happy young couple on the sand a few yards away from them.

An amused smile shone his face. She always amazed him by her thoughts and ideas and he was waiting for a novel amusing thing now.

'And how is that?'

He said it half knowing what she will say.

'I lived it all with you in my dreams, in my daydreams when we were apart. I relived all my life with you. I experienced every experience with you. This is how I survived being away from you.'

He took her into his arms and their lips were locked in a deep passionate kiss just like the young couple laying on the sand a few yards away.






This is what jWoman have to write for today.

jWoman in Budapest

Looking through the large glass windows that surrounded the waiting area, I can see aeroplanes standing still and humungous, as little electrical cars moving busily around them like little insects trying not to wake the beast. Budapest airport seems so quiet and small in comparison to Dubai airport where you could feel like a lost absurd child at his first visit to funland. I felt like crying, because it felt so big and busy and I felt so little and lost. Here only a couple of planes are standing in the runway field.

I have been here for only five nights and I am flying back to the furthest place on earth, to the new land. Airports and airports are places where you contemplate your life and think of everything or nothing. You have all the alone time you can dream of or dread. And I am a fan of alone time.

When I think, I can't believe I am here. A year ago, I couldn't have imagined doing that and alone too, never. The timid girl with wild imagination but big fears is finally able to do something. I have finally broke the chains of illusions. I feared everything, and I was always looking for someone to be there with me to do anything. I dreamt but never did.

Finally, jWoman is doing. Finally, I am living and acting not waiting for something to happen, or someone to do something for me.  I am doing.

This year had marked the start of my change. Leaving home to start my PhD. , at 35 I am still starting. It's always better late then never. But still, some negative people mock me for doing that.

An old post from October 2016

Woman

They say we are equal. They say we live in the age where women had been given all her rights and is treated as a human being, as an equal. But is that true. Is it true in the head of all men? Men are hard-wired to think lowly of women.

Judgemental as they are, men seem to know think they are superior, they know better. Behind the back of woman, when alone or with other male friends over drinks, they talk about woman. They enjoy calling us names.

She is too fat, not good enough
She is too thin, not good enough
She is too curvy, must be a slut
She laughs out too loud, she is a slut
She is too silent, how can her man endure her
She is too flirtous, a slut of course.
She is too independent, she is a slut.
She is too dependent, must stay away from her
...................

And a long list of names and descriptions, names I couldn't write here.

In my desperation

Sometimes, in my deepest desperate moments, I need to find someone to be upset with. I try to find the weakest link, someone to carry all the blame, someone to be the target of all my wrath. Someone who I have constant contact with but yet has nothing to do with my desperation. And that poor person, in my head, becomes my worst opponent, the one I have to deal with but don't want to do that at all.

And days pass by, and my desperation subsides, or atleast, is controlled and I am back to being me. Then, I suddenly realise my error. That person was just a normal human being who had done me no wrong. He was just the weakest link in my social network and I needed a target to blame for my pain.

Fortunately, it all happens in my head. The person only feels I am subdued and avoiding social contact and after some time I am back to normal. I hope those people can forgive me my weakness.

My Readings: The Second Sex

"Why is woman the Other?"

This book has been a constant attraction to me for years now. I wanted to much to read it but was always scared away by its volume and density. I started it more than once but never proceeded beyond the introduction. This time I meant to finish it and I am working on it. It's august 2016. And let's see when will I end it.

The amount of biological knowledge in the first part of Book One is astounding. It should have taken a really huge effort from Simone to get through all this information and form them into a train of thoughts that is really enlightening. She took me through the eternal male-female relation in all living organisms from one-celled organisms to the fully evolved adult human beings, walking past insects, animals, fish, primates, mammals. It was an adventure so enlightening and revealing.

"The two gametes at once transcend and perpetuate themselves when they unite; but in its structure the egg anticipates future needs, it is so constituted as to nourish the life that will wake within it. The sperm, on the contrary, is in no way equipped to provide for the development of the embryo it awakens. On the other hand, the egg cannot provide the change of environment that will stimulate a new outburst of life, whereas the sperm can and does travel. Without the foresight of the egg, the sperm's arrival would be in vain; but without the initiative of the latter, the egg would not fulfil its living potentialities.
We may conclude, then, that the two gametes play a fundamentally identical role; together they create a living being in which both of them are at once lost and transcended. But in the secondary and superficial phenomena upon which fertilisation depends, it is the male element which provides the stimuli needed for evoking new life and it is the female element that enables this new life to be lodged in a stable organism."

This previous extract, from "The Data of Biology" In Book 1, is the beautifully described reproduction process in human beings which shows no dominance of man on woman but a cooperation and harmonious partnership. The female is always enslaved by the species and mostly this is reflected in limitations of her various powers. A woman also suffers from an alienation from her body during the different stages of her life while a man is always one with his body.  However, Simone de Beavoir noted that biology and anatomy alone cannot account for an answer to the question posed by the book.

Next she take us in tour through psychoanalysis. Her main criticism to it is that Freud based his interpretation  always  starting off from the male libido, the male , the sovereignty of the father which he is ignorant as to where the origins of male supremacy.

"To be a woman would mean to be the object, the Other - and the Other nevertheless remains subject in the midst of her resignation. "

More coming soon..........................

In September 2016,

Next, the book digs into the history of humanity, the history of woman in the Human story. The woman moved from a weaker but equal companion into the Mother, the Earth, the sacred Woman and then at some point she turned into man's private property, the insignificant Other. The fear of woman, she carries the truth of life in her, birth and death, she reminds man of his mortality, his limit, his weakness.

These two parts of the book is really intriguing. The myth, the fear and the hope of man in woman. She was feared, degraded, slavered, exploited, but never made equal. Of course, writing this book in the 40's the environment and society and norm was different. I wonder what Simone would think of woman of our age. Woman of this age has gone a long way and gained the liberty and the respect of an equal human to some extent. This extend change from one part of the globe to another. Because till today in some societies women is still looked down as incapable, as the weaker, lesser intelligent of the two sexes. Her biological function still lays as a burden on her shoulder. It seems as if it is her mistake, her problem that she was chosen by nature to be different, to take part in the eternal process of life. But man still takes this as her weakness. I think, this may be due to his fear of that role she plays. I think when man lack courage, lack confidence, lack the guts to face difference, he plays the role of superior and project his inferiority on the other, the woman.

In most of the Arab societies, a woman is still to some extent objectified. An eastern arabic man still sees her as object of desire, a sex tool made just for his satisfaction and his name's continuation.

I think there is a balance, an equality that is so unique. A man and woman can have a balanced and nurturing relationship. But such a balance needed confidence, courage and love.

More coming soon ...........................................................

My Readings: The woman destroyed

Story 1: The age of discretion

A story about growing old, about realizing that you have grown old. The heroine is faced with her age, her life is changing. She is retired, her only son has left her home and turned into a man she is disappointed in. Her husband has grown old too. There will no more be any excitment, any adventure, any new discoveries. Even her body is failing her, because she is no more young.

In her disappointment with her only son, she reminded me of another of Simone's heroines, Anne Dubreuilh in the The Mandarins. It was a great book to read. Both heroines had a disappointment in their children. Both didn't know how to communicate their love, only seeked to control and was disappointed when the mold of their child turned out into another shape, a shape too mediocre for their taste.

This short story is gloomy and sad to read but true. We feel the same but time pass and we are no more the same. It is about growing old, which is my own nightmare. I look to the horizon, every day thinking how will it be when I don't have so much still to achieve. How can take the day as good as it gets. Can I live through this peacefully. At 35, I am afraid of 65. But I think this will help me figure out how to deal with 65. 

If I live to 65, I am preparing for that from now. I want to live a life and enjoy its end. I am not letting myself grow into an old grumbling lady. I will find a peaceful way.

Story II: The monologue

I could really read it thoroughly. I was so distressed trying to get through its pages. It felt like being yelled at. I felt that that woman was shouting at me, fighting with me. No, indeed I felt I was in the mind of a crazy woman who feels she had always been victimized in her life and she feels hopelessly abandoned. I ran through the words, skipped paragraphs and pages just yo reach the end and feel a closure to this fight of a story.

Story III: The woman destroyed

This is a masterpiece. A painful painting of a woman destroyed by fatal love. In my opinion, Simone drew out a picture of all her fears in this short story. She never married the man she loved, because she was afraid she will be destroyed by that marriage. She wanted to keep her independence and keep him free too. She was afraid she will lose him if she captivated him into a marriage. A strange unnatural notion but it worked for them well but won't work for all. 

Monique, in The woman destroyed, lived  an assumed happy life. She believed she was happily married to a man who loved her for twenty years and still does. She believes she is a good mother with happy daughters. She sees the future at forty-five as harmonious and peaceful as can be. Suddenly, everything change. Her life is shattered inside out. Like a crumbling autumn leaf under her feet, her history and future crumpled and shattered into million pieces at her feet. It is painful to hear, see and feel her pain. She mistrusts her judgement and intelligence. She loses all self-confidence. Why all that? Because, she did what Simone is so afraid of, she gave herself totally into that marriage. She took her husband, her marriage, her daughters for granted. She overlooked small details and even her memory of things we are not sure of now after an incident that questioned them.

Maybe Monique was wrong, but the other way around is not the solution too. Maybe there can be marriages that survive forty and fifty years and keep intact. I think this needs to keep up the work and development, to keep questioning and curious about each other. Taking a marriage for granted is the worst thing, because you slip into a make belief. You no more want to see the truth but only the image that most make you comfortable and happy.


That's what jWoman has to say for today.